IMS Field Marketing Ltd's Blog

Hello and welcome to my very first field marketing blog. As National Field Team Manager here at IMS, I’m always looking for opportunities to interact with the field team and now we’re living in the age of ‘online social networking’ I thought I’d create an official IMS blog as an informal way of keeping touch with you all.

Despite the economic climate being pretty tough at the moment, March and April have been incredibly strong months for us at IMS and this is largely down to your contributions. I think over the past 2 months the quality of work you have put forward has been nothing short of excellent. This has allowed us to build on our relationships with some of our key clients and continue to provide you with more work out in the field. It’s certainly a win-win relationship for all of us.

I’d say our biggest success story over the past 2 months has been the work we’ve conducted for a cereal manufacturer. As you’re all aware this manufacturer is a relatively new client and we’ve managed to seriously impress them with your help. Key milestones we achieved during the March activity (when compared to January) is as follows:

• A 25% increase in the number of packs brought forward.
• A 27% increase in availability.
• A 25% increase in ROI (Return on Investment).

These great results mean that we are not only completing further activity on their behalf this month, but will also be conducting another campaign in June, so more visits will be coming your way in the next few weeks.

In addition to the above activity, we’ve also had some very impressive work conducted in the field for established clients in the banking, media and food industries. Keep your eyes peeled for some additional banking and food related activity taking place in June.

I’d like to say a big thank you to you all for showing your commitment to making IMS an elite field marketing agency that clients keep coming back to. Where possible we like to reward excellent performance and this is backed up not only by our merchandiser of the month award, but also our new incentive schemes (such as cash prize draws for excellent performers). Stayed tuned for more interesting developments and please feel free to offer any feedback that you feel relevant.

Kelly Gosnay
National Field Team Manager

In the current economic climate it is of paramount importance that retailers maximise their customer service levels. We’ve all had an experience, whether it be in a supermarket, pub or restaurant where we’ve not been happy with the standard of service we’ve received. Mystery shopping allows organisations to look at themseleves through the eyes of their customers and avoid giving their customers negative experiences.

Mystery shopping can be used by all retail businesses as well as a whole host of other service types (even churches and dentists can be mystery shopped). For retail chains with 20 or more outlets I’d recommend contacting IMS. They have a nationwide field team of over 2,000 and are the first (and currently only) agency to hold the DMA Field Marketing Best Practice Accreditation. You can check them out at www.ukims.co.uk They are also number 1 on www.google.com and www.google.co.uk for field marketing.

Alternatively if you’ve got between 1 and 20 outlets, it’s worth trying www.MysteryShopMyBusiness.com as they offer a pay as you go mystery shopping service which is really easy to use. This is quite a new service concept as mystery shopping has only previously been available to the larger retailers.

Actually conducting mystery shopping visits can also be a great way to earn some money and get the odd freebie for those people who find this type of work fascinating. The most popular mystery shopping visits for 18-21 year olds is Challenge 21 mystery shopping. It’s incredibly easy to do, submitting your shopping results is easy and you also get paid to buy alcohol (and there’s not even a catch). More information on this type of work can be found at www.oldenough2drink.co.uk