UK Mail's hybrid mailing brand imail has assisted The Co-operative Childcare, one of the UK's leading childcare providers, part of The Midcounties Co-operative,  bring in over £2million worth of sales through utilising imail's direct mailing service.

The Midcounties Co-Operative is one of the largest independent co-operatives in the UK with gross sales over more than £1bn in a broad range of business from food to travel, pharmacy, funeral and childcare. The childcare division of the group has seen rapid expansion over the last 5 years going from just 6 nurseries to a portfolio of 50 nurseries nationwide. The group enlisted the help of imail for their direct mail marketing needs.

The direct mail marketing campaign saw the two companies work on an effective yet measurable localised direct marketing campaign for the open days each local nursery holds.  Co-Op Childcare holds 3 open days for the nurseries throughout the year. To target potential parents, they purchased specific, tailored data of parents with children of the right age in the local areas.  With the data purchased The Co-Op Childcare then used imail to post out A5 postcards with eye catching artwork to potential customers inviting them to the open days.

The mail fulfilment was carried out by imail with a dedicated account manager monitoring and managing the whole process from data purchasing, artwork upload right through to print and post. This saved The Co-Op Childcare the time and money of manual mail fulfilment and stationary costs.  The response rate through the marketing campaign was successful with 50% of the number of attendees coming through from the postcards sent. The Co-Op Childcare then used imail again for another bulk mailing in January with over 90,000 postcards being sent through imail thus resulting in £2 million worth of sales.

Gemma Allardyce, Head of Customer & Brand at The Co-Op Childcare, said:

"We understand that parents choose nurseries based on an individual basis and a big national campaign wouldn't work for us. We needed something local and measurable yet on a large scale. imail housed all of our needs under the one roof, we were able to target potential customers in the areas of all of our nurseries with specific messaging tailored for them. The imail team and service was reliable and made it easy for us to successfully roll out the campaign and minimise our mail fulfilment costs as well as time."


Andy Barber, General Manager of imail, commented:

"We are delighted to be working with The Co-Op Childcare division and see such exceptional results. We look forward to working together again to help continue to grow the business".

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