PDA

View Full Version : our first all internet marketed event....



greenoak
09-12-2010, 09:21 PM
we just had our first all internet advertized event.... it was great....about 10k over 3 days when normal would have been about 6k..... we just used email and facebook.....
one thing that really worked was an idea i got from a top retailer on another forum.... offer a 10$ off coupon on a 20$ purchase...altho we changed it to a 30$ purchase....
we had them print off the coupon...or just mention it....then if they spent 30$$ they got 10$$ off...

HOW WOULD YOU LOOK AT THIS? about half the sales were under 40$ , meaning they tried hard to hit the 30$ and didnt go much further....some of those sales were on one of our best items....maybe half were on something else.....
one way to look at it is we lost about 1000$ thru the coupons.... also we didnt have any advertizing costs!!!! and upped our sales a whole lot...love that!!
the person whose idea this coupon was is a the top retailer in our state...a guy i actually know about... .....
the profit is way above what ive heard of groupon coupons..... not counting the comeback from groupon...if any...
my biggest worry on this event was/is that it will slow down attendance to our big christmas event....we dicided to risk it, figuring its a different season...we will find out about that in about 8 weeks...
any thoughts..?

Spider
09-12-2010, 11:07 PM
I think you did well, Ann. It seems to me you would have easily spent $1,000 on advertising to pull in that extra business, so the "loss" on the coupons is well offset. Another way of looking at it is, the extra business was $4,000 ($10,000 - $6,000) - at a markup of, say, 2:1 (I don't know what normal markup would be on antiques but using 2:1), you cleared an extra $2,600 gross (2:1 on $4,000) for that $1,000 coupon cost.

I would also hazard a guess that this IS a different season and would not affect your Christmas event.

Good job, all round!

Harold Mansfield
09-13-2010, 12:50 AM
I think you did great, congratulations! I don't think this will have any negative effect on Christmas at all. Too far away..if anything it may help it.

greenoak
09-13-2010, 07:43 AM
thanks..im happy and not feeling bad about selling almost outof one super item...
..the 4 normal events, with snail mail and all the paid ads bring in about 4 times that amount of people....but they have been going around for years.... this one we will defiinitely be doing again....
you can always rationalize so we figured them getting our most popular item so reasonable would cause good buzz....its a centerpiece and all their friends will see it....
another good thing is the weekend before was great also ....being a holiday weekend...so lots of customers wouldnt have come 2 weekends in a row....
using facebook is just totally unknown territory.... i never want to be spam.... but it gets me on their page whenever i choose...until they drop me for being a pest........lol....using coupons that works totally new too...usually they just dont respond..this one was pretty good apparrantly....

KristineS
09-13-2010, 05:03 PM
I think the best thing is that you did the math on this. A lot of people try something new and don't have any reference point and don't really know if the new idea worked better or worse than what they'd done previously. I say good for you that you had stats you could track and some benchmark for figuring out whether the new way of advertising was useful or not.

I would guess it won't have much impact on the Christmas event.

greenoak
09-14-2010, 06:58 AM
we have the monthly numbers for the last 20 yrs!!! and i can estimate pretty well....if this had been a dud at least it wouldnt have cost much.....
also we got 175 email addresses from our drawing...
most didnt bring coupons...i dont quite get that...about 90 brought them...maybe i dont appeal to coupon clippers!!!!

KristineS
09-14-2010, 02:02 PM
most didnt bring coupons...i dont quite get that...about 90 brought them...maybe i dont appeal to coupon clippers!!!!

There are people who don't tend to bother with coupons. I know I don't a lot of the time. It has to be something I really want or a real luxury item for me to use a coupon. Most of the time I stick them in my purse and then forget about them.

Spider
09-14-2010, 04:38 PM
Most of the time I stick them in the trashcan and forget about them! =:-O

greenoak
09-14-2010, 08:38 PM
im the same way on coupons.....
..these were wortth 10$$ if they came in.... a real number to a young mom..a big part of my target audience.....
ive always been pretty dismissive of them but now im a little more interested....

Spider
09-14-2010, 11:48 PM
Do people REALLy pay attention to the "10 cents off" coupons that seem to flood the mailbox? I mean, 10 cents??

OTOH, I saw a program on TV about two ardent 'coupon-clippers' (one a man, one a woman) - each was given $20 and sent shopping. The woman came back with about $120-worth of groceries that cost her just over the $20 she was given. The guy came back with $98-worth of groceries but still had the $20 he was given and another $20 cashback (Or something of that order - I don't remember the details exactly.)

To me, the time it takes that prolongs an already boring and tedious task, would be worth paying full-price and getting the hell out of the place, but sometimes it seems the coupon business has gone crazy. I certainly wouldn't buy anything I wasn't already planning on buying just to "save" a few bucks. If I wasn't already planning on buying that product, $25 off a $100 item is not $25 saved, it is $75 wastefully spent.

greenoak
09-15-2010, 08:30 AM
im all with you spider.... but its sure suggested a lot...
..of course shopping at greenoak is never boring!!!!!
and like i said ours was worth 10 $$$ and all about what they are buyying right now....fall decor....
im not going too deep in this...i dont want them waiting for a deal and only coming then....but some stores have things all the time...some really good stores....

KristineS
09-15-2010, 03:02 PM
I wrote for a blog about frugal living for a while and there was a whole community of people who did nothing but clip coupons. There were whole forums devoted to finding coupons.

To me it was nuts. The time these people spent hunting down, clipping and organizing coupons could have been spent so much more profitably, at least so far as I saw it.

I think coupons appeal to some people and not to others. If coupons are your only marketing strategy then you're going to be serving only half your audience. Coupons should be part of the mix, but not the entire plan.

Harold Mansfield
09-16-2010, 10:44 AM
im all with you spider.... but its sure suggested a lot...
..of course shopping at greenoak is never boring!!!!!
and like i said ours was worth 10 $$$ and all about what they are buyying right now....fall decor....
im not going too deep in this...i dont want them waiting for a deal and only coming then....but some stores have things all the time...some really good stores....

I think it's gotten to the point where just about everybody has some kind or deal of special all of the time. Sometimes it's not even really a deal, it's just marketed like one. I noticed this trick with some department stores that seem to run specials every week....Sometimes I think everything in the store is purposely marked up an extra 10 percent at all times, just so that they can take 10 percent off of anything at will and never run out of things to offer as specials.

KristineS
09-17-2010, 02:34 PM
I think it's gotten to the point where just about everybody has some kind or deal of special all of the time. Sometimes it's not even really a deal, it's just marketed like one. I noticed this trick with some department stores that seem to run specials every week....Sometimes I think everything in the store is purposely marked up an extra 10 percent at all times, just so that they can take 10 percent off of anything at will and never run out of things to offer as specials.

A lot of stores and businesses do exactly that. They artificially inflate the price so they can then mark it down and make it seem like a deal. I think consumers are so focused on the "sale" that they don't really stop to look and see if what they're paying is actually a bargain.

greenoak
09-19-2010, 08:44 AM
its so huge on the internet....dh went to a site and got a 200$ off coupon on a raft we were buying from overtons...and when he bought his motor he found some big valuable warranty deal that the dealer hadnt told him about...
.so its not just little old ladies...altho maybe we are dumb not to be saving all that at the grocery....
im not planning to go much farther in the coupon thing tho...i dont want to get the customers just waiting for the next deal....

Spider
09-19-2010, 09:21 AM
But, by and large, do customers wait for the next coupon/deal? Some may, but for those, if you don't have a coupon or a deal of some kind, they'll go to who has. So you lose them, anyway, between coupons.

My view is that there are people who only buy with a coupon or special offer, and there are those who don't. You must decide which type of customer you will serve. It probably depends on the business which group is the biggest.