Polypipe Plumbing
The Client
Polypipe Building Products: the UK leader in plastic piping, plumbing and heating systems.
The Challenge
Increase market share for Polyfit, the company's demountable push fit plumbing product. As the second to market product in this sector, Polypipe needed to encourage installers to switch brand loyalty and increase merchant stockist count.
The Solution
Critical to this project was to create awareness of a critical product benefit, unique to Polyfit, and to invite installers to trial the product. With no previous client history of directly targeting the installers, who are one stage downstream from Polypipe's customers, we elected a direct mail campaign as the centre piece of the marketing strategy. This meant researching and acquiring a list of 20,000 plumbers and installers and devising a four part mailing with multiple calls to action. The DM campaign was backed with trade PR and merchant point of sale. Ahead of the installer mailings all merchants were mailed to invite participation in the scheme. A bespoke database was constructed at Rare to handle mailings, track responses, and manage fulfilment. Additional intelligent data was collected during the campaign to inform future mailings. Rare handled all print, production and fulfilment and delivered the final solution on time and on budget.
The Creative
Stressing the overall ease of use of Polyfit we created a headline campaign message that described the instinctive insertion of pipe to fitting and the inbuilt locking mechanism: "Push, Click, That's It". This was supported by 3 further mailers that reinforced key messages about security, demountability, and flexibility. Strong visual graphics were created to add impact and encourage recipients to open the mailing. Multiple calls to action were devised including the opportunity for free samples, fun T Shirts, breakfast mornings and prize draws.
The Results
The campaign produced an outstanding response rate of 11% meaning that over 2200 installers were sampled. Merchant participation reached 77% and most importantly annual sales increased by over 90%, providing a superb return on the marketing investment.
