A North Carolina-based furniture retailer used events to make the most of a limited ad budget.

Gibbons | Peck:

• Built a promotional strategy around a calendar of sales events to drive traffic, generate loyalty, and seat a premium brand.
• Targeted promotional dollars around consumer purchase cycles in order to “make hay where the sun shines.”
• Leveraged manufacturers co-op and promotional programs, within the branded event structure.
• Layered preferred customer preview events (in which insiders were given first pick and special savings at after-hours sales preceding each event), highly-qualified direct mail (based on a combination of the E.F. Merrell database and purchased lists), newspaper, television, and radio to promote the event community-wide.

Results: The first event filled the prospect pipeline, leading to a solid month, followed by two record months. Each subsequent event had similar results. Longer term, the events opened relationships, which simplified the job of commissioned sales people.