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Starting in March 2003 and ending in November 2004, Meridian Delta (then Endeverus) was a large marketer of refurbished laptops to businesses in the UK.

Our goal was simple - provide top-quality, cost-effective laptops to customers with the type of back-up you'd expect if you had bought a new laptop from a famous high-street provider.

Over the course of the 18-or-so months we were in the marketplace, we sold over 1,000 laptops. Eventually we exited the market because we could not buy in sufficient quantities to undercut the market leaders. After all, it was our sideline business, not a major business.

If your main business is new or refurbished computer equipment and you can achieve massive savings with bulk buying, benefit from the lessons we learned in our time in the market.

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Objective The goal was simple enough. We could achieve big savings from suppliers if we bought in quantities of 25 or 50 or more.
When we heard about a good deal coming along, we would reserve the number of laptops we needed to make the savings. We would then give ourselves 7 working days to make either all or the majority of sales before we had to buy the laptops.

Making it more complicated was the fact that we do not debit customers' cards until we dispatched the goods. Organising the purchasing and making sure we made the sales in time was the over-riding aim of the exercise.
Whom were they targeting? Our data is never more than 9 months old - thanks to the specialist companies which supply us with data. We can get to just the companies you need. Click here to find out how.

We were targeting any type of business, no matter what the size. Our belief was that the vast majority of companies do not need the latest laptops. Most of them are bought for travelling salespeople, to use Microsoft Office programs and to surf the Internet.

With the belief that businesses did not need the very latest, we aimed to pitch the laptops at the companies it would be useful for - that is, pretty much every one.
What were the results? The emails were always a massive success. For a while, we had a branch in the South of England that dealt with the laptops and servicing the customers.

From a standing start, and with no experience of running a laptop company, we averaged around 65 sales a month from email marketing alone. Another 5 or 6 sales a month came from referrals from customers who had originally responded to emails.

As mentioned above, we did not have the buying power to compete with others in the end, so we withdrew. It was a great 18 months for us, but, because of our inexperience, we were forced out in the end.

   
All figures given are based on customer correspondence with us. Email marketing is a form of advertising, and as with all advertising it can be successful as well as unsuccessful. We do not guarantee any level of response. On average, for every 1,000 email sent out, there are 1-2 opt outs, even fewer than fax broadcasting! When we receive an opt-out, we remove the number from all databases to ensure they are never emailed by us or the pool participants again.