ECRM Webcast Helps Wakefern Engage Suppliers at Scale 9/19/2016
Wakefern is the nation’s largest retailer-owned cooperative and is comprised of 50 member companies that own and operate retail supermarkets across nine states, including more than 260 stores under the ShopRite and The Fresh Grocer banner, and more than 60 Price Rite stores.
Chris Skyers, Wakefern’s VP of HBC, sought to find a way to find a way to directly engage the beauty care supplier community, and provide them with guidance on how they can most effectively conduct business discussions with the co-op, its retailer-members, and the unique communities served by each. "We wanted to directly connect with the supplier community to deliver our brand message and strategy, and educate them on how to best interact with our category managers," said Skyers.
ECRM enabled him and his team to do just this via its Retailer Webcasts Series, a turnkey program developed for large retailers to provide a platform for engaging the supplier community via an hour-long live interactive discussion. More than 350 beauty suppliers registered for the webcast, 170 of which were live for a presentation by Skyers and Beauty Category Managers Neetu Aneja and Amanda Hoffman. This was followed by a 15-minute Q&A session in which Skyers and his team fielded questions live from supplier participants. The webcast was recorded and is available on-demand for those suppliers unable to attend live. (Click here to view the on-demand Wakefern webcast)
"The ECRM webcast enabled us to reach the supplier community at scale,” added Skyers. “In addition, providing the suppliers this information will help our category managers get the most from meetings with them, particularly at an ECRM EPPS."
ECRM handled all aspects of the Webcast project management and promotions, which included email marketing to ECRM's extensive supplier database, and also moderated the live discussion.
In addition to the value of being able to directly engage with the supplier community, the webcast also enabled Wakefern to collect valuable information about the needs of its beauty care supplier community via questions included in the registration process and during the Q&A portion of the live webcast. Following the webcast, Wakefern received a detailed report, including the contact list of registered suppliers, the questions for Wakefern that each attendee entered when they registered, as well as any questions they may have posted during the live Q&A session.
"We solicited questions from suppliers during the webcast registration process, and received hundreds of them," added Skyers. "These questions, along with the questions during the live Q&A session, provide us with insights on information they are looking for from Wakefern to help us more effectively engage them moving forward."
ECRM has conducted similar webcasts for retailers like Walgreens, Amazon, and Jet.com, in each case enabling them to efficiently address a large audience of relevant suppliers on particular topics relevant to the retailer.
