Sweet! Valvoline’s summer promotion offering a pair of Mechanix gloves – MSRP $23.95 – in exchange for 6 proofs of purchase was a thumbs-up winner in the create a new customer sweepstakes. Valvoline’s always been my oil of choice and this just cemented the deal. I stripped off the plastic rings from the 60-weight already on my shelves and 4-6 weeks later the gloves were on my workbench.

This marketing promotion worked well on a number of levels. Actual retail value of the premium was easily compared by visiting any chain store and checking out the pricing. The gloves themselves have a known brand cache. The fact that the product was practical as well completed the reward expectations loop, justifying the effort to collect, fill out, insert and mail the qualifying bits and pieces. And this promo created a fair amount of blog and forum buzz, which never hurts.

Not every marketer can devote the resources needed to lay out a promo like this one. (Adobe just ran a buy two get an iPod shuffle to hype their stock art biz. I didn’t need another iPod but couldn’t resist taking the bait.) But if the audience is big enough, the rewards on both sides of the mailbox can be considerable.

First some background. One of the essential Marketing Customer Commandments that’s emerged in the era of the internet has been a total focus on customer retention. My recent experiences with vendors ranging from Valvoline motor oil to Garden of Eatin’s line of organic chips convinces me that it’s not just a throwaway line. But then there are retailers like Circuit City, and this goes to the reason why Best Buy is clobbering The Other Big Red Box.
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