Customer Appreciation?

 One of my favorite outdoor stores had what they called a Customer Appreciation sale a few months back. That’s when they take all the merchandise they didn’t sell throughout the season and mark it way down. They then invite folks to an evening event that in this case included a keg of beer and wine in addition to all the great sale prices.

 I took a friend along and while sipping a microbrew and riffling through discount racks she asked a really good question; Why didn’t she hear about about this awesome customer appreciation sale? A good question that I couldn’t answer. Chances are she was probably even a better, longer time customer than I was at this particular store. She had even purchased a $400 ski rack a month before and had certainly spent more than I had in that store over her lifetime. “How did you hear about it? she asked.”

 Well, I had just happened to be in the store the day before and had seen signs posted promoting the event. I had also seen a mention about Customer Appreciation day on Facebook as I had friended the store months before. Not a big Facebook user, somehow she had fallen through the marketing cracks. If it wasn’t for a referral from me, she would of air balled the event.

 It really got me thinking. It wasn’t actually a Customer Appreciation sale but rather more a Facebook Appreciation sale. Any social media junkie who happen to “like” this business on Facebook was informed of this great event regardless if they had ever set foot or spent a nickel inside the store.

 Some emails were probably sent to their list, but with only a few hundred collected and mostly through their website, they were still missing the most important and profitable cross-section of customer; the ones that regularly show up and spend money in the store. Then it dawned on me, without an ongoing effort to gather actual customer information in the store, no retailer can ever offer a true customer appreciation sale, at least without excluding most of their customers.

 Because bringing existing customers back is far cheaper than going out and finding new ones we’ve developed Constant Capture, a simple high tech, low cost solution to building the most massive customer lists. Touch screen technology in store lets a retailer easily gather the customer’s information in a tidy and non-intrusive way.  It can even segment and target specific groups based on preferences, giving a business like this outdoor retailer complete and total control over its marketing message as well as the delivery of that message.

 I know of one customer in particular that would have appreciated that.