Another "Big Jewelry Store Turnaround #1"
How Sam turned his jewelry store around and exploded his daily sales using some clever VIP customer strategies.
Part 1: The Best little "Failing" Jewelry store I've ever been in.
This is Sam. (a cartoon version of him anyway)
Sam is an amazingly talented jeweler that I met a couple of years ago when I happened to visit his store while I was out of town on a business trip.
Between meetings I had to find a gift for my girlfriend and time was short. I asked at the front desk of the hotel about jewelry stores and they sent me towards the closest one to the hotel. I didn't have much time before my next meeting.
It was about 10 AM on a Tuesday and there were a lot of shoppers on the sidewalk. I spotted Sam's store and walked in. With so much traffic on the sidewalk, I was surprised the store was almost dead. It made me wonder how my shopping experience was going to go. Why was nobody there?
"Oh well" I thought...
I need to buy that gift now and it was either this or spending all evening looking for another jewelry store in a strange town.
I went in and looked around for a minute then walked up to the counter. Sam walked over and introduced himself. In just a few minutes, he'd figured out the perfect gift for my girlfriend. He obviously was a skilled jeweler who knew his stuff.
I couldn't believe how great of a buying experience that was. Problem solved, gift ready to hand to my girlfriend as soon as I got off the plane. I was thrilled to not suffer the 'hard-sell, zero customer service' you find all over nowadays.
How often do you run into friendly and knowledgeable sales people in a store? Most of the time they don't even look up from their cell phone, right?
As I was talking to Sam and paying for my purchases, I was really puzzled. This jewelry store was great, but here I was at the busiest time of the day on a Thursday and the place was simply dead. What gives?
As a marketer, I notice things like this all the time. There are so many stores out there that deserve a lot more customers. I told Sam, his store was awesome and I was thrilled to discover it. I asked him how in the world they weren't slammed with business.
Sam said that he'd been in business for 5 years and although he had some very loyal customers over the past years, he had made a grave mistake.
He was surprised at the level of competition in the area and was having a terrible time getting word out to get people back in the door. The customers just weren't coming back often enough.
He was literally almost in tears, just talking about it as I finished paying. He was worried about not making it and he felt like his store was slipping away from him.
I had to get to my meeting but I told him I'd like to talk more about this later if he had time to chat later that night. He agreed to meet me at 7 PM and I went off to my next meeting.
Over the next few hours, I thought about this jewelry stores problem and got more and more excited. The store was terrific. It just needed a little marketing push and I knew exactly what that push should be because I'd helped lots of other jewelry store's like Sam's before.
Part 2:
The clever "VIP Customer Program" strategy that we implemented that immediately exploded Sam's jewelry store and skyrocketed his monthly jewelry sales.
As promised, I returned to Sam's store that night around 7 PM.
We sat down and I laid out the following VIP Customer plan to Sam and he agreed to give it a shot over the next month inside his store.
The Jewelry Store Follow Up Explosion Strategy
I wanted to keep things simple for Sam in the beginning I recommended a strategy that wouldn't add much additional work to his plate. This strategy leveraged the fact that his existing customers loved him and made it easy for him to get them back in the store a lot more often.
For this reason, we decided to focus entirely on setting up a VIP program for his existing customers.
This would instantly boost his business from several angles...
A) The 'Loyalty rewards' Psychology Trick.
Showing true appreciation and thanks to all his past customers (especially the most valuable ones).
B) The 'VIP In-Store Event' Sales Booster Trick.
There is nothing better to get your best customers back in the store. It's the true massive advantage your local store has over every online jewelry store.
C) The 'Monthly VIP promo' Customer Reminder Trick.
Face it, the hardest thing to do today is get through all the distractions people face. It's a huge overwhelming sea of options. Thousands of ads in their face daily. Unlimited ways to shop and spend their hard-earned money. I know my email in-box is jammed daily, too much to even look at.
Today, you need to keep sending people reminders or they naturally will forget all about you. Don't let your customer list go to waste. Send regular messages, notes of thanks, news and updates.
D) The 'Monthly VIP Club Newsletter' Psychology Trick.
If you run option 3 above often, you'll be worried about overselling. Nobody looks forward to getting nothing but pitches from a store. It gets obnoxious and leads to bad feelings.
So the answer for that and the secret to being able to send them 2 messages each month (24 times a year) is to send them more than just a pitch all the time.
A simple 2 page VIP newsletter let's you drop helpful and useful tips, news and a quick story about what's going on in the land of jewelry buying.
With the mail box being so uncrowded today, if you send a VIP promo letter and your monthly newsletter in the mail, you get noticed. You can't say that about email or FB ads. With those you are in a sea of distractions.
The trick is to be helpful and reward them for being VIP customers.
But don't worry, sending letters today is as easy as sending an email. It's as simple as sending an email to the right printer and it's all done for you.
You may be worried also about the cost. Relax. It's a lot cheaper than buying another expensive ad. They cost only $1 or $2 bucks each. People are paying that much or more for one click online. Just a click.
For less money, you get your letter in your best customers hand at home! The secret isn't to go broke sending letter to your whole customer database. Instead, we limit this to VIPs.
So...
How did we make it easy for Sam to start his VIP program up?
This is how it would work...
We invest in Sam. By partnering up on this first promotion and funding the expenses ourselves. No upfront fee for Sam. No risk. In return for a simple revenue-share agreement...
- -Step 1: We do the planning, setup and run Sam's first promotion for him. All he has to do is give the approval and pick the start date.
- -Step 2: We create the promotion, segment his customer list (to find the VIPs only), schedule the letters to go out and have them printed and mailed for us.
- -Step 3: We have the event or VIP special offer and watch the sales come to us over the next 14 days.
- -Step 4: Sam only sends us a check after these extra VIP sales are cool cash in his bank account. And for only a small percentage of the new revenue.
- -Step 5: We go over the results, because unlike ads and SEO (or other online tactics) We know exactly where these sales came from. We caused them ourselves.
Now that Sam has seen actual results... He can take what he learned from us and continue on his own.
Or...
We can continue working together and help him do next months promo and newsletter.
It's as close to Win-Win for everyone as possible.
If for some reason we fail to get extra sales, Sam never pays us a dime. Why would I offer it?
Simple, it works great almost every single time. Why should I make Sam take the risk? We both have a huge upside and little downside.
Part 3:
The Results For Sam's Jewelry store
Within just a few weeks of Sam implementing the VIP program, he started seeing plenty of customers coming back regularly and his promos were getting takers all the time. (and bringing more friends and family when they did).
By the second month, VIPs continued to buy his special offers and were thrilled to do it. Because treating VIPs special is the key and showing real appreciation always feels great.
Every time he sends his monthly newsletter, he gets comments and calls thanking him for sending it. People love to know the inside story and to see behind the curtain.
Within a few months, Sam's Jewelry Store was off to the races and it's been thriving ever since.
Part 4:
Got a Jewelry Store that you'd like to grow fast and want to use our DFY funded VIP Program model starting as soon as next month?
My team and I love helping businesses grow and we specialize in jewelry store marketing.
The best part? You can get started with your own VIP program at zero upfront cost.
Use the contact info below and call or text me. We'd be glad to hop on a call and get you set up with your own first VIP promotion and get you the same kind of results Sam got.
Michael Johnson, Owner at NotVanillaMedia
Call or Text me at (206)486-6267
(leave a message 24/7 even in the middle of the night)
Or fill out a 2 minute info request form here.