Nothing creates warm-fuzzy feelings quite like cookies. That’s why Howdy Honda in Austin, TX recently used LoyaltyTrac, their service rewards program, to conduct an email campaign centered around the holidays and cookies.
Colorful, cheerful emails were sent to all of Howdy Honda’s service reward members, encouraging them to submit their favorite holiday cookie recipe to be included in a downloadable cookbook that the dealership would create and distribute in its December email. Members were encouraged (but not required) to post their recipes on Howdy Honda’s Facebook wall. Every member who sent in a recipe received a bonus 10,000 service rewards points redeemable towards any service of choice.
The email campaign achieved an open rate of nearly 20%, far surpassing the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMS) average of 12-14% for opt-in lists. More than 50 members clicked through to the dealer’s Facebook page, resulting in many cookie recipes being posted on their Facebook wall. The campaign’s focus was to engage service rewards members using social media, but a nice added bonus was that the campaign also generated service appointments that averaged $250 per RO in customer pay work.
Other LoyaltyTrac auto dealerships have achieved similar results with various non-solicit campaigns. Emailing seasonal recipes to service rewards members as a “thank you” or vehicle safety tips and do-it-yourself guidelines are other examples of how you can gain appreciation from your customers.
Howdy Honda’s cookie campaign is just one example of how customized campaigns work to build customer loyalty. LoyaltyTrac is a rewards-based loyalty and retention platform that may be points-based, activity-based or incentive-based, and extends the experience of a dealer’s loyalty program into Facebook and Twitter by making customers’ actions in social media both trackable and rewardable.
However, before you design your own campaign, LoyaltyTrac makes the following recommendation: service managers should assign every recipe to one employee so they can bring in the various treats. After all, you wouldn’t want to hand out recipes that you haven’t personally tried, would you? We didn’t think so!
Happy Holidays and enjoy the treats, customer goodwill and extra revenue!