Case Study · Marketing Strategy & Campaign Management · 2025
Spring Preseason - A Promotion Revival
Three years of structural fixes, vendor strategy, and outreach turned a declining annual promotion into Standard Supply's most successful promotion on record.
What is Spring Preseason?
A promotion built around the busiest season in HVAC.
Summer is the peak season for HVAC contractors. Before the heat hits, they load up their trucks with parts and supplies to stay on job sites instead of running back to the supply house. Standard Supply's Spring Preseason capitalizes on that behavior. Buy a qualifying order of parts and supplies in spring, and lock in discounted pricing, extended billing, free delivery, and a 100% buy-back guarantee through the end of cooling season.
The promotion ran every year. But by 2022, the year before I joined, it had stalled. $63,000 in sales. 18 total orders. A catalog that hadn't been updated since 2020.
What was broken
Outdated Everything
The catalog, pricing, suppliers, and items hadn't changed since 2020. It was a copy-paste year after year with no refresh, no relevance, and no reason for contractors to act.
Broken Distribution
The catalog was digital-only. Customers had to find it online and place orders over the phone or print an order form and turn it in at a branch. Friction at every step.
Failed Promises
Customers who placed orders weren't receiving the incentives they were promised, extended billing, locked pricing, because there was no cross-functional process connecting the order to the credit team.
The Turnaround
One promotion. Four years. Every decision deliberate.
The low point.
The promotion generated $63,000 in sales across 18 total orders. The catalog was a copy of 2020. Customers weren't receiving their promised benefits. The promotion was getting stale and nobody owned fixing it.
Before you can grow it, you have to fix it.
My first year running it. I identified three structural failures and fixed all of them.
Cross-functional process: I worked with IT to ensure orders automatically triggered the credit team to apply terms to customer accounts, so customers actually received the benefits they were promised.
Updated the product: I worked with the pricing team to refresh pricing and the purchasing team to update the item list and ensure every branch was stocked.
Printed the catalog: For the first time, physical catalogs were printed and distributed to all branches. Customers could write their order directly in the catalog and turn it in. Online availability, branch TV screens, and email campaigns ran simultaneously.
Sales nearly doubled.
Make the promotion pay for itself.
With the foundation fixed, I focused on margin and reach.
Vendor co-op program: I implemented a system where vendors with preseason items funded all marketing in exchange for catalog placement. Feature your items, pay for the marketing. Additional advertising tiers were offered for added visibility.
Online ordering: I rebuilt the order process in JotForm. Customers filled out their order via form submission. If the order exceeded the buy-in threshold, they were automatically added to the program and their sales manager was notified to process the order.
Sales nearly doubled again.
The system was built. Time to find new customers.
With the infrastructure in place, I turned my attention entirely to acquisition and accountability.
Direct mail campaign: 500 postcard mailers sent to prospective contractors across Texas and Oklahoma. New customers who signed up and placed a Preseason order received $100 in account credit. Customers were instructed to show their postcard at sign-up so conversions could be tracked. 13 new customers acquired.
Sales incentive: A SPIF was introduced for salesmen. Top 3 performers in Preseason sales received cash rewards to drive internal competition and push the promotion harder at the branch level.
Reporting: I ran data check-ins with sales and data leaders throughout the promotion, tracking performance and holding underperforming territories accountable.
Sales more than doubled.
The Results
Seven times the revenue. Four years of deliberate decisions.
2025 Direct Mail Campaign
500 mailers. 13 new customers. 444% ROI.
A targeted postcard campaign sent to prospective HVAC contractors across Texas and Oklahoma. New customers were offered $100 in account credit for signing up and placing a Preseason order, and asked to present their postcard at sign-up so every conversion could be tracked back to the campaign.
- Total acquisition investment$1,471
- Attributed gross profit (preseason)$8,005
- Net after acquisition cost$6,534
- Campaign ROAS23.95x
- Customer GM%22.72%
Acquisition Funnel
What this built
A promotion that went from ignored to institutional.
Spring Preseason 2025 wasn't just the best year on record. It was the result of three years of structural work. Fixing broken processes, building a self-funding vendor program, creating an online order system, and scaling outreach to new markets. The promotion now has a repeatable framework, a co-op model that funds its own marketing, and a direct mail acquisition strategy ready to scale.
Tools Used
The Stack Behind the Build.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Catalog Design & Art Direction
Microsoft Excel
Reporting & Financial Analysis
JotForm
Online Order Form & Automation