My Best Promotion

May's My Best Promotion was submitted by Drew Davis, MAS, a partner with Denver-based Specialty Incentives. Davis chose to share a self-promotion he found to be particularly successful: mailing out gift copies of "The Big Book of Breakfast," complete with a cover imprint and custom insert, to current clients over the 2010 holiday season. The promotion started as a simple thank-you paired with a clever marketing insert for Davis to give to his own clients, but quickly spiraled into a program involving follow-up mailings and other additional marketing efforts. Numerous coworkers of Davis's have since picked up the promotion, using it to great success as well. Said Davis of the promotion, "In the 10 years I've been with Specialty, I've never had more response from recipients than I did for that book."

Davis chose "The Big Book of Breakfast" not only because he is a fan of the book and cooking in general, but also because he was familiar with its recipes and knew it would be useful to cooks of a wide skill range. Packed with a card, the books were mailed individually to Davis's clients for the 2010 holiday season. The books were provided by industry supplier The Book Company, who decorated the stock cover of "The Big Book of Breakfast" with a crash imprint of Specialty Incentive's logo and added an additional marketing insert page to the front of the book. The marketing page was co-written by Davis and his coworkers and was a play on a standard recipe, providing Specialty Incentive's recipe for a "fresh, locally grown promotional campaign with success sauce."

Promo Marketing: Could you explain the specific goal of the promotion?

Drew Davis: I would say purely appreciation. It was sent to people who I have sales relationships with that are customers to say thank you.