McCurry Associates Marketing Idea Exchange Archives

Volume 50 - July 10, 2003

Bill McCurry McCurry Associates wmccurry@mccurryassoc.com 609 688-1169

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Editor’s Note – This entire issue is devoted to the question from Issue 48 by Maurice Kornreich, Village Photo, Franklin, MA – How do you make film clubs effective, especially for digital. We have received numerous submissions of new marketing ideas recently. . . . In fact we’re overwhelmed . . . we will publish them all in a manner that still keeps your reading to an estimated 3 minutes per week. . . so please bear with us as we work through them. Lots of great sharing on this list, thank you.

Idea #1 – Neil Hoversten - Photo Finish, Inc - Sheridan, WY - neil@photo-finish.com

As members of IPI, we have used the Smart Image Plus Club for years. Traditionally, we've offered 2 for 1 prints, free replacement film, or a free 5x7 with each roll of film processed. Recently we expanded the choices to include a free CD from their images, or a free upload to our online Lifepics photo service. The Lifepics option makes it easy to introduce our customers to this service, but the free CD option is the one really taking off with our customers. No one else in our area offers this club benefit.

I hated to give up the $9.99 or $7.99 per roll for CD's that we've received in the past, but our business lives on traffic, and the loss of rolls to all the grocery/drug/discount stores has impacted our business. The CD's actually cost us less than second prints or replacement film and has a much higher perceived value to the customer. It seems to work, and since the customer only gets one choice, we can sell the second set of prints again.

We also extend this club offer to media cards. We offer the same services and the same prices film or digital. The CD option is even more popular with these customers and the often have over 100 prints per order--we only offer the "roll" club options if we print all the photos on the card(s). Selected images from a card are treated like reprint orders.

How well this all works only time will tell, the market is a moving target, but so far the customer response to digital expansion of our club offers is very good.

I appreciate your newsletters, Bill. Keep up the good work.

Idea #2 – Bruce Rickerd - Photo Express - Circleville, Ohio - photoexp@frognet.net

Like many other photo labs we too have a free film club. We promote it to everyone who comes in the door. The dues are cheap $10 / year and we include a 4 pack of film to start the customer off. When the customer does the math (which we do for them on our flyer) we are $1.50 to $2 less expensive than CVS etc...

We are now teaming up with other stores - members in the health store across the street now get into our club free when they join the health club, in fact we are now offering this type of deal to all the business in our downtown that likewise have some type of loyalty program. We also offer a free membership to all our fellow chamber of commerce members. This has increased our membership and helped roll count.

Idea #3 – Tony Frontera - Tuthill’s Photo, Vestal, NY tony@tuthillsphoto.com

We used to have a "club" membership. In fact there were two levels one at $19.95 and one at $29.95. For us they were not very successful in terms of the number we sold, and many customers did not like the idea of carrying around another card. So we did away with the club thing and enrolled anyone on our mailing list in our new PHOTO REWARDS program with no membership fee or card! It is part of our POS system. Points are earned on any purchase and these points can be used as discounts on future purchases. Items earn points based on margin, the higher the margin the more points one earns. The program can be modified on the fly so we can run weekly double points on photofinishing, for example. Or we can select a product category to promote. It is very flexible. The benefit is we don't take dollars off a purchase until a certain number of points accumulate.

Idea #4 – Jen Sutton – Moto Photo - bgs_moto@algxmail.com

Punch Cards- our store was doing $5.00 punch cards, for every roll you develop, you get a punch on a card. Then, once filled, they can use the $5 bucks for anything. Well, I was losing about $600.00 a month in punch cards until we thought of doing a 10 punch card where you get 9 punches on a card and then get the 10th roll processed free that way were only losing the cost of developing.

Works out much better.

Idea #5 – Sue Mitchell – Camera Service Center – Lewiston, ME - Mainecamera@aol.com

We have a Film & Processing club card, which we give out to our customers at no charge. Each time our customer purchases film or picks up any processing services we punch the card for the pre-tax dollar amount spent on film and processing for each visit. Once the card is fully punched it is worth $5.00 towards our customer’s next purchase. It takes $50.00 in film or processing purchases to completely punch the card, this is like giving the customer a 10% discount.

As you can see we have no expiration date on the card, once the card is fully punched and redeemed, we enter our customer's name and address into our mail list. We use this mail list to send our processing customers specials on our processing services and our Holiday Greeting Card promotions.

Some of our customers have been know to save up their cards to redeem them towards Cameras, Lenses, Flashes, Frames, Albums etc. When we have a customer come in or call for pricing on developing 10 or more rolls of film at one time and they ask us if we have any discount we mention our Film & Processing Card and tell them we can give them a 10% discount instead of punching the card. This usually makes them very happy and they leave their film for processing.

The card is the size of a wallet size photo which can easily fit in our customers wallet.

Idea #6 – Bob Banasik, Best Photo Lab – Danbury, CT - bob@bestphotolab.com

On a side note, I have not yet made any special club card offers for our digital reprint customers.

We treat "digital customers" the same as those with film. Our club offers 20% discount on color film processing, reprints, and enlargements. That also goes for digital "D&P", enlargements, etc. We also have a "Digiprint Card" for sale which entitles you to a year's worth of digital photos. (One order per month of up to 24 prints). We punch the month designator on the card at each visit. At retail the card's value is $141.00 (.49 per print). We sell it for $69.99 explaining to the customer that we don't think they will actually 'remember' to visit us every month. If you don't use it you lose it. They, of course, figure they are darn well gonna be here so the half price deal is really a good value. The best value we have received from this vehicle so far is in using it for charity auctions. We donate the card and get publicity for having donated $141.00 worth of services. The "lucky winner" gets to come to our lab once a month for their digital photos. Simple to do on the computer; just print and laminate.

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