4 Crazy Nights in Cancun

Author: Frank Bertalli  /  Category: Tips and Tricks

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Let me start by admitting that the title of this article has very little to do with what I am about to write. I’ve been reading about blog posts and how important the title is. The more I read the more I realized that simply writing what your article is about is not enough.  As I thought about what my title would be, I dawned on me that writers have been doing this as long as the written word has been published.  A good title should have a number in it and must be persuasive enough that people will want to click and read it even if it’s a stretch from what the article is really about. So I came up with the title “4 Crazy Nights in Cancun”. It’s got you this far so I guess these blogging gurus know what they are talking about after all! My article is really about how Travel Certificate still work just as good as they always have.  You can see now how hard it would be to write an intriguing title about that. I believe that travel certificates as sales incentives will work even better than before because people have had to cut back and tighten their budgets but I know they would still like to take a trip somewhere even if just for a weekend retreat. Now, as an employee reward, I know travel certificates still work. That’s sort of obvious, who wouldn’t put in a little extra effort to have a shot at a fully paid vacation? Who wouldn’t be pleased if their boss walked up to them and handed them a travel certificate and said “Nice job, go and have a good time”? Are you kidding? A few years ago a company introduced a gas certificate that just went through the sales incentive business like a storm.  The problem was the people who sold the certificates designed them around a concept called breakage. Breakage is a term used in the certificate business that means that some or most of the certificates never get redeemed so the profit from selling those certificates goes to pay for the redemption of the ones that do.  The problem with this is, if the redemption rate is too high, you start losing money and eventually you go bankrupt and that is exactly what happened to this company. Unfortunately, a lot of these certificates were given to valuable customers. The certificates turned out to be worthless and that soured the whole certificate incentives business for everybody. As a result, businesses today that are trying to find ways to bring back the customers may be over looking a tried and true tool that can still do just that. I’ve been designing travel certificates for over 19 years now and the one thing I always hope for is that my next certificate will take off the way that the gas certificate did.  Fly Free America, my signature travel certificate program, was one that did, and I’ve hit a few other home runs over the years, but I never gamble on breakage to make my programs work. I want my certificates to not only entice your customers to buy your products; I also want them to entice your customers to travel with me too. I use a simple formula. It costs a certain amount of money to print and support the certificates and it costs a certain amount of money to fulfill the vacation that the certificate offers.  I add the two together and let you decide how to split these costs between you and your customer. Now some business owners contribute more than others so the cost of fulfillment is more or less but it’s still a good deal for your customers because it’s less than what they would pay without the certificate. Because of that, there is very little breakage of my certificates but that’s just what I want to happen. I can’t close this article without stating that there is a downside to the way I design my travel certificates. Since I allow my customers to set the split of how much they pay and how much their customers pay, there is the potential of a business trying to contribute too little. It’s always the businesses that try to contribute as little as possible to the certificate that also misrepresent its value to their customers as well. Eventually, the customer finds out what the certificate is really worth and that they were intentionally mislead so the few dollars they saved in the beginning cost them a lot more in the end. So there you have it; 4 Crazy Nights in Cancun. If you are interested in going there yourself, I can provide the accommodations for 2 people for less than $100! Great title and an interesting article too don’t you think?

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