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Advertising is an important part of any business activity. However, every business wants to know the success (or otherwise) of a marketing and advertising campaign. This is so that revenue can be matched to the actual cost of any promotion. When a supplier is involved, it is also possible that they may want to measure the success rate of any such campaign if they were to fund it. Measurement figures are also extremely useful when gauging the advertising medium that is being used – for example, which Newspaper or Magazine generates better hit rates. One may also want to know if an SMS campaign produced better results compared to a letter or email. Of course the cost of delivering the campaign also has to be taken into consideration. For example, an email campaign may get fewer hits but one has to remember that the cost of such marketing is a lot lower than sending out letters, and so on.

So, how can you use VETLINKSQL features to measure the success of marketing campaigns you ask? Not too difficult at all, and with “Corporate” style as well. You will recall that VETLINKSQL Version 4.2 had a new feature added called “Reporting Product”. Help on this is available in the on-line help menu in VETLINKSQL as well as the Version 4.2 Updates Notes document.

When Totally Vets (Fielding, New Zealand) requested this feature to be programmed in for them for farm billing (you can thank them for this feature), we decided to look at the broader use of such a feature, and added in a few extra features. A Reporting Product is an “item” that can be added to the Product file but have no inventory or price, but does allow quantity recording and reporting. You can use this feature for many other purposes, one being PROMOTION TRACKING. This is one way to use this.

THE PROMO & SETUP

We want to advertise a Puppy Pet Food Promotion and have a coupon in the local paper or mail drop. First, create a “Reporting Product” called, say, “Puppy Food Promo”. Then print out the barcode label for the Reporting Product, and ask the advertisers to print that barcode into the advert. If doing a letter or email campaign, you will have to get that barcode in there as well. If you want a PROMO CODE instead (or both), simply quote the product number in VETLINKSQL as the PROMO CODE. If you want, you could have different ones for the “source” of the coupon. This will allow measurement of the advertising medium success rate , in case the advert was delivered in several forms.

THE CROWDS QUEUE UP!

When people come in to buy the promotion product and have the coupon(s), simply scan the product they are getting and then scan the (appropriate) coupon as well. If they don’t have the coupon and you still want to offer them the promo price then have a barcode at the counter to scan in or just enter the product (PROMO) number. The “Puppy Food Promo” line will show on invoices but will not have any other entry except the quantity. It is this simple!

REPORTING

Once the campaign is over, you can use standard reports to dig out the “sales” of the PROMO product. This will show you the quantity “sold” without any effect on price, inventory, etc. This value will show you the redemption rate from your campaign!  Note that you can also group Reporting Products into categories, just as you can with real products.

AND THERE’S MORE

Now that you know what you know........this label can also be attached to the bottom of other products (or laminated sheet at the counter) to report on Redemptions for your Suppliers for other products – and then to ask for monetary rebates so that you can create your own in-house clinic specific Loyalty System! Click Here to see how VETLINKSQL’s Loyalty system will assist your business!