We launched our Christmas Voucher Offer a couple of weeks ago and can positively confirm that women are so much more organised than men when it comes to purchasing Christmas Presents. As I said in a previous blog, we have to overcome our own natural antipathy about talking about Christmas in October – we actually have to plan everything in August (!) – and we have to remind our corporate event clients that they need to book dates for their Christmas Events in late October to be sure that they will get track-time at our venues. As a result our promotions for both Christmas events and for Christmas Vouchers go out together in late October. Now that we have been offering Xmas vouchers for about three weeks, I decided to take a look at how we were doing and the results prove a couple of absolute truisms!
Firstly 95% of our voucher sales so far are to women. I notice that as about 90% of our drivers are men so its quite interesting to see such a huge proportion of purchases being made by women, even though it is simply proving the well known adage that women plan Christmas and start buying presents as soon as the Summer Holidays are over so that everything is sorted and organised in good time. Conversely men tend to let Christmas sneak up on them and then panic buy on Christmas Eve.
And secondly 95% of our voucher sales for Christmas 2012 have been purchased on-line. In line with most companies, we are seeing a continued massive increase in on-line purchasing. As our Christmas vouchers are packaged with a card and placed in a standard envelope, we are supporting Royal Mail rather than the home delivery firms and packaging manufacturers, but we are certainly doing our bit for keeping the Post Office alive. We haven’t yet worked out how to package a kart up and sell them on-line but its early days yet. We offer the same 20% off Christmas Vouchers whether you buy them on-line over the phone or in person, so there is no financial incentive to on-line purchasing – but as we all know, it is so easy these days! Simply visit our website, click on the book on-line link, select the vouchers you want, sign in and pay. The whole process is so much easier than having to actually go shopping.
I can’t help but wonder how many men will ring us during the morning of 24th December to enquire as to whether they can pop in to one of our venues and pick up vouchers for their god-sons, nephews and maybe even wives and girlfriends.
Jim Graham
TEAM DAYTONA