Alan Gayle is a sales and marketing consultant specialising in the construction industry. In this column he offers advice on how to make an impact in the market. This month he turns his attention to loyalty incentives.
This month I had intended to continue the Word of Mouth marketing theme by talking about the importance of converting our marketing efforts into solid sales growth. But during a trip to Tesco last week, I received something that is worthy of inclusion this month.
So what happened?
The ‘Pyrex Collector Card’!
Eh? What could that possibly have to do with marketing in the construction industry? I hear you ask. Bear with me.
The Pyrex Collector Card is a customer reward scheme where Tesco offers any customer that spends over £20 on one transaction a small sticker, (about the size of a postage stamp), which you stick inside your collector card. When you’ve filled the card with stickers, you redeem it to buy Pyrex cookware products at a whopping 60% discount. The scheme is designed to promote customer loyalty and thereby increase sales. Radical eh?
Well, not that radical actually. Anyone over 40 will remember a very similar scheme in thousands of British shops and petrol stations in the ’60s and ’70s – Green Shield Stamps.
Still not with me?
About 20 years ago Tesco was a pioneer of a new customer loyalty scheme called the Clubcard. It was a revelation because, unlike Green Shield Stamps, the electronic Clubcard system gave Tesco valuable data about our buying habits and preferences. The data were, and still are, used to enable them to sell more products to us.
If you bought cat food regularly, Tesco would send you offers for its super-cat-lovers pet insurance. If you bought nappies, it would assume you had a baby and would send you special offers for more baby-related products. It was very innovative at the time and it was a huge success for Tesco. Such a success that other retailers quickly adopted the idea with their own loyalty cards.
So why has the mighty Tesco revived a sales promotion scheme it abandoned in 1977?
For all the ingenuity and convenience of the Clubcard, some people still don’t want to use it. Some people long for the return of Green Shield Stamps. Being the master-marketer that we know Tesco is, the retailer realises that while a significant number of its customers (currently about 15million f them) use Clubcard, it’s still worthwhile offering something for those customers that prefer their loyalty scheme on paper.
And now to the point.
You might have a brilliant website. You might be on page one of Google. And you might believe that social media marketing is the way forward. But take a tip from Tesco – there are still plenty of people that prefer to do business the old fashioned way.
And that is especially true in this industry, which isn’t known for being at the cutting edge of technological developments.
No matter how high your online profile is, some people will never read your Tweets, ‘Like’ you on Facebook or sign up to your blog.
How many of them there are and how important they are as potential customers is impossible to say. I don’t have enough space to go into how to reach them now, but you ignore them at your peril.
No matter what the digital marketing specialists tell you, in this industry, the days of printed literature, networking events and exhibitions are not over yet.
I’ll get back on track with the word of mouth conversion rate article next month.
Alan Gayle has worked in sales and marketing roles in the construction industry since 1983. Following a successful career with some of the UK’s leading building product manufacturers, he has worked in the stone sector for the past 10 years. He now runs Keystone Construction Marketing, a marketing agency specialising in the construction industry. The agency works with building contractors, subcontractors and building product suppliers to help them increase their sales and improve their margins.
www.KeystoneCM.co.uk