“I have to say this has far exceeded my expectations. The recommendations coming through are engaged and they want more information. It makes selling to them very easy.”


Where The Trade Buys (WTTB)
Five strategic UK locations, Sunderland and London offices.
Printing, Manufacturing, B2B Sales
Developing business opportunities with a hand-researched, four-stage, strategic outbound email campaign.
253 leads in 4 months
Revived engagement with dormant clients resulting in 280 orders
Download a Case Study
WTTB is part of the largest online commercial print group in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2010, they offer bespoke printing and door drop marketing services to trade resellers and print businesses across the UK. With 5 key UK locations, WTTB employs over 360 people to give their partners white-label access to inspiring products, smart print technology, and award-winning support.
Despite being one of the largest providers of print services in the UK, WTTB was struggling to find an effective way to generate new revenue. “When we started talking to WTTB, they had been running a paid ad campaign for six months. In addition to being expensive, the campaign had only generated a handful of leads,” explains Connor Addis, Managing Director of Lead Gen Dept. “At first they were justifiably sceptical about what we could achieve, but they were willing to give Lead Gen Dept a try because they had been referred to us by The SME Partners who were, in turn, referred by Parker Software.”
“We worked with Emma, the Head of Marketing at WTTB to define the campaign aims. Working with other printers to provide white label services is the majority of WTTB's business and it’s vital to their growth,” recalls Addis. “With that in mind, we decided to focus our efforts entirely on the print industry. One of our team members went through and manually checked every print industry website we could identify. Then we excluded companies that sell printing equipment and focused on the Owners, CEOs, and Managing, Commercial, and Operations Directors of verified print operations that would benefit from WTTB’s services.”
Lead Gen Dept also worked with WTTB to vet every potential contact before they sent the first email on their behalf. “I really want to emphasize that our clients approve each account and target prospect before we begin an email campaign. They need to say ‘Yes, these are the accounts that I want to sell to. These are the job titles.’ This ensures that every lead we generate is with a company that our clients actually want to do business with.”
The Power of Personalised Email
With WTTB on board, Lead Gen Dept used a four-step email framework that has worked exceptionally. This proven framework has also achieved significant results for Bridge Coffee Roasters, Orca Hygiene, Pervasive Displays and Blake Envelopes.
“Our approach works,” says Addis. “As unsexy as people think outbound email is, if you have the right message, aimed at the right audience, and it offers value, you will generate substantial results.”
“But it’s not that straightforward,” Addis adds. “In WTTB’s case, printing is an old school industry. It's not easy to craft an email that's highly relevant for that audience. It takes research and experience to develop a message that makes the receiver feel like our client actually sat down and wrote a detailed email for them alone. Our emails are never nagging and our communications are polite and natural. That is why we get results.”
WTTB saw immediate results at less than half the cost of their prior six-month ad campaign. “The response has been fantastic. We've already converted not just website registrations but significant sales. After day three I was calling customers to follow up and to understand how we could collaborate.” says Louise Stephenson WTTB’s Managing Director. “Engagement has been great,” agrees Thompson.
Out of 1357 emails sent by Lead Gen Dept, the WTTB campaign achieved an 81% open rate. More importantly, 31% of the email recipients responded to request more details.
So far, Lead Gen Dept has delivered 253 leads to WTTB in four months. In addition to generating new business, the email campaign revived several existing WTTB clients with dormant accounts who placed over 280 orders between them — all while the company was still working their pipeline.