WHEN DAVE RATNER was in sixth grade, he was thrown out of school for his sense of humor, his willingness to play to an audience and his overriding concern about what people thought of him. In 1994, when his Agawam, MA-based business, Dave’s Soda & Pet City, was chosen Springfield, MA’s “Small Business of the Year,” he attributed his success to his sense of humor, his willingness to play to an audience and his overriding concern about what people thought of him.
A folksy feel to his shopper affinity program-the Club Dave’s card-belies a shrewd marketing mind: The welcome note says, “The purpose of the card is to save you money. As long as I don’t screw up the works too often, you should be receiving coupons, freebies and other cool stuff in the mail.”
In fact, Ratner, the company’s chief instigating officer (“I do virtually everything. I am the marketing department, the buyer, the invoice checker and the general schlepper”) doesn’t screw up the works too often.
The company’s 40,000-name active customer database is constantly being mined for purchase-oriented direct mail campaigns. Ratner also takes every opportunity to augment it, sponsoring co-op programs through schools, basing employee bonuses partly on the card’s spending levels, and promoting “scratch and win” contests that were only open to cardholders. “Every deal that we have in the store, bar none, is contingent upon you having a Club Dave’s card,” he says.
But Ratner’s most successful promotion involved a “dogonomically correct dog bed” designed for very old or arthritic dogs. The design of the bed is similar to that of a foam egg carton, providing sickly (or just plain lazy) dogs extra support.
Ratner isolated 20,000 purchasers of dry dog food in his database, and last Christmas each was sent a postcard advertising the bed, which was offered for $39.99, a $10 savings off its $49.99 price.
Ratner also included an offer for a free 4-pound bag of Dave’s SPF, a house brand of dog food. Even though the margin on the house brand is smaller than for, say, Iams, “It still represents a wonderful value,” says Ratner. “Customers can only buy it at my store. They can buy Iams at any store.”
The chain’s three stores sold out their stock of 400 beds. At $40 a bed, the promotion realized $15,600 in revenue-and that figure doesn’t include ancillary purchases. “When we do a sale on Iams, many people just buy it and leave,” says Ratner. The promotion, he adds, was the best he had ever done: Other mailings, including those for specific brands of dog food, usually result in a 15% to 20% response, but not a corresponding rise in transactions.
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