Q&A: Holiday Promotions
Presidents Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day. More than just patriotic celebrations, these holidays have long served as key promotional opportunities in the mattress retail industry. But with the growth of the DTC category and ecommerce retail, the traditional mattress sales cycle has evolved—especially as online brands often offer discount code promotions year round. Not only have these trends adjusted consumers’ expectations, they are also impacting traditional retail sales strategies.
How has your approach to holiday promotional events evolved in this day and age?
Gerry Borreggine
CEO, Therapedic
At Therapedic International we have our own in-house art and ad department so we are able to customize almost any idea to fit a retailer’s need. We get requests for everything from ad layouts, radio or TV spots, direct mail circulars and web page graphics with increasing requests for digital assets. We also create point-of-purchase graphics for in-store signage and posters for our dealers. Today’s dealers are a dynamic group; many are looking to be different or stand out from the pack. That is where we are able to help them to distinguish themselves in their own individual marketplace(s) with a customized program.
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Billy Curtright
National Sales Manager, Magniflex
Offering promotions throughout the year can be beneficial, however we continue to find better success for our retailers when we offer larger promotional discounts over a shorter period of time, such as the traditional holidays. These are a great opportunity for our retailers to advertise the Magniflex brand, while we continue to promote our retailers in digital efforts. We’ve reached a time where consumers expect products to be on sale, and if you don’t focus your efforts on holiday promotions, then you are really missing out. In order to work with our key partners on holiday promotions, we are always offering additional marketing resources such as advertising support and targeted social media ads, RSA rewards and incentives, and volume rebates. We’ve found that many of our retailers prefer this method because we are not diminishing our brand by being known as the ‘mattress that’s always on sale.’
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Nick Bates
President, Spring Air International
Our approach has evolved in many different ways to address today’s needs. The biggest shift is understanding that simply making a special bed for a special day and giving it a special name will not drive consumers into the store to buy. We offer our retail partners a complete program accompanied by a great message that grabs the consumer’s attention, helps the retailer bring people into the store and shows value to the consumer. Spring Air also provides retailers with turnkey marketing support. Our team offers a variety of video, print and digital ad collateral to make for seamless marketing for planned promotional events. Our network of sales representatives are also ready to be deployed to assist RSAs on the showroom floor during holiday events to help drive sales.
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Kevin Spencer
VP of Marketing and Branding, Kingsdown
We’ve developed a brand promotional calendar that syncs with and drives the promotions our retailers rely on, and we’re also in the progress of building support around other key selling times when consumers buy mattresses—like moving, renovation, back-to-school, holidays and seasonal hospitality rentals. Also, our logistics team aligns production and delivery schedules to assure we deliver on our commitments. We maintain a robust marketing portal where our Kingsdown dealers have access to a wealth of brand assets, including beautiful product imagery for use in digital and print advertising, as well as for social media platforms and in-store presentation.
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Melanie Huet
EVP Chief Marketing Officer, Serta Simmons Bedding
We have shifted to an omni-channel approach. We view the entire market and then work to make compelling offers that are motivating to consumers and can breakthrough in several channels: retail, on-line, mobile, etc. We coordinate our efforts across all of these touch points because we know that 80% of all consumers go on-line before making a purchase, 26% use mobile before deciding and 73% still make a trip to the store before finalizing the purchase. Therefore we must be available and have a coordinated approach across all channels. We provide a variety of support to our retailers. For our biggest launches and opportunities we support with National TV tagged with offers, in-store POS, signage, digital advertising and custom media packages.
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