There are several ways you can beat the seasonality of the car wash business in order to engage your customers all year round and grow your business. In this post, we’ll share tips for how to drive traffic to your car wash during off-peak days and times.

Capture customer and purchase data

While car wash businesses may be impacted by weather conditions, location, competition, and the time of the year, there are tools car wash merchants can use to engage their customers.

As your business grows, it becomes increasingly harder to know all of your customers and relate to them on a personal level. A data-based customer engagement platform empowers car washes to capture customer data and identify who their best customers are to drive engagement and ultimately, increase revenue because your best customers visit and spend the most. Using a customer engagement platform like Thanx will reveal a customer’s visit frequency patterns, as well as their average spend and feedback.

You can also see purchase data to understand which services each of your customers purchase the most. You can use this data to send targeted campaigns with discounts around these purchases and encourage them to visit your car wash more. Use segments so that you send the right messages to the right people at the right time in order to drive the behavior you want.

Send personalized offers

Using the data from your customer engagement solution, you can identify who your VIP customers are and communicate with them in a highly personalized and targeted way. You can send them offers and messages that encourage them to visit and spend more at your business, especially during slow hours or times.

For example, during a slow season, a car wash can send an offer for an upgraded wash to their top 100 customers. This will not only bring more customers in, but it will also cause a timeshift and drive revenue during a slower time. You can also send birthday offers, respond personally to any feedback, win back customers who have stopped visiting, and build relationships at scale.

The more you know about who your customers are, the better you will be able to relate to them in a personal way and increase your ROI through segmented and targeted campaigns.

Implement a subscription model

Due to the competitiveness and seasonality in the car wash industry, many car washes are moving toward a subscription-based model where customers can purchase unlimited monthly car wash plans.

This model provides car washes with a recurring revenue stream. These memberships can bring in more money than one-off visits and can improve cash flow. You can incentivize your staff by offering a reward to the employee with the most membership sign-ups so that they will promote the membership program to each customer.

If customers pay for an unlimited monthly membership, the seasonality of the car wash business may matter less since the subscription could cushion slow days and times.

Respond to customer feedback in real-time

You VIP customers are the ones who will visit your car wash the most during the off-season, and they are the ones you should consistently engage with through targeted campaigns. Customer feedback is a crucial part of customer satisfaction and it’s important to make sure that your best customers are hearing back from you after leaving both positive and negative pieces of feedback.

One negative experience can change the way someone feels about your car wash, and if they share their experience on social media or a third-party review site like Yelp, it can damage your brand reputation.

Capturing customer feedback helps you gain insight into how your customers feel, and enables you to respond in real-time to any negative feedback you may receive. Using a customer engagement platform enables customers to send you their feedback right after they’ve made a purchase and the experience is top of mind.

You can also collect data from NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys to understand how your customers feel. If, for example, one of your happiest customers leaves a low rating because they found scratches on the windshield, you can send them a personalized offer and intervene right away to resolve the issue.

Create ongoing marketing campaigns

Keep your car wash top of mind by putting your content in front of your best customers where they are. This includes email marketing, social media campaigns, blog posts, events, and more.

Targeted email campaigns can let customers know about exciting things happening at your car wash, or you can send them personalized offers based on their average spend and visit frequency to encourage them to visit again.

You can also engage with your customers on social media by sharing company news, special sales, and customer stories while building relationships with your audience. The more people can identify with you, the more engaged they will be.

Wrap up

While you may have faced seasonal car wash slumps over the years, customer engagement solutions can help you combat that challenge by engaging with your top customers using the right message at the right time. The more data you can capture, the easier it will be to send segmented and personalized campaigns, grow your business through using a subscription model and respond to all customer feedback in real-time