Four offers running, no idea which works
Your MOT is advertised at a discount on your website. A leaflet with a voucher went through doors last month. There is an advert in the local magazine. A booking site lists you at its own price. At the desk, customers mention "the offer", and staff give the discount without asking which one.
At the end of the quarter, you have spent money on the leaflet and the advert and given discounts to many customers. You do not know whether any of it brought in someone new.
Why offers are hard to measure
Offers arrive through different channels, and none of them is recorded consistently. Online bookings might show a price but not where the customer came from. Desk bookings rarely record anything. Vouchers are taken and thrown away. The till records a discount but not which offer it was for.
There is also a trap. A discount given to a regular customer who would have booked anyway costs you money without bringing anything new. Without a record of whether each customer is new or returning, every offer looks successful.
Timing muddies things further. A leaflet that lands in March might bring bookings in May, when the MOTs on those streets fall due. Without a code carried with the booking, those tests look like ordinary repeat business, and the leaflet looks like it did nothing.
What unmeasured offers cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| No code per offer | Cannot tell which channel works |
| Discounts given on request | Regulars get discounts they did not need |
| Vouchers not recorded | Leaflet spend cannot be judged |
| Booking site prices not tracked | Unknown share of tests at lower margin |
| No new or returning split | Every offer looks like it works |
Marketing money is hard to earn back for a small centre. Knowing which offer brings new customers means you can stop paying for the ones that do not.
How we track offers from booking to test
- Each offer gets its own short code: website, leaflet, magazine, booking site, and any others.
- The code is captured automatically for online bookings through the booking link, and picked from a list at the desk for phone and walk-in bookings, so staff ask every time.
- Each customer is marked new or returning, based on your test history.
- The code and discount are carried through to the test and the payment, so you can see which offers led to tests that actually happened.
- A simple report shows, per offer, the tests, how many were new customers, the discount given, and how many of those new customers came back the following year.
- Discounts given without a code are flagged, so the desk knows to ask which offer the customer means.
We report what the data shows, including when an offer brings in few new customers. The decisions about pricing and marketing stay with you.
A quarter with answers
At the end of the quarter the report shows the leaflet brought in some new customers, most of whom booked by phone. The magazine advert brought very few. The website discount was used mostly by returning customers who would probably have come anyway. The booking site brought new customers at a lower price.
Next quarter you run the leaflet again, drop the magazine, and change the website offer to new customers only. The decision is based on your own numbers.
- A code for every offer and channel
- New and returning customers separated
- Discounts tied to tests that actually happened
- A report you can act on each quarter
Over a year, the picture gets more useful still. You can see whether customers who came in on a discount came back the following year at the normal price, which is the real test of whether an offer earned its keep.
Do you know which offers work?
- You run several MOT offers at once.
- Discounts are given when customers mention an offer.
- Vouchers are collected but not recorded.
- You cannot say how many new customers each offer brought.
- You keep paying for adverts without knowing if they work.