Harley-Davidson Dealers Sees A 250% Sales Increase in a Single Day
Winter is tough on motorcycle dealerships. Fewer riders means fewer showroom visits, and that usually shows up fast in apparel and gear sales. Progressive even calls out winter as the time of year with less traffic at motorcycle dealerships. That’s the exact window Route 66 Harley-Davidson wanted to attack with a holiday promotion. (Progressive)
Route 66 didn’t need another generic “holiday sale” that gets buried with everyone else’s. They needed something that created repeat visits and moved real product. So we built a simple engine that ran for 12 straight days.
The objective
Route 66 Harley-Davidson wanted to stay visible with current customers and add new customers and revenue through a holiday promotion. (Slow season. High competition. Lots of noise.)
The strategy
Our goal at 7 Media Group was straightforward. Promote products and increase sales to existing and new members of Route 66’s Mobile Club.
Instead of one big discount that people forget about, we used a daily offer cadence that gave customers a reason to come back again and again.
The call to action
We promoted membership in Route 66’s Mobile Club through:
Social media
In-store marketing
Previous customers of the dealership
Once members opted in, they received daily SMS alerts offering 20% off a different merchandise item each day.
This format works because urgency is built in. It’s “today’s deal,” not “sometime this month.” SMS is also immediate by nature, which is why it’s still one of the most effective direct channels for retail-style promos. (Infobip benchmarks)
Quick note on “open rates.” You’ll see “98% open rate” quoted a lot for SMS, but open tracking for SMS isn’t as clean as email. A better way to think about it is speed and visibility. People see texts quickly, and that supports time-boxed offers. (Infobip on KPI reality)
Execution
We built the “12 Days of Christmas” calendar around rotating categories that mattered to the dealership. Apparel days to drive volume and quick wins. Premium gear days to move high-dollar items and prove lift beyond tees and trinkets.
The message discipline stayed tight:
One featured item per day
One clear discount
One job. Get them into the store
The results
Route 66 saw a significant increase in sales for the specific items discounted during the campaign.
Here are the numbers they cared about:
T-Shirt Day: T-shirt sales were over 250% higher than a normal day.
Helmet Day: helmets sold with the discount matched the number sold the entire previous week.
Leather Jacket Day: 7 leather jackets sold at 20% off, a 16% increase over jacket sales the previous week.
Those gains also came with what every dealer wants in the slow months. More traffic.
What Route 66 proved with this campaign
This wasn’t complicated. That’s the point.
A daily offer series does three things really well:
Creates repeat visits. People come in for the deal, then browse.
Increases awareness of inventory. Items customers ignore suddenly get a spotlight.
Builds a list while driving revenue. The Mobile Club grows while it pays for itself.
Route 66 also validated the channel choice long-term. Their marketing manager, Nick Edwards, summed it up like this: “Thirty-five percent of our customers come to us from mobile advertising.” (MMA Global study)
The takeaway
When sales are slow, you don’t need louder marketing. You need a repeatable reason for customers to show up.
A 12-day SMS cadence with one clear offer per day gave Route 66 Harley-Davidson a measurable lift in both volume items and premium gear, plus increased dealership traffic during a season that usually drags.
