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Staff at On the Rochs distributed 300 "No Peeking" envelopes to selected guests during the month of April. Each of these sealed envelopes contained three playing cards. In May, when the customers returned with their envelopes, there were two cards on display in the restaurant. (These were the first two cards dealt from a deck.) The guest and the wait person would open the guest's envelope and then the wait person would deal two more cards from the restaurant's deck. If the guest's best five card hand matched any of the winning hands listed on the envelope, the guest won that prize. (Knowing the mathematical probability for each hand made it easy for the owner to determine the distribution of prizes.)
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On the Rochs used this promotion to bring guests into the establishment on slower nights. By restricting redemptions to Sunday through Thursday, they increased business on those nights and avoided having to deal with the time-consuming task of dealing cards on the busiest nights of the week.
It is important to note that this promotion is successful because it’s FUN! It gives your guests a reason other then food to visit your establishment. There is little cost to distributing the envelopes, and large give-aways are as rare as drawing a royal flush.
The incentive for guests to return was that they had a chance to win something, but even if they didn’t win the poker hand, they were GUARANTEED something. Each person who returned to play the game received a "bounce back" card worth $5 on any visit in June. This provided On the Rochs with two additional visits within two months as a result of this one promotion.
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Here are the results of these promotions:
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 Distributed 300 envelopes
Redeemed 90 (thirty percent!)
Redeemed an additional 42 of the 90 bounce-back cards!
Sales from this promotion: $2,895.51
Promotion Cost: $165.00 for the envelopes, plus $13.50 for the bounce-backs
Return on Investment: $17.55
Profit on this promotion: $1.542.21
Every dollar spent on this promotion, including the cost of "free" food, put $5.31 back into the owner's pocket.
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