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McCurry Associates Marketing Idea Exchange ArchivesVolume 48 - June 19, 2003
Our apologies for missing last week's issue. Thank you to all who inquired. Idea #1 - (Shameless Self Promotion) Recharge your batteries and refresh your marketing ideas at Bill McCurry's upcoming presentations - open to all industry members: Tuesday, June 24 - Columbus, OH - Agfa Success Seminar Saturday, July 26, 2003 - Dearborn, MI - Great Lakes Division, PMA - more information from (800) 762-9287, ask for Division Activities Thursday, September 11 - Sunday, September 14 - PMA Fall Conference, Miami, FL - New at the Fall Conference will be the Marketing Idea Exchange, similar to the popular, sold-out event held at the annual DIMA show as well as other marketing sessions. This fall convention is the place to get your marketing concepts grounded in what's currently happening in our industry. More information (800) 762-9287 or www.pmai.org
Idea #2 - Film Clubs - What works for digital? One of our successful marketing ideas deals with our club card enrollment program. Like many other stores, we offer free doubles or 20% discount or replacement film for all rolls processed for those customers who pay $19.99 per year for membership in our club program (other discounts also for reprints, enlargements, film and frame purchases). Whenever a new mother comes in to the store (or new dad with the film), we offer a free 3 month trial membership in our club. This keeps them coming back at a time when they are shooting lots of film and most do join our club when the trial membership is over. On a side note, I have not yet made any special club card offers for our digital reprint customers. I would like to pose a question to the Marketing Idea Exchange members who do have clubs at their stores. What offers have been made to keep those digital customers coming back to them and keep them signing up for additional years memberships?
Idea #3 - Drive By Photo Contest Each year Photography Enthusiasts of El Paso (or PEEP, our local camera club) has a photo contest. It's cool because each participant is required to purchase a single use camera (from us!) for $16.00. This includes camera, processing, and one 8X12 for submission into the contest. It is called the "Drive By Photo Contest" because you are required to be within five feet of your car when the shutter button is pushed. The prizes are Jim's Photo Lab gift certificates that we sell to the camera club for 50¢ on the dollar. Last year we had 220 entrants (not 150 like the story hyperlinked below says) and at least 150 of them were not regular customers. This gives us a chance to show off our photofinishing abilities, and we make everybody run their enlargement through Newman and they are - of course - amazed at what we can do. We are expecting 300+ entrants this year. The morning the story came out in the paper we got 10 phone calls before noon about the contest. We set a record by selling 122 cameras for the drive by photo contest in one day. (46 of the cameras were sold at the PEEP meeting, so we sold 76 in our store in six hours.) I believe that last year we sold 72 cameras on opening day. We bagged each camera in a white lunch sack and included:
Plus it's a lot of fun! Each entrant requires three visits to our store - getting the camera; dropping off the camera; and picking up and choosing the image they want enlarged for entry into the contest. When they drop the camera off, we will give them the Kodak gift (a keychain) and a "Thank You for playing in the Drive By" business card. While printing their roll, we have made a template that will list services of ours that they might not be aware of such as restorations, portrait studio, rubber stamps, developing of digital camera film, and others. Like all our templates, this will have one of their own photos on/in it. When they pick up the roll and choose their entry, they will have that template and we will give them an invitation to the awards banquet held in July. We will also give everybody a certificate for a free 5X7, a BOGO on an 8X10, a 15% off certificate for a restoration and some kind of promo on coffee mugs. We also make the contestant use the Newman station for choosing and ordering their enlargement and give them a sales pitch on ordering reprints and enlargements through Newman. We grab everybody's name and address when they drop off the film (we use our Xerox machine to make customized finishing envelopes) so that we can send them a card for next year's contest. The "custom" finishing envelope also has a signature line allowing us permission to use their images for promoting the contest. I just checked the statistic pages for the store website and it looks like we had about twenty more visitors than usual plus five valid signups for our newsletter since the story ran in the paper. The newspaper story on the contest can be viewed at http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/living/20030610-123454.shtml
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