Archived Getting my store Green in Conversion

[xxTheDudexx]

I'm one of the two power sellers in red cards at my store. Usually can get at least 5 red cards in one day, had as many as 11. I worked my tail off on Saturday to meet our goal to achieve our goal and got 6 to meet the goal, and someone else got one at the end of the day to exceed our goal by one. How is it we are still red? I was told it was because we didn't use prompts. How should that matter? I always try to promote the red card during every sale, I've gotten people to sign up for it with less than 10 dollars worth of merch. It frustrates me because we've always been green and in the last 2 weeks we went first yellow and now red this last week even though we met our goal.

Furthermore, I find it that the prompts always screw up the process. I find it much easier to just back out to the checkout screen and scan the bar code on the red card application. Anybody else having that problem? Any tips?

 

[mrknownothing]

I'm one of the two power sellers in red cards at my store. Usually can get at least 5 red cards in one day, had as many as 11. I worked my tail off on Saturday to meet our goal to achieve our goal and got 6 to meet the goal, and someone else got one at the end of the day to exceed our goal by one. How is it we are still red? I was told it was because we didn't use prompts. How should that matter? I always try to promote the red card during every sale, I've gotten people to sign up for it with less than 10 dollars worth of merch. It frustrates me because we've always been green and in the last 2 weeks we went first yellow and now red this last week even though we met our goal.

Furthermore, I find it that the prompts always screw up the process. I find it much easier to just back out to the checkout screen and scan the bar code on the red card application. Anybody else having that problem? Any tips?

The prompts thing sounds like BS to me. A Red Card is a Red Card, regardless of whether or not it was prompted. They should be happy you get any Red Cards, let alone the number of apps you get in a single shift. Sounds like they raised your store's conversion goal to an unreasonably high number.

 

[insiteful1]

Red cards now count towards your conversion % whether they are prompted or not. That did not use to be the case.

 

[Rock Lobster]

Essentially, the easiest way to understand conversion is this... For every Redcard, whether its on a prompt or not, whether its credit or debit, is worth .5 out of 100 prompts... To get that 1.2 conversion, you need to therefore have 2 (1.0%) to 3 (1.5%) to average above the 1.2%...

Prompts act as markers to Target to measure how many people on average go through your lines that COULD sign up... and that is essentially what you are scored on with conversion! How many people are signing up for a redcard versus how many people COULD sign up for redcards... Do you need to "convert" that specific person? Nope, its just there to figure out averages!

Now, its very difficult to predict all the variables that happen when you set a redcard "goal" for the day... Target can't accurately predict a store's penetration rate (amount of redcards being used versus total transactions) or the amount of large orders versus small orders a store might experience... A store with lots of small orders and high redcard usage automatically would receive less prompts for that day since it won't prompt for those types of transactions, and therefore require less redcards that day if that was out of the normal! If you got hit your goal for that day you would have a higher conversion than expected because you got less prompts than a normal day!

Now you can think of it backwards as well... If you had an unusually low usage of redcards and lots of large transactions for your store, you would have more prompts than normal and therefore require a larger amount of redcards than the goal to remain green! The only way to accurately measure this is in real time... the GSTLs can view the amount of prompts the store is receiving on their LPDA and figure out how well they are doing on conversion each day... a goal of 6 might be great, but if you somehow had 300 prompts that day because everyone went grocery shopping (same volume of sales, just less people with larger orders not using redcards) then you would have to up the goal to at least 8 or higher to remain green!

Hopefully that all makes sense

 

[Barcode]

Conversion goals for 2012 are absolutely ridiculous... Enough said.

 

[Ask Alexandria]

Back when Spot had the "Would you like to open a Target Redcard and save 10% on your purchase today?", prompting was weighted 80% of conversion. Now, it's weighted 50/50 as Spot finally realized that we get a lot of non impulse applications on these nowadays. Not to mention, the Debit card option is not really an impulse, its more of a convenience factor.

As far as the LPDA numbers go: It will only count conversion based on prompted Redcards. So, if you ever look at the Redcard screen it may say some unusually high number, or even a low number. It's inaccurate. The overall Conversion % that your ETL-GE should keep everyone informed about is the actual conversion.

There is also talk of increasing Conversion goal to 1.75. My STL said its official so he's setting the bar that high.

Also : xxTheDudexx, as Rock Lobster said, redcard goals are not set based on conversion. They are set based on the sales goal of that particular time period. There isn't really a way to predict how your prompts are going to act, so they go on the only predictable piece of info they can: sales.

Furthermore, a good example of how conversion works...on the sheet your ETL-GE should keep posted in/near the break room/tsc that has everybody's WTD conversions. If you look at the electronics/guest service TMs/GSAs they have crazy conversions as high as 50 sometimes. This is due to their low prompts, yet high potential for redcards.

 

[greatteam]

I know I personally wish they would fix the damn system so that I don't get to the end of a guest applying for a card only for it **** up and say "RedCard system down" Really? Really? It's ****ing down?! WHY IS IT STILL DOWN!? Yeah, sorry my conversion isn't great, but the 20 RedCards I had this week got "system down" because they can't do a simple fix. AWESOME!

Little bit bitter about this.....I haven't opened a RedCard in weeks because everytime I open one, I get this same ****. And the ironic thing is that the application still processes, but doesn't count in my conversion. I sometimes feel like they want to make us fail

 

[xxTheDudexx]

I know I personally wish they would fix the damn system so that I don't get to the end of a guest applying for a card only for it **** up and say "RedCard system down" Really? Really? It's ****ing down?! WHY IS IT STILL DOWN!? Yeah, sorry my conversion isn't great, but the 20 RedCards I had this week got "system down" because they can't do a simple fix. AWESOME!

Little bit bitter about this.....I haven't opened a RedCard in weeks because everytime I open one, I get this same ****. And the ironic thing is that the application still processes, but doesn't count in my conversion. I sometimes feel like they want to make us fail

OMG, I know!! I had this happen to me several times last week!

I have a tip for you on that though. There are two types of ways that happens.

1.) If it happens when you scan the red card application and it tells you the red card application thing is down, just wait a couple moments and try again. Sometimes I find it helpful to suspend the transaction and immediately go back into it and rescan the bar code of the red card app. I've never had to wait more than a minute or or two. I usually just talk to the guest to kill the time saying things like "It'll just take a minute. Sometimes the system does this, computers... It's a love hate relationship these days." Eventually it will work.

2.) If you get that message at the end of an application and it tells you to say sorry, red card applications are down give guest 3 dollar coupon and apologize, the most aggravating one imo. I apologize to the guest, and tell them that the system is being a royal pain today. Suspend the transaction and move to another register. Then inform the guest that they have to do it again real quick. 99.9 percent of the time it works. I've only had one instance where it failed 3 times in a row. Almost always works.

Just a tip.

 

[Ask Alexandria]

OMG, I know!! I had this happen to me several times last week!

I have a tip for you on that though. There are two types of ways that happens.

1.) If it happens when you scan the red card application and it tells you the red card application thing is down, just wait a couple moments and try again. Sometimes I find it helpful to suspend the transaction and immediately go back into it and rescan the bar code of the red card app. I've never had to wait more than a minute or or two. I usually just talk to the guest to kill the time saying things like "It'll just take a minute. Sometimes the system does this, computers... It's a love hate relationship these days." Eventually it will work.

2.) If you get that message at the end of an application and it tells you to say sorry, red card applications are down give guest 3 dollar coupon and apologize, the most aggravating one imo. I apologize to the guest, and tell them that the system is being a royal pain today. Suspend the transaction and move to another register. Then inform the guest that they have to do it again real quick. 99.9 percent of the time it works. I've only had one instance where it failed 3 times in a row. Almost always works.

Just a tip.

Actually, I heard you're not really supposed to do step 1 at all. If it says it's down if the guest is ticked I'll give them a coupon but otherwise it does go through. Sometimes it won't count conversion for the cashier, however it will go on the redcard count. Even if it says its down, the guest will receive further verification in mail regardless of credit instore.

 

[xxTheDudexx]

Actually, I heard you're not really supposed to do step 1 at all. If it says it's down if the guest is ticked I'll give them a coupon but otherwise it does go through. Sometimes it won't count conversion for the cashier, however it will go on the redcard count. Even if it says its down, the guest will receive further verification in mail regardless of credit instore.

I was encouraged to do so and learned it from my GSA. Even my head GSTL never questions me when I tell her I have to switch registers or anything. Odd.... Guess it depends on your store.

 

[redandkhaki]

There was an email sent down saying that if the system said it was down that you are NOT suppose to process it anymore as it has actually already gone through. I don't know why you're GSA or GSTL hasn't seen that email?

 

[Rock Lobster]

Back when Spot had the "Would you like to open a Target Redcard and save 10% on your purchase today?", prompting was weighted 80% of conversion. Now, it's weighted 50/50 as Spot finally realized that we get a lot of non impulse applications on these nowadays. Not to mention, the Debit card option is not really an impulse, its more of a convenience factor.

As far as the LPDA numbers go: It will only count conversion based on prompted Redcards. So, if you ever look at the Redcard screen it may say some unusually high number, or even a low number. It's inaccurate. The overall Conversion % that your ETL-GE should keep everyone informed about is the actual conversion.

There is also talk of increasing Conversion goal to 1.75. My STL said its official so he's setting the bar that high.

Also : xxTheDudexx, as Rock Lobster said, redcard goals are not set based on conversion. They are set based on the sales goal of that particular time period. There isn't really a way to predict how your prompts are going to act, so they go on the only predictable piece of info they can: sales.

Furthermore, a good example of how conversion works...on the sheet your ETL-GE should keep posted in/near the break room/tsc that has everybody's WTD conversions. If you look at the electronics/guest service TMs/GSAs they have crazy conversions as high as 50 sometimes. This is due to their low prompts, yet high potential for redcards.

When I say use the LPDA I didn't mean where it gives us conversion numbers (the scorecard?) I go by the sales/payroll tab and look at the totals for the day on Redcards... All I do is take total apps/total prompts and then divide the number in half... and that is your real time conversion!

 

[StaticSun]

Weekly redcard goals are posted on the DPS board at TSC. The actual report is visible, I believe, via Store Reports. It now lists how many redcards you had last week, whether you were R/Y/G, this weeks totals, and next week's totals, in addition to your district-wide(or group?) ranking.

 

[Ask Alexandria]

When I say use the LPDA I didn't mean where it gives us conversion numbers (the scorecard?) I go by the sales/payroll tab and look at the totals for the day on Redcards... All I do is take total apps/total prompts and then divide the number in half... and that is your real time conversion!

Yeah, on the screen under Sales/Payroll the grid, the last column is conversion. That's the thing that isn't always accurate - math always works better.

 

[Ask Alexandria]

I was encouraged to do so and learned it from my GSA. Even my head GSTL never questions me when I tell her I have to switch registers or anything. Odd.... Guess it depends on your store.

Your GSA/GSTLs want more redcards :huh:

 

[Barcode]

If the system says its down, you can usually just back out ,count to 30 and try again and it will work... Least 90% of the time for me.

I can't imagine how many REDCards we've lost due to this glitch though, and the cashier just saying **** it lol.

Aside from all this, stores can bust their asses off on REDCards, you think you hit green, but NOPE. Just yellow I don't remember the last time we were green, we've been yellow/red for AGES.

 

[StaticSun]

If the system says its down, you can usually just back out ,count to 30 and try again and it will work... Least 90% of the time for me.

I can't imagine how many REDCards we've lost due to this glitch though, and the cashier just saying **** it lol.

Aside from all this, stores can bust their asses off on REDCards, you think you hit green, but NOPE. Just yellow I don't remember the last time we were green, we've been yellow/red for AGES.

Hey, I've been green for the past 5/6 weeks. Check what your goal is. I think the report is on Store Reports, and look for redcard dashboard or something like that.

 

[Barcode]

think its like 84 a week or something aka 12 a day

 

[StaticSun]

Org Chat 3 - B Volume: Our weekly goal is anywhere from 39-54 a week.

 

[Dia512]

My store has a weekly goal of 30. We are an ultra-low volume store though. Still, we get a huge push from the GSTLs/ETLs to get more Redcards. I am the top Redcard seller in my store and also a GSA (but 99% of them from helping out on CLs not guest service, I'm hardly at that desk). Point being I came in to cashier yesterday for a 4hr shift and my ETL said if I got 5 in my one shift we would have a party...A cashier usually gets 2 in one shift at the most. Well yesterday I got 6 before I went home so....PARTY!!!! Pretty pumped about yesterday still. I did also get a free Starbucks drink yesterday too!!!