Madison Car Wash, Montgomery, AL

Full-Service Carwash

Percentage of Customers Buying Extra Services More Than Triples After Loyalty Promotions Are Run With DRB Systems

Challenge: To increase dollar volume even when car count is flat or declining.

Solution: Use loyalty promotion features in your DRB Systems computer to send out targeted mailings that encourage customers to spend more on extra services.

When a carwash cleans fewer cars, you would expect it to take in fewer dollars -- not so at Madison Car Wash. A few years ago, the car count at this Montgomery, AL fullservice wash declined by 4.7%, because of a soft local economy and a long spell of bad carwashing weather. At the same time, however, the wash's dollar volume moved in the opposite direction, increasing by 7.7%.

Madison's owner, Rick Johnson, accomplished this impressive feat by using the loyalty promotion features in his DRB Systems computer to target extra-service promotions at customers based on their previous purchase history. This helped the wash sell extra services to 73% of its customers during the year when his car count was down. (In prior years, only about 20-25% of his customers had purchased extra services.)

Now that the weather and the local economy are cooperating, Madison's car count is again on the rise. But Johnson is still using his computer system to target his promotions and increase his dollar-per-vehicle average.

"We enter the license plate number of every vehicle that visits our wash into the computer system," said Johnson. "We also encourage customers to enter their names on our mailing list. This allows us to tailor extra-service promotions to specific groups of customers, which in turn makes them more likely to spend money with us."

A case in point is the targeted discount mailer promotion that Johnson runs for his extraservice packages. Like many carwashers, Johnson offers extra-service packages in good, better and best options. He uses his computer system to send customers discount mailers that encourage them to try an extra-service package that is one level up from the one they're currently buying.

According to Johnson, it would have been impossible to run this kind of targeted mailer promotion without his DRB Systems computer. "We wouldn't know enough about our customers' buying habits to create these promotions," he said. "The system has given us a whole new way to communicate with customers."

Bottom line: Johnson has upgraded his customers' buying habits and increased dollars-per-vehicle by using his computer system to target promotions based on previous purchases.