LAUREL, Md. — Marketing is the one part of a drycleaning business that can create revenue on demand, but only if it's built around clients who are actually worth marketing to.

This was the message of Dave Coyle, owner of In the Bag Cleaners in Wichita, Kansas, and founder of the Maverick Drycleaners coaching group, when he spoke at a recent webinar for the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI) about marketing methods that have worked for him and his group. 

In Part 1 of this series, we explored why marketing should be built around being different rather than better. In Part 2, we examined clients already in the database: those who've drifted away and those who could be spending more. Today, we’ll conclude by looking at two strategies built for the long term, plus the checklist he runs every piece of marketing through before it goes out.

Subscriptions, Coyle says, remain rare in the drycleaning industry despite the advantages they offer. Recurring revenue smooths out seasonal swings in cash flow and raises a business’s valuation, since buyers and lenders both treat dependable, recurring income differently than transactional sales.

“People don’t cancel their subscriptions,” Coyle says, noting that In the Bag lost only two clients from its plans during the pandemic. Subscriptions also help operators who deal with big seasonal swings between their busiest and slowest months, since a recurring charge lands in the bank the same way every week regardless of season.

In the Bag currently offers five subscription tiers, ranging from a discount-only pass to a full concierge plan, and pushes the offer at every touchpoint.

“Once you get someone on a subscription, they aren’t leaving unless you sell that business,” Coyle says. “And then they’re not leaving. They’re just going to the new owner.”

Coyle’s next recommendation runs against a common industry assumption, that comforters take up too much machine capacity to be worth the trouble. His answer is to route them to a laundromat instead, staffed by a single team member two days a week, and to price the service low enough to bring in high volume: $19 to $22 per comforter, delivered back within three or four days.

The volume more than makes up for the lower price, Coyle says, calling the price point “irresistible” for clients. Comforter bags, distributed at the counter and on routes, prompt clients to send them in rather than let them pile up at home or on the garage floor. Beyond the comforters themselves, Coyle treats the offer as a reminder mechanism that brings clients back more often and opens the door to related services, including sheet sets and pillows.

For his most valuable route clients, Coyle also hands out a 24-inch rolling rack, sourced from Uline, in exchange for a garage code. Clients give it back if they stop using the service.

“People love them because instead of putting stuff on a wreath hook, on a doorknob, crushing collars,” clients can spread garments out properly, Coyle says. The racks also tend to produce better-quality finished garments than a doorknob hanger, he adds.

Coyle closed his presentation with a 10-point checklist he runs every ad through, drawn from years of testing direct-response campaigns. Among the requirements: every ad needs a specific offer rather than existing purely for branding, must grab attention and speak to a pain point the recipient already feels, and needs to present a believable solution to that pain point. From there, the ad needs a deadline and clear next steps, and its success needs to be measurable, typically through a redemption code that can be tracked back to the campaign.

No single piece of marketing, he says, should stand alone. New clients in particular need a sequence of touches before they respond, since only a small fraction of any given audience is ready to buy at the moment an ad reaches them.

Asked during the Q&A portion how far members should go to stand out, Coyle pointed to a recent conversation about a local Chick-fil-A promotion offering a free meal to anyone wearing a cow costume. Coyle’s team, it turned out, already had a standing arrangement to clean the restaurant’s mascot costumes in trade for gift cards.

“We do a ton of mascots like that, and they’re super fun on social media,” Coyle says.

For Part 1 of this series, click HERE. For Part 2, click HERE.