OPINION
89
ON MESSAGE Since the pandemic struck, the National Bed Federation (NBF) has redoubled its efforts to communicate with the trade and consumers, embracing new channels in a bid to reach an everwider audience, explains marketing & membership manager, Simon Williams.
WE’VE BEEN FINDING ADDITIONAL WAYS TO ENGAGE WITH OUR MEMBERS
INDUSTRY PARTNERS
By SIMON WILLIAMS www.bedfed.org.uk
We’ve all learned many different things over the last 16 months, not least the importance of communication and staying connected – whether that’s with our friends and family, colleagues, business contacts or customers. At the NBF, our audiences include our members, the wider bed industry, bed retailers and the bed-buying public. Communicating with these segments entails different approaches with slightly differing messages. When the pandemic hit, the importance of communicating with our members and providing them with the latest Government advice became even more critical. Coupled with keeping our members informed on all the postBrexit issues, we were sending out information on an almost-daily basis. Over a 12-month period, we sent out more than four times the number of member communications than we did in the previous year. Of course, there’s always the danger of over-communicating, and we’ve all experienced email overload where it becomes overwhelming and it’s easier to just press delete. So, we’ve now settled into sending a regular Friday morning bulletin, and have seen open rates increase to well above the (email) industry average. As well as emails and social media channels (we use Linkedin and Twitter for the NBF), finding additional ways to engage with our members and keep them up to date with key topics and important business issues led us to launch our series of BedBiz Podcasts (Musings on Mattress Matters). Our first featured Hypnos’ sustainable mattress packaging, and we’ve since covered such topics as how to resolve consumer complaints on mattresses with The Furniture & Home Improvement Ombudsman, help with training and
apprenticeships via FIESTA’s Skills Plus service, and how our members can get involved with The Sleep Charity. Continuing the audio-visual route for improving member engagement, we are planning to start regular news vlogs. It’s more personal and effective, with content retention rates much higher than text. Turning to bed retailers, in an effort to forge closer ties, we launched our NBF Retail Champions scheme last year and already have over 225 independent retailer participants, with a total of over 280 branches between them. As well as receiving PoS items and digital assets to promote their NBF Retail Champion status, we engage with them via a Champions Chat e-newsletter, and from time to time ask their views via surveys on key topics affecting the bed industry, such as sustainability, rising costs and extended manufacturer lead times. We aim to develop this scheme to have more of a members’ club feel, and are looking at how we offer further benefits, including VIP visitor status at the Bed Show, lapel badges to wear instore and exclusive competitions. Finally, when it comes to advising consumers, we use our new consumerfacing website (www.bedadvice.co.uk) and social channels Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (@bedadviceUK) to engage with the bed-buying public, promote NBF member brands, answer questions and hopefully manage people’s sometimes-overreaching expectations! We also direct the consumer to their nearest NBF Retail Champion. Our ongoing social media and SEO programmes will build on the current 26,000 monthly visitors to the site, and we will be producing a number of short video clips to address key consumer questions around the bed-buying process and post-purchase issues
