Case Studies
Printable Case Studies Showcase
The Integrated Marketing Solution powered by Printable™ cuts print costs 25% and provides more control.
What happens when you find out the web to print system you are using is costing you money and users? The marketing manager for retail store marketing for a major restaurant franchise discovered that his company’s web to print solution – Brand X – was simply not delivering. New to the franchise, a multi-billion dollar company with tens of thousands of franchises around the world, the marketing manager examined the system from the print network to customer service and from a business perspective as well as a technology perspective. His task was to get the best total cost of use from his system.
While a web to print solution with a built-in supplier network sounded good at first, the end result was not the most cost effective for the franchise. The turn-key solution was costing the company its users; local restaurant owners were simply opting out of purchasing their printed materials through the established retail store marketing program because the prices were too high.
Even though prices were supposedly benchmarked against market prices and projects were ganged with other jobs, at the end of the day the marketing manager found he could leverage his buying power and cut his print production costs by 25 per cent.
The Challenge
The company has never mandated that franchisees use the retail store marketing program for their print purchases. While it is a benefit they receive as part of their franchise agreement, use is strictly voluntary. A survey of hundreds of franchisees determined that the biggest reason they were avoiding the program was cost; however, the user experience was less than optimal as well. For example, there was no way to know the price of a product before customizing it, no way to edit jobs already in the shopping cart, and no ability to purchase multiple products in a single order.
And for the marketing manager, the proprietary network made it difficult to reach a supplier when a project went sideways. “When you’re buying a solution that includes a print network and somebody else is managing everything, you’re making a phone call to an intermediary,” he noted. “You are one step removed from your supplier.”
The Solution
Using the Integrated Marketing Solution, the restaurant franchise offers a single location where more than 1000 franchisees browse through catalogs of items sorted by product, marketing situation, or by retail store “life cycle” - a grand opening or shop closing, for example. They can read use cases and detailed product descriptions to understand what each product is for and when to use it. And when they select a product, they can order it at the very best price; a price negotiated with the strength of a multi-billion dollar company behind it.
The marketing manager has also been able to combine high tech with high touch to provide additional support and consultation for direct mail projects. When a direct mail piece is customized and ordered, the franchisee receives a call from an account manager at the company’s advertising agency of record, which provides all the creative for the retail store marketing program. Together the store owner and the account manager look at the store location, competitors in the area, population patterns, and the date of the planned event to build a campaign.
New to the retail store marketing web site are templates where store owners have the ability to write a custom headline or custom text. In a process that “manages by exception,” only these few templates are reviewed by field marketing managers to insure that content meets brand standards. Combining
automation and a human interface offers savings in time and money for something that is easily customized by the franchisee, but provides more support when the store owner needs it.
With the Integrated Marketing Solution, the retail store marketing manager has been able to add new capabilities that have very little to do with print. For example, 20 to 30 field marketing managers are using a custom program to mange activity calendars for 66 DMAs (Designated Marketing Areas) which communicate what ads are going to be on television, what marketing programs are in action, and information about all the marketing activity for that DMA. This is a service delivered to franchisees for no charge.
“It’s services like these that makes it clear the retail store marketing program is a superior choice for franchisees to plan, customize, and purchase print to support their incremental marketing efforts,” said the marketing manager. “Printable has allowed us to negotiate prices using the buying power of our brand and to make the retail store marketing web site a good experience for franchisees and field marketing managers alike.”
The Results
Implementing the Integrated Marketing Solution not only improved the usability of the web site, but also gave the restaurant franchise more control. “We’ve made big technical leaps forward compared to the old system,” says the marketing manager. “But more important, we’ve taken control of the economics. We’ve been able to reduce all the prices on the website by at least 25%. That’s a huge economic advantage for us.”
The launch of the new site has drawn a big increase in interest from the franchisees; the number of calls to the field marketing call center has tripled as store owners are signing on and requesting new passwords. Orders on the site are up too. In the past, users would order just one product at a time, now store owners are ordering two, three, or even five items in a single visit.
While a new user survey hasn’t been completed, it appears that user satisfaction is higher. The marketing manager notes, “With the old system, people were ordering and resenting the experience. Products are organized more elegantly, pricing is available on the catalog page; little things like that are seen as big improvements by our users.”
There are more than 500 templates on the site, and the time to get a new piece posted has dropped from several days to one day, just hours for a static item. By enabling the advertising agency can do the creative and post the finished template, a number of steps have been eliminated and the process streamlined.
When people buy into this major restaurant franchise, they get marketing skill, marketing knowledge, and a broad range of marketing programs delivered through the retail store marketing web site, based on the Integrated Marketing Solution powered by Printable Technologies. Franchisees benefit from the strength and buying power of an international brand to do incremental marketing on their own.
The Benefits
- Printing costs reduced 25%
- Sales through the site increased 25% - 30%
- 48 hour turnaround for products ordered
- Reduced time to get a template on the system from 3 or more days to 1 day
- Improved print supply chain control and eliminated the “hidden” print network
- Increased multiple orders because of simplified procurement workflow
- Number of templates on retail store marketing site increased more than 40%, from 350 to over 500
- Improved presentation of catalog items in multiple folders
- Requests for new passwords have tripled
- Improved user satisfaction
Site By: Cuker Design