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Free Marketing Collateral Helps Drive Ink Sales

newsXpress sent double sided A1 posters to all newsXpress stores participating in our latest HOT ink! campaign – at no cost. The professional (and free) posters connect with the national brands which feature in the HOT ink! campaign and help the stores dress appropriately to reflect the value of the HOT in! offer. Using this newsXpress exclusive collateral along with the colour personalised brochures, our in-store offers newsletter and our How to save Money on Your Print Costs advice sheet combine to give newsXpress stores exclusive and valuable leverage in the valuable and growing ink space.

Did we say that newsXpress provided this additional marketing collateral for FREE? Yes. newsXpress often delivers bonus benefits to members and it does this without a marketing levy or additional charge. Like the national TV campaign – this too is being run without members funding the campaign.

As the article in the Australian Financial Review showed earlier this week, ink is a strong and growing category for newsXpress stores. It drives excellent traffic and delivers a valuable margin dollars bounce to sales. newsXpress helps members make the most of the opportunity by providing bonus collateral and tactics with which our members can engage.

My Family stickers by The Sticker Family selling well at Castle Towers Shopping Centre

newsXpress Castle Towers is having a terrific time with the My Family stickers from The Sticker Family.

A key driver for their success is the pull up banner at the front of the shop. Their clipping of paper on which customers can note their orders is proving to be especially useful, helping browsers easily and comfortably convert into shoppers. It is simple and smart moves like this one at newsXpress Castle Towers which helps drive sales of The Sticker family stickers.

The newsXpress Castle Towers team moves the promotional collateral for The Sticker family around, to combat store blindness and to make the most of the opportunity of this popular product range.

newsXpress to Host Local Area Marketing Workshops

newsXpress is running Local Area Marketing Workshops for members in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane starting later this month.

These face to face workshops will share practical information and training on how to use the exclusive collateral created by newsXpress for use by newsXpress members and how to run a range of different local area marketing campaigns. They will also provide excellent opportunities for newsXpress members to workshop their own local area marketing ideas.

The workshops will challenge participants to step out of their comfort zone and reach beyond traditional newsagency marketing. They workshops are not for the feint hearted.

This training is another way newsXpress is helping members get more value from their newsXpress membership and showing that we go way beyond the traditional newsagency marketing group offering.

Each session is expected to run for three hours. Numbers will be limited to ensure that the maximum opportunity is available for personal and business specific engagement.

Each workshop will cover topics such as:

How to choose the right local area marketing campaign for your business
How to modify the newsXpress provided marketing collateral
How to engage your entire team
How to work with outside parties such as schools and community groups
How to measure results
How newsXpress can help

A good local area marketing campaign delivers a deeper connection. The new toolkit from newsXpress helps members more easily make this connection.

The details of the workshops will be announced to newsXpress members later this week.

newsXpress Gympie wins Hallmark Alliance Retailer of the Year Award

Congratulations to Warrick Hosking and the terrific team at newsXpress Gympie in Queensland for winning the inaugural Hallmark Alliance Retailer of the Year Award.

What a terrific win for this creative and energetic team!

newsXpress Gympie won from a field of ten finalists including seven newsagencies of which four were newsXpress stores. They won for their proactive, creative and commercial support of the Hallmark brand and products.

This is an excellent win for a newsagency in a town with seven newsagencies. talk about competition.

Well done to Warrick and the team. Well done to newsXpress Bairnsdale, newsXpress Glendale and newsXpress Sunbury Square for making the final ten in a tough commercial competition.

Hallmark is a newsXpress Strategic Partner. Through this relationship we leverage a range of benefits for newsXpress members including residual benefits from the inreased Hallmark national TV advertising and access to exclusive product opportunities.

This Christmas, newsXpress stores will carry an exclusive range of boxed Christmas cards sourced through Hallmark.

The Best Newsagency Marketing Kit Ever

Earlier this year, newsXpress launched the most comprehensive newsagency marketing kit ever. Covering a broad range of marketing options from community engagement to in-store offer promotion, the newsXpress Marketing Toolkit provides newsXpress members with professional posters and collateral which can be easily customised to local needs and situations.

Having had four months to engage with the newsXpress Newsagency Marketing Toolkit, newsXpress members are starting to offer feedback. The most common feedback from newsXpress members is brilliant! and thank you!

newsXpress wants the store level feedback to be in the form of money banked as a result of engaging in embracing opportunities in the Marketing Toolkit.

The Marketing Toolkit perfectly demonstrates the newsXpress difference. It is an excellent example of our commitment to helping newsXpress members drive traffic and increase the average spend of shoppers. It supports strategies and tactics for driving sales of excellent deals available from newsXpress preferred suppliers.

newsXpress has invested considerably in the creation of the collateral in the Marketing Toolkit for newsXpress members. We own all materials and this provides flexibility in how it can be used. It also gives us an excellent base off of which we can create more materials for other campaigns.

The newsXpress marketing team is not resting on its laurels. Since the Marketing toolkit was originally launched earlier this year, a further five marketing campaign opportunities have been released to newsXpress members.

In addition to providing professional and high quality marketing resources, newsXpress also provides advice and guidance on local execution and engagement.

William and Cate Calendar Pre Sale Delivers Excellent Sales

The pre-sale order form for the William and Cate Royal Wedding calendar for 2012 has been a terrific success in some newsXpress stores. The simple placement of the flyer at the counter has generated sales with customers fully pre-paying to secure their copy of this calendar. The flyer shows newsXpress stores off as being innovative and offering a product which no other store was promoting at the time.

In many ways through the year newsXpress presents its members with innovative ways to pitch their newsagency businesses as different to other newsagencies and as offering products which are quite unique to the many newsagency products which are also sold at other retail locations.

Through newsXpress energy and creativity, we are able to show our retail channel as being competitive, value-based, exclusive and community connected … genuinely unique, newsXpress unique.

The Sticker Family Counter Mat Drives Sales

This counter mat promoting the My Family stickers from The Sticker Family is delivering excellent success in newsXpress locations in which it is used. There are many stories of customers presenting at the counter to purchase a card, magazine or lottery ticket who notice the counter mat and comment along the lines of oh, you sell these or ah I wondered what these were when I saw them on cars.

Marketing experts tells us that shoppers are more likely to respond if they see a single message repeated in their interaction with a retail store. This is where the counter mat works in that by the time a shopper gets to the counter they will have passed the pull up banner. They may also have seen and promotion elsewhere in the business for The Sticker Family range.

The counter mat is another valuable touch point in selling these stickers to new customers as well as those with stickers already. newsXpress highly recommends it to members.

Zodiac Smurf Figurines

The Smurfs are back! They are at newsXpress. Some newsXpress stores have taken the opportunity to offer Smurf zodiac figurines, giving shoppers an opportunity to connect with these wonderful characters from a couple of decades ago. With the new Smurf movie out this year, Smurfs are connecting with a new audience and reconnecting with an older audience. These precious characters sell well to a couple of generations. They connect well with any targeted retro offer.

newsXpress innovation is on show here … helping to bring to newsXpress locations products which you would not see in a traditional newsagency and thereby helping newsXpress members pitch their businesses as different, more relevant, more current and more connected with shopper interests.

Tinco Products a Hit For newsXpress Stores

The Tinco range of gift tins and mugs, bear themed and cat themed, are selling well in participating newsXpress stores. They are being used to create centre piece displays to attract shopper traffic and drive sales basket efficiency … as the photo shows.

Connecting primarily with older shoppers, the Tinco range is attracting people who tend to purchase more than one item in a newsagency – thus improving overall sales efficiency.

One of the biggest lessons for newsagents and any retailer is that they are not their customer. Many newsXpress members have experienced this first hand when they have at first declined to take on a product and then see it sell well when encouraged to take it on by the newsXpress merchandise team. The Tinco range was one such product in a newsXpress store recently. The newsXpress member almost sold out the entire shipment in less than a month, delivering a valuable return on investment to the business and attracting new customers who have returned to the business.

Part of the newsXpress role is to help newsXpress members to push the boundaries of what their businesses can sell and, through this, to explore attracting new shoppers to the business.

One of the reasons for growth in some newsXpress stores, growth which is considerably beyond the average for the newsagency channel, is the broadening of the appeal of the business through challenging product selection … as encouraged by the newsXpress merchandise team.

This is a newsXpress difference, going considerably beyond offering products. newsXpress not only negotiated good deals, it also helps members leverage those deals to their maximum advantage.

newsXpress Redcliffe Enjoys Great Gift Sales

newsXpress Redcliffe has been growing gift sales since the store oepened a year and a half ago. Today, the gift department makes an important and sizeable contribution to sales and GP for the business. Buying from newsXpress preferred suppliers and tapping into exclusive newsXpress offers, the Redcliffe team has built a solid gift offer based on the mix of cards selected by shoppers. Using card sales data to drive gift buying is paying off with excellent growth – way above industry average.

While many newsagents talk of tough trading conditions, newsXpress Redcliffe is enjoying success by embracing newsXpress opportunities. Their success shows the commercial value of embracing newsXpress preferred supplier opportunities.

newsXpress pioneered the use of detailed card sales data analysis to guide gift purchases. It has had exclusive access to caption sales data with which to guide product purchase choices by members.

Click on the image to see a small part of the Redcliffe gift selection.

newsXpress Knox Stocks Up For HOT ink! Sale

newsXpress Knox, at Knox City Shopping Centre in Victoria, has stocked up for the latest newsXpress HOT ink! promotion. Sales have been excellent. Shoppers are bringing in their flyer to purchase their choice of brand name ink from the flyer … many have commented that the prices are better than nearby outlets such as Dick Smith, JB HiFi, Harvey Norman and Australia Post.

The newsXpress HOT ink! campaign is key to driving new traffic to newsXpress businesses. It combats the consumer view that newsagencies are expensive. newsXpress is not expensive. It is the value place to shop. Delivering value prices on brand name ink and toner is just one way newsXpress helps its members make this important consumer pitch.

Massive Book Sale at newsXpress Roselands

newsXpress Roselands is enjoying tremendous success with another massive book sale on centre court at the Roselands Shopping centre in Sydney. Supporting newsXpress by preferred supplier ABW, this book sale extends the reach of newsXpress Roselands and delivers excellent incremental business as a result.

newsXpress works with landlords, suppliers and newsXpress members to facilitate mutually valuable outpost opportunities. In large capital city through to smaller regional shopping centres, newsXpress is able to help all stakeholders enjoy success with outposting in areas such as with books at Roselands.

Cash Prizes on Offer to newsXpress Facebook Page Visitors

The latest HOT ink! flyer from newsXpress is promoting a competition for fans of our corporate Facebook page. We have four $250 cash prizes on offer as part of our promotion through Facebook. At the last round of member meetings, newsXpress presented training on the use of Facebook and other social media for promoting businesses. Many newsXpress members are already well connected with this new platform for reaching out to customers.

Promoting T3 magazine in newsXpress locations

newsXpress stores across the network are promoting the latest issue of T3 magazine with in-location and prime location displays.

T3 is a popular title and is easily purchased by shoppers on impulse … hence the value of tactical placement in high traffic and good impulse locations. Thee publisher has provided newsXpress stores with additional information to help achieve the best result from the magazine.

This is an excellent magazine with which to promote the connection between the newsagency and mobile devices.

This special promotion of the latest T3 is part of our campaign to support magazines in newsXpress stores.

Planning for the newsXpress National TV Campaign

Representatives of newsXpress and of the Nine Network met last week to commence planning for the first of our national TV commercials promoting newsXpress.

Running nationally, these TV commercials will offer a consistent message and call to action for all newsXpress businesses.

The commercials will further unify the newsXpress network around common product offers and pricing. They will help pitch newsXpress as a value based shopping experience, differentiating our retail network from other newsagencies. This will be vitally important as further changes are experienced in newsagency product mix and pricing.

Winter Warmers Success at newsXpress Kin Kora

newsXpress Kin Kora has been having excellent sales success with their Winter warmers campaign. Put together by the newsXpress merchandise team and promoted to newsXpress members, the Winter Warmers campaign included these microwavable huggable warmers. When you just about sell out in 24 hours you know that you have a hit product. That is exactly what happened at newsXpress Kin Kora … what a hit! Of course, more product is on the way to help keen newsXpress Kin Kora shoppers warm.

This is another success story for the newsXpress merchandise team.

Baked & Deliciious a new partwork opportunity

newsXpress is working with its members to maximise potential for the new Baked & Delicious part series which launches in July. Through exclusive services, newsXpress if driving added value for newsXpress members, added value designed to help newsXpress members bank more dollars from this title.

The multifaceted newsXpress magazine strategy is packed with ways newsXpress members can leverage exciting new title opportunities like this one. newsXpress members have a few days to respond with information sought on behalf of the distributor – to make the most of the opportunity.

Biodegradable bag launched by newsXpress

newsXpress last month, at its one day member conference and trade display in each state, launched a fully biodegradable newsXpress branded plastic bag. This environmentally conscious move by newsXpress has been embraced by newsXpress members with many orders placed for the bags.

In addition to this being a proactive environmentally caring move in the part of newsXpress, the new bag carries the newsXpress branding and engagement message out of newsXpress shops and into the community, extending the reach of our brand beyond our retail network.

The new branded bag is part of a broader strategy by newsXpress to strengthen the representation of our singular national brand. Greater use of branded bags by our sores better positions newsXpress members to leverage our soon to launch national TV campaign.

Massive Art Sale at Sunbury Square Drives Excellent Sales

newsXpress Sunbury Square has been enjoying excellent sales from its Massive Art Sale featuring products from newsXpress preferred supplier Mont Marte. Thanks to a special newsXpress buying day recently, newsXpress members had access to excellent deals for far better than the usual good margin. The team at newsXpress Sunbury Square has been using the art sale to drive traffic from within the shopping centre as well as to attract impulse purchases from regular customers.

A display like this shows the offer from the business as being fresh and competitive. It combats what Australian shoppers think about the average newsagency.

Promoting the My Family Stickers from The Sticker Family at Knox

newsXpress Knox is promoting the My Family stickers range from The Sticker Family at the front of the newsagency, facing into the shopping mall. This placement is the ideal placement for promoting the My family stickers as it attracts shoppers from across the mall to the shop.

By placing the My Family stickers pull up banner in front of the card department, the Knox team is subtly suggesting that the My family stickers could also be purchased as a gift … as the store has seen. Shoppers can buy the gift (stickers) and a card and be done with a complete gift in one shopping experience.

Sales of the My Family stickers range at newsXpress Knox continue to be excellent, adding hundreds of dollars of gross profit to the business every week.