Retail Contrarian

Valentine's Day marketing ideas

Whatever you sell, Valentine's Day offers all retailers an incredible opportunity to create incremental sales and visits.

Let's start with those who don't sell the typical Valentine's gift products. You can put together a one-week "We Love Our Customers" event that lets your customers know how much you appreciate them. You can promote the event on the run-up to February 7th, and then hold seven days of We Love Our Customers specials, events, and giveaways. I'd promote the heck out of it. There's still plenty of time to put something together.

Those of you sell typical Valentine's Day products can also do We Love Our Customers events, of course. Your challenge/opportunity is to figure out how to get your message to shoppers who may not get your newsletter or be a member of your Facebook community.

I recommend a fun, Valentine's-themed campaign suggesting how your customers can leave hints for the perfect Valentine's gift. It could include things like little cutout notes in your newsletter to be left for the reader's significant other, or Facebook posts that a follower can share so his/her significant other will read. There are lots of fun possibilities with this one. Don't be afraid to take it over the top. You need to stand out!

Also, here's a thought for those of you who sell very traditional Valentine's Day gifts like flowers, chocolates, and jewelry. You need to do something that makes your products/gifts stand out above and beyond anyone else's. Consider adding a free $5 or $10 gift card for the buyer to add to the gift they're giving. The gift card acts as a bounce back to drive the recipient into the store to make an additional purchase.

Ah, there are so many possibilities this Valentine's Day - if you put your mind to it and dare to be better than good!

So let me ask, will your Valentine's plan bring you results you'll Love?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create an extraordinary experience and results.

Go BIG on your holiday events

There are many reasons to host holiday events. They're great ways to drive your best customers into the store and best of all, most of them arrive intending to make a purchase. Events are going to be key for a lot of independent specialty retailers this holiday.

If you go BIG and follow these tips you'll not only deliver a better customer experience, you're also more likely to sell more, a lot more, at your event.

1. Go BIG - even overboard - with your event.  I've been to a lot of store events in my life and the ones that stand out the most are the ones that exceeded my expectations at the time. If you're going to go to the hard work and expense of hosting an event for your customers, by all means spend the extra money to impress your guests.

Surprise people by taking your food and drink up a level. Use higher quality plates, utensils and serving pieces.  Give out gifts and prizes that people will remember. Do something that you know will wow your guests. Although you may not see the extra effort and expense pay off at the event itself, the impression it makes on your customers will pay long-term dividends.

2. Make a BIG effort to get your best customers to the event. You can't leave the important subject of which customers attend your event up to chance. You need those top 10-25-50-100 customers to show up. You also want those customers who spent big at last year's event to come back this year.

Take time right now, before you get too busy, and create a customer wish list for your event. You know, the customers you want to attend.  Right before the event these customers should be sent handwritten invitations and called. You may need to take an employee off the floor to do this, or bring in a temp.  The owner or manager should consider personally calling the top five or ten customers on the wish list.

3. Go BIG on staffing by bringing people in for non-selling activities. This is especially important for holiday events. I once attended a men's night at a boutique where it seemed the staff was doing everything except selling. Use temporary staff such as family members and friends of the staff to serve food and drinks, gift wrap, and take care of any other non-selling activities. You want sales people selling BIG.

4. Offer BIG incentives for your staff the night of the event. Not only do you want sales people selling, you want them to maximize every customer opportunity. Consider having progressive payouts and prizes for higher levels of performance.  If you can, make an even bigger impact by paying out the incentives at the end of the night. 

5. Have a HUGE sales goals for your event. If you're going big with everything else, then you should be able to put up huge sales numbers at a holiday event. Aim high!

So let me ask, are you going BIG enough for your upcoming holiday events?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Purposeful parties and events

Last week one of our clients announced to their employees that the traditional holiday party will not be held this year. The employees were very disappointed. The annual event has long been a high point of the year because it brought families together together for an evening of food, drinks, and socializing.

The disappointment turned to excitement when the owner announced that the holiday party hasn't been completely cancelled, but will be replaced by a smaller scale event that will enable people to give back to their community.

The company is giving each employee a gift card to use to purchase holiday gifts for children in need. The employees, along with their families, will bring their purchases to a giftwrapping party held over consecutive nights at the company's office. The giftwrapping party will be catered and is shaping up to be a wonderful evening.

LOVE IT!

It's a holiday party with a purpose. Employees are still recognized for their contribution to the company, but at the same time the organization is able to give something to their community. It's a win/win that makes a difference, and in this particular instance it could spell the difference between a child having a present under the tree or not.

Whether you currently do something like this or not, it's a great reminder of the opportunities to touch more lives we have in our businesses. You also can't underestimate the impact this has on both employees and customers.

Here are a few more suggestions for ways to add more purpose to holiday parties and events:

* Donate a gift or make a contribution for every customer who shows up at a VIP or Wishlist event. This gesture could be the tipping point for a customer who is undecided about whether to attend or not.

* Ask customers to bring a gift or canned goods as the price of admission for an event. Even better, match the donation.

* Offer a gift card or discount for bringing in a gift or canned goods. This is a great way to start the sale. It's up to you and your team to finish it.

* Let customers vote on Facebook and/or in the store for your holiday charity.

* Partner with a local shelter or charity to create a Wishlist tree. Customers can purchase an ornament that helps a particular person or family in need, and those customers are invited to an exclusive evening or weekend holiday event.

So let me ask, how can you add more purpose to your parties and events?

 

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Different ways to WOW your VIPs

In my previous post I shared how to identify and leverage the three types of store VIPs.  The three types of VIPs are:

* Top VIPs. These are the top 10-25 customers.

* Current VIPs. The top 50, 100, or 250 customers.

* Community VIPs. These are customers who are important to your store but not necessarily big spenders.

Here's different ways you can WOW your VIPs and maximize your relationship with them.

Private shopping hours. Offer your VIPs exclusive private shopping hours before the store opens.  To increase the value, make the private shopping hours seem to be in limited supply.

First look events.  Invite your VIPs to be the first to see and purchase new products at exclusive events. You'll be amazed at how special this makes your VIPs feel.

Limited product opportunities. Got a hot product that's limited supply?  Don't put it on the floor for sale, call and offer them to a couple of your Top VIPs.

Breakfast with the designer or expert.  Host a VIP breakfast before your next trunk show or event.

Dinner with the designer or expert.  Invite a Top VIP to join you for dinner with the visiting designer or expert.

Birthday gifts. While recognizing every customer's birthday with a card and gift card is good business, you might consider sending a Top VIPs and select Current and Community VIPs a gift directly to their home.  What a nice surprise!

Surprise and special occasion gifts.  There are numerous opportunities to WOW a VIP - if you listen for them.  For example, a customer who is shopping for something to wear for her anniversary could be sent a gift certificate to a local restaurant.

Follow-up thank you calls from the owner or manager.  If you miss the chance to thank a VIP when he/she is in the store, why not call and say "thank you" for their business or visit?

A call or email about a new product you think might interest that customer.  This is obviously a key action of clientele-ing.  I always like to remind people that clientele-ing isn't keep a customer book....it's using a customer book!

Thank you card. While you probably want to send all of your customers a thank you card for a substantial purchase, send your Top and Select VIPs a thank you card for being your customer. You can also thank the Community VIPs for supporting your store.

So let me ask, did I miss something that you do to WOW your VIPs?  Did you see something new you might try?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Identifying and leveraging your VIPs

Of course all of your customers are important to the success of your business, but your top customers are even more important.  Let's call them your VIPs.  There are three types of retail VIP customers.

One set of VIPs are customers who buy the most over a given time period.  I like to measure spending over an 18-24 month period. This makes it easier to spot customers who are falling down or coming up the list. The number of VIP buyers you track depends on how big your business is. Most retailers track the top 50 to 100 per store.

I like to break the VIP buyers into two groups. The top 10-20 customers are my Top VIPs; the rest of the top 50-100 customers are my Current VIPs.

Another group of VIPs aren't actually big spenders but are still vital to a store's success. These are either loyal advocates who bring in a large number of new customers, or someone in the community we benefit from being associated with.  Examples include someone famous, a political mover and shaker, and well-known businesspeople.  Call this group your Community VIPs.

Most retailers have identified their Current VIPs but haven't necessarily segmented the Top VIPs or officially identified their Community VIPs.  It's important to not simply identify your three different groups of VIPs, but to also to leverage each group.

Do you keep track of when a Current VIP last visited your store?  Do you call or send a note or gift to your Top VIPs to invite them in to see the newest products?  Are you making sure your Community VIPs are getting special invitations for key events?

Loyalty cuts both ways.  The customer who spends a $2,000 a year deserves more of your attention and an even better experience than the one who spends $50 a year.  As always, the goal is to WOW every customer, but elevate the WOW and personal service to an even higher level for the VIPs. This also enables us to create incremental visits and sales from our VIPs. 

So let me ask, are your very important customers getting enough of your attention and a VIP experience?

 

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Summer events

Summer often brings a slowdown in sales and traffic for retailers who don't depend on the seasonal customer.  As a result, stores cut back or even stop holding customer events all together.
 
It is easy to understand why, but isn't a slowdown in sales and traffic exactly the time you want to increase your sales and traffic?  I advocate doing more events over the summer, not fewer.
 
Here are some thoughts and recommendations on leveraging summer events:
 
1.  The goal of summer events is to create incremental visits.  Imagine the impact on your summer business if every customer in your community visits your store one extra time this summer.  Cha ching!
 
2. Events give customers a reason to visit the store besides the need/desire to make a purchase. Your top-notch staff can turn that visit into a sale.
 
3. Events give you an easy way to stay in contact with your customer without being overly promotional.  Promoting your summer events via email and Facebook reminds customers about how special your store and store experience is.  Your summer events may not be well attended, but promoting them may lead to a different visit over the summer.
 
4. Simplify your summer events compared to the rest of the year.  You want to do this for two reasons.  First of all, because most summer events are less productive than the rest of the year you probably want to reduce your costs.  Second, most stores run with less staff over the summer since many of the employees are taking vacations, so making your events less labor intense allows your focus to remain on the customer already in the store.
 
5. Do lots of fun mini one-day events. It can be something as simple as inviting a local Girl or Boy Scout troop in to celebrate Lemonade Shopping Days.  Most stores can do a Customer Appreciation Ice Cream Social from 12-3 and 6-9.  A baby store could hold a Stroller Wash. A hobby store can do a Remote Control Car Demo Day.  A boutique reader of ours hosted a High Heels and Highballs Shopping Night with a percentage of the sales going to charity.
 
6. Partner with other stores and companies to reduce your costs and promote the event together.  Maybe a local ice cream store will work with you on ice cream social.  Maybe the local liquor store could sponsor the daiquiri and shopping night.  A vendor could sponsor the Stroller Rodeo.
 
7. Just as with bigger events, have employees invite their regular customers to a summer event.  It doesn't matter if the customer doesn't answer the phone or if they reply to the email to say they're on vacation. The employee still connected with the customer and the customer appreciates being invited.
 
So let me ask, are you planning on increasing or reduce the number of events you're doing this summer?

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Doug Fleener is a proven retail and customer experience expert that helps companies dramatically improve their customer experience and their results. Visit our website or call Doug at 866-535-6331 to discuss how he can help you create extraordinary results.

Small Business Saturday

American Express is showing their support of independent merchants by announcing that they will sponsor and promote "Small Business Saturday" on the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Says AMEX CEO Kenneth Chenault, "This is the start of a movement."  Chenault noted that large retailers have Black Friday and online retailers have Cyber Monday, "and now, starting on Nov. 27 of this year, small business owners will have Small Business Saturday."

This presents some terrific opportunities but you need to jump on them right now.  The first 10,000 small business owners who sign up to participate will receive $100 worth of Facebook advertising.  That’s free marketing money!

And check this out: American Express will give a $25 credit to 100,000 of its cardholders who pledge to use their cards at independent businesses on Nov. 27.  I’ve signed up and will be using my card at an independent business that day.

Start here at http://smallbusinesssaturday.com/ and click on Get Involved.  Join the movement and register your store, then get your Facebook credits by clicking on the For Your Biz page.

You can sign up for the $25 AMEX card credit from the Facebook page or here. As long as you take American Express (and it’s up to you but I firmly believe you should) you can tell your community on Facebook and in your newsletter to sign up and spend the $25 with you.  It’s like free product! Remember, the $25 credit is only available to the first 100,000 who sign up, so move quickly.

Small Business Saturday may take a few years to catch on, but with American Express’s support this initiative will have legs.  You might as well leverage it.

Turn Slow Days into Good Sales Days

Try some - or all - of these seven ways to create more quality traffic and sales during slower days:

1. Create an event.  Remember in college when "every day was a good day to throw a party?" Well, maybe you didn't go to the same college I did, but one of the best ways to create traffic is to give people a reason to come to your store.  Don't miss the biggies like Groundhog Day or Valentines Day.  This Friday is the 13th and could be a fun way to kick off Valentines Day.

But after you hit the obvious "Days," create your own.  How about Avoid Spring Cleaning Day, Pitchers and Catchers Reporting to Spring Training Day, or We Love Cupcakes Day?  Heck you can either do Celebrate Thursday Day. The more fun and different the event, the more likely you are to pull people in.

2. Call your customers.  I know this one isn't a favorite of most employees but on slow days the best investment of the staff's time is to get on the phone.  Obviously you want to call your top customers who haven't been in the store for some time.  Think about calling some recent buyers to make sure they're happy with their purchase.  You'll be surprised how often that leads to additional sales.  Of course if you're doing events you call and invite customers to join you.

3. Put an employee near the front door and invite people in to enjoy something to drink and eat or to participate in a special event.  Don't be overly aggressive; wait to make eye contact with a person before inviting him/her into the store.  The key is to have a reason for them to come in (beyond your good-looking face, of course).

4. Keep music playing throughout the day.  On slower days a too quiet store can unnerve some people and cause them not to stay as long than if other customers were in the store.  You might even turn the music up a bit louder than usual so people passing in front of the store hear it.  Just be sure it's not too loud for those customers already in the store.  

5. Don't let the staff congregate in the store.  I recently walked into a store on a weekday afternoon and felt like I needed to walk through a rugby scrum to get to the merchandise I wanted to see. Customers who only have a mild interest in visiting your store will turn away if they see more employees than customers.

6. Ask (or politely tell) your customers to tell their friends and family about store specials or events.  This is the most low-cost, low-tech, highly effective method to increase your traffic.  The power of suggestion is amazing.  The odds of people advocating your store go up considerably when you ask them.

7. And last but not least, maximize the traffic you do have.  Sometimes the traffic really isn't that bad but once we start to think it's a problem we miss opportunities.  Remain positive, keep engaging your customers, and take action to make your week.

So let me ask, what can you do today to make it a Good Sales Day?

Doug Fleener and Matt Norcia

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Invest in Your Future with our Retail Success Visits

This is NOT the type of visit where someone walks around a store and then spits out a report that ends up sitting, unread, on a shelf. This is an intense working session to create the strategies that will enable you to thrive in this economy.

We'll focus on a number of areas including but not limited to maximizing your current customer base, creating new customers, customer experience strategies, employee engagement, visual presentation, and store leadership.

Contact us to discuss how we can improve your future.

Your Upcoming Successful Weekend - or Not

Here are five actions you can take to increase the likelihood of having a successful weekend.

1. Offer the customer a free service. Retailers who sell jewelry or handbags can offer to clean the customer's jewelry or handbag while they shop.  Shoe stores can offer to change out the shoelaces in their customer's shoes. Cellphone retailers could offer a mini tune-up on the phone by polishing the display, cleaning the camera lens, and checking for any software update.  And before you discount this idea you might want to talk to Susan who did this last Wednesday and made a $1,000+ sale to one customer!

2. Create impromptu events. Pick a product or product category and offer demonstrations throughout the weekend.  To thank your customer for taking time to participate in the demonstration, enter him/her into a drawing for a free product or gift card.  Not only will this engage customers and increase the possibility of making a sale, but you'll also get contact information to follow-up with them next week.

3. Offer some aggressive weekend-only specials. While I'm not a big fan of competing on price, some weekend specials are great for "priming the pump."  Be sure to highlight that the specials are only good through Sunday.

4. Offer food and drinks. I'm telling you, this works, and one of the reasons it works is because so few people do it.

5. Combine all four into a Customer Appreciation Weekend. Sometimes the best parties are the impromptu "just because" kind. People right now need to feel good and be appreciated, and if anything this will create good Karma!

Here are now five things that you can do to decrease the likelihood of having a successful weekend.

1. Stalk customers as they shop in the store. Remember, if you follow a customer around without adding value it's called stalking, not service.

2. Be too quick to ring a sale and don't offer the customer additional products.  You want to have a high Unit-Per-Transaction (UPT), not a high Undersized-Purchase-Total.

3. Plan on having a so-so weekend.  Plan to succeed.  Positive energy works wonders.

4. Don't work the customer, clerk the customer.  As someone said to me the other day, if you don't know the difference, you're clerking.

5. Do the same thing you've done every weekend this year. That is, of course, unless you've beat your sales target every weekend this year. If that's the case then hit "reply" to tell me what you're doing and I'll share it with your fellow readers.

Good luck, have fun, and make your successful weekend a reality!

How to Attract More Customers

Money magazine recently asked me to answer this question posed by a retailer:  "How can I attract more customers to my retail boutique without spending a lot of money?"

Here's some part of my answer.

“One of the cheapest and often most successful direct ways to boost retail traffic: Send an e-newsletter to past customers.  ‘It's always more effective to market to the person you know,’  says Doug Fleener, president of the Dynamic Experiences Group, a Lexington, Mass. retail consulting firm. ‘This way, you don't need to advertise to the whole local market just to get these shoppers back in the store.’”

Read the rest of my advice, as well that of other experts, here at CNNMoney.com.