Adam n Eve – Valued Client Card
Damen and I are always thinking of ways that we can improve the services we provide and reward our customers for their continued loyalty. You don’t stay in business in Sl for 3 years without some strong loyalty from very special people and we areally are aware and appreciative of that.
In the last year a freebie culture and hunting for free items seems to have exploded all over the grid on a massive scale. I love sharing what I’ve made and giving people who enjoy it a free item but it seems to be getting to a point where there is not much incentive to purchase things lately, particularly in the current tough economic climate, and most of us designers have to make tier to keep on going and making items, whether for profit or for art, we need our land, space, piece of virtual terra. I think that the sheer weight of free items is becoming detrimental to business in SL, specially for smaller less established stores and it not great for the SL economy. Free items take time to make and are a privilidge but many people seem to expect them these days as an entitlement and very few are inclined to say thanks. It may be a quick fix to get people over to your land with a mass of freebies but its not always great for your business nor for the economy at large. I know that view won’t be popular with eveyone but it is a view held by many, and many in the design community.
We had thought about introducing store cards recently but weren’t sure that we could see the value of those to us and our customers, then I had an idea, what about a loyalty card reward system. I took the idea to scripter Katoria Stevenson, whose store card system we had already been looking at, and she felt it was a valid concept. We’ve been working on the project for some months now and after a testing session with selected members of our group, we are happy to announce that we are launching this new scheme into our store today. Please read the post below this one for more in depth information on how this will work.
I still maintain, if the economy (at least in America) wasn’t suffering so badly, freebie-hunting wouldn’t have exploded to this extent. I still say scavenger hunts are good to get people in, and hold them in your sim to boost traffic, and–if you can spread the word far enough–freebies *can* be a benefit.
The *problem* is–and I’m seeing this more often than not–those people who feel “entitled” to freebies. *No one* is “entitled” to freebies–freebies should, most of the time at least, result in people looking around your stores, deciding that purchases can be made *while* they’re in the store, looking for whatever freebie is out.
That being said, though, I adore this concept. I think you have a significant enough client base, and are well known enough, for the loyalty system to work stunningly.
Here’s to seeing it play out well.
Comment by Emilly Orr - December 6, 2008 9:29 pm
Finally!! Thank you for speaking out sachi! Below is a post from my own blog of this past week after my sales hitting rock-bottom (traffic actually going down) while participating in the POE hunt. I totally agree with rewarding customers and hope to see more incentives like yours… I apologize in advance for this long post, but at least we can be unpopular together:
Enough with the Hunts, the Freebies, the Dollarbies, the Cheapies, the Group Gifts, the Group Bribes, the Lowbies and the Near-Freebies. In an already ailing economy, we are simply making matters worse. Now, I’m just as altruistic as the next person and I’m all for helping out newbies or the occasional freebie (especially for loyal customers), but at some point don’t we, as content creators depending on SL for income, need to stop and ask ourselves if perhaps our mother’s weren’t right when they told us that no one would buy the cow when the milk was free.. or was it that no one would buy the milk when the cow was free? Hmmm.. now I’m sure I gave away a LOT of milk back in the day, but I think now I am beginning to see her point. There comes a time when we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot with all this free stuff. In an economic slump, in fact, giving away items simply devalues our hard-earned linden that much more. Giving away things may give us a temporary traffic boost but it’s like a bad crack habit.. once the freebie is out the door and we’ve earned nothing for our hard work, we frantically began making something else to bring in more people who will spend a maximum of one minute in our shops and neither buy anything nor stay long enough to actually contribute to our traffic count before jaunting off to the next stop on the freebie-train.
Point in fact.. so I’m out shopping and there’s this really cute dress that is 200L… its well made, beautifully textured, and reasonably priced, but do I buy it? Duhhh.. No, of course not. Why should I? I still have well made, beautifully-textured stuff I’ve yet to get around to even opening from the Halloween ghost hunt. Pay for something.. huhhhh.. unheard of!! The “hunts” now don’t really even require much hunting. Now I confess, I am a participant in the massive grid-wide Peace on Earth hunt taking place this month (far be it from me to be a roadblock on the road to world peace), and we were asked NOT to hide our items.. in face to put them out in full view. If that’s not enough, there are websites that will post every single coordinate to every single freebie for you. What next….. soon it will be asking too much to even show up to pick up our free gifts and we will stomp our well-heeled (with free shoes from Maitreya) feet and demand that designers deliver their wares to us personally!
Back when I joined SL in 2005, you were lucky to have 1 skin that you’d sat on a camping chair for 4 weeks to be able to afford and freebie clothing looked like something a one-armed blind man in a sweatshop made.. and we were damn lucky and happy to get those!! (we also walked 8 miles to school uphill in the snow, but I digress). Now, each and every Hunt or Group Freebie finds my inventory bulging with yet another gorgeous skin from top-notch designers, an imaculately-tailored outfit and enough shoes, hair, and bling to fill Dolly Parton’s wardrobe. (not that I have a clue how big her wardrobe is, but I’m pretty sure the ceilings must be pretty high to accomodate the wigs alone).
Let’s turn over a new leaf in 2009. Let’s start getting paid a little for our hard work. Let’s make owning a beautiful skin or outfit mean something again.. something we can take pride in and not simply let pile up in an already over-flowing inventory. Let us not fill our recycle bins with items that should be treasured nor cause even more lag on the grid with our 150K-item inventories. Let’s not give away the cow anymore.
Comment by Persia Christensen - December 7, 2008 4:23 am
Thanks for your responses guys and thank you Persia for a very well written post. I agree with you and I think there are many others who do too. Katoria Stevenson made my system and I’m sure she would be happy to help anyone else who would prefer to go this route for 2009.
There is another fantastic post by Dot Lane on this subject on her blog as we’ve discussed in plurk and in SL.
Dot’s Article.
Comment by sachi Vixen - December 7, 2008 11:08 am
[...] pre-loaded with 200L$ of loyalty points). Please see this post on their blog for further info, and this post for their reasoning behind the move. With 10 loyalty points already on the card, and some of their [...]
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