PeakMade Real Estate needed a better automated solution to procure their Limited-Edition Merchandise, or Merch as they call it.
As a third-party manager, PeakMade oversees over 70 student property brands. They were looking for a solution to create consistency while maintaining individual brand identity.
Across their portfolio, property and regional managers were spending too many hours and too much money on sourcing, pricing, and ordering promotional products, print, signage, and t-shirts to attract new residents and renewals.
Since merch is such an emotional buy, Benson and PeakMade started using internal ambassadors to find the right solution for property teams across their entire portfolio.
PeakMade worked with the Benson Team to conduct ambassador focus groups, gather feedback, and build a true vendor/operator partnership. The groups used qualitative data to launch a next-generation online marketing site, or SmartStore®, which is part of Benson’s Centralized Marketing Platform (CMP), to build on-demand stores for each individual property brand.
The SmartStore® cut out the administrative part of the buying process and put control in the hands of the user. Order turnaround times were reduced and additional design/set-up fees were eliminated.
PeakMade launched a Limited-Edition Merch collection that allows them to stay trendy, cut cost, and order promotional items more efficiently. The changes made based on the Ambassador feedback helped PeakMade optimize how they leverage the Benson platform for better results.
PeakMade can create campaigns and strategies at the corporate level that scale with ease to the property brand. This has created stronger brand recognition in each property market, time savings for team members, and consistency that drives efficiency.
Benson provides PeakMade with an end-to-end solution so that they can focus on the right method to design, order, and ship the right products.
By utilizing technology to manage their promotional product procurement, PeakMade has been able to scale up projects at all 70+ properties across their portfolio. The SmartStore® solution helped change behavior for property managers by removing the emotional distractions when ordering merch.
Searching for promotional items can be overwhelming with over a half a million options from countless vendors. With the SmartStore®, PeakMade has curated a collection of specific products that have been approved by the corporate sales and marketing teams.
Taking advantage of this technology has made ordering more efficient and has given back thousands of hours to on-site operations and marketing teams so they can focus on their core responsibility – to develop qualified leads and take care of their residents.
The SmartStore® is used for almost everything that PeakMade needs professionally branded so they are able to reduce the time it takes to fulfill orders. The technology offers instant proofs that go immediately into production after approval without anyone at Benson having to get involved.
PeakMade is also able to streamline their most frequent orders to eliminate design fees and reduce the time their team spends on placing orders. PeakMade is able to control templates for each product at a corporate level to help keep properties on brand. Benson scales those products across the entire portfolio to fit each brand that PeakMade manages.
Benson’s automated solution was able to remove over 3,000 manual steps in the marketing procurement process. This automation significantly improved product selection and allowed the PeakMade team to develop a packaging system for promotional items that improves the experience for residents and prospects. PeakMade is able to save valuable time and buy the right products at the right price.
Over the past two years, this solution has allowed team members to focus on the experience, personalization, and packaging of promotional products. The days of having to work with multiple vendors to request quotes and submit artwork are a thing of the past.
PeakMade has seen a 33% decrease in total promotional product spend. In addition, Benson and PeakMade used collective marketing operations and analytics to cut annual promotional product orders in half with order frequency reduced by 53%.
Time to procure products decreased by 80% with the automated solution. This allowed properties to buy better products, at a lower cost, more efficiently.
Benson’s CMP is a true game changer that puts you at the forefront of creating memorable moments and experiences with their residents.
To learn more about Benson and how we can help you automate your marketing operations, contact us at Benson@yourbenson.com
