Unfortunately, free rebate certificate promotions fall into this “too good to be true” category.  If you tell a potential customer that, for example, if they buy a car you’ll give them a certificate for $500 worth of free gas, they are instantly suspicious and on their guard.  Many will ask you what the catch is.  Consequently, if you use free gas and grocery promotions (we offer six categories plus a Combo), you have to know them backwards and forwards. You need to be able to explain to a customer, on a moment’s notice, exactly how the gas and grocery certificates work so thoroughly that they have no doubts left that the offer is indeed legitimate.  To help you in that, this article will explain in detail just exactly how free gas and grocery promotions work. 

First, you (the store owner) purchase a number of these free certificates from a redemption company.  You buy them at a greatly discounted rate, paying “pennies on the dollar”.  You then use these certificates as an incentive to get customers to buy your product or service.

The best analogy that you can use to explain the process to your customer are the mail-in rebates for items at electronics stores like Best Buy.  The customer pays full price for the item, mails in the rebate receipt, and within a few weeks the company mail back a check for the rebate amount.

To use free gas and grocery promotions, the customer must: (for this article I’m referring to Gas and Grocery but we have six categories available – Gas, Grocery, Dining, Pharmacy, Pet and Retail

1. Choose a gas station (for gas certificates) or grocery store (for grocery certificates) that they want to use their certificate with.  They can choose any store they want, but then must always use the same store for the entire certificate redemption period.

2. Activate the free gas or grocery certificate, and state which store they plan to use it at.  They can ONLY do this online.
(Your customer must have access to a computer)

3. The redemption company provides the customer a redemption coupon that is printable from the registration site (much like a mail-in rebate form) with the customer’s name, activation number, and month & year the coupon needs to be sent in on.

4. On the first day of the next month, the customer begins saving receipts of their gas and/or grocery purchases. 

5. At the end of the month, the customer mails in the redemption coupon for that month and their receipts to the redemption company. Receipts must be entered by the end of the month and mailed before the 15th of following month – see “Terms and Conditions” on actual certificates. 

6. If their receipts show they have spent at LEAST $100 on gas or groceries that month at the store they previously selected, the redemption company will mail the customer a $20 VISA gift card or make a “Direct Deposit” on their Visa card which the customer may use anywhere. ( or Option B – 24 hour turn around after approval of physical receipts)

7. They continue this process until the certificate amount is used up.  For example, if they received a certificate for $100 in free gas, they can get $20 in free gas once a month for five months.  If they get a certificate for $500 in free gas, they can get a gift card for $20 worth of gas once a month for 25 months ($20 per month x 25 months = $500.00).

That’s how it works.  The customer does have a few hoops to jump through, and a deadline each month, but nothing unreasonable.  If you explain this clearly enough to them, hopefully they’ll become convinced that your free gas or grocery promotion is legitimate.  That builds customer trust—something worth its weight in gold in a competitive marketplace.

The following is a “Industry Specific” slideshow presentation on HOW the actual system works.
This presentation is for the “Home Security” industry.
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com/slideshow/security/starrebates

Only the Best,

Michael Goulet – TL
Direct Strategies, Inc.
“The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
http://www.incentivebasedpromotions.com/    (Star Rebates)

April 19, 2010

Dear Mr. Pouls:

We have a successful furniture business in Waite Park, Minnesota. We researched Star Rebates and contacted some companies that have done business with you. We learned that Star Rebates has a stellar reputation and that you have had no problems.

The Star Rebates program is simple and is set up to help the customers avoid mistakes, such as sending in the wrong receipts. Our customers are receiving their rebates via gift cards and direct credit to their Visa cards. We have had several customers comment on how much they like the program, and we have even had previous certificate holders return to make additional purchases!

We definitely are pleased with the promotional value of this program, and our customers have expressed their appreciation to us. We will continue to take advantage of this program – it has been a great resource!

Star Rebates is doing a fantastic job in providing our customers with very efficient and timely service. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding this program. Thank you Star Rebates!

Sincerely,
Phil Loch and Dale Dirkes

Here is and industry specific presentation just created for the Home Security Business. Will have more presentations soon covering multiple industries.

Check how our Rebate Certificate can be used in your business.

http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com/slideshow/security/starrebates

Our Introduction Presentation

The majority of the information below was compiled and provided by my associate and Franchisee owner Angela Smith of Direct Strategies, Inc.

Rebates:

The definition of a rebate is important for you to understand. If you do not understand it, then you will review the Terms & Conditions and think they are harsh. Rebates are our most popular program but they do require work. The definition of a rebate is that you need to do things in order to obtain your rebate. We offer other products which programs are much simpler, but the rebate program has the biggest “wow” factor. You have to decide what is best for you. I would like to outline below the benefits and possible challenges of rebates so that you can make a clear decision. Our site allows you to take a “Demo” tour of our system.

Benefits:

* In the rebate program the customer receives $100, $300 or $500 based on the rebate you select. The way that they receive this rebate is they either get a $20 visa gift card each month until it has equaled $100, $300 or $500 or by simply providing a credit card number, they can receive a $20 credit to that number every month until they reach the full value of the rebate.

* The customer enjoys their rebate by going to the web site www.MonthlyGiftCards.com and entering their pass code and expiration date. After they enter that information they simply fill out the registration form and send it in within ten days with a $12.95 registration fee. The registration process takes less then a minute.

* During the registration process they must select a brand that they plan to shop at in order to obtain their rebates. So if they select a fuel rebate, they have to select a gas brand like Exxon or Shell or any other brand and they must shop their each month and send in $100 in receipts from that brand in order to collect their $20.

* The two most popular rebates are food and fuel because most people can spend $100 a month in food and $100 a month in fuel so they are not being asked to do anything more then they would otherwise do. If they do not spend $100 a month or they spend it at the wrong store then they cannot submit those receipts for that month’s $20. But they are not disqualified from the program, they just miss that one month.

Possible Challenges

* Point #3 of the Terms & Conditions explains to the customer that once they register they have ten calendar days to send in their registration form along with a $12.95 cashiers check or money order. This is done so that the rebate company does not receive bad checks with no recourse.

* Each household is permitted to submit one rebate certificate per type per year. There are five types, so each household could have one food rebate, one fuel rebate, one dining rebate, one pharmacy rebate and one retail rebate.

* The redemption process is an online process which has worked wonderfully for both the rebate company and the customers. Each month the customer goes to www.MonthlyGiftCards.com and clicks on the button labeled “add a receipt.” They enter for example $50 at BP Oil. The reason this system is so successful is because the system will tell you if you made a mistake or if you are pre approved. So at the end of the month, simply print out your Pre-approval Form and send it in with your receipt and you already know you are pre approved so you will either get $20 credited to your existing visacard or a new $20 visa gift card – whatever you select. Because this is an online process, some customers may not be able to easily take advantage of the program – if they do not have access to a computer.

* Finally, if you get the $20 credited to an existing Visa, then there is no expiration date to use that $20. If you get a visa card, you must use your credit within 90 days or there is a $5 monthly charge to the card. Rebates have the “wow” factor that lots of businesses want but they also have hurdles as is inherent in the word “rebate.” Prior to our work with Star Rebate, which has been in business for 12 years and has an A-Rating with the BBB, there have been two other rebate companies that have gone out of business. Those companies that went out of business appear to have planned to go out of business from the beginning as they had no $12.95 registration fees, they charged small amounts of money for their rebates and they had no controls in place as does Star Rebate. For example, Star Rebate has advertisers on www.MonthlyGiftCards.com. These advertisers help support the program.

Rebates make their money on non-usage. In a way, it is sort of like the insurance business. Everyone buys homeowners insurance or even life insurance but if every home burned down or every person died the same day, then the insurance company would go out of business. In the rebate business, the company has been around for 12 years and they have a tried and true model where only 20% of all rebate customers redeem. Some register and forget to send in their $12.95. Others don’t send in their $12.95 because it is not worth it to only get back $20. A rebate program requires a lot of work by the customer and because “life happens”, the majority of people don’t follow through the length of the program. If you look at all of your membership companies today, all of those membership companies give away tremendous benefits that cannot be afforded with a $9.95 membership fee. How do they do it? They do it because only 3% nationwide take advantage of membership benefits. Those statistics can be verified independently. So if you decide to do rebates, now you understand how the model works.

Only the Best,

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc. – “The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com

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Gas and grocery promotions ( also Merchandise and Pharmacy available April 1, 2009)—offering certificates for free gas or groceries to encourage customers to make purchases—has the potential to drastically improve your business, sales, and profits. Note that we only said “potential”. Like any other sales campaign, if you don’t do free gas and grocery promotions just right, you’ll only get mediocre results—or possibly no results at all. This article will give you some hints and tips on how to get the most out of free gas and grocery promotions.

ADVERTISE, ADVERTISE, ADVERTISE

First and most importantly, you HAVE to advertise a free gas and grocery promotion as much as possible. The purpose of free gas and grocery promotions is to get customers into your store who wouldn’t normally come, and to make purchases they wouldn’t otherwise make. If you DON’T advertise the free gas and grocery promotion adequately, what you’ll get instead are people who come to your store planning to make a purchase anyway, and consider the free gas or grocery certificates a pleasant, but unexpected, surprise bonus.

There are many ways to advertise. Blast emails are probably the cheapest. A direct mail campaign to a targeted audience is also effective. Finally, spend the money to place an advertisement where it will reach a large general audience, like an ad in the local newspaper or a commercial during the local news. The goal is to make as many people as possible aware of your free gas and grocery promotion.

BIG DEAL

You also have to make the deal sufficiently sensationalistic to turn heads. If, for example, you only offer a certificate for $50 worth of free gas if a customer makes a $1000 purchase, that’s not going to encourage very many people to come into your store. In general, the closer the values of the purchase and the free gas and grocery certificate are, the more people will respond. That same $50 free gas certificate, if offered in exchange for a $100 purchase, will generate more interest. A $500 free grocery certificate in exchange for a $1000 purchase will have the same effect. The ultimate is to offer a certificate equal to the amount of the purchase—for example, a $300 free gas certificate for a $300 purchase—because customers will see that as “free money”, and consider themselves fools not to take you up on the offer.

MEDIA MATTERS

If your free gas and grocery is sufficiently sensationalistic (such as in the last example mentioned above), it might generate enough interest to be newsworthy. Contact your local newspaper and television news program, and let them know about your sale. There’s always the chance they’ll have a slow news day, and decide to run an article or news report on your free gas or grocery promotion. This is essentially fantastic, free advertising. Even if your local media declines to do a spot on your promotion, you haven’t really lost anything—it takes almost no time or money to have made a phone call or mailed a letter.

FOLLOWUP AND FEEBBACK

Finally, make it as easy as possible for customers to collect on their free gas and grocery certificates. Your free gas and grocery campaign can backfire if the first round of certificate holders grumble to their friends that your promotion wasn’t all it was cracked up to be—or even a scam. That’s the kind of free advertising you DON’T want.

Instead, explain the redemption process to your customers in detail. Provide them with written instructions. Finally, purchase your free gas and grocery certificates from a redemption company that makes it simple and easy for certificate holders to get their free gas or groceries, with a minimum of conditions, restrictions, deadlines, or hoops for the customer to jump through.

Michael Goulet
Free Fuel Nationwide Team Leader
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
w-612-377-5262
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com

Gas and grocery are the main theme through out article. We offer a total of 8 certificate categories in which the same principals apply.(we offer Eight Certificate options)

Rebate Certificates reward consumers for being loyal customers of their favorite grocery store, gas station, retail/department store, pharmacy, spa, movie theater, restaurant or sporting event. That’s eight different categories which, in exchange for submitting their monthly receipts, customers get $100, $300, or $500 in Visa cards as a “thank you” for being a loyal customer!

Grocery and Gas certificates are something that will get everyone’s attention since 100 % of people eat.  By giving grocery or gas certificates to your customers, you are boosting your business while retaining your sales.  How does this work? It’s a gas or grocery certificate that entitles their customer to participate in an EXCLUSIVE, INVITATION ONLY rebate program.

When marketing minds work in sync, we can find a unique way to help you.  When your company buys these certificates from us, you hand them out to customers. You can do this as a Grand Opening incentive, customer loyalty award, new customer reward, or any other way you can imagine. Some businesses use them to schedule in-home demonstrations. The success has been phenomenal for these businesses.

The ideas for using these certificates don’t stop here. By using these certificates, you will have very loyal customers AND increased profit margins.  You can use it as a lure to extend the length of service agreements, increase the traffic to your location, generate a local media buzz, gain market information on your customer base, and offer promotions that are impressive compared with your competition.

Your company purchases the certificate for a greatly reduced price. You give your customer the certificate when they spend a certain amount of money with your company, and you are only spending pennies on the dollar to offer this deal.  Companies who tested this method of incentives for customers with one hundred certificates are now ordering them every week because of such a huge increase in business. With one car dealer, the results were so amazing for a free gas offer he had to order emergency certificates to make it through the weekend.  Can you imagine this kind of traffic to your business and how this will excite your employees?  Please contact us for more information on pricing.

So contact us to provide your customers with a great product from you and an incentive to go with it.  Let’s keep the economy rolling!

Please visit my site and review our FAQ for additional details.

Michael Goulet – Team Leader
Direct Strategies, Inc. – “The Incentive Pros!”
http://incentivesgroceryandgas.com
http://incentivebasedpromotions.com/ (Product Site)
http://fundraisingandincentives.com/ (Non-Profit Certificates)
http://fundraisingandtravel.com/ (Non-Profit TravelBook)
w-612-377-5262
Fax-480-304-9095
michaelg@freegrocerycenters.com