Page 121 - BCM June 2024

MARKETING

Information Is Your Friend

How a Frequent Bowler’s Club can drive tra c… and repeat business.

ver the years, I’ve raved about American Recreation and Kroger.
O Centers, a publicly held chain of bowling centers We created a task force at ARC that consisted of corpo-
that was based in California, but also had clusters of rate and bowling center sta — not just managers, but also
locations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri and employees from the reception desk, snack bar, lounge and
Wisconsin. ARC’s visionary leader and CEO was Bob even the pro shop. A list of questions was created for Mr.
Feuchter, who really set the tone when it Byrley to see if our Frequent Bowler’s Club could become
came to innovation and change. a reality. Here are a few of the questions and answers from
Feuchter made a monumental change that initial list:
in the operation of the company in 1989, Can a Frequent Bowler’s Club card do it all?
when he brought in a couple of “outsid- A single card can be used for multiple purposes. Pay-
ers” to shake up the status quo. One was ment system options include a proprietary ARC credit card
Dianne Hazelroth, from Capitol Federal or using the Frequent Bowler’s Club Card as a surrogate
DAVE Savings and Loan, as director of opera- for any third-party credit/debit card.
WILLIAMS tions. e other was me, from AMF, as the Can a bowling center read the information associated

marketing director. Together, we formed with the card at their location?
the nucleus of a rejuvenated company that would intro- RSI’s system reads the card data and automatically ex-
duce concepts that are still being talked about and dupli- ecutes the marketing programs designed by ARC. Any card
cated today. data desired by ARC can be printed during each transac-
e list of operational and marketing concepts that we tion. Authorized ARC employees can have password ac-
created or changed is lengthy and, all modesty aside, im- cess to the database.
pressive. Some of the more noteworthy included: Can we pre-punch points into a list of regular users?
• Co ee and soda cups with the company logo. Yes, at any time during the operation of the program.
• Kiosks for iers and brochures. Can buying habits of customers be tracked?
• Impact signage at the reception counter and snack Yes, and at each particular source (bowling, snacks, bar
shop. and pro shop).
• House balls, color-coded by weight, with the ARC logo. How do we handle discount coupons for tracking/han-
• Velcro strap rental shoes (also with the ARC logo). dling/ringing up?
• Wireless microphone system for operational commu- Each coupon issued
Each coupon issued
nication among employees. has a unique code.
When a coupon o er is
• A $500 youth scholarship program at every location. When a coupon o er is
And that’s only about half of the new programs that redeemed, the cus-
tomer’s card is swiped
were introduced within a ve-year span. tomer’s card is swiped
Another was a Frequent Bowler’s Club. With Hazelroth’s and the code is keyed
background in banking, the decision was made to con- into the terminal. RSI
vert all locations to a credit card acceptance system. ARC will track each cou-
was the rst chain to do this, and many members of the pon issued to and
Multi-Unit Bowling Information Group followed our lead. redeemed by each
Jim Dressel of Bowlers Journal International paid special cardholder. We will
attention to this topic with an article that appeared in the also generate an
April 1992 issue: “Charge! Except at the Bowling Center.” overall ARC host
Once the credit card acceptance system was in place, we and store level
began to research ways to introduce a Frequent Bowler’s redemption for
Club that could utilize the same system, like the printout each property.
you receive when shopping at a supermarket. at’s when Can we ascer- ARC’s Frequent Bowler’s Club appli-
I discovered Retail Services Incorporated (RSI) in Dal- tain who is bowling cation helped build a data base that
las, Texas, and Frank Byrley, who was responsible for the in more than one could be sorted in numerous ways
program introduced at supermarket chains like Albertsons league? for targeted marketing.

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