Plastic promotional cards
If a promotion with plastic cards is going to work, the proof will be that
the customer retention and spending rate improves by a measurable amount.
How can you make that happen? By communicating with your customers. Let's
look at a few examples of customer communications with plastic cards that
really worked.
A 25-unit Steak and Seafood company offered a $10 birthday plastic card to
215,600 customers who filled out a birthday club registration cards while
eating. A database was created from these registrations. They used the
database to send birthday card with gift card mailings which, over a year,
cost about $100,000. 41.1% of the plastic cards were redeemed, producing
overall sales of $2.9 million dollars. Each birthday patron brought an
average of 1.8 other guests for the party who paid full price.
Another restaurant issued paper Frequent Diner membership cards for their
patrons. When they had issued 25,000 paper cards, they decided to mail
plastic cards to replace them. The cards plus mailing cost about $10,000.
During the week before the cards went out, these card holders visited the
restaurants 1,050 times. During the 13 weeks after receiving their permanent
plastic cards, these same patrons visited an average of 1,400 times per week
– an increase of 33%. They spent $156,000 more than they were spending
before the cards were mailed. What is most significant is that there was
no special promotion associated with the plastic cards. There was no
additional discount offer. The plastic cards were simply a substitute for
the paper cards.
Another restaurant chain wanted to increase frequency and reactivate members
who seemed to be “drifting away.” They selected 4,000 frequent diner card
members who had not earned any points during the previous three months. They
sent them a letter offering and a $5 plastic gift card on dinner. The offer
was good for 35 days. The letter and plastic cards cost $3,600. What were
the results?
• Average member visits went from 25 per day before the promotion, to 42 per
day during the promotion, and 29 per day in the 35-day period after the
promotion was over.
• Average visits per card went from 1.18 before to 1.26 during and 1.22
after the promotion.
• Incremental sales were $17,100 during the promotion and $4,700 in the 35
days after the promotion was over.
In other words, by spending $3,600, this restaurant chain reactivated 599
people who were otherwise lost as patrons. The gain was not only during the
promotion period, but had a lasting effect, with 147 of the reactivated
people visiting the restaurant after the promotion was over. Relationship
building works and has lasting benefits.
This is not high tech stuff, folks. It is simply collecting customer names
and using the information to create promotions with plastic cards.
Andreoni.com can offer you beautiful promotional cards that will give you
everything needed to make your card one that your clients will keep,
remember and utilize. Award winning designs, full range of "extra" features
on cards and encoding for magnetic stripes at no extra cost. We can also
print paper card holders and assemble your mailing pieces for you. Lastly,
we can send all assembled pieces to a mailing house of your choice, or, if
you don't have one, we can make a recommendation.
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