Turfer Sportswear promotions go vertical using Campaign Enterprise

Turfer Sportswear is a Rhode Island-based manufacturer and distributor of branded apparel which has been supplying blank sports promotional outerwear to marketing companies and retailers for some 40 years. Turfer's end customers buy golf polos, jackets windshirts and other accessories in bulk to emblaze them with assorted company logos and messages. They purchase these garments through regional company representatives, who visit each of their customers carrying the latest Turfer line of outerwear.

Turfer is also dedicated to providing apparel to other vertical markets besides product distributors and embroiderers. These verticals include golf pro shops and sporting goods retailers. Promotional products business is an entire industry built around blank products, from blank pens to blank specialty garments, which are then customized into corporate promotional items. Turfer's available vertical markets are almost limitless, and its success lies with its ability to communicate regularly with all of its verticals.

Turfer Sportswear has approximately 10,000 active customers, with about 6,500 of them supplying email addresses to receive ongoing specials and other email announcements. The company also uses email to communicate with the thousands of leads it gets each year from the trade shows it attends, thanks to modern day badge scanning technology that loads emails of leads directly onto usable databases.

"At our last tradeshow we scanned at least 2,000 badges—which are all active leads we then send an email saying thanks for coming by our booth and offering them a discount for getting started with us," said Gary Goldberg, president and CEO of Turfer Sportswear.

Goldberg says his company has always used available cutting edge technology to stay ahead of the competition. Using technology-based garments like those made with micro-bead waterproof breathable coatings is one example of the Turfer methodology to improve the product and the service, and thus improve business, he said.

It was a pursuit of the latest email marketing technology that brought Goldberg to Campaign Enterprise software.

Challenge: Distribution to regional reps
Turfer Sportswear regional representatives travel throughout the U.S., physically carrying Turfer garment samples while visiting distributors. "We wanted to send the same email marketing creative to all of our distribution customers, but dynamically customized to look like the emails came from the regional representatives," Goldberg said.

Turfer needed a strong software solution that would act as a gatekeeper of information, to find out which companies are steady customers, which are returning customers or which ones are expressing new interest in Turfer products. The company also needed a way to make its electronic documentation available, such as updated suggested retail pricing lists that reps use to show their customers what price points the products retail for.

Solution: National data in one location
" Because of the nature of Campaign Enterprise, we can subdivide our email campaigns pretty intensely between our main verticals," Goldberg said. "We personalize the emails by groups, and manage the database in one location," he said.

Turfer also rates customer interest of individual garments by using Campaign to track the number of hyperlink clicks the image of a specific product within the email message attracts. The emails offer the same specials nationwide, customized with the specific Turfer sales representative's contact details. The number of email click-throughs is tallied at one database, and the corporate office notifies individual reps as to which companies are clicking though on what products, so representatives can subsequently follow up with these customers.

Results: Seasonal product pushes and more
In addition to lead follow up, email marketing, gauging customer activity, and communicating with company representatives, Campaign Enterprise also helps Goldberg's firm push specified products that may not have done well through traditional marketing methods such as print, catalogs or samples carried by the representatives. The software also allows the manufacturer to segregate seasonal pushes for products. Fleece, for example, will get a big email push between Aug. and Sept., while spring golf items will be the subject of emails at the sign of the first spring thaw.

Goldberg describes Turfer's email marketing tool as "robust software." "I looked at all of the email software solutions, and I kept on coming back to Campaign Enterprise based on features, price and scalability," he said. "You offer a single user version for small business, which is what we needed, and if we want to increase our marketing as business grows, we can."

"The software is powerful when we work what it's telling us," Goldberg said.

About Turfer Sportswear
Located in Rhode Island, Turfer Sportswear has been manufacturing outerwear for over 40 years. Turfer is dedicated to providing the finest apparel to a range of markets, including promotional product distributors and embroiderers, golf pro shops and sporting goods stores.

About Arial Software
Founded in 1993, Arial Software is widely considered the leading industry pioneer in permission email marketing software. The company’s products are used by thousands of businesses, non-profits, associations and other groups to compose and send email newsletters and personalized messages directly to subscribers, customers, prospects and members.

If you are interested in a Campaign Enterprise email best practices case study, contact the Arial Software Media & Press Relations department here.