The Client
3663 First for Foodservice is the UK’s number one delivered wholesaler to the catering market. Supplying both national chains through to independent pubs and hotels, 3663 is a £1 billion business. The company differentiates itself in the market by offering the widest range of the best brands in ambient, chilled and frozen food, but it also has a range of own label products under the brand of Chef’s Smart Choice. This range is the focus of the Smart Start promotion.
Objectives
- To drive penetration and sales of Chef’s Smart Choice
- To utilise the shopping data within the business for marketing purposes for the first time
- To demonstrate that 3663 is in tune with customer needs
Target Audience
Existing 3663 customers not buying into the 3663 Own Label range.
Strategy
To approach the target audience with a completely bespoke and personalised offer via direct mail to achieve the campaign objectives.
Media, Channels & Techniques
There were three main elements to the Chefs Smart Start promotion:
- Special promotional prices from January through to March on their personal recommendation list
- An eight month price hold on a selection of essential products
- An insured competition with £1,000 of free stock to be won every day from January to March
The Role of Data
There are rich seams of data in 3663 in terms of shopping habits of different caterer types and different channels (pubs vs hotels etc) however it was not being used to inform or target marketing activities.
Smart Start has broken the mould for 3663 and as such the business is now committed to building more insight and intelligence on its customers in order to match more closely to their needs.
For Smart Start, the shopping histories of 12,000 caterers was analysed to understand penetration of key own label products and trends across channels.
Channel Data
Analysis of transactions helped us to build a picture of top skus for customer groups such as Pubs with Restaurants, Workplace Canteens – this provided us with the overall trend information we were lacking.
Individual Customer Analysis
With an understanding of what the customer should be buying (from the Channel Data) we matched this to individual buying behaviours to identify the gaps.
This created a new data set of individual shopping SKU lists ready to provide the content for bespoke direct mails.
Personalised direct mail:
The key mechanic in the promotion. Personalised on the front and containing:
- This Insight and the Fixed Price message
- The bespoke personal recommendation list
- The text to win promotion
Branded Depot Material:
3663 have 20 depots around the country, each with a dedicated telesales team to drive the promotion. We produced a range of branded Smart Start items which included pens, post it notes, coasters and posters to engage the internal employees to up-sell the products on the personal recommendation list when customers called in to the depots.
Timescales
Two elements of promotion ran from December 2009 through to March 2010. The price hold on a selection of products is ongoing until the 27th August.
Results
From the database mailing of 12,000, 44 per cent of customers bought products on their unique list and overall uplift of 55 per cent was achieved.
This exceeded 3663’s expectations so was a great result for Chef’s Smart Choice Products.
All results can be independently verified.
