Be excellent to each other! – Fake Socrates in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”

I’m going on my soapbox here. I hope you will indulge me while I get something off my chest.

I wrote once before about how your attitude towards those who give you service you in buying situations can affect what kind of treatment you receive. Although their attitude is primarily their responsibility, how you act toward them can affect their attitude positively or negatively. I bring this up again because yesterday it hit rather close to home.

My wife works in the retail businesses. This close to Christmas, you can imagine she’s pretty harried. The stores are crowded with holiday shoppers who are in a hurry and in foul moods. Although most of those who work at her store try to deliver superior service, sometimes things outside their control adversely affect what kind of service they can give.

For example: long lines at the checkout can be caused by a flu bug going around and several key people calling in sick on the same day. That type of situation can adversely affect how long customers will wait in line to pay for their purchases. It’s also something outside the realm of an individual’s control.

My wife cried herself to sleep last night. As she was going about her duties she ended up on the cash register and had to deal with someone who lambasted her for having to wait too long in line. With little regard to her feelings or the fact that she had no control over people calling in sick, he insulted her and blamed her for all the problems with this particular retail outlet. She was so upset when she came home, she couldn’t even tell me what the man said, other than he cussed her out and called her terrible names.

I understand this person was probably having a bad day. He was likely tired and in a hurry to finish his holiday shopping so he could finish other tasks. Or, he could just be a total jerk. We’ll never know for sure. What we do know is he ruined the day of someone who was doing her best to help him along.

I say again that the Golden Rule applies: Treat others as you wish to be treated.

I’ve been thinking a lot about online contests over the past several months. Moderating the “Engaging Your Community and Audience Through Contests” session at PubCon gave me some new idea as to how I might use contests at work.

Over the long weekend I entered two contests. Each was for a brand I like very much which offered prizes I would enjoy having. One was for Cracker Barrel, which I learned about from scanning a QR Code on a tabletop placard. The other was for the Zagg “iPad An Hour” Black Friday event, which I learned about when they sent me an email. Here are some observations I made of each:

Cracker Barrel’s

Pros

• It was fairly easy to enter
• Bonus entries were available
• It was sharable
• The prize was valuable enough to be an incentive to enter (a gift basket and a $250 Cracker Barrel gift card)

Cons

• The form required way too much information. For example, did they really need my phone number and postal address if I provide an email address? Also, why was it necessary to set up an account with a password just to enter a contest? To their credit, they did offer login through Facebook, which may have negated the need to fill out the form.
• Because I got to the form by scanning the QR Code on the tabletop card, it would have been nicer to have been sent to a mobile-friendly version of the form rather than the one designed for a computer browser. Also, while I understand the reason for CAPTCHA, it’s a pain to use on a mobile device (Auto-Correct, anyone?)

Cracker Barrel Holiday Sweepstakes Entry Form

Zagg’s

Pros

• It was very easy to enter, just provide full name and email address
• Bonus entries were available
• It was very sharable (as this was the way to get bonus entries)
• The prize was valuable enough to be an incentive to enter (a new iPad2)

Con

• To be considered for each hour’s drawing everyone had to enter once every hour, which put a huge demand on Zagg’s servers. I had trouble getting the entry page to load early in the morning, though they had it under control and loading quickly in short order. The rest of the site loaded well during the short-lived slow time, so their commerce was, hopefully, not adversely affected.
• I didn’t win one. (Well, OK, perhaps that’s not really a ding on how the contest was implemented …)

Zagg iPad An Hour Giveaway Entry Form

 

Each of these contests had merit. Without knowing the goals of each, however, it’s hard to tell whether or not they were effective. Each had a good prize to offer and it was reasonably easy to enter both. From the consumer standpoint, however, I would say that Zagg had the better implementation given the very simple entry form. The one seeming mistake was that they didn’t anticipate the popularity of their giveaway and weren’t prepared for the onslaught; though they did recover quickly much to their credit.

Update: After I posted this, Scott Cowley at Zagg told me that from their point of view, the iPad An Hour contest was a huge success. He cited some stats on the results from Drew Conrad that look very good. Thanks Scott and Drew.

What say you? Did you participate in these or another contest over the “Black Friday” weekend? What did you think about them? Please feel free to share in the comments.

Customer loyalty programs come in a number of forms ranging from the personal, “low-tech” to the more impersonal “high-tech” ones. But, are they right for your business? For most business to consumer concerns, as a consumer, I have to answer this question with a resounding “Yes.”

Why?
As a seller of goods or services, you have to find a way to differentiate yourself from your competition. You can only shave so much off your prices before getting to the point where you can’t sustain your business. A loyalty program can help you offer better service and reward your repeat customers. The more technical the program, the easier it is for your customers to participate and have choices in how you will reward them. It really can be a “win/win.”

How?
The least technical and the most personal is for you, the owner or manager of the business, to get to know your customers personally. After a while of dealing with them and offering exception service you will begin to see who keeps coming back. The more you learn about them, the more you can offer them in discounts or extras which will make a difference to them. This type of system is difficult to quantify without keeping some kind of records, so unless you have an exceptional memory you might want to keep some kind of diary if this is to be your approach to a loyalty program.

Another, more technical, approach is a punch-card system. This is simple to start and implement. Decide on an offer – something like if you purchase 10 tubs of banana guacamole the customer gets the 11th tub free. Print some cards, hand them out, and punch the cards when the customer presents them. Simple and easy for you and the customer.

More technical is the electronic card system. In this case, you have your customer sign up and give them a card which they can scan or swipe at purchase time. This is the most technical and complicated, but perhaps can offer the greatest reward.

This type of system allows you to set up different ways the rewards can be accrued and redeemed. One system which comes to mind is casino rewards programs in which points can be earned playing machine or table games and then can be redeemed for cash, hotel rooms, meals or in stores based on the cash value of the points accrued. Customers can go on line and see how many points they’ve accrued, as well. Certainly a rewards program doesn’t have to be so complex, but this type of system allows for that kind of flexibility of offerings.

Bottom Line
Rewarding loyal customers is easy enough to do – and if you’re not you should be doing so. Find a way which works for you, your customers and your employees (let’s face it, if the program isn’t used it does no one any good). Start small and grow as needed. Your customers will appreciate your efforts and reward you with more of their business.

photo credit: JoshMcConnell

I am a computer geek by trade, but also a marketer by default of my position. Because of this, I’m eager to read up on topics which will broaden by knowledge of marketing and sales.

“The X and Y of Buy” by Elizabeth Pace is a good book outlining differences in the sales cycle when selling to women or men. Each chapter covers a different aspect of sales and specific differences between the genders. Ms. Pace’s assertions are taken not only from her own experience, but also research from research including functional MRI studies. The chapters wrap up with a “Taking It To The Street” section outlining the key points of the chapter. At the end of the book, the author’s Gendercycle Selling™ is outlined.

The book is written in a way which makes it easy to read and easy to digest. If you’re interested in things sales and marketing and want some tips on adjusting your techniques to male or female audiences, then this book is for you.

Disclaimer: I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Blogger program. Although Thomas Nelson Publishing provided the book at no cost to me, this review is my honest opinion of the work.