How are you engaging with car wash customers when they are off site? What can you do today to strengthen brand loyalty and to grow memberships? Do you have a tool to manage promotions, engagement, memberships, and more?
In the latest episode of Car Wash M&A, The Podcast, your host Lanese Barnett talks with Dennis Dreeszen and Adam Trien of AMP Memberships. Dennis and Adam talk about the benefits of this robust customer experience platform for car wash owners looking to strengthen their customer base and grow their memberships.
HOW THE AMP PLATFORM HELPS CAR WASH OWNERS
As Dennis and Adam share in the episode, the AMP Memberships platform was created to address technology gaps currently available to car wash owners. AMP is a customer experience platform that includes a highly customizable white label app focused on encouraging customer engagement and helping grow and manage memberships for car wash owners. The app is flexible and is not tied to a specific point-of-sale system. It also enables car wash owners to run creative promotions and to track their effectiveness.
Born out of Dennis’ firsthand need to create a custom-branded app for his car wash chain, Dennis got connected with Adam to develop AMP. Once they launched, they realized this technology and service could really benefit so many more car wash owners, and Dennis wasn’t the only one experiencing this service and support void.
As Adam says about the genesis of AMP, “We turned it on, and within a couple of weeks, we were seeing traction at Dennis’s Autowash car washes that he hadn’t experienced before. When you have a tool and technology that is not just convenient and nice, and people like it, but it actually drives revenue, that’s an equation that always wins. It’s really exciting to get going with AMP.”
USING DATA TO DRIVE DECISIONS
The AMP customer experience platform helps car wash owners know more about customers, and that knowledge enables meaningful, targeted interactions with each customer segment. The app collects so much information about participants who use it. Adam shares, “From day one, having full transparency and access, and having a really nice design data model sitting behind the system was really one of the most important goals of AMP. We’re collecting so much information… We have operational data: where they’re washing, how much they’re washing, things like that. We have financial data; we’re able to see how long someone has been a member. We know timing… when someone gets a trial wash, how long does it take them to become a member? And then when they become a member, what’s their lifetime value? How long are they a member?” This specific data is easy to access through dashboards and reports, making it very convenient for owners. From there, car wash owners can establish effective action plans.
As a simple example of this targeted marketing in action, Adam shares an experience they had promoting the Broncos as a part of an ongoing partnership. In the past, those promotions went out in bulk blasts to all participants, but as Dennis learned, not everyone likes the Broncos, and it can actually be a turn-off for customers. The AMP platform addresses this problem.
Adam shares, “We have a survey tool that can ask, ‘What’s your favorite team?’ When a car wash app launches, they can ask, ‘What’s your favorite local team?’ We’re able to collect that information. And now when we send those messages, we send them to people who just love the Broncos, and it gets so much more engagement.”
BUILDING CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Because the AMP platform is highly customizable and white-labeled, it promotes your specific car wash brand and builds your business.
As Dennis shares, the numbers show the success of AMP. Dennis states, “It really changed our business model, for sure. I think for most people who get into the membership model of car washing, it changes their revenue line; it makes things a little bit more predictable and a little bit easier to operate. And it lets you grow and scale. And that’s what the app did for us. But what we’ve been able to do now, since we’ve changed over and built AMP, is really explode our growth. Now we just have so much more capabilities to grab people. I think we were sitting at 4,000 or 5,000 members when we switched over to the AMP platform. And now we’re at 16,000 and growing. It’s been pretty incredible.”
SEEING RESULTS WITH CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
As Dennis and Adam share in the episode, the platform significantly increases customer engagement by connecting with customers off-site. Because of this increased engagement and loyalty, car wash owners can afford to be generous with promotions and can bring value to participants.
Adam states, “There are great statistics out there that if you have a user or customer that has an app, they’re going to spend 30% more with your brand than someone without an app. So yeah, it’s pretty exciting. You can be really generous. And you can do things like offer discounts and promotions in the app, but your net growth and your net profits are still going up, because now you have this huge audience as a captive audience that likes your brand.”
Because of its power to grow engagement and provide critical data to car wash owners, the AMP customer experience platform is helping car wash brands grow and succeed.
For more information from Dennis Dreeszen and Adam Trien, check out the full episode of Car Wash M&A, The Podcast.
Stay tuned the last Thursday of each month to hear the latest thoughts from podcast guests.
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