Laundromat Owners Discuss the Art of Crafting Creative Customer Promotions
Customer promotions can play a crucial role in running a successful laundry business. Done correctly, they not only attract new customers, but also help to retain existing ones.
In this collection of insights from laundromat professionals across the country, we can see a variety of creative and effective customer promotion strategies – tailored to suit the unique needs and goals of each business.
The insights below reflect the diversity of customer promotion strategies utilized in the laundromat industry today – each with its own creative approaches and customer/community engagement. The key takeaway is that effective customer promotions must align with your business’ specific objectives and provide real value to your customers:
Sam Szteinbaum
The Wash Stop
San Jose, Calif.
We run ongoing promotions on off-peak days for our two, fully attended San Jose stores. They are straightforward and are the same at both locations, just held on different days – every Monday and Tuesday at one store, and every Wednesday and Thursday at the other.
They work as follows:
On Day One (Monday/Wednesday), one set of machines are half-price all day. At one store it’s all of our 30-pound machines, and at the other it’s all of our 40-pounders.
One Day Two (Tuesday/Thursday), we offer free dry, given as a discount on every washer. Our smaller washers are $1.50 off, while the machines over 50 pounds are $3 off. This enables customers to dry for 30 minutes for free.
We’ve been running these promotions for years, and we have signage at both stores that explaining the promotions. Our intention is to shift customers who are more price-sensitive into those slower days, as well as offering customers who might be watching their budgets some alternatives to help make their laundry day more affordable.
Some customers will purposely avoid our promotional days and go to the stores when there’s no promotion running, as there are sometimes more machines available at those times.
On promotion days, the store offering a discount likely will do comparable revenue to a weekend day. And this also means that customer traffic on Sundays is not too crazy.
On weekends preceding a Monday holiday, we still respect the promotion, so that store will be quite busy on those Mondays – however, we run our promotions continuously, with no exception.
We also own a third laundromat, which is smaller, unattended and located in a more affluent neighborhood. As a result, the above promotions are not offered at this location.
Sam McKnight
Little Giant Laundry
New Haven, Conn.
I’ve been running a couple of successful customer promotions for more than 10 years.
I’ve partnered with the local grocery store, which is just a half-mile from my laundromat. I have my promotional coupons printed directly onto cash register receipts from the grocery store.
Customers who redeem the receipt/couple receive a $2 discount on any washer that’s 40 pounds or larger in capacity. And we typically receive a few coupons every day.
It encourages customer loyalty and has been a proven winner for my business.
Our second successful promotion is to offer “free” Tide detergent every Wednesday. Our cost-conscious customers have found that this promotion helps their budgets. Prior to this promotion, Wednesdays were one of our slower days, but not anymore. And, once again, the giveaway promotes loyalty to my store.
For laundry owners looking to create various customer promotions, I’d suggest asking your existing customers what would interest and motivate them.
Sharon Balog
Everything Clean Laundromat
Elgin, Ill.
Our card customers enjoy a loyalty program that provides a 9 percent discount on all machines. Since our store is a coinless laundromat and customers are required to either receive a loyalty card or use their own credit or debit cards to do their laundry here, offering a discount offsets the argument that they’re being forced to get a laundry card or to use their credit or debit cards, which include surcharges and fees.
Since implementing this loyalty program, we’ve experienced a 35 percent increase in self-service customers. We have new members signing up daily to join this program.
In addition, we collaborate with the local school district and the public library on early childhood learning activities at our laundromat. We also hold a community coloring contest for kids, with prizes awarded monthly.
During the Christmas and Easter seasons, all customers receive $5 during the weeks of those holidays.
With full-service laundry, all first-time wash-dry-fold customers get $15 off their initial orders, and we provide free pickup and delivery.
To get out the word, we advertise on social media and on our website. Plus, customers who mention where they saw our business advertised receive discounts. Additionally, we encourage our customers to post reviews of our laundromat on Google; customers sharing their actual experiences with business really help promote the store.
All in all, give your customers a great experience with working equipment, a clean environment, and attentive customer service – and then boost your exposure through SEO and a presence on social media.
Ayad Mirjan
OrangeBag
Los Angeles
Our customer promotions are sent through email and SMS. We send one or two email promotions per month to our clients, and another two or three promotions via text message. And these promotions tend to convert quite well.
For us, “successful” promotions are ones that are utilized by at least 10 percent of our clients. That’s how we define success. They certainly do impact sales in a positive way; however, we’re more interested in customer engagement. These promotions help us reduce churn by increasing loyalty to our brand.
Our promotions tend to be seasonal or occasion-based. In other words, they revolve around a specific holiday or season, or an internal campaign.
We go after one demographic, and we hit it hard. Early on, we decided that our marketing should be “inch-wide, mile-deep.” We know who our customer segment is, and we go after it.
We duplicate our SMS and email marketing effort by posting the same promotions on our social media platforms as well. In addition, we’ve worked with several influencers on collaborative campaigns, with varying degrees of success.
We apply the “minimum viable product” (MVP) model to everything we do. Rather than spending large amounts of cash on one campaign, we use those same funds on several marketing efforts to see what converts and works well. Once we have scientific results that we can rely on, we double down on what works. I would highly suggest this model to anyone bootstrapping their promotions, with finite dollars to spend on marketing.
The best – and also the most “expensive” – promotion is word of mouth marketing. Focus on your service quality (customer service, cleanliness, maintenance, etc.), and the rest will come. I see far too many owners spending large amounts of cash on marketing, while treating their business as a passive investment. Spend the time in your business, see what works and what doesn’t. Pay attention to the customer experience and success will be almost guaranteed.
Randy Roberts
Columbus Express Laundry
Columbus, Ohio
On the laundromat side of the business, we run very few promotions. We work to supply a premium service by having attendants on site and ensuring that the store is always extremely clean. However, we’ve recently switched to a full card system and are reviewing options to provide incentives that would improve customer retention.
On the wash-dry-fold side of the business, we keep our customer promotions fairly simple. We offer three basic promotions – a free laundry bag for first-time customers, discounted first service, and a military discount.
Above all, we always try to do what’s right. Sometimes that can be the best promotion of all.
For example, we recently had a situation in Columbus, where a police officer was shot during a high-speed pursuit, and the officers parents were flown in due to the severity of his injuries. We received a call to provide wash-dry-fold service to the family.
Our team rallied – supporting the family members and handling all of their laundry needs during that difficult time. The best news is that the officer appears to have made a full recovery. However, as a side note, the officer’s mother seemed to have lost a sock while here, which was not contained within the items to be laundered. So, we immediately replaced it with several new pairs, because laundry needed to be the very least of her worries at that time.
Kevin Shawver, Vice President of Marketing
LaundroLab and 2ULaundry
Charlotte, N.C.
One promotion that we recommend to our franchise partners is something we call Double Your Money. Simply, if a customer deposits $20, for example, they get an additional $20. And it’s without question our most popular customer promotion.
This is an offer that many LaundroLab stores provide to new and existing customers who sign up for our app. The benefit to store owners is that it gives them the ability to measure new customer growth and collect customer contact information for future promotions, as well as providing a sticky benefit to bring customers back time and again.
Some of our campaigns require manual tracking. Although that adds an extra step for our attendants, it’s justified to collect more customer information, track how they found us, and gives actionable insights for future marketing activities.
In terms of KPIs, the most important performance indicators to track are (1) the number of new customers acquired and (2) revenue generated from those customers. Once you know these two numbers, you can easily calculate the ROI for your campaign.
Travis Unema
Brio Laundry
Bellingham, Wash.
Promotions work best if you can engage the customer. Having customers that want to be a part of your business and embrace your company ethos is the goal.
A good example is that we sell Brio-branded cardboard laundry bins. They are $10 for customers to buy, and the customer gets free soap as long as the box is present and works. People hang onto them for years and make them last as long as possible.
The idea is to save on plastics by using cardboard that can be recycled. And it even becomes a friendly competition between customers as to who has had their cardboard laundry bin the longest. It’s fun, simple, within the company ethos of using recyclable products, and it’s very engaging. Having a promotion that customers talk about in-store to other customers is very effective and fun. And the only real cost is the free detergent.
An older promotion we used to run was called Lucky Duck. Customers would open up the soap dispenser on their washer, and if a toy duck was inside, they received a free wash. Years later, customers still ask about this promotion.
Effective promotions don’t have to run for long periods. “Special” promotions with short, defined timelines can be more effective. After all, you want your customers to act on promotions before they expire. In my mind, never ending a promotion isn’t really a promotion.
Tracking promotions can be done either through your point-of-sale software or manually. This past summer, we ran a free, single-use soap giveaway. We also sold the large, packaged version of this product and used the giveaway single use as a trial soap. Along with the promotion, there was a sign explaining the benefits of using eco-friendly detergent sheets, versus liquid detergents.
Typically, promotions fail when there are too many hoops to jump though. Make sure your promotions are simple to understand and easy on which to train your team, and that they have a tangible benefit. How much you want to track the promotion is up to you. Be certain to set clear beginning and ending dates – and stick with the rules you set.
From a customer’s point of view, it’s enjoyable to be part of a promotion, to receive something tangible, and to be able to talk about the promotion with friends, family or other customers.
Max Sabo
Brax Laundry
Oregon City, Ore.
We remodeled our laundromat in 2022. When we reopened, we offered customers $20 if they downloaded our app. “Your first $20 is on us!” was our marketing message. We advertised this months in advance of opening, and we broke even on Day One – and it’s still growing.
Many people were talking about our laundromat on the local Facebook groups and the Nextdoor app. We had people come in with working washers and dryers at home who just wanted to see what the buzz was about, and they brought their laundry.
We ran this promotion for four months. It wasn’t inexpensive, but it got a ton of organic advertising through word of mouth.
The promotion cost tens of thousands of dollars. That can be a big ask for a newly renovated laundromat that’s just opening. Some owners may look at the dollars given to customers as lost profit, but for us we looked at it as an effective grand opening promotion that people were talking about for months after we stopped.
Yes, a handful of people took advantage of the promotion by signing up for multiple accounts, but it was a small percentage of the total number of those who signed up. But, no doubt, laundry owners need to consider what controls they have in place to make sure their promotion doesn’t run away from them.
With this particular promotion – which was suggested by our equipment distributor, Andy Goodale of Cleaning and Laundry Equipment – we had 95 percent app adoption, and it remained in the low 90 percent range until we switched over to being a card- and app-only laundromat. We love technology that makes it easier for our customers to pay for vends, and solves vend issues that arise.
I get most of my promotional ideas from listening to other operators on podcasts. Of course, not all promotions I hear about would work in my area, but laundromat owners are some of the most creative people I know when it comes to marketing.
At Brax, we also partner with LoveOne, a local nonprofit, to offer free laundry nights two to four times a month. Although it’s not a traditional promotion, we feel offering free laundry to our neighbors in need helps the customers who need it most.
We don’t turn anyone away on our free nights, so even if someone doesn’t necessarily need free laundry, we pay for his or her laundry that night.
Many of our customers are impressed with these free laundry events and the impact LoveOne has on our community – and many end up volunteering their money or time to the cause.
In fact, a year before we opened, we started working with LoveOne on how we could partner to serve our neighbors in need. LoveOne has a portable shower trailer, so we made sure we had electric, water, and sewer available in our parking lot to serve the shower trailer. When some of LoveOne’s funding was reduced, we picked up a lot of the free laundry night expenses to make sure we could jointly serve our neighbors.
I would recommend any laundromat owner who can look into partnering with local or national organizations to offer free laundry nights or other services for those that need them. Our houseless neighbors respect us as business owners and our business location, because we know them and talk with them when they come in.
We also offer free, on-demand, self-service laundry to our local high school and community college. And our local clothes closet launders its donations here every Thursday.
My partner and I built this business to make money, but also to give back to our community. I haven’t tried to measure how much more business we have because of our partnerships, but I know we make a significant impact in our marketplace because of them. And our customers often tell us they appreciate the work we do within the community.
Of course, we analyze our revenue growth, especially among our customers who take advantage of promotions. But we also listen to our customers to discover if they consider our prices to be a value to them, with and without promotions.
Part of the reason we haven’t run more promotions is because sometimes marketing messages are more effective than giving someone a lower price. We have the largest washers in our state, and the non-discounted per-pound price is less expensive than most other laundromats in our area. We can do that because we have large washers. So, that’s our marketing message to our customers, and they see the value in that without a promotion on top of it.
We sell three different size laundry bags with our logo on them. Our sale prices is just a couple of dollars above our purchase price. We don’t make a lot of money off our logo bags, and we sell a lot of them. For us, we believe it’s better to see customers using our bags
The best advice I can offer other laundromat owners is to make sure you have a promotion goal in mind first. You want to attract the right customers at the right time.
Remember that price is just one lever in a promotion. There are several other levers when it comes to marketing – some of which are more effective at attracting and retaining customers. Perhaps you have the largest washers in town; although your pricing may look to be the highest, maybe it’s actually lower than your competitors on a per-pound basis. Or maybe your payment system is the most convenient for your customers to use. I’d suggest making sure to promote those aspects of your business before your consider running discount promotions.
Joe Dan Reed
Splash ’Em Out Laundromat
Lexington, Ky.
Essentially, we’ve offered eight main customer promotions through the years:
When opening a new laundromat, we’d offer customers double their money on our card system. For example, if a customer puts in $10, that person will get $20. We’d run this promotion for one month after opening. This promotion was awesome because word will spread fast among the community that customer can double their money. I’ve got to thank North Carolina operators Luke and Lee Williford for suggesting this promotion. They said it’s the only way to go if you’ve got an all-card location – so we did it, and customers found us quickly.
We now offer a $2 bonus for every $20 in cash spent with our card system. This is a cash-only promotion, and our customers love the fact for every $20 bill they insert into our system, they get $2 free on their cards. It has an everlasting impact, and many customers view it as receiving “free” drying time, in some ways. This is an ongoing promotion. And, in fact, during Christmas, customers will receive a $10 bonus on their cards as a holiday thank you.
Every new pickup-and-delivery customer receives a free laundry bag. This is something our customers love, and it goes a long way. My wife, Kelli, felt it was important for first-time PUD customers to get some type of swag from us. And what better way to promote our business than by giving away a free laundry bag? Now, whenever those customers look at that bag, we’re the first laundry business that comes to mind.
We offer a 10 percent discount on all services for firefighters, police officers, and military personnel (both active and veterans). It’s our way of thanking them for what they’ve done and continue to do for us.
Students receive a 10 percent discount, which we think their parents may appreciate more than the student – especially with regard to our pickup-and-delivery service. Students need to concentrate on school and typically don’t have the money or time to do their laundry, so we wanted to help out.
We offer a laundry bag trade-in program. If customers have bags from other laundromats – whether within our marketplace or not – we will let them trade in their old bags for our new ones at no charge. Customers appreciate the new bags, and this promotion enables them to sport the bag of the laundromat they now use.
We also offer a laundry card trade-in program. There’s nothing worse than having a card from an apartment complex or some other laundromat. So, we’ll trade customers one of our laundry cards for theirs – and we even put $20 on the new card to get those customers started. We don’t like seeing customers stuck with a float from another laundromat after having chosen our business, so it’s a way to show our appreciation.
We give away a free kid’s bike every month. I see so many kids in our laundromats. Plus, I love bikes, and I think every kid should have one.
We’ve also collaborated with Metronet cable company to give away a free semester of laundry to two University of Kentucky students. This partnership has been good for us, because Metronet is constantly thinking of different promotions on which we can team up.
Additionally, we try to offer different promotions throughout the year, so we’re always thinking of ways run seasonal promotions.
We work with a media company called Suds Digital, which dials in on how to promote everything we may offer or give out to our customers. This company’s expertise is promoting laundromats, and it helps us market all of our promotions.
Of course, there are some potential challenges that come with customer promotions.
One challenge is the fact that some customers may come to expect a certain promotion. For example, we had been offering our double-loaders at half price on Wednesdays for a while, and when that promotion ended some customers became upset. Therefore, when running such promotions these days, we name them to indicate a certain timeframe – such as “March Madness Special,” for instance, so that customers clearly understand that this promotion will end when the NCAA tournament ends.
Overall, I would suggest to other laundromat owners that giving customers something with your business’ name on it – like a laundry bag and or card – has a lasting impression, whenever they bag their dirty laundry or open their wallets. Spend the money needed to promote.
Tom Rhodes
Sunshine Laundry Centers
Vero Beach, Fla.
Because we own multiple laundromats, I approach our promotions in a different way than if we had just a few stores. I’m not personally in the stores on a daily basis, so our promotions need to be more programmed.
We currently have four promotions in our quiver, each accomplishing something different.
For more than 10 years, we’ve offered Wonderful Wednesday to our customers, where the normally priced $4.50 20-pound washers are $2.99. Our card system enables us to do this, and this promotion has turned Wednesdays from one of our slowest days of the week to our third busiest. In fact, we have customers who will wash with us only on Wednesdays. As a side note, we raised the discounted price last year from $1.99 to $2.99.
Another promotion we have is our Community Washer Program, where we donate 25 percent of the revenue from a specific washer and dryer to a different local charity each quarter. This accomplishes three things. First, it makes our community a better place to live. Secondly, it shows our customers that we care about being an integral part of the community and helping it flourish. This program generates a tremendous amount of goodwill within the community. In fact, while at a restaurant recently I ran into a long-time friend – and, after she sat down with her friends at the booth behind me, I overheard her tell her friends all about the program. And, thirdly, it shows our employees that we care, again creating goodwill. In fact, we recently hit the $100,000 mark for giving to local organizations through this program.
We also have an email blast (using Constant Contact), which is sent out 10 times per year with various specials – usually a BOGO up to $5 in value. We have 1,400 people on our list, with an open rate of about 20 percent. People can sign up for the emails at our website. Although our redemptions are typically about 30 per e-blast, those customers look forward to receiving them and are quite loyal.
Lastly, we’ve created a points program at several of our card-operated stores, where every 15th wash is free. Honestly, while that’s a 7 percent discount, it hasn’t been generous enough to get people’s attention. As a result, I plan on changing it to every 10th wash free in the near future, in an effort to entice more customers to use our store cards rather than their credit cards, where we pay more than 3.5 percent on each transaction.
Sharon Brinks
The Laundry Station
Wichita, Kan.
At The Laundry Station, we’re continually trying out new customer and community promotions. Here are a few:
Our self-service customers who use our payment app in the store receive one point for each dollar spent on any of our washers and dryers. Once they have 15 points, the app will automatically convert the points to $1 in credit that can be used on any of our machines. On Thursdays, which used to be our slowest self-service day, customers receive two points for each dollar spent.
We’ve provided a large gift basket of laundry products for a silent auction at a local annual breast cancer fundraiser. We’ve also held an in-store drawing for a laundry basket full of products.
We deeply discount our pickup-and-delivery service for our local Ronald McDonald House Charities, for which we launder all of their bedding.
One 4th of July, we hired a local restaurant to cook free burgers for all of our customers for four hours at lunchtime, and we provided free soda and chips. And, another year, we ran a “Free Dry 4th of July” promotion for the entire day.
During the Christmas season, we’ve asked our customers to donate coats, scarves, and mittens to the local elementary school, in exchange for a raffle ticket to enter a drawing for a boy’s and a girl’s bicycle.
All winter one year, we provided the use of our washers and dryers at no charge to the largest homeless shelter in our city, which had lost its laundry facility. This enabled them to wash their blankets every day, until their new laundry operation was up and running in the spring.
On the last Wednesday evening of every month during the school year, we hold a “Laundry Party Night” for the local elementary school, in partnership with a local church. We provide the washers and dryers and all of the laundry supplies at no charge to families who have children who attend the school and who have signed up for the event with the school. There are no limits on number of machines that can be used or what can be washed. I want all kids not only to have clean clothes, but clean bedding as well.
We wash, dry, and fold the neighboring elementary school’s field trip shirts at no charge.
We participate in a neighboring elementary school’s “Trunk or Treat” event each year.
I’m always open to additional partnerships with charitable organizations. I would love to do more. And using our equipment manufacturer’s app makes it easy the track expenditures for an organization’s account and for me to add reward dollars to their account to allow free vend of machines whenever needed.
Waleed Cope
The Soap Box
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Some customer promotions we’ve run in the past that have generated interest include a discount off first orders for new clients, back-to-school promotions, and Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions.
For the last four years, we’ve been offering free drycleaning to anyone who is unemployed and going on a job interview.
In addition, partnerships with other local businesses have played a great role in our promotions. One example is a meal prep firm that offers our clients a special rate if they place an order. Also, we’ve partnered with a local eyewear firm and exchanged email blasts to each other’s mailing lists.
No doubt, you must be wary of consumer behavior and mentality, which can lead to some clients expecting special promotions all of the time and getting addicted to them. This can lead to lower revenue and profits, due to constant giveaways and promotions. You never want your laundry business to be known as a “discount business.”
My suggestions would be to design your promotions based on your clientele and your business. Try not to copy promotions that others are running within your marketplace. Be original, and do something people haven’t seen or heard of before and that would be of value to them.
