Services     |     Downloads     |     Client Login     |     News     |     About Us     |     Contact Us     |     Home

Strategy # 1  >   Strategy #2  >  Strategy #3   >   Strategy #4   >   Strategy #5

Five Strategies for Increasing Store Traffic

At the risk of stating the obvious, your retail business cannot sustain itself without store traffic - regardless of how good your products or services are. Less obvious is the fact that store traffic - and subsequently store sales -- can only be increased in two ways: 1) By attracting new customers to your store or, 2) By selling more products and services - more frequently - to the customers you already have. Ideally, you should be doing both for maximum effect on your store's bottom line. This article describes five strategies within the context of the OMS/RSTM framework that are intended to bring new customers into your store as well as leverage your existing customer base.

Strategy #1: 
Give every customer an incentive to return to your store sooner rather than later.

A good customer will probably return to your store again and again until given a reason not to do so.  Your goal, however, is to have more influence over the frequency of the return visits over time.  If you can influence a customer to visit more frequently then the amount of business that customer generates over time increases.  One way to influence the frequency of visits is to give every customer an incentive to return sooner rather than later.  Issuing a coupon at the POS that is redeemable on the customer's next purchase - or at a predetermined time within the next 30 days -- is an excellent way to influence when the customer will make a return visit.  The natural time for this to happen is during checkout.  Ideally, the coupon should be printed out at the POS printer along with the sales receipt.  If your system is not designed to do that then you should have a large stack of coupons available for the cashiers to hand to every customer upon checking out.  The coupon will serve three purposes.  First, it will become a constant reminder to the customer and create a "top of mind awareness" about your store.  Coupons kept in a customer's wallet, purse, or taped to the refrigerator door retain their "branding power" long after their actual value expires.

The second purpose for giving away a coupon at the POS is that it almost guarantees that the customer will return to redeem the coupon towards a future purchase.

The third purpose for giving away a coupon with a sales receipt is that it becomes a "gift" in the customer's mind for doing business with you.  Everyone likes to receive gifts, however small, and the coupon serves that purpose at a cost of only pennies to the retailer aside from its actual redemption cost.  But, if the customer forgets to redeem the coupon even the actual redemption cost does not impact the retailer.  The "gift" and branding impression on the customer remains, however.

Leverage Your Website to Bring Customers Back

A good place to offer your customers and incentive to return to your store sooner rather than later is through your store's website. Provided that you have a system in place for capturing your customer's names and email addresses you can execute an email campaign to deliver coupon incentives cheaply and efficiently. Marketing emails sent to your customer base can direct the recipient to your store's website where they can then download and print a coupon which can only be redeemed at your store.

IMPORTANT!   Email campaigns should only be conducted using email addresses that your store has collected from actual store customers. We do not recommend purchasing email addresses from brokers or other third-party sources.  In addition, each customer must be given the opportunity to "opt-in" to your email marketing program; that is, they must give you explicit permission to use their email address to send them promotional email.   OMS/RSTM services that are provided by MELCOOPER include the effective handling of all facets of your store's email marketing campaigns.

Another reason to consider using email to deliver in-store coupons is that this method can give you some metrics about the effectiveness of your website.  You can find out what your customers are most interested in by the numbers of visits, or "hits", to certain pages on the site.  In addition, you can use the customer's visit to your site as another opportunity to ask for more information about the customer to add to your growing customer database.

Click here for Strategy #2

For more information about Online Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores (OMS/RS) services offered by MELCOOPER Consulting please call us today at 1-866-695-8669 or visit our website at http://melcooper.com .

2007 MELCOOPER.com (866) 695-8669 All rights reserved.

Our clients achieve these objectives by leveraging Online Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores (OMS/RS) to create a distinctive message that deepens the customer relationship. >> Learn more...

Click here to download FREE White Paper on Online Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores