This weekend I received some coupons from Home Depot in the mail. One coupon offered $10 off $100 of purchases this month. The other coupon offered $10 off $100 of purchases next month. Now this seemed like good timing since I needed a bunch of stuff from Home Depot. However money is tight. And my schedule is also pretty tight so I have been putting off the Home Depot trip for a couple weeks. The coupon was just the incentive I needed to get to the store.I thought I would review the effectiveness of the coupon and the Home Depot experience here as a business case study. I ended up spending $336 on Home Depot goods this weekend. After applying my $10 discount, my total bill came to $326. But the funny thing is that I actually felt good after the Home Depot trip. I got the stuff I needed anyway. The $10 discount seemed good. It also helped me get out and finally take care of some business I needed to take care of anyway.
The other great tactic Home Depot used was that it gave me a coupon that is valid next month. Do you know what? I am going to return to Home Depot in a month. And I will probably spend a couple hundred more dollars on Home Depot goods then too. The trick here is not that Home Depot created a need with that $10 coupon. I already have the needs. And Home Depot already sells the solution to that need. However they got me past my worries about the economy and my habitual procrastination by adding a little more value with the discount.
The other real coup from Home Depot is that they just have to get me in the store. I thought initially that I could spend $100 to maximize the savings percentage. However once I was in the store, I realized that I might as well pick up all the things I needed from my list. The only challenge for them was to get me in the store. And I also felt happy when I left. I did not think I was part of some bait and switch and got robbed.
Due to the overall bad economy, as well as the morbid housing market, I believe Home Depot as a company has been hurting. If Home Depot could reach more people like it reached me this weekend, they might be able to turn the tables on the bad times. I want to learn from them. I wonder if their marketing department knew in advance how their coupon would spur me on to big spending. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they did. I hope they are analyzing my coupon usage, spending habits, and return on investment. Even if they are not, I myself need to learn from them and apply this to my own software business. I have what I consider some good products. The trick is to get the customer to make that move and buy. The rest is taken care of.
