|
You don’t
have to be a major player to make the same
concepts work for your company. Businesses
of all sizes and persuasions can benefit
from the power of continuity. Whether you’re
striving for safety or sales goals, employee
or brand loyalty, continuity programs
designed by your promotions professional can
help your company achieve its goals.
Stunning Simplicity
One of the most common types of
continuity programs is one that shows client
or employee appreciation by sending out
related gifts at certain intervals of time.
The continual reminders of your company’s
name and goodwill creates a positive
impression with recipients.
For example, a company trying to get the
attention of corporate decision-makers might
send a series of desktop gifts, like
pens/pencils and holders, busi-ness card
holders, letter openers, etc. Others might
send a holiday ornament or other gift for
the winter holiday season. “The number one
task in a continuity program is client
retention and brand reinforcement, whether
you’re marketing pens and pencils or
insurance,” says promotional consultant Dan
Rappoport. “That’s what’s delivered by
effective continuity programs.”
But, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Developing an effective theme and selecting
products that complement that theme are very
important to making your program a success.
And that’s where your promotional consultant
comes in.
“The most effective programs are those
that don’t replicate items or products in a
row,” Rappoport explains. “One month [the
product] might be a gardening kit; the next
month it might be aromatherapy; the third
month it might be origami. What you want, in
your mind’s eye, is a desktop or a shelf of
plaques on a wall that are related but not
identical.”
Step Up For Safety
Carefully planned continuity programs can
be used to influence all sorts of behaviors.
Applying the concept to the workplace,
companies can encourage employees to work at
a high level and make their businesses more
successful.
A successful program that focuses on
safety can be invaluable to a company.
“Lost-time injuries are extremely important,
not only from the standpoint of the cost
factor, but certainly from the standpoint of
the government regulatory agencies that
oversee safety issues. It can become a
major, major problem for companies,” says
promotional consultant Shannon Westerman.
“Workman’s comp is becoming such a big issue
across the country, in all industries. If
you get a guy who hurts his back, he could
be on workman’s comp for the rest of his
life.”
For high-risk jobs, employers need to
consider just how much employees’ safety
means to them. Is everything possible being
done to ensure that employees know and
follow established guidelines? By reminding
employees with safety-related gifts, or
setting up a comprehensive program that
rewards employees for following safe
practices, a company can significantly
increase its safety records.
One way that companies can encourage
safety is through thematic programs.
Westerman says he will often create a
cartoon character to convey the message of a
safe workplace to workers. “[The character]
will be the safety shadow and the spokesman
for the company. We have a lot of fun with
it. We’ll name the character and he becomes
part of workers’ everyday habits and is seen
throughout the company,” Westerman explains.
“For example, we had one named Archie, and
he would always pop up somewhere. We’d give
[workers] a pen with Archie on it; maybe
we’d give them a lapel pin with Archie. He
just sort of becomes part of their daily
lives.”
Taking things a step further, companies
can extend a theme to a full-scale
points-and-rewards program. For example,
when steel manufacturer Bon L Canada Inc.
wanted to strengthen its workplace safety,
it instituted a multitiered program to get
employees on board. “We found that they had
a very high accident rate and the plant
morale was extremely low,” explains
promotional consultant John Covey. “So, what
we aimed to do was reverse that.”
The resulting program consisted of three
main elements: overall safety awareness,
individual employee incentives and team
employee incentives. Products such as
keytags, screwdrivers, pocketknives, pens,
magnets, first-aid kits and more were used
as gifts and prizes to reward employees and
reinforce the company’s safety goals.
Within a year Bon L saw concrete results:
Its accident rate dropped 86%, creating
significant savings in employees’ lost-time
pay. And, thanks to the program and the low
accident rate, employee morale grew as well.
Overall, it was so successful that Bon L
re-instituted it for another year and
recommended it to other branches of the
company.
Continuity programs can also be used to
encourage other positive workplace
practices. Much in the same way they are
used to remind workers of safety issues,
they can also be used to inspire more sales,
improve customer service or even encourage
better teamwork.
Encourage Excellence
Today’s shaky economy and unstable job
market can leave many employees feeling
anxious about their jobs. Budget cutbacks
and fewer bonuses could cause top employees
to start looking elsewhere. While companies
have no control over some of these factors,
they can make employees feel more secure by
showing their appreciation. “The whole idea
of an employee recognition program is to
touch on the intangible, the non-monetary,
the non-verbal area of what keeps employees
happy and focusing on retention,” says
promotional consultant Mitch Gale. “You’ve
got to not only attract good people to your
company, [you have to] get them trained and
retain them. If you retain your good people,
your overhead goes down.”
Programs can be as simple as naming an
employee of the month, explains promotional
consultant Bill Wright. “It can [recognize]
sales numbers, obviously, but it can also
acknowledge new accounts, it can be leads or
all types of different accomplishments,”
Wright explains. And, he adds, they can be
instituted for very little cost: “I always
try to think in a per-person cost, because
you can amortize that number down into a
pretty small number most of the time. … It
could only cost $5 per employee over a
year’s time.”
Companies can also create long-term
high-reward programs by building them around
a point system. Employees who consistently
perform well can earn points toward high-end
gifts like radios, watches, trips, etc.
And, thanks to advances in technology,
employees can track their progress online,
seeing how many points they have and how
many more they need to reach their goals.
“An effective way to implement [a program]
is through the Internet,” Gale says.
“Whether you’re setting up a point system or
even recognition system for accomplishments,
the Internet [makes it] very fluid and adds
neat functionality to the program.”
The Means To Motivate
You may be more familiar with
comprehensive continuity programs than you
realize. Chances are, you’re participating
in one already. Have you ever belonged to a
CD or movie club? Used frequent-flyer miles?
Collected UPC codes or box tops to earn a
reward? Then you’ve experienced continuity
first-hand, and know from experience how
effective they can be. “Paying your mortgage
every month is a continuity program – it’s
not a very fun one for most people, but it’s
an example of a regularly scheduled
transaction,” Rappoport says. “Continuity
programs are, almost by definition, becoming
a member of a club. It’s a marketing effort
to reward, maintain and up-sell members of
your club or organization.”
For example, Rappoport worked with
ratings firm ACNielson to increase
participation in its HomeScan
grocery-tracking program. What they came up
with was a multilevel system for rewarding
panelists. Participants would earn points
for every item they reported, and then cash
in the points for prizes. These included
promotional products, computer games, CDs,
books and more.
“Once they accrued enough points and they
used it on an item, they could then accrue
more points and ‘buy’ something else. So,
they could continually go to the well and be
motivated in a continuity program fashion to
maintain their [scanning] diligence,”
Rappoport says.
Pepsi used the point system for a recent
promotion it did in conjunction with college
basketball. It had used the concept
successfully in the past with consumers
collecting specially marked soda caps to
earn merchandise from a catalog; last year
they decided to do something similar for
March Madness, the highlight of the year for
many college basketball fans.
Mountain Dew or Sierra Mist drinkers
could win instantly when they found a
winning cap – college jerseys, coupons and
other Pepsi products were awarded – but
those who didn’t win could win prizes as
well. By collecting 32 non-winners,
consumers could earn a Mountain Dew T-shirt
with the phrase “game on” on the front. “It
was either win or you keep collecting until
you do,” explains Dave Dececco, Pepsi
spokesperson. But Pepsi came out the real
winner: Nearly 200,000 jerseys and T-shirts
were claimed, more than an 8% response rate.
First Things First
The first step to installing a successful
continuity program is considering exactly
what your business needs to accomplish.
Better safety records? Increased sales?
Brand recognition? All of these and more can
be accomplished with a carefully planned
continuity program.
Ask yourself:
- Has my company ever used a
continuity program before? What did I
like or dislike about it?
- What does my company hope to
accomplish with the program? Generate
awareness? Increase safety? Accomplish
some client- or employee- related goal?
- What kind of actions should the
program encourage/reward? Does my
company want more hits on its Web site?
More visits to its showroom? Higher
rates of customer-service
satisfaction?
- Who am I trying to influence with
the program? Are the recipients mainly
male or female? Young or old? Computer
programmers or construction workers?
- Should the program be ongoing or
will it only last a specified amount of
time?
Considering these questions with your
promotional consultant, is the first step to
creating a successful continuity program. |
