Case Study: Maritz Increased Awareness of ALSA (The Association for Lou Gehrig's disease)

Maritz increased awareness of ALSA, while at the same time increasing program effectiveness by 43%.

Situation

The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association (ALSA) benefits ALS, more commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Like most cause related agencies, the ALSA generates revenue by selling “pinups” through various retailers at the point of sale. Maritz helped increase the revenue and awareness for the ALSA, while at the same time generating incremental revenue for participating retailers. The objective of the turnkey program was to increase:

• ALSA Pinup Sales
• The Public’s knowledge of the cause and efforts of the ALSA
• Incremental Revenue

Solution

Maritz developed an easy to implement program designed to motivate retail employees to sell ALSA pinups during customer transactions. By introducing pre-denominated reward cards to employees, the program could be tiered to offer multiple rewards levels and drive performance. The reward cards, a Maritz proprietary product called the exclusively yours® (EY) card, can be used at over 150 retail, travel, catalog and online merchants. Program elements included:

• Reward vehicle: The EY card gives the participant choice and is easy to use, just like a debit card
• Store Manager incentives: To promote the program through their store and motivate their employees, store managers also received a pre-denominated EY card
• Targeted communications: Program participants were given a clear understanding of program objectives and goals with ongoing communications
• Mystery Shopping: To motivate employees to exhibit the correct behavior, ALSA volunteers posed as normal customers in various retail partner stores. Employees exhibiting the correct behavior were rewarded with an additional reward card
• Store Coupons: Retail partners attached store coupons upon ALSA pinups as a contribution to the ALSA for their efforts
• Creative Theme: “R.U.N. to defeat ALS” was a memorable acronym that helped generate the desired program behavior from all program participants.

                R- Request $1 donations
                U- Understand ALS
                N- Now is the time to ask

Results

The R.U.N program was designed to be implemented in branded, recognizable, large, regional or national retailer stores. Maritz chose two national retailers for the beta test of the R.U.N. program. The following results were achieved:

• 60% year over year improvement for Retailer A
• 640% year over year improvement for Retailer B
• 43% increase in overall program effectiveness

^{Rewards Cards are issued in connection wtih a loyalty, award, or promotional program}