Matthews the Printers offers production and management services for all marketing and promotional materials including menus, leaflets, posters, correx, banners, brochures, booklets, lookbooks and all other types of marketing literature.
The organisation predominantly targets companies within the food and drink, retail, leisure, travel, education and charity sectors. Approximately 85 per cent of their marketing spend is directed at these sectors, with the other 15 per cent targeting the various other industries.
Matthews’ has two main business purposes, to produce high quality marketing materials supported by exceptional customer service. In order to maintain these business objectives, it is continuously researching additional services that may be of benefit and interest to its clients. This has recently resulted in the addition of new software solutions, which enables the organisation to offer its clients the ability to completely personalise their marketing to their dataset and provide the production engine for sending emails and SMS, as well as setting up personalised web pages.
As a small, family-run business, Matthews has historically operated a traditional approach to its marketing. As with many traditional SMEs, sales have largely been generated by the sales team cold-calling and instigating face-to-face meetings, which was successful for the business up to a point. However, the industry has drastically changed since the recession and a revised approach to customer acquisition was required. However, as cold-calling had always been successful for the business, this was not eradicated completely.
The ‘Print with care’ campaign was designed to not only generate leads independently, but also provide the sales team with a discussion point when speaking to prospects and customers, in addition to the traditional sales pitch.
The campaign, which consisted of three pieces of DM rolled out over several months, came about as Matthews wanted to challenge the perception that sending emails or carrying out web direct marketing campaigns is cheaper and a more environmentally friendly option than print. The brand wanted to re-educate people on not only the environmental benefits of print but also how the quality of the materials produced and sent out impacts their bottom line, as well as the perception of their brand and service offering.
The solution devised was to produce a series of printed pieces along with the development of a sub-brand, the ‘Print with care’ brand, which is now used on all marketing materials. While the message of the campaign aimed to promote responsible printing, an integrated approach was taken as well as sending out DM. Matthews used Facebook and Twitter to both spread the word about the campaign and encourage discussion among the industry. Personalised emails to prospects and existing customers were sent out, while personalised web pages were also leveraged.
The campaign launched in April 2011 with Matthews sending prospects the DM leaflets on a monthly basis. The first wave of the campaign began with the ‘Do you print with care’ leaflet. This was followed by the ‘Environmental’ leaflet and lastly the ‘Do you maintain quality leaflet’, which was sent out in July 2012. A tight colour palette and bold imagery was used across all leaflets.
Following the campaign mailings, Matthews has had the opportunity to be part of several tenders due to the sales team having a point of interest to discuss with its prospects. It has obtained approximately six new clients since the start of the campaign, which is a real success.
Commenting on the campaign, Gemma Firth, marketing and business development manager said, “Since starting working at Matthews five years ago, my aim has been to incorporate marketing campaigns within the business. Due to the number of services that we now offer, we are looking at a variety of different campaigns using a number of communication channels and techniques. This print with care campaign is the first main marketing campaign that we have completed as a business and it is one that we are all very proud of.
“It is slightly different to what other businesses may do in terms of marketing the business, as it doesn’t purely promote Matthews. They are informative pieces, which was our aim, because we felt that by doing direct marketing materials based purely on our service offering we would not generate the crucial business leads. We wanted to do something that stood out as being different but also that educated our prospects and clients reading the piece. We are looking forward to the next set of campaigns that we have coming up as well to continue on the results we have seen with our first campaign.”
