Pro Installer December 2013 - Issue 09 | Page 35

35 PRO INSTALLER DECEMBER 2013 PRO BUSINESS @proinstaller1 Generating millions of pounds from email marketing Insight Data, the specialist data and direct marketing company has generated over 2,000 trade and commercial leads from email marketing campaigns carried out for clients in October, representing millions of pounds in new business. Unfortunately, many companies are still trying and failing at email marketing and the number of companies getting blacklisted is rising, seriously damaging their own reputations. Vicky Francis, marketing manager for Insight, says: “Successful email marketing requires three elements – highly accurate data, a powerful email marketing platform and the right message designed for an email audience. Traditional marketing methods don’t work for email marketing so it is important to have experienced digital marketing skills.” Insight Data has developed Mailminx, a highly advanced email platform that ensures much higher deliverability rates than other email systems, and also spam scores and tests the email design format in different email clients such as Outlook and Gmail. “In October we sent some 300,000 marketing emails on behalf of clients and achieved 98% deliverability and an average 21% open rate,” Vicky continues. “But the really exciting result is the number of sales leads – some 2,100 trade enquiries directly from the campaigns.” Call 01934 808293 or email hello@insightdata. co.uk How is the joinery industry coping with CE marking? A report by software provider Joinerysoft. Interest was high initially, with over 150 joiners attending the first CE marking seminar run by Joinerysoft Ltd in June, just before the regulations became law. Joinerysoft has run three workshops on CE marking but predict that many hundreds, if not thousands of joinery manufacturers are still not CE marking. Invited to present a CE marking workshop to building control officers provided valuable feedback on the stance taken by both building control and trading standards officers. Joinerysoft received the impression that while these enforcers get up to speed with the new legislation themselves they are giving a grace time to comply until early next year, but clearly this will vary from region to region. Joinery manufacturers are commonly reporting that they are now increasingly being asked for u-values by architects and customers. Bearing in mind this became a legal requirement in 2010 could indicate that CE marking may similarly lag behind the legal commencement date. Even though the legislation may be slowly policed, feedback from building control suggests that building control officers may be the advance field workers of trading standards to report back instances of non-compliance. Certainly building control has intimated that they will not be signing off work that does not have a required CE-mark. The reality is that CE marking legislation has simply brought together all other regulations that should have been complied with already. CE marking itself isn’t difficult and those companies that embrace it will be able to shout about it in their marketing further increasing customer awareness and rais- Chancel