Exclusive Promotional and Loyalty Products » rewards http://freegrocerycenters.com How to Acquire More Customers Using Free Rebates and Loyalty Products Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:36:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 2010 Product Review – Our Certificate Program “Star Rebates” http://freegrocerycenters.com/2010-product-review-our-certificate-program-star-rebates.htm http://freegrocerycenters.com/2010-product-review-our-certificate-program-star-rebates.htm#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:37:25 +0000 http://freegrocerycenters.com/?p=195

Over the next few days I’m going to send detail information on our products and invite you to review and see how these products could be used in your business. With our products, Video Presentations and documentation all your questions will be easily addressed.

The majority of the information below was compiled and provided by my associate and Franchisee owner Angela Smith of Direct Strategies, Inc.

Rebates:

The definition of a rebate is important for you to understand. If you do not understand it, then you will review the Terms & Conditions and think they are harsh. Rebates are our most popular program but they do require work. The definition of a rebate is that you need to do things in order to obtain your rebate. We offer other products which programs are much simpler, but the rebate program has the biggest “wow” factor. You have to decide what is best for you. I would like to outline below the benefits and possible challenges of rebates so that you can make a clear decision. Our site allows you to take a “Demo” tour of our system.

Benefits:

* In the rebate program the customer receives $100, $300 or $500 based on the rebate you select. The way that they receive this rebate is they either get a $20 visa gift card each month until it has equaled $100, $300 or $500 or by simply providing a credit card number, they can receive a $20 credit to that number every month until they reach the full value of the rebate.

* The customer enjoys their rebate by going to the web site www.MonthlyGiftCards.com and entering their pass code and expiration date. After they enter that information they simply fill out the registration form and send it in within ten days with a $12.95 registration fee. The registration process takes less then a minute.

* During the registration process they must select a brand that they plan to shop at in order to obtain their rebates. So if they select a fuel rebate, they have to select a gas brand like Exxon or Shell or any other brand and they must shop their each month and send in $100 in receipts from that brand in order to collect their $20.

* The two most popular rebates are food and fuel because most people can spend $100 a month in food and $100 a month in fuel so they are not being asked to do anything more then they would otherwise do. If they do not spend $100 a month or they spend it at the wrong store then they cannot submit those receipts for that month’s $20. But they are not disqualified from the program, they just miss that one month.

Possible Challenges

* Point #3 of the Terms & Conditions explains to the customer that once they register they have ten calendar days to send in their registration form along with a $12.95 cashiers check or money order. This is done so that the rebate company does not receive bad checks with no recourse.

* Each household is permitted to submit one rebate certificate per type per year. There are five types, so each household could have one food rebate, one fuel rebate, one dining rebate, one pharmacy rebate and one retail rebate.

* The redemption process is an online process which has worked wonderfully for both the rebate company and the customers. Each month the customer goes to www.MonthlyGiftCards.com and clicks on the button labeled “add a receipt.” They enter for example $50 at BP Oil. The reason this system is so successful is because the system will tell you if you made a mistake or if you are pre approved. So at the end of the month, simply print out your Pre-approval Form and send it in with your receipt and you already know you are pre approved so you will either get $20 credited to your existing visa card or a new $20 visa gift card – whatever you select. Because this is an online process, some customers may not be able to easily take advantage of the program – if they do not have access to a computer.

* Finally, if you get the $20 credited to an existing Visa, then there is no expiration date to use that $20. If you get a visa card, you must use your credit within 90 days or there is a $5 monthly charge to the card.

Rebates have the “wow” factor that lots of businesses want but they also have hurdles as is inherent in the word “rebate.” Prior to our work with Star Rebate, which has been in business for 12 years and has an A-Rating with the BBB, there have been two other rebate companies that have gone out of business. Those companies that went out of business appear to have planned to go out of business from the beginning as they had no $12.95 registration fees, they charged small amounts of money for their rebates and they had no controls in place as does Star Rebate. For example, Star Rebate has advertisers on www.MonthlyGiftCards.com. These advertisers help support the program.

Rebates make their money on non-usage. In a way, it is sort of like the insurance business. Everyone buys homeowners insurance or even life insurance but if every home burned down or every person died the same day, then the insurance company would go out of business. In the rebate business, the company has been around for 12 years and they have a tried and true model where only 20% of all rebate customers redeem. Some register and forget to send in their $12.95. Others don’t send in their $12.95 because it is not worth it to only get back $20. A rebate program requires a lot of work by the customer and because “life happens”, the majority of people don’t follow through the length of the program. If you look at all of your membership companies today, all of those membership companies give away tremendous benefits that cannot be afforded with a $9.95 membership fee. How do they do it? They do it because only 3% nationwide take advantage of membership benefits. Those statistics can be verified independently. So if you decide to do rebates, now you understand how the model works.

What’s Next?

There is a possibility of offering your customers options of the products they want. You could easily do that with three or four of our products and watch your results increase by 20% or 30% or more. Another product which may give you more comfort is called the LifeTime Travel Book Plus and it combines 20 LifeTime Travel Book offers with $500 in rebates. You might like this program because the customer must take two of the trips in the book before they are permitted to register for the $500 in rebates.

Only the Best,

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc. – “The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com

]]> http://freegrocerycenters.com/2010-product-review-our-certificate-program-star-rebates.htm/feed 0 How to Leverage Your Advertising with Incentives http://freegrocerycenters.com/how-to-leverage-your-advertising-with-incentives.htm http://freegrocerycenters.com/how-to-leverage-your-advertising-with-incentives.htm#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:41:45 +0000 http://freegrocerycenters.com/?p=105

For quite some time now, businesses have been catching onto the secret to grow business without a lot of extra advertising money. Through the use of free gas and grocery certificate incentive programs, not only have they seen sales increase, but customer loyalty has been at an all time high through the use of these incentives. By providing a reward that the customer needs these certificates make it possible for them to have products or services previously not possible.

This option is not available just for the businesses now, however. Non-profit groups that need to earn fund-raising dollars can get access to these free certificates also. Now paired with the easily recognizable name of Kidz-IDZ, free grocery and gas certificates are waiting to help your organization earn money.

How you do this is simple. Just offer free groceries or gas in return for a donation to your organization from $20-$30. The purchaser will receive a certificate that needs to be activated, and every month can exchange $100 in grocery receipts for a $25 Visa card. It?s really that simple.

The plan for fundraising has been set up through an established company that knows how to make your marketing plan easy. With an easy to read catalog, customers will be able to select a dollar amount for the donation and see the reward given back to them – either groceries or gas.

Recently we have added a new feature to our free gas rewards. There is now a new type of certificated for your customers. The pharmacy certificate is available to use towards prescription and non-prescription medications. In addition, customers also get a prescription discount card that can save customers up to 60% off prescriptions. Combine that with s $25 reward card, and you are providing customers with a huge benefit in today?s savings with rising medical cost.

If customers have children (or grandchildren), as an additional bonus, they will get a free Kidz-Idz with each certificate purchased. This will provide a safety net in the event there is ever a need to have children?s photos and fingerprints on hand, as well as any other identifying information that may be hard to think of in an emergency situation.

What other program offers you so much for so little? Higher sales or dramatic fundraising results, great value for your customers and loyalty to the program? Get started today with your certificates. Help your customers save money on the things they use everyday while you help stimulate the economy by growing your business.

Only the Best,

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc. – “The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
http://incentivebasedpromotions.com/ (Product Site)
http://fundraisingandincentives.com/ (Non-Profit Certificates)
http://fundraisingandtravel.com/ (Non-Profit TravelBook)
w-612-377-5262
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com

]]> http://freegrocerycenters.com/how-to-leverage-your-advertising-with-incentives.htm/feed 0 Twenty uses for Gas and Grocery Incentive Certificates http://freegrocerycenters.com/twenty-uses-for-gas-and-grocery-incentive-certificates.htm http://freegrocerycenters.com/twenty-uses-for-gas-and-grocery-incentive-certificates.htm#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:44:32 +0000 http://freegrocerycenters.com/?p=91 In case you haven’t heard of gas and grocery incentive programs, they work like this: You, the retailer, buy a large number of certificates for free gas and groceries at a greatly discounted rate (pennies on the dollar).
You then offer these certificates as an incentive for customers to buy your merchandise.  Historically, these types of incentives have worked well, and the gas and grocery incentives are very popular due to the rising cost of both fuel and food in these tough economic times.  The traditional use of these free gas and grocery vouchers is to offer a customer one of these certificates if they buy a certain dollar amount of merchandise from you.  Although that works quite well, there is so much more you can use these gas and grocery certificates for.  This article will give you a list of ideas.

Use gas and grocery incentive certificates to:

·    in exchange for scheduling in-home sales demonstrations
·    get a customer lead to come in and hear your sales pitch
·    get new customers to sign up for new services
·    to get customers to extend the length of their service agreements
·    get dormant customers to order new or repeat services
·    encourage customers to make big purchases
·    as customer loyalty rewards for repeat business
·    reward customers who refer new customers to you.
·    to get more traffic for seasonal businesses (like landscaping) during off-months
·    to encourage customer spending during economic downturns
·    to attract big crowds for grand opening events
·    to create free advertising through a local media buzz
·    to win out over competitors who normally could undersell you
·    as the prize for employee sales competitions
·    to encourage employees to hit sales goals
·    as employee attendance or safety rewards
·    use a few certificates cards for your company’s vehicle fleet – everyone likes free gas, even you!

For Non-Profit Organizations:

·    to encourage higher donations during fundraising
·    as prizes for raffles or other contests
·    to generate attendance and sell more seats at seminars

As you can see, there are tons of ways to use gas and grocery incentive certificates.  A little creative thinking will take you a long way.  As a general rule of thumb, the trick is to find out what the key is to making a sale, then offer the gas and grocery incentive certificates to get customers to do just that.

Let me give you an example.  In automotive sales, for example, if you can get the customer behind the wheel for a test drive, the chances that they’ll buy the vehicle rises dramatically.  Knowing this, a car dealership in New York ordered 700 gas certificates, and offered them to customers during a weekend event in exchange for just coming in and taking a car for a test drive.  By 5:00 AM the morning of the event, they had people lined up outside the door.  By the end of the first day, they had to place an emergency phone call to order more gas certificates just to make it through the weekend.  The sales campaign worked so well, that dealership now orders 5,000 gas certificates per month on a regular basis.

If you try a gas or grocery incentive-based sales campaign, tinker with different approached and conditions for customers to get the incentive certificates.  Experiment and find the approach that works best for your particular business.

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc. – “The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
http://incentivebasedpromotions.com/ (Product Site)
http://fundraisingandincentives.com/ (Non-Profit Certificates)
http://fundraisingandtravel.com/ (Non-Profit TravelBook)
w-612-377-5262
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com

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