Success Stories
Bob & Kay’s, Kalamazoo, MI
Exterior-only chain
Using Retail Fuel Discounts To Sell 90,000 Prepaid Carwashes
Challenge: To lock in the loyalty of customers, without discounting wash services and detracting from the carwash's professional image.
Solution: Use SiteWatch® to run a promotion that awards a discount on retail fuel to customers who purchase prepaid carwash cards.
Bob Willmarth is a very reasonable man, but when it comes to marketing Bob & Kay’s carwash, he admits that he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. Located in the competitive Kalamazoo, Michigan market, Willmarth was eager to use price incentives to keep customers coming back to his three carwashes. Yet at the same time, the former Michigan Carwash Association “Operator of the Year” didn’t want to detract from Bob & Kay’s professional image by discounting his service.
Willmarth was able to achieve the delicate balance he sought by running a prepaid card promotion using the Loyalty Promotion feature in SiteWatch from DRB Systems. Calling his program “Super Saver Plus!” he marketed prepaid cards that entitled customers to five carwashes. The cards ranged from $20.25 to $29.25 in price, depending on the type of carwash the customer pre-purchased.
As an incentive to participate in the Super Saver Plus! Promotion, customers who purchased the prepaid wash cards received a 2-cent-a-gallon discount on “regular” grade gasoline, a 3- cent-a-gallon discount on “Plus” and a 4-cent-a-gallon discount on “Premium” every time they visited Bob & Kay’s retail fuel pumps. Customers could buy discounted fuel as often as they wanted (up to 100 gallons per day) for one year from the date that their prepaid card was purchased.
“Instead of using the carwash to promote fuel sales, we decided to use the fuel to promote our washes,” said Willmarth. “Our washes have built up a very good quality image over the years, and we didn’t want to detract from this by promoting a big wash discount. However, retail fuel is regarded as a commodity, so a price promotion at the fuel pumps wasn’t going to affect our image.”
Customers responded enthusiastically to Willmarth’s promotion. He sold over 18,000 Super Saver Plus! Cards (a total of more than 90,000 prepaid carwashes) during the program’s first year. That’s quite an accomplishment considering that the Kalamazoo trading area has a population of only 225,000. Almost four out of ten (38%) of Bob & Kay’s customers now use the prepaid cards. Since starting the program, Willmarth’s average monthly fuel volume has increased by 21%, and his carwash traffic has jumped by 9%.
“The Super Saver Plus! Program is a great deal for our customers, because they get to save money on fuel all year long just for buying five carwashes,” said Willmarth. “It’s also a winning program for us, because it gives people a strong incentive to return to our wash again and again. A cardholder has two strong incentives to return to us: first to use the washes he purchased, and second to take advantage of the retail fuel discount. As long as people keep coming back, we have the chance to win more of their business. Pre-selling packs of five carwashes up-front, also is a nice thing for our cash flow.”
Willmarth says that it would be impossible to run his Super Saver Plus! Promotion without SiteWatch. “Our computer takes care of everything, without involving any decision-making or record-keeping on the part of our cashiers,” he explained. “The computer automatically invokes the retail fuel discounts, keeps track of how many prepaid washes the customer has used, and how many he or she has left, without requiring any action on our cashier’s part. This eliminates the risk of cashier error, and makes the job a lot less stressful for our employees.”
Since the computer maintains complete histories of each customer transaction, Willmarth is able to impose a time frame on his Super Saver Plus! Cards. If the customer brings a card in after the one-year expiration period, the DRB Systems computer will reject it. Willmarth doesn’t have to worry about Super Saver Plus! Cards being lost or stolen, because the cards aren’t “activated” until they are attached to a sale in the computer system.
“You don’t have to put these cards under lock and key the way you did the old paper books, because they don’t work until the computer activates them,” said Willmarth. “The cards can also be easily re-activated when customers decide to pre-purchase another five car washes . . . That’s been happening quite a bit lately. Customers love the Super Saver Plus! Deal and they’re renewing their cards. Everything about this promotion has worked as well or better than we expected.”
