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Getting Involved in Your Community

August 15, 2018

As a stand-alone store, it can be hard to shine in the community the same way a well-known corporate chain store does. In our case, we have to be a great deal more creative when it comes to forming a customer following and making a mark in the community, especially in areas that are growing so rapidly in business and culture. When the odds are against you and your brick-and-mortar store and it seems like other businesses are advancing without you, here are some tips for staying involved and keeping your community interested:

Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone

A fantastic way to get involved in your community is to open your arms and welcome people in by hosting a creative and exciting event. It may be something completely new to you, possibly an intimidating idea, but event coordination is an excellent way to reach out. Trying something new and hosting an event (of any kind) makes your location known to those who may have never heard of you, and it offers an ideal destination for family activities. Creating environments in which customers are encouraged to participate, have fun, and get to know your employees will inevitably lead to good reviews and good relationships. People will associate your location with happy memories and subsequently will want to share those good vibes with friends and family. We often get lost in the cold, hard side of business and forget that the most important factor is the community you form with your customers (because where would we be without them?). The warm and genuine human relationships are what make it possible to build a friendly and loyal base of customers, and hosting fun events is an excellent way to initiate these kinds of bonds and stay active in the community.

Band Together

Another way to remain current in the community is to get to know your fellow comrades in business and join forces to create an even larger web of customers. Rather than pitting yourself against the small business down the road, why not offer a friendly hello, get to know their story, and work together to bring business through both doors? In our growing society of online shopping, brick-and-mortar stores need to link arms and march bravely into the future by sharing their knowledge and offering a helping hand to a fellow neighbor. Putting your heads together to create joint marketing ventures (such as offering discounts if customers shop at both locations) is an excellent way to get involved and also to show your customers you are dedicated to the growth of the community.

Lend a Helping Hand

Perhaps one of the most essential ways to get involved in your community is to reach out in whatever way you can to those in need. A charitable donation can go a very long way with regard to relationships formed and the reputation of your business. It is important to be kind but cautious when choosing who/where to donate to. Obviously you can’t donate to everyone, but sometimes a small discount or a literal helping hand with a project can go much farther than anything of monetary value. Donating your time and your efforts can be just as worthy to someone as free product or a big cheque, and it also lends itself easier to that warm and genuine human connection that will help your business succeed in the long run.

Ultimately, it is your human nature that will aid you and your business in getting involved in the community around you. There is a lot of give and take in business, and the more you dedicate to your customers, neighbors, and those in need, the more you will receive back in spades in the form of customers, marketing, recommendations, and lasting relationships. So be loud, proud, and stand out in the crowd! Your success, as well as that of your brick-and-mortar store and your community of followers, is worth the effort!

Samara Bissonnette

Book Outlet

Retail Store Manager

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Book Depot Turns Up the Volume!

August 9, 2018

Book Depot has some exciting news to share which will be very impactful to all our customers! Over the past year, we have seen a constant rise in inbound product and opportunities continue to present themselves for acquiring even more product. In order to keep up with the increased volume of product that is arriving at our warehouse daily, Book Depot has made the momentous decision to keep the lights on a bit longer and add a second full shift to our operation. The second shift started late in the spring of 2018 and has added 40-plus full-time jobs to our warehouse staff!

The Facts

So why is this exciting news for all of our customers? Please let me explain and provide you with some data. The second shift currently has one main purpose, and that is to work through our inbound books and get them into our inventory faster. Our sort machine is now running 16 hours per day and we have staff working to put the books onto our shelves for the same amount of time so that you have an even larger selection of books to purchase from.

Here are some interesting numbers that will help to substantiate this increase in volume.

In the first three months of 2018, Book Depot was adding an average of 269,000 books per week into inventory. That number of books represented 9,331 unique titles, of which 2,800 were titles that had no existing stock (either a sold-out title that we had reacquired stock on or a completely brand-new title that we had never carried previously). Those are already impressive numbers, but wait for the latest stats!

In the past eight weeks since we have implemented our second shift, we are now adding on average 411,000 books per week into inventory, which represents 12,580 unique titles, and of those individual titles, 4,080 are titles with no existing stock. That represents:

a 50% increase to our receiving capacity
a 35% increase in the number of titles added
a 45% increase to titles added that we have no existing inventory

So, what does all of this mean to you, our customers? There are actually a few areas that this increased volume will positively impact you.

Increased Purchasing Opportunities

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog entitled, Here Today and Gone Tomorrow. For all of you who are veteran bargain and remainder book buyers, you will understand this statement completely. The nature of our business is opportunity buying. Great titles become available at great prices and, as a buyer, you need to take advantage of those opportunities to help create the best assortment of bargain books that you can find. With the increase in our available product from our second shift, this will create even more of these great purchasing opportunities based on the additional number of titles we are adding on a daily basis.

Decreased Wait Times

For those of you who shop our New Arrivals often, you can see the pattern of the same publishers being sorted over and over again, almost by routine. The reason for this is because we have relationships with the publishers to take in their overstocks on a continual basis, so we might be getting a truckload from them every week or two. With the increase in our sort capacity, that will mean we will be able to get to these sorts sooner, which in turn means a shorter wait time before we sort your favorite or preferred publishers again.

More Books to Go Around

Another benefit we see from this increase in volume is that those desirable titles that sell out so quickly should either get restocked faster (if we get them again) and/or the quantity of those “hot” titles rise so more customers can “share the wealth.”

I hope you can see why Book Depot is excited for you, our customers, and the added opportunities that our second shift is creating for you. More product means more choices and better selection, which should also benefit your customers and/or institution. We continue to stand firmly behind our mission statement, which is that we want to save you time and money by offering the largest selection of high-margin books. This new change allows us to continue to improve upon that promise.

Rick Mechelse

Online Sales Manager

Book Depot

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Webinar: Maximizing the Book Depot Website

June 27, 2018

Throughout the years, we have been refining our website to make our customers’ buying experience as easy and efficient as possible. If you are new to our website and want to learn about all the features it has to offer, watch the video below. If you are a returning visitor, discover how you can get the most out of our site by leveraging its features to their full potential.

Website features covered (in order of reference):

If you prefer to read about the features on Book Depot, we invite you to read this article.

What would you like to see?

Do you have any suggestions or features that you would like to see built into our website to make your buying experience even better? Do you have any positive or negative feedback that you would like to share regarding our current site? Place your suggestions in the comments below.

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What’s Hot, What’s Not at Book Depot

June 14, 2018

Bookstore owner: “For this buyers’ job, we need someone who is responsible.”
Applicant: “I’m the one you want. In my last job, every time there was a problem, they said I was responsible.”

Sound like someone you know? Have you ever been the “responsible” buyer for some duds? I’m quite sure we’ve all had our share of purchases that never materialized into profitable sales. Let’s admit it—it can be difficult to select all winners when we have a store or chain of stores to keep fully stocked with great titles that appeal to our customer base. This blog will hopefully help you a bit in discovering what’s hot and what’s not in the world of bargain books.

As one of North America’s largest purchasers of bargain books, Book Depot gets a huge selection of titles arriving every day. As a point of interest, we are now sorting 400 pallets of bargain books per week! Some of the product that finds its way into our inventory is like pure gold and sells out quickly. At the other end of the spectrum are books that have lost their relevance and salability. These will be quickly separated (often at the point of initial sortation) and recycled into various paper-based products. In between, where the bulk of our inventory falls, are good to great titles that you as a buyer need to sift through and decide what may or may not sell in your store(s).

Based on the last six months of sales at Book Depot and interviews with several of our seasoned sales reps, we have the following information you may find helpful:

What’s Hot:

Kids’ titles that have a STEM component (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)
Kids’ titles with a different format like sound books, lift-the-flap, and box sets
Fiction continues to sell very well, and in some cases, trade paper outsells hardcover due to the lower price point and less bulky format
Political books relating to recent events and certain individuals – any guesses on this one?
Inspirational and self-help titles, especially when linked to a well-known individual or celebrity
Brick-and-mortar stores do well with kids’ storybooks and board books that don’t necessarily need to be written by a big-name author, but instead, have a nice quality about them. Here is where the touch and feel experience makes all the difference
Adult colouring books, but a lower price point is key to successful sales
Cookbooks that are written by celebrities and/or deal with vegan and gluten-free content

What’s Not So Hot:

Generic cookbooks, especially those without rich, colourful content
Computer and Internet
Education
Sports and Recreation
Low-end paperback romance

In summary, content that is freely available on the internet tends not to sell well in printed form. Maybe it goes without saying, but high-quality content that is relevant (or timeless), priced well, entertaining, and worth sharing is going to find a customer and enrich their lives.

With over 50,000 current titles in stock, we have a huge selection of great books. Below is a special list of 35 top-selling titles at Book Depot, recommended by our sales staff, for your buying consideration:

ISBN	Title	Category	List Price (USD)	Our Price (USD)
9780062651754	Pharaoh (A Novel of Ancient Egypt)	Fiction	$19.99	$2.25
9781250045478	Victoria	Fiction	$16.99	$3.50
9780425280126	Island of Glass (Guardians Trilogy, Bk. 3)	Fiction	$17.00	$2.50
9780765377043	Children of the Fleet (Fleet School, Bk. 1)	Fiction	$25.99	$3.75
9781501124389	Everyone Brave is Forgiven	Fiction	$16.00	$2.25
9780684822761	In Our Time	Fiction	$14.00	$3.50
9781250075857	Mind Game (Eve Duncan)	Fiction	$27.99	$4.50
9781250119889	You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds	Humor	$15.99	$2.50
9780062568892	Victoria: The Heart and Mind of a Young Queen	History & Geography	$29.99	$5.00
9781250080431	Pogue’s Basics: Life	House & Home	$19.99	$3.25
9781250087256	Obsessed! (Hungry Girl, Clean & Hungry)	Cooking, Food & Wine	$21.99	$4.50
9781250127761	The How Not to Die Cookbook	Cooking, Food & Wine	$29.99	$6.50
9780894803123	Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book	Cooking, Food & Wine	$10.95	$2.50
9780062409706	Nevertheless: A Memoir	Biography & Autobiography	$28.99	$3.25
9780312553685	I’d Know You Anywhere, My Love	Children Fiction	$17.99	$3.00
9780448437477	The Night Before First Grade	Children Fiction	$3.99	$1.00
9780451534040	The Crayons’ Book of Colors	Children Fiction	$8.99	$2.25
9781848698611	My Book of Animal Babies	Children Fiction	$8.95	$2.00
9781848698567	One Rainy Day	Children Fiction	$8.95	$2.00
9781474821483	Snowflakes and Sparkles Coloring Book with Crayons (Disney Frozen)	Children Fiction	$4.99	$1.00
9781474821490	Hopes and Heroes Coloring Book with Crayons (Disney Pixar)	Children Fiction	$4.99	$1.00
9781474821681	Dare to Dream Paint Palette Book (Disney Pixar)	Children Fiction	$7.99	$2.00
9781481492201	Daniel Tiger’s 5-Minute Stories (Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood)	Children Fiction	$12.99	$2.75
9780689832130	Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type	Children Fiction	$17.99	$3.00
9780374300210	If Animals Kissed Good Night	Children Fiction	$7.99	$2.00
9781680520606	A New Toy Truck (Touch & Feel Busy Workshop)	Children Fiction	$12.99	$3.25
9781680520743	Brave Little Camper	Children Fiction	$12.99	$3.25
9781680520095	First Words Lift-a-Flap Book (Babies Love)	Children Fiction	$7.99	$2.00
9780544454361	Let’s Cook! (Sesame Street)	Children Nonfiction	$17.99	$1.50
9780312522827	First 100 Numbers	Children Nonfiction	$5.99	$1.50
9781250151070	Way of the Warrior Kid	Tweens Fiction	$13.99	$2.50
9780375870644	The Fourteenth Goldfish	Tweens Fiction	$16.99	$3.00
9781484789728	Disney Beauty and the Beast (Art of Coloring)	Crafts & Hobbies	$15.99	$2.00
9780892969982	The Power of I Am: Two Words That Will Change Your Life Today	Religion & Spirituality	$14.99	$3.75
9781455517275	The Mind Connection	Religion & Spirituality	$24.00	$3.75

Bill Van Vliet
CIO
Book Depot

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Success Story: Salt Lake County Library Services

May 30, 2018

Background

Salt Lake County Library Services is the largest public library system in Utah. They began operations some 79 years ago in 1939 out of two classrooms in the old Midvale School, UT. Today, they offer books, music, magazines – all in a variety of formats – and much, much more.

Salt Lake County Library Services currently runs a highly successful Summer Reading Program from its 18 branches that services approximately 60,000 participants across the county. The program features specially designed reading records to encourage the whole family to keep track of their reading progress throughout the summer. With the program offered to three different age groups for over two months, they need a reliable supplier they can count on to provide the huge breadth of high-interest titles they require for this program with a one-stop shopping experience.

Solution

With the largest selection of titles in the industry from nearly all major North American publishers, Book Depot is able to provide them with the extensive variety of titles in all age ranges they require to run a successful Summer Reading Program year after year. Book Depot offers a user-friendly website that gives clients a real-time view of its inventory and sales representatives to help facilitate easy order placement.

Results

5-10% increase in Summer Reading Program participants each year.

Salt Lake County Library Services chose Book Depot as their preferred supplier because Book Depot allows them to fulfill all their various needs (children’s books, tween, adult, nonfiction, and board books) from just one vendor.

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Four young readers standing and reading books.

Engaging More Readers

May 23, 2018

When catching up with an old acquaintance I have not seen for years or in general conversation with someone I have just been introduced to, invariably the question will eventually come around to “What do you do for a living?”

After telling them that I work for a bargain book distribution company and explaining a bit about my job, the typical follow-up question is, “Do people still read?” I usually respond with a sharp quip that I hope people are still reading for another 15 or 20 years so I don’t have to go looking for another job before I retire! However, the question is still a valid one— I think especially so for the younger generation. Are people still engaged in reading at the same level as say 10, 20, or 40 years ago? Are young people today inclined to read a book? And I don’t really think it matters whether it is a print or electronic book, although we print booksellers are certainly pulling for the one over the other! But I don’t think we should be as concerned over the format of the book as much as whether or not people are still reading.

The Pew Research Center conducts a yearly survey about book-reading trends in America, and it is interesting to note that the amount of reading is relatively unchanged over the past few years based on the 2016 survey. What the survey has also uncovered is that print books are still the preferred medium for most readers; the amount of people reading a book on a dedicated e-reading device is pretty much flat. Where there is growth in e-reading is on tablets (multi-use devices) or smartphones. Put me firmly in the category of preferring to read a printed book, though. That might make me old school, but I just cannot wrap my head around reading a book on my phone—if I ever did it had better be a short story!

Regardless of the medium, I believe the challenge for our society, especially for those of us in the book industry, is how to engage the youth of today to be readers in an age of so much distraction. We all love having instant access to a wealth of information at our fingertips or the ability to communicate with someone immediately without having to make a phone call or even send an email. We can watch our favorite programs when we want on our DVR or Netflix without the intrusion of commercials. Our communications are in the realm of 140 characters or less, and everywhere we look people are walking with their heads down staring at their handheld devices. I marvel when I go out to eat and see a family sitting together and no one is talking to each other because they are all on their devices. So how do we get the youth of today to slow down their busy and distraction-filled lives and pick up a book to invest some time reading, learning, expanding their minds or imagination, and losing themselves in a good story?

The Harry Potter era was certainly a wonderful time for booksellers as it really engaged a generation of new readers, but it has been over ten years since The Deathly Hallows, and nothing has really come close to matching that level of sustained excitement and anticipation for a new installment in a series. Waiting for the next big thing to come along to draw in a new crop of readers is wishful thinking, but I think it is also unnecessary. There are so many great books that are just waiting to be read, and what we need to do is encourage reading from an early age. The hope is once children get started and with some helpful prompting, we can create more book lovers. For instance, my eldest daughter loves to read but has a hard time deciding what to read next. Based on her tastes and sense for adventure, I recommended the Redwall series to her. It was not received with much enthusiasm at first and I had to keep encouraging her to give it a try and get past those first couple of chapters so that she could see the story start to build and then get wrapped into it. It took some time and the book was on and off again for a couple of weeks, but finally, the story grabbed her and now she is deep into book two and I am sure well on her way to devouring the series.

I do have a vested interest in the success of the publishing industry because of my career, but more than that, as a father of four children I want to see my kids reading, enjoying a good story, and learning about new and exciting things. And the sooner we can start them on this journey the better! At Book Depot we have the privilege of working with some great nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to putting books in less privileged children’s hands at no cost. We also are involved with some local schools where we donate books for their reading incentive programs. I don’t mention these things in order to congratulate ourselves but to raise awareness that we all can do our part to help the cause of literacy and try to engage more readers. As a book-related community, I think we all share the responsibility to encourage children to read with the hopes that this will open up a world of opportunities for them.

Rick Mechelse

Senior Sales Representative

Book Depot

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Hands being raised to take part in a survey.

The Survey Says – Make Your Business Stronger

May 9, 2018

How do your customers truly feel about you? Are you their “go to” source for books? Should you be restyling your store, or offering more products? I am sure these questions and countless others are always top-of-mind for all booksellers, but formalizing the process may get pushed aside in the hectic daily running of your business. One way to truly know how you are perceived – surveying your customer base. At Book Depot we query our constituents for each of our lines of business on an annual basis. We use this data to reflect on where we’ve been and as an important tool for planning our future. Some of the benefits of taking the time to properly plan and execute a surveying initiative include:

Customer appreciation. People inherently love to feel valued and that they have a voice that is heard. They will be impressed that you respect their opinion enough to ask them how you are doing.
Customer retention. Customer acquisition is tough and extremely expensive. Satisfying your customer’s needs will keep them coming back – increasing their lifetime value and providing a revenue stream that will be easier to forecast.
Free information. Utilizing your own client base for information comes at no cost (other than time) and will be completely pertinent to your business as all the questions are about your business.
Improve problem areas. We all like to think that each aspect of our business is running smoothly. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to recognize the areas that need to be addressed.
Recognize trends. Are you carrying the right mix of categories and keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry? Can you expand your product lines by carrying higher margin products? Asking product based questions will reduce your fiscal risk by identifying fact-based gaps in your selection. (It is impossible for one person to know everything there is to know about the publishing world.)
Establishing a baseline. Performing surveys consistently over a length of time will provide you an opportunity to gauge yourself against yourself. Track all the changes you made and monitor how they are received.

I know what you must be thinking, theoretically I see the value – but I don’t have the time or know where to even begin. Let me assure you that it has never been easier than it is today. To make the process manageable, we have broken it down into three basic steps to help ensure your initiative will have success:

Scripting the Survey

Pinpoint exactly what you want to know (i.e. should we expand our bargain book section?).
Use basic language. Stay away from industry lingo that could confuse your customer.
Keep the questions as short as possible and never exceed a total of 10. Only ask the questions that will not have the biggest impact on success.
Utilize the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Book Depot ends every survey by asking, “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend, or colleague”. We feel this is the most powerful way to gauge the overall health of your business. Willingness to recommend your store to a friend, is extremely powerful.

Administering the Survey

Choose a web-based survey provider. We use Survey Monkey for all of ours. It is extremely user friendly, offers great examples & step-by-step tutorials and provides the data in a manageable format.
Define who you want to query. Are you looking to poll your entire list or are you really looking for information from a specific subset of customers in your database?
Decide if you want to provide an incentive. Often times we will offer a predefined discount off the customer’s next purchase if they complete the survey.
Design the survey. Most provide an extremely user-friendly template, so all you need to do is cut-and-paste your questions.

Analyzing the Results

Calculate the response rate (divide the number of completed surveys by the total number of surveys sent). The higher the response rate, the more representative and trustworthy the data will be. Aim for over 10%.
Be open minded. Listen to what the data is really telling you, not what you want it to tell you… this can be harder than you would think.
Categorize the data. “Bucketing” your responses by area of your business will make it easier to focus on the specific needs of each.
Look at your results on both a micro and macro and level. You will glean key “nuggets” by looking at both.
Thank your respondents. Let them know how much you appreciate their time and how you plan to utilize the responses to better serve their book buying needs in the future.

As David Penn succinctly stated, “Measuring engagement and engaging consumers are two sides of the same coin.” At Book Depot this is one of our mantras. We know that not only have our customers made us who we are today, but make us who we will be in the future. If we want that future to be successful, we must keep our finger on their collective pulse.

Making customer surveys a key part of your annual planning will pay off with making your store stronger and more profitable, while keeping your customers loyal!

Greg Sizelove

Business Development Manager

Book Depot

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Product Diversity – The Book Depot Anthem!

May 2, 2018

Diversity: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements; variety.

Diversity is a 21st-century buzzword. How diverse is our society? Would you consider yourself inclusive or exclusive? Do you have enough variety in your life or are you pretty much same old, same old? This word often pops up in discussions about race, religion, politics, or a variety of other social or economic issues.

At Book Depot, diversity in terms of product is something that we have striven for since day one. Offering a wide variety of products is what we feel separates us from most other bargain book suppliers. Whether it is fiction, children’s books (in just about every format), history, biography, crafts, cooking, health, business, religion—you pretty much name it, and we have it. Maybe it is because of our roots in retail many years ago when we had to fill a very large store with as many different books as possible, but we have the mindset that there should be “something for everyone.”

Fast forward some 25 years later and not much has changed. Our motto is “The Largest Selection Pays” and our mission statement (did you know we had one?) is “To save retailers time and money by offering the largest selection of high-margin books.” Having the largest selection of books is our goal, but married to that is the idea that the selection has to be made up of a diverse range of product. It is nice to say that you have 50,000 titles, but it is just as important to have a range of titles over many categories and genres. We want to be a one-stop shop for you and all of your bargain book needs. It doesn’t matter whether you are a specialty store or a full-range bookshop; everyone recognizes how crucial it is to have as much variety as possible to meet your customers’ needs.

Creating this diversity in product means a lot of hard work; relationships with many publishers and suppliers; lots of air miles and meetings around the globe; and leaving no stone unturned in the search for something new and exciting for our customers. We will take the risks to find the product we want you to be successful with. Every one may not be a home run, but Book Depot is a company that is not afraid to take a chance on something if we think it may benefit our customers. I remember 18 or so years ago when our owner came back to the booth very excited after acquiring 10,000 copies of Billy Graham’s autobiography. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Rev. Graham was likely nearing the end of life and this would be a good title to have in relatively short period of time. Needless to say, we sold all those copies long before we ever anticipated, but this is an example of the mindset we have always had at Book Depot—we take risks. A smart buyer once told me that you are not doing a good job as a buyer if you don’t make a mistake once in a while. Certainly, you don’t want to make more mistakes than your successes, but when bringing in product and trying to diversify to meet all your customers’ needs, you need to take some chances.

Book Depot is committed to being the most diversified supplier in the bargain book industry. However, to maintain this reputation, we need your help. We would like to get your feedback on items that you would like to see us consider for additional product offerings! We recognize the importance of good sidelines and the impact they can have in a bookstore, and maybe you have some suggestions for us? What additional items work well for you in-store, whether it is book, book-plus, or non-book product that we can investigate for you? We want to hear from you!

Rick Mechelse

Senior Sales Representative

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Loyalty Program: Why you need one and how to get started

March 14, 2018

Loyalty programs can make customers feel more appreciated and special, and in turn increase the likelihood of them advocating your brand to their peers. Your customers are your biggest cheerleaders (or your biggest threat!), so treat them well and it will pay off. Customers will join a loyalty program firstly to save money and secondly to receive rewards, so be sure to make the program worthwhile otherwise they will lose interest. If there is too much of a barrier for customers to receive discounts and convert points to dollars, your loyalty program loses meaning and people will drop off and no longer encourage others to sign up. Find the sweet spot for making it fun for your customers by giving them real value for their actions while you gain valuable analytics.

Why you should have a loyalty program:

As much as your customers think a loyalty program is a benefit to them, the real winner is you. When customers initially sign up for a program, most don’t think twice about the impact they have when filling out form fields such as age, gender, and address. Gaining customer information on habits and buying patterns is powerful information that you can use in decision making for purchasing product, sales, events, store layout, etc.

The moment a customer walks out your doors, you have lost contact with them and you are at their mercy regarding when or whether they decide to come in again to browse for new books. A bonus of a loyalty program where you collect people’s email addresses is now you have a way to keep your brand top-of-mind and entice them into your store with sales, promotions, and exclusive member-only content. With these promotions, you can incentivize more frequent and/or larger purchases that make the customer feel like a winner, but you ultimately come out on top.

Loyalty promotion ideas:

Creating a loyalty program that makes your customers feel good and also benefits you will take some research as to what you are willing to give up in order to gain. Depending on how complex you would like to get with your program, you may have to take a deep dive into analytics such as AOV, LTV, CPA, etc. to see exactly how much you can give away. The focus of this article is to give you some basic ideas you can implement relatively quickly, all while keeping things simple to maintain and attainable for your small business.

Punch Card

If you want to start out cheap, punch cards are a great option. Design your own or visit your local printer to come up a simple punch, stamp, or sticker card where each time a purchase is made, a mark is made on the card to get the customer closer to a special offer. But, in order for the customer to get the card, collect information from them such as name, email address, address, age, and gender that you can track against their purchases each time a mark is made on their card. Incentives could range from a free book under a certain value to 50% off your entire purchase under a certain amount. If you want to get a little fancier with it, once one card has been redeemed, you can graduate your customer to the next level that is a little harder to attain, but the perk at the end is that much better.

Special in-store offers

Forget the card and just collect your customer’s information in your POS system, where you can associate a purchase to an email address. At the point of purchase, inquire with your customers as to whether or not they are a loyalty member and look them up by email address. This allows you to run promotions whenever you choose and the customer does not have to deal with a card. Run deals where loyalty members get x% off on a certain slow day of the week to up your sales on those days. This will make all your customers want to join your program! Or offer a limited-time sale where customers can get x% off their order for a certain amount of time, where only loyalty members can take part in the promotion.

Anniversary perks

When collecting your customer’s information, if you record the date they signed up and/or their birthday, you can offer them fun anniversary or birthday perks, like giving them a free book under x amount for the 7 days before and after their birthday. This makes the customer feel like you have a personal interest in them and associates a positive life experience with your brand.

Points = money

This one can get a little tricky. The sweet spot for finding out how much you are willing to give away will need to be determined by looking at your AOV, LTV, CPA, etc. If you would like to hear about our personal experience with our retail brand on how to get started, please leave a comment below and we will get in contact with you! With points, you can have more fun with promos by running 3x or 10x days, for example, where your customers rack up the points faster by making a regular purchase. Keep in mind that customers do not like their points to expire, so send them reminders that they have points available to redeem or let them know at checkout when you pull up their account. Also note that expiring points in Canada is now illegal, so be sure to set up your program in a way that abides by the new laws. This loyalty program approach can be a lot of fun, but if you make it too hard for your customer to earn real dollars towards future purchases they will quickly realize this and stop using the program.

Marketing your program:

It’s great to have a loyalty program, but if your customers don’t know about it, no one benefits. A simple way to make sure your customers know about your program is to ask each one at point of purchase if they are a loyalty member. If they are, mark their purchase against their email address. If they aren’t, be sure to have pamphlets at cash that you can hand to your customers that summarizes the perks they will experience by signing up that day. When customers first join your program, add them to an email campaign that welcomes them to the program and confirms they are successfully signed up to be a part of an exclusive community with perks. Since you will be collecting everyone’s email addresses, send out monthly or bi-monthly emails about exclusive offers and reminders about why being a member benefits them. Use this opportunity to also give them exclusive insight to sales before they start so they are the first to know. When you let your loyalty customers know about something exciting before everyone else, it makes them feel special.

Measuring success:

Once your program is up and running, you will want to know if it is worth your time to continue or not. Important metrics to look at when comparing your loyalty members to your non-loyalty members are frequency of purchases, average order value, and program engagement rate. Are things improving for your bottom line? If not, don’t worry. It might take a couple of changes to start to see where you are making an impact with the customer. Be patient with it and give it the time and dedication it needs before you decide to stop your program.

Don’t be afraid to ask your customers how they are liking your program. Send out an email survey or run a simple ballot survey in-store and learn about what your customers love or dislike. The key metric you are measuring here is Net Promoter Score (NPS) by making sure to include the one question “How likely are you to recommend [store name] to your friends and family on a scale from 1-10?” Your customers are your biggest advocate, so you want to ensure they will be telling their friends about you if they are happy. Check out this article here to learn about the importance of NPS for your store.

Let us know if you plan on trying to implement some of these ideas in-store and keep us updated on how things are going! We would also be happy to have someone from our marketing team jump on a call with you to discuss our own experience with loyalty programs, so please leave your info below if you would like to be contacted.

Mary Tigchelaar

Book Depot

Marketing Coordinator

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Visual merchandising display of books in bookstore.

Creative Merchandising Ideas

February 28, 2018

Does your store stand out from the crowd? Does it excite customers? Is there a way you can beef up your merchandising to increase sales? Is that even possible in a bookstore? I say YES! Having 11+ years’ experience working for a major book retailer in Canada, I have seen many ways to increase sales via in-store merchandising. People come to your brick-and-mortar store to discover new items, to be WOWED. Making your store stand out from the competition is crucial to staying healthy and profitable in this competitive marketplace. Not only are you competing with other brick-and-mortar stores, you are now competing with online retailers too. Therefore, creative merchandising becomes even more important. You want to provide your customers with the ultimate shopping experience! Here are six easy ways to boost sales, while making an aesthetic impact on your store.

Change displays biweekly

All of us know that it is crucial to merchandise displays to follow holidays, seasons, etc. But is that really enough? Keep your store vibrant and fresh by switching your displays on a biweekly schedule whenever it is possible. This will keep customers excited and looking forward to see what’s new when they return.

Is your cash lineup exciting?

New arrivals should be displayed near the front of the store. Most book retailers have ample new arrivals weekly. Keeping your cash lineup fresh gives you more opportunity to entice your customers to impulse buy an item they didn’t even come into your store for. Alongside these sought-after new arrivals, display easy add-on items (low ticket priced items – like bargain books) to increase your customers’ basket size.

Tables should tell a story

Grouping like products together will give your customers additional reasons to buy more items from you, saving them time mixing and matching categories and topics that interest them. All tables should tell one cohesive story. A customer is looking for a complete solution. For example, if doing a Mother’s Day table and you are featuring some books on tea, cross merchandise this with tea, tea cups, and cookies, for example. Table displays that tell a story are more interesting to a shopper and potentially much more profitable to you as a retailer.

End-caps

End-caps should be used to display new releases or older books by popular authors. When customers browse through your store and pass by the ends of your shelves, they can be influenced by what is displayed. Use end-caps creatively by adding products such as book lights, reading glasses, or gift cards. Adding one or two higher-margin products to every basket can really affect your bottom line.

Back of store merchandising

Categories such as Science, New Age, and Crafts and Hobbies, to name a few, should be placed in the depth of your store. Less impulse in nature, customers will travel to the back of your store to find these categories. By doing this you will increase the chances of those customers putting other items in their basket, increasing their basket size.

Make the shopping experience a comfortable one

Most shoppers shop with another person; a spouse, a friend, or a child. The more uncomfortable the spouse, friend, or child may get, the less time your customer will spend in your store browsing and adding to their basket.

Examples may include: chairs and sofas to make browsing more comfortable, ample heat/air-conditioning, or sufficient room to maneuver between shelves and tables.

These are just a few ideas to get your juices flowing. You will have many unique ideas that tailor to your store and your target customer. Have fun and be creative!

Tracy Basnett

Book Depot

Category Manager

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