Kincrome
Business objective
Kincrome wanted to develop a campaign and on-line ordering facility, generate new sales channels and provide a promotional channel in support of sales efforts.
Business benefits
Sales generated on promotional days almost doubled forecasted targets, further to this success, Kincrome was able to generate a campaign that created on-line awareness with its customers.
B2BE solutions
Kincrome create April Tools Day (ATD) e-Catalogue
The Kincrome project team came up with a concept to hold an ‘April Tools Day’ on-line sale where customers would be able to view and purchase a range of discounted current and clearance stock items with goods refreshed every two hours. The Kincrome group sought to provide a new an innovative promotion which would allow customers to participate in a fun and interactive one day clearance sale. The sale would be held on 1 April in a play on the April Fool’s Day concept.
Kincrome’s key objectives were to:
- Develop a campaign and on-line ordering facility which would create a sense of fun and excitement for its customer base and encouraged user participation.
- Generate a sales channel that would allow Kincrome to move sale stock quickly (one day only) and create a sense of urgency for customers (hurry don’t miss out!)
- Provide an on-line ordering facility for the April Tools Day Sale that would be both technically efficient and extremely easy to use.
Project team leader Mick Hayes, who had previously seen the B2BE e-Cat product, recommended that Kincrome partner-up with B2BE to develop an e-Cat solution that would meet the requirements of the April Tools Day promotion.
How did B2BE help?
Using the knowledge and strengths of B2BE and leveraging off an already exceptional business relationship, Kincrome was able to work closely with design and development teams at B2BE to create a website and e-Cat within extremely tight deadlines.
In the amazingly short amount of time (four weeks), the team at B2BE were able to design, develop and deliver the key website and EDI requirements of the April Tools Day on-online promotion.
“Everyone at B2BE provided excellent support and worked in a true partnership to ensure the success of ATD. The quality of work and professionalism of the B2BE team was outstanding.” Said Mick Hayes.
April tools day - the sale
The promotion had over three distinct phases, a marketing campaign to drive customers to the registration site, the registration process itself and the on-line sale day. Around 200 different product types were made available through the website on ATD which operated from 9am to 6pm EST. Products were rotated though four sales sessions during the course of the day, creating a sense of urgency and excitement as each new session was loaded. A countdown timer for each session displayed on the site gave an indication of time remaining in each sales session.
Kincrome received an amazing response from customer’s attempting to log in as early as 8am to pick up a bargain on the site. Within the first two hours around 200 customers had logged in and had made significant purchases.
Throughout the day customers continued to remain active on the site with notable increases in traffic at product turn over times. Through customer feedback, the turnover over time has been described as ‘like a rocket launch’ with many of our customers glued to their screens to catch the next lot of bargains as they loaded up. In most instances, ‘hero products’ sold out within the first three minutes of availability.
The interaction that the promotion created between Kincrome and its customer base was excellent with calls increasing to its customer service centre from those needing a little help to log-in and use the site. The marketing and registration campaign generated high interest in the promotion with one customer who did not have access to a computer resorting to booking a PC in a library, while others used internet café’s to ensure they could log on and grab a bargain.
Sales & success
Sales generated on the day almost doubled forecasted targets, further to this success, Kincrome was able to generate a campaign that created on-line awareness with its customer base, collect email address & contact data, and open the doors for more on-line activities in the future.
B2BE closed the loop on the entire process through the delivery of orders via EDI to the Kincrome group using existing communication channels via the B2BE Transaction Delivery Network. “EDI translation was excellent, helping us to provide the orders through to our customers with minimal delays.” Said Mick Hayes.
Future plans with B2BE
The experience of working on this project has further strengthened the partnership between Kincrome and B2BE, with the teams now working together to deliver the Kincrome Group Corporate website, with a number of other innovative on-line projects on the drawing board.