This summer we began a new project for an outdoor products retailer. Their primary marketing objectives are to acquire new club members and to generate interest in outdoor classes or adventure trips. Data from the first half of the program showed some early trends for us to monitor.
Let’s start with how well the brand ambassador team is accomplishing the first objective: acquiring new members.
Acquiring New Members
The field recap data indicated that of the 6,800 consumers engaged at events in the first three weeks. 75% were retail club members. We conducted surveys with a sampling of consumers at each event. 84% identified themselves as members, which implies the remaining 16% were non-members.
So, the early events were heavy on retail club members. I brought up this finding with the client, but they were not concerned because they expect the proportion of members to non-members to even out as the team activates in new markets in the coming weeks. Okay, no big deal. But we should monitor to see if the member trend persists.
The reason we’re monitoring member and non-member reach is that retail club members should be more likely to purchase from the store or consider taking an outdoor class or adventure trip than non-members. That should be obvious, but to what extent is that true?
It turns out that the team has made a strong impact on members’ intent to purchase in the first half of the program. Nearly all (97%) retail club members said they were likely to purchase from the store in the near future. However, the team was effective at generating purchase intent among non-members as well. More than four in five (84%) non-members said they were likely to purchase.
While the event experience may have reinvigorated interest among members, it also encouraged non-members to consider purchasing in the future. This stresses the importance of maximizing opportunities to reach non-members.
In addition to purchasing intent, we measured the likelihood to sign up for an outdoor class or adventure trip.
It’s this metric where we saw some drop-off. Half of the retail club members (50%) intended to sign up for a class or adventure trip following their event experience, while only 32% of non-members are likely to sign up.
Where value is truly going to be derived is identifying demographic or psychographic segments among the non-members that are more likely to purchase or sign up than others. As the program moves along, we’re going to focus on identifying non-members of selected age groups who are most interested in what the retailer has to offer. It should be interesting to see what that data reveals. Stay tuned.
Photo Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grand_canyon_nps/