Furniture Rep Creates Innovative Advertising Programs for His Dealers

There’s a mattress rep in Berks County PA who is paying attention to current events and using these to help his retailers with their advertising. Jeff Giagnocavo is an innovative rep, the type I like to highlight in this column.Jeff is always working on helping his retailers sell more stuff - not just his mattresses, but sell more of all furniture they carry. He knows that if they are successful, and he helps them become more successful, he and they will both benefit. One time Jeff sent me copies of three different ads he had written and sent to his dealer base. None of the ads featured his specific product, but rather allowed places for the retailer to put in his bedding offers if they so chose. Of course, if Jeff went to the time and trouble of writing up these ads, why wouldn’t a retailer reciprocate and feature some of his product.

Now I know a number of very good reps that constantly are working with their dealers to plan out promotions, so that is really not why I am featuring Jeff. He is a very enthusiastic and successful rep who constantly pays attention to what is going on in the world around the furniture business.

One campaign in particular I thought was worth sharing for those who want to use promotions that are current as today’s headlines. This campaign is about the extra tax credit for first time home buyers. There was an $8000 tax credit for first time home owners that expired at the end of 2009 and has been extended to end of April 2010. The genius of Jeff’s campaign was the reality of how closely buying a new home is to buying new furniture.

The information Jeff sent his dealers was as follows:
Cash in on the “1st Time Home Buyer Tax Credit Program”,

Rarely do we know how much money and when a customer is going to have it. But this tax season with a little effort we do! By using your local county(s) deeds/recorders website you can access the addresses and names of those that have most likely bought a new home this year and are therefore eligible for a first time home owner tax credit of up to $8000.

You can search out deeds for the entire calendar year and pull out the information needed to do a private letter mailing. You will want to make sure that you only focus on deed amounts that would be a first time home dollar amount for your area, unless you feel like sending mailings to everyone.

Depending on your local deeds office you may need to pay a small fee per record pulled/printed but if you simply scroll/click on the addresses you can get them for free, at least in Berks Co. PA.

I would suggest the following on how to utilize this information,

1. Create a well written letter congratulating the person(s) on buying their first home, see attached for some starter ideas.
2. Include a link to the IRS site in the letter outlining the credits, it is this link - http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=215791,00.html
3. To ensure the best success with this campaign/promotion I suggest handwriting all envelopes and you may want to do 2-3 per customer depending on the type of promotion(s) you run.
4. Have your sales staff pull the records, maybe each person handles certain letters of the alphabet or certain townships this way there is no overlap
5. In order to make sure this gets done you can have a contest between the staff. The person that gets the most letters back (customer needs to bring letter to get discounts etc.) wins something, such as cash, TV, Ipod, Furniture, or whatever you feel will work the best. Have each person put their initials on the letters they stuff.
6. Plan on mailing this on 1-30-10 this is the day that all W-2’s are required to be in the mail.
7. Depending on your promotion you may want to include a “shop early deeper discount” aspect, such as shop these dates 1/30/10 - 2/15/10 and save XX% and so on. Again see attached for letter ideas. I have also included some ad concepts for review too.
8.

Here is a few samples of some of the copy Jeff gave his dealers to use

“…Congratulations on purchasing your first house. As a member of your local community we hope we are the first to welcome you with a tremendous money saving offer. As you may know we take great pride in supporting our local community via (insert charities, sports teams, etc here.) And now we want you to take advantage of our invitation only “House to Home” offer today. This sale is for first time homeowners only and gives you the opportunity to furnish all rooms in your home for a great price of .XX…”

“…Dear New Home Owner, at (Store Name) we want to say congratulations on the purchase of your home this year. Did you know that you are eligible for up to $8000 in tax credits when you file your taxes for 2009, and remember to write off your closing costs and interest too! We want to help you make that house a home and if you shop now you can save even more money on our already everyday low prices…”

“…We have included the IRS link if you have any questions on this great tax credit as always consult your tax professional for detailed questions. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=215791,00.html …”

“…As a way of helping you out to defray the new costs of homeownership not only we will give you the best pricing and service but with each purchase of we will reimburse you for your tax preparation up to and for purchases of we will pay for your tax preparation and give you a $50 gift card to Lowes/HomeDepot…”

So let’s review why I think Jeff should be featured:

1. He saw something not in our industry and applied it to benefit our industry
2. He went to the trouble of researching how a retailer could actually find names of new home buyers
3. He created an innovative advertising campaign tied to current headlines
4. He went to the trouble of demonstrating to his dealers the exact steps they needed to take to implement
5. He even wrote sample ad copy for his retailers
6. He is not directly pitching his product but rather trying to help his dealers sell more furniture overall

Here’s the best part for anyone reading this. It’s not too late to take advantage of this program. People are just getting their tax returns back and some of these people will have an extra $8000 in their pockets to spend on new furniture or vacations. I’d much sooner remind them about spending their tax refunds on furniture for the new house.

Good job Jeff.