Hi, it’s Bob Negen, and I’m glad you’re here for this episode of Real Retail TV. Today, you’re going to learn about one of my absolute favorite, favorite promotions, the fifth Saturday promotion. 

Every year, there are four months that have five Saturdays, and that fifth Saturday represents an opportunity for you to have a promotion. And of course, you can do whatever you want. You could have a customer appreciation. You can have a store wide clearance. You can have buy one get one’s. You can just use the fifth Saturday for an excuse for any type of promotion. 

But what you’re going to learn about right now is my absolute favorite way to get the most from a fifth Saturday. And by the way, what you’re going to learn about right now on average, anecdotally, the people who are doing this, and continue to use the strategy are about ready to learn, do three times the volume on a fifth Saturday that they do on a regular Saturday. 

So let’s talk about how this particular fifth Saturday promotion works. First of all, there has to be a bag, a specially designated bag. This bag comes from our clients and our friends, Jill and Lewis, at the Pet Beastro. So you notice it’s not a cheap plastic bag. This is a beautiful, beautiful screened bag, heavy quality. You know, it feels good, and it should, because you’re going to give this to your absolute best customers. 

There’s also a tag that tells them what days of the month, or what months have five Saturdays– 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021. And it also on this tag explains the promotion. So I’m going to let Lewis and Jill explain it to you. 20% off, congratulations. You have earned the Pet Beastro recyclable bag with your loyalty points. Please enjoy 20% off items that can fit into this bag on the fifth Saturday dates listed below. We appreciate you, we love our customers, thank you. 

So do you see what happens? And this is really important. You have to earn the bag. You can’t just give the bag away. I mean, you can. But if you want to make this as effective as possible, you don’t want to give the bag away because it doesn’t have any value then. You don’t want to sell the bag, because then all you’re doing is getting the people who want deep discounts to participate in this promotion. You want to give the bag to your best customers who have earned it. 

So if you use the six box loyalty program– which I’ll talk about in another episode of Real Retail TV– if you use the six box loyalty program, when people fill out their first card, they get the bag. If you have a loyalty program on your point of sale system, you find a threshold. But it’s important that your best customers get the bag, but that they earned the bag. Because psychologically, when they earn the bag, they become part of the cool kids club. Everybody likes to be part of the cool kids club. 

And then of course, what you want to do is, in your database you want to tag the people who are in the fifth Saturday club so that you can promote this event to them separately. But again, it’s really straightforward. Every time there’s five Saturdays in a month, on that Saturday, anybody brings in their bag, everything they can put into the bag, they get a 20% discount. Again, anecdotally, three times the volume of a regular Saturday. 

And another benefit to having this as part of your promotional calendar is you now have four great events on your calendar. Part of your challenge as an independent retailer is to have a really robust promotional calendar. And so of course, you’re going to have sidewalk sales and clearance sales if that’s appropriate to you. So those go on your calendar. And if you have regularly scheduled customer appreciation events, those go on your calendar. And for big slots get filled with your fifth Saturday program. 

So this is an amazing, an amazing promotion. If you don’t do it, I would encourage you to think about doing it, consider doing it. Because again, you can’t argue with success. 

There it is. One of my favorite promotions. So if you haven’t subscribed to Real Retail TV, I would encourage you to go to iTunes or go to your favorite platform and subscribe. And of course, I love your comments, I love your questions. Put them down below. I’d love to hear from you. So I’m Bob Negen, hope you found this helpful. We’ll see you next week.