For Coca-Cola Beverages, an innovative solution was developed with which dealers receive personalised offers via e-mail. The special feature: it is possible to order directly from the e-mail. The personalisation logic of an existing e-commerce solution is reused for this.

Coca-Cola Beverages AG is responsible for production, sales and retail marketing for brands such as Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite and Valser. In Switzerland, Coca-Cola Beverages supplies tens of thousands of drinks retailers with its own products, other brand name products and promotion articles.

Orders are placed via an online portal
Orders are increasingly placed via an e-commerce solution which enables central, fully automatic processing of orders. After login, the traders can place general orders and access past orders. In the order process, individually agreed range, quantity and price specifications are automatically applied.

Bring not fetch: inform traders with personalised e-mail
To increase the frequency of contacts and to increase customer loyalty, Coca-Cola Beverages decided to build up a new communication channel to the traders with e-mail marketing. Following the associated permission of the traders, adjusted, up-to-date customer profiles are available which allow the traders to be addressed personally with individual contents.

One-to-One marketing with individual offers and price advantages
With a mailing suitable offers are transferred from the e-commerce solution to the e-mail system, so that the recipients receive highly relevant offers with their individual prices. The links contain special hash codes so that the traders can log into the shop with one click within a certain time window. 

The articles marked in the e-mail are placed in the shopping basket and can be ordered in the same way as the previous order process. There is thus an incentive to order by e-mail. However, the order itself is handled by the existing business logic of the shop, where the existing interfaces to peripheral systems can be used. As value added and an incentive to order for the recipient, every e-mail also contains the current status in the loyalty programme (Coke Dollars) and the last credited transactions.

Many orders are received before and after shop opening hours
In practice the solution has proven itself very well. Many traders have registered for the personalised e-mails and the opening rate is considerably above the figures of regular newsletters. Numerous logins and orders are recorded immediately after the mailings are sent. Analyses of the access times show that the traders make particular use of the time before and after regular shop opening times to read the e-mails and place orders.

With the integrated e-mail solution, Coca-Cola Beverages is now able to carry out personalised campaigns at very short notice and low cost and to process the incoming orders fully automatically via existing processes and IT systems.