Westcoast gets Smart over marketing

Tatham: Many smaller resellers do not have the time or money to conduct targeted campaigns

Westcoast has unveiled its new-look Smart Campaign tool to help resellers through the challenging economic times.

The distributor has supported its resellers with free marketing for a number of years including its Mail Gun email campaign, and Printstore hardcopy mailing initiative.

Alex Tatham, sales and marketing director at Westcoast, explained: “When we get e-shots from vendors, most resellers want to put their own logos and contact details on them. Smart Campaign allows us to do that on behalf of the resellers.

“We keep a database of their end user customers that they would like to send the mail to, rebrand it and send it on their behalf. Resellers then have access to their own portal to see who has opened the emails, and leads are created. We maintain the database for the resellers, but they still own the customers and control who is sent what.”

Tatham said the Smart Campaign tool, which is free to all resellers, pushes tailored mailshots out to more than 450,000 customers. A maximum of two mailouts are sent a week to avoid bombarding customers.

“We know that some of our smaller resellers simply do not have the time or money to execute structured, targeted and successful marketing campaigns – they are too busy doing their day job," he said. "The improvements made to our programme mean they can do both.”

Samantha Wilson, manager of Coast Studio, the agency which oversaw the programme revamp, said: “We have been working hard to make resellers’ experience of using the tool as seamless as possible.”

She added that more enhancements to the distributor’s marketing initiatives will be announced over the coming months.

The Coast team is also offering resellers training on the tool, either telephone based or on a one-to-one basis by appointment.

Kunal Khanna, business manager at reseller ILGS, is a regular user of the Smart Campaign tool.

“The tool is very handy for resellers to keep track of campaigns as it gives a breakdown of opened emails, click throughs, replied emails, sent to a friend and unsubscribed emails in a neat graphical display.

“It also shows your top five links or items customers have clicked on and top five customers that have viewed most items. It is a cost-effective way for a reseller to keep customers updated and have all the benefits of managing their own email marketing list at no cost at all.”