Introduction
This case study will illustrate how to increase genuine Accessory Sales by implementing a highly responsive sales overlay program that will increase participant engagement by educating participants, using interactive games, and issuing sought-after reward incentives as part of a promotional sales claim process. The case study is an illustrative of the promotion outcome after the conclusion of three similarly situated overlay promotions over an eighteen-month period.
The subject of the case study is a leading global automotive manufacturing company that is South Korea’s oldest manufacturer of motor vehicles. Over 1.5 million vehicles a year produced in 13 manufacturing facilities and assembly operations in eight countries. They wanted to run a genuine accessory sales overlay promotion for their dealer partners in the US market. The promotion included sales, service, and accessory departments.
The current promotion was not performing and the manufacturer reached out to All Digital Rewards to re-launch the program. Being a valued client of All Digital Rewards, and it was important to take into consideration how the promotion was previously conducted, not confuse the participants, and not lose the component participants had enjoyed – the rewards. All Digital Rewards would have to address the promotions decline over the last couple of years with better engagement and apply advanced technologies to increase the sales of genuine accessories without increasing the budget, confusing the participants with an administrator change, while at the same time improving participation and efficiency in reward delivery.
All Digital Rewards recommended a sales claim overlay program that included keeping the previous program branding, adding interactive games of chance, accessory education, more timely program notifications, and enhanced reward management technologies for administration and reporting.
A manufacturer claims sales overlay program is a short-term promotion added to an existing sales incentive promotion to boost sales of particular products or products during certain seasons where the selected participants, (and in this case upon completing qualifying genuine accessory sales). Participants are then rewarded with prepaid cards, merchant gift cards, merchandise and travel upon completing the manufacturers’ desired behavior. Whereas a traditional sales incentive program is a continuous reward promotion where the participants are offered points or an alternate reward value for completing desired sales, safety, and health and wellness activities; of which they can spend towards a selection of incentive gift cards, prepaid card rewards, merchandise, digital rewards, and travel.
The purpose of rewarding the participants in this sales overlay study or any incentive program is to meet stakeholder behavior objections.
Table of Contents:
– Challenge
– Solution
– Results
Challenge
Increase the sales of the manufacture’s Genuine Accessory sales to maintain their commitment to its brand and keeping vehicles performing at peak efficiency for as long as possible. Genuine Accessories can do that; the aftermarket’s ability is questionable and a gamble. Additionally, to make sure dealer participants understand that an overall vehicle owner’s investment in the automobile, purchasing Genuine Accessories for their vehicle assure a stronger ROI on their investment.
All Digital Rewards requirements were to breathe life into an existing promotion that engagement was declining, help build awareness of Genuine Accessories with the sales, service and parts participants of the superior quality of the genuine accessories as compared to their aftermarket non-brand accessories, increase engagement/awareness and to increase the sales of the manufactures genuine accessories at the dealer locations who participate.
Solution
All Digital Rewards (ADR) spent time identifying the client’s objectives and interviewed several automotive dealers to ensure program success. It was confirmed that it is important to the success of the sales of the Genuine Accessory program that the Dealership sales, service, and parts staff should be upselling Genuine Accessories to new customers as well as returning. And that the promotion should continue, but the program needed new technologies and methodologies applied to ensure its success. Sales play a very important role when upselling Genuine Accessories for new vehicle sales. It was also determined that product knowledge was an issue as well as a definite lack in program knowledge or rather the promotion itself. Dealerships have a high personnel turnover and with new vehicle models arriving each year. It is important to engage new and existing staff immediately with the right product knowledge training. ADR helped plan a strategy with the manufacturer which resulted in a web-based sales claim site that was designed to easily implement at the dealer level. ADR managed a fully customized solution that integrated into the manufacturer’s dealer system. Participants access the program website via Single Sign-On (SSO) thus eliminating the need to have Dealership employees have multiple logins for each promotion. The system included gaming technologies and a knowledgebase. The program Icon/logo was posted on the portal. The Themed Program is scheduled to run every six months with small promotions in between.
Upon launch of Themed Promotion:
- Announcement Email is sent notifying dealership participants of the soon to arrive Program Announcement Promo Box and to be on the lookout. Managers receive notification first.
- Dealership receipt of the Promo Box
- The Promo Box contains a dealership Welcome Letter to the promotion
- Informational Brochure about the promotion and its rules
- Themed manufacture branded logo items
- Delicious snack to get the attention of the sales, service and accessory managers
- Series of scheduled encouragement emails notifications are sent throughout the three-month promotion period to participants engaged until the promotion’s close date.
- As new employees are on-boarded at the dealer level, they begin to receive an email notification as well to encourage them to participate in the program.
- Incentive rewards issued as sales claim levels are achieved and prizes are won through engaging instant win games.
- Grand prizes are issued at promotion conclusion
Each promotion is designed with a unique theme to generate excitement. The web-based solution for Dealership personnel staff was programmed knowing several promotions will utilize the same core system. Dealership personnel enters their sales data into the website. Three files are sent from the Client weekly: Eligible Dealership File, Eligible Dealership Employee File & Eligible Genuine Accessory products.
To encourage enrollment an instant award was given just for enrolling, one per dealership. As Genuine Accessory sales claims are entered into the system instant rewards are awarded for the first 5 claims, first 25 claims, the most claims per week, per region and one grand prize winners per region. As a kicker, each participant is served up 200 Genuine Accessories questions. Each correct answer puts the participant into an instant drawing, one in twenty are a winner. An additional award to promote the selling throughout the dealership is the weekly munchie box. One dealership per category grouping (small, medium & large dealers) wins a munchie box for the most correctly answered clues for the week. This really made a difference when the small to large dealers were acknowledged.
Results
The promotion had awesome results with participant promotion engagement and resulted in an increase in Genuine Accessory sales from previous years. Claims increased from 32,000 to over 73,000 claims in a three-month period, there was an increased awareness of Genuine Accessory knowledge and sales increased by 800%. The promotion more than met the expectation for increased Genuine Accessory sales and at the same time educating the dealer sales, service and accessory participants about the manufactures’ products and services and its commitment to keeping vehicles performing at peak efficiency for as long as possible to build a strong product brand advocacy.
The promotion was renewed and continues today.
About All Digital Rewards
All Digital Rewards is a privately held company and a leading customer engagement specialist that works directly with companies, partner networks, and end-users to design and support employee, consumer loyalty programs, and incentives. With customized web portals and cloud-based advanced technologies, businesses are finding it easier to establish a personal relationship with customers and give the best customer experience possible. ADR is a technology company that provides programs for loyalty, recruitment, retention engagement and valuable analytics. With an extensive offering of incentive rewards including prepaid reward cards, merchant gift cards, check printing, digital rewards, merchandise, and travel ADR can service both the US and internationally. All solutions are supported by an experienced client success support team, including management and consulting.
