Marketing ideas to drive recency, frequency and leads in 2016

It’s that time of year when distributors are either beginning, in the midst of or completing their their 2016 marketing plans. Sometimes promotional initiatives are inserted as “generic” with details left for later, sometimes the team has a brainstorm and scopes out the idea.

Many times inspiration, which some define as innovation, comes from outside the industry. Changing ones frame of reference creates new opportunities.

So, in this spirit below are some concepts inspired by retail women’s footwear, by a grocery store, by a home improvement retailer, an industrial supply catalog company and be an industry lighting company’s initiative with a national chain.

DSW’s Callback

DSW, a women’s footwear retailer offers a robust frequent buyer program. They know what, when and how often many of their shoppers visit…and when they don’t visit.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending upon your perspective, one of their postcards came in the mail. My wife hadn’t visited in awhile.  Hence the offer of $20 off her next purchase of $49 or more during a defined time period.

Why of interest?

A key driver of sales growth and account develop is a concept called RFM. R = recency of order; F = frequency of ordering and M = monetary value.

Strategies can be developed to monitor customer activity and attempt to stimulate re-activity.

Frequenting Lowes

It seems like there is a supermarket on every street corner and at times multiple on the same street corner. Unfortunately there is nominal differentiation between many.  So, they offer promotions on a regular basis.

While many offer frequent buyer programs (which usually generate some price savings … but just about everyone gets, or there is some type of to get discounted gas or discounts on food.  A favorite practice is also to get customers engaged in a frequent buyer promotion. These are typically 6, 8, 10 week promotions.

In this Lowes promotion, simply purchase a minimum of $40 / week for 6 of the 8 weeks of the promotion and earn a $20 coupon that needs to be redeemed in the month following the promotion.

Consider. $20 dollars that needs to be redeemed for items that you would buy from the store.  The value is based upon retail; the award is based upon COGS.  And they get you to spend a minimum of $240.  This is the F in the RFM equation.  They want you to “frequently” visit…and how many people only spend $40 a week at the supermarket?

Lowes for Pros

We’ve all heard how Home Depot and Lowes want to pursue going after “pros”.  It seems to always be their desire but their outreach initiatives go hot and cold.

Recently Lowes promoted its Lowes for Pros initiative with the following 4 panel direct mail piece was received at the office.

Two points …

• Direct mail is not dead.  Remember the phrase ” a picture can be worth a 1000 words”?
• The are highlighting electrical materials … smoke detectors and landscape / outdoor lighting among other products

If you are trying to generate new customers, it never hurts to first gain some visibility and offer loss leaders to generate activity.

MSC Direct

MSC, along with Grainger, has been held up as models to emulate for ecommerce.  And both do this very well. Reportedly 40% of MSC’s business is via ecommerce and Grainger is comparable.

So what is this? An MSC catalog showing up in the mail (and one dedicated to metalworking showed up today.

The question becomes “why?”

Consider

• If you don’t know what is on the website and are not thinking of MSC every day, how do you know what is on the site? Perhaps the catalog is the “salesperson” for the website?
• The website’s “inventory” is the product content and descriptions.  These are housed in the PIM (an acronym the industry is hearing more and more).  Product content in the PIM can be repurposed to multiple outlets … websites (main and niche), ERP system, catalogs, customer specific e-catalogs, for e-marketplaces / procurement systems and more.  Perhaps MSC is using their PIM to create the catalog, hence significantly reducing the cost of developing a catalog.

If you are developing a PIM or have access to one, check to see if it can output the data to a catalog and auto-paginate for a print catalog as well as how you can repurpose the content. With the cost of developing content, PIMs and ecommerce engines, perhaps your biggest ROI can come from repurposing the content in your PIM?

Philips Lighting and WESCO

Last comes a sampling program by Philips Lighting in conjunction with WESCO.  Called WESCO VIP Pick 2 Promotion, this promotion, hosted on Philips Lighting’s website allows “visitors” (whomever the promotion is targeted to) to select 2 Philips Lighting products (out of 7) to receive a sample.

They must order their sample by December 15.

Recipients enter their contact information, select their products based upon a conversation with a Philips Lighting rep (a WESCO rep is not mentioned in the program rules).

Good concept for lead generation, list building, generating supplier / customer conversation (and maybe a sales call) and gaining early access (and insight) into projects as presumably someone wants a sample in anticipation of a project that is under consideration

(sorry for the resolution. We suggest you visit the site, http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/content/B2B_LI/en_US/campaign/contractors/pick-two-promotion.html, or feel free to email and a “better resolution” graphic will be sent)

Hopefully these ideas stimulate ideas for your 2016 marketing strategy.  We’ll share more 2016 planning tidbits throughout the remainder of the year.