Bonzai: Thoughts and Expressions

Oktoberfest at Mercedes-Benz

We have been gearing up for an “Oktoberfest” car clinic for the last 6-8 weeks or so. This is the first time I have been involved in such an event but still wound up coordinating part of it; specifically the advertising to our clients.

The network connects all of the dealerships of my company (about 26 in all) to a central server that keeps track of customer information and more. I was given the task of collecting names and addresses from the server of customers owning at least one Mercedes-Benz. Ok, no problem. I create and run a report and promptly download over 9000 names and addresses. Ugh! After ‘purifying’ the list, I wound up printing and mailing over 6800 letters to clients via snail mail and another 3500 or so emails as well. My boss asks me after they are all sent out: “Where did you get so many names? We have only ever sent them to about 3000 or so in the past.”

Well, after some digging I figured out what happened. My predecessor ran a similar report but only for customers from our dealership. I however ran a report against all 26+ dealerships – including the other Mercedes dealer (who wasn’t happy about this). I was surprised at how many other customers in the system have a Benz but get it serviced elsewhere. Anyway, it all panned out. Saturday rolls around and the cars start showing up early. The weather was rainy but not pouring, so it was enough to get these people off the golf course and into the dealership – and boy did they!

We broke the previous record for number of cars half way through the event. Shortly after that, we had to start giving out Rain Checks and turning people away because we simply couldn’t accommodate the amount of traffic we were getting. The caterers had food for 500 – and wound up nearly doubling the food as the people just kept on coming in. It was crazy – but successful. The boss was happy and I got a pat on the head. Great.

posted by Bonzai @ 7:51 PM