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The Platinum Club

Incentive

No. of delegates: 100+

Location: Over the years the Platinum club has taken delegates to Barbados, New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Dubai.

Event type: Incentive travel.

Industry: Flooring.

An incentive travel scheme brings a range of benefits for companies who want to:

Drive employee motivation.
Increase performance.
Promote a productive and thriving environment.

Our previous incentive events have led to proven return on investment across each of these core goals, often exceeding sales targets for our clients.

Want to find out just how effective our incentive events can be? Take a look at the account from one of these clients below, as they detail how their incentive programme offered long-term, sustained benefits to their multinational brand.

Event agencies are frequently challenged with designing unique programmes that will grow sales, increase customer satisfaction and retention, and generate an acceptable return on investment (ROI), all whilst adapting to the evolving needs of the teams we want to incentivise. Let’s take a look at how we overcome this challenge.

But before we get into the juicy details, let us tell you a little bit more about the client. This client is a market leading business with a high UK share (approximately 50%), manufacturing and distributing to over 70 countries. They sell to a relatively small audience of retailers and distributors, an audience that contains a high proportion of owner-managers.

Their marketing strategy focused on better utilising their already strong relationships with their larger customers by increasing their share of their business. If they could achieve this goal, they would be able to generate profitable sales growth. But in order to do this, it was critical that they retained this business against competitor intrusion. From this context, together we developed “The Platinum Club”.

The Platinum Club, as well as being a tailored programme designed to meet client needs, also created an accompanying marketing programme to better promote the wider messages of our client. Many event management companies are great at organising events but, in order to be truly successful, these events need to form part of a wider campaign that brings you closer to your goals. The First Event team excel at designing itineraries that meet the needs of our clients and their customers, and creating more than just an “event”.

The proposition of The Platinum Club was simple. The client targeted a selection of their larger customers and set them a challenging, but achievable, target for their purchases from the client.

The promotion would run for a full year and customers would provide monthly updates on their progress to date. So, what did the customers get when the target was reached?

The reward was a money-can’t-buy, five star experience across luxurious international destinations such as Dubai, New York or Barbados. Each qualifying customer was allocated two places, meaning attendees could bring partners or friends to join them for the experience. Typically the trip itself lasts for four nights including return flights, five star hotels, transfers, dinners and some half day excursions for attendees to better explore the destination.

Key members of the sales team would also attend, providing the opportunity to network and get to know their customers outside of conventional business environments. In addition to this, the Sales Director and CEO participated fully in the event. Their involvement highlighted to customers just how valued they are by this company, and their commitment to working together to achieve shared goals.

Did it work? Without a doubt. The Platinum Club delivered incremental growth averaging 15-20% over a seven year period at an ROI in excess of 200%.

Customer response to the events was universally positive, with satisfaction levels at 95-100%, and it made a significant contribution to improving business relationships and retaining key customers.

All the key stakeholders benefited from the creation of this incentive programme. The customers had a truly unforgettable experience and were made to feel special and valued. The sales team had a unique initiative to help them grow sales and retain key customers, and it proved particularly effective in countering competitor activity.

This is what the client had to say:

“First Event have proven, in my opinion, to be an outstanding event management company. Led by Richard Murphy, First Event’s Managing Director, they have always understood our business objectives and what the Platinum Club was there to do.

They worked hard in negotiating with airlines, hotels and local agents to get the best deal for us and they were committed to an on-going process of continuous improvement. Several customers qualified for multiple events over the years, and so their expectations were always high. There is a clear need to continually improve the events, cost effectively, so that customers remain motivated. The First Event always delivered and never took us or our customers for granted.”