Points never expire. Earn 200,000 points and you win an all-inclusive, one-week vacation. This year’s is to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.
The program is particularly effective because, Selesnow says, it’s at the center of all the company’s marketing efforts. Alure Home Improvements promotes Partner Points in every sales presentation, on its Web site, in its annual catalog, in sale flyers, and in dedicated newsletters twice a year. A companion program enables employees to earn the same trip by bringing in referrals to Alure. Especially important are those who come into contact with customers in the process of servicing past jobs. “We count on everyone in the company to promote repeats and referrals,” Selesnow says.
In five years, 47 couples have earned Caribbean vacations from the company. “Plus we’ve got probably another hundred couples who are within the 120,000- to 180,000- point range,” Selesnow adds. At a dollar a point, that represents more than $9.4 million in sales, at a direct cost of about $4,000 a trip and $7,000 per party.
TECH AND TOUCH Neither Weather Tight nor Alure Home Improvements use e-mail in their programs, yet. However, other contractors find e-mail well-suited to list-based marketing of this kind.
“It’s inexpensive and easy to put together, it flows more easily from your data, you can be a bit more timely with it, and the cost to send a single piece of e-mail is negligible,” says Marc Waldeck, president of Brave New Markets, a marketing company in Owings Mills, Md.
E-mail is the major form of previous-customer outreach for Waldeck’s client, S&K Roofing, Siding and Windows, in Eldersburg, Md. When Waldeck developed the company’s marketing program six years ago, repeat business was in the single digits, says Charlie McCurry, S&K director of sales. By contrast, in 2006 “previous customers generated more than half of our revenue,” he says, adding that, together with referrals, they now account for almost 70% of all leads generated.
S&K sends monthly e-mail messages to some 5,500 previous customers, offering seasonal product discounts rather than trips or other premiums. “Better pricing than we would give the regular public” is, McCurry explains, the draw for repeat and referral clients.
Using information from the company database, he periodically targets customers who bought a particular product. Similarly, every invoice leaves S&K Roofing, Siding and Windows with a cross-selling message. “If I sell you a roof, included with that invoice for final payment is an envelope stuffer that says, ‘Did you know we not only install roofs, but siding, etc., too?’” McCurry says.
This e-mail plays a key role in balancing the company’s high and low spots throughout the year, he adds. The idea is to “look at where we might be wanting in our business,” McCurry says, then use targeted e-mail messages to create a backlog that the company is comfortable with. “If we’re slow on roofing, we push roofing,” he says.
At Bloomfield Construction, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a newsletter delivered primarily by e-mail is the linchpin of owner Jeff Petrucci’s successful previous-customer marketing program.