Located in the heartland of the United States, the Store of the Community serves national brands in need of experiential marketing, also known as engagement marketing. The Bentonville, Arkansas company, specializes in sending traveling marketing teams to national retailer locations across the country to promote their clients’ products.
Extended travel is an essential part of the Store of the Community’s services and it’s a huge undertaking, according to Jackson Gates, senior director of operations at the Store of the Community.
Three years ago, Jackson was solely responsible for planning all the company’s promotional tours—typically spending 5 to 7 days working on routes that took as many as 3 marketing teams to national retailers across the United States. These teams would travel for 2 weeks and sometimes even for as long as five months.
He needed a better way to get the job done.
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Jackson did a lot of research before choosing MyRouteOnline. “Most routing software doesn’t fit our needs,” he said. “It’s either designed for shipping logistics, which is more complicated than what I need, or it’s too basic.”
MyRouteOnline fit the bill, Jackson said. The customer service team was very helpful, and the time savings were immediately evident.
“The last time I hand-routed a program, the team needed to visit 233 stores in 35 days,” he said. “It took me a whole solid week to route. With MyRouteOnline I could do it in a day.”
The Store of the Community teams are required to work 8-10 hours per day, typically visiting 3-4 stores per day. The teams are sometimes divided into regions, i.e., West Coast, Central and East Coast. They drive vehicles wrapped in the client’s branding so the marketing message continues even when they’re are on the road.
Jackson sometimes needed to make manual adjustments to routes, and he uses a Google Drive spreadsheet so each team has live access to the latest route information.
While each promotional tour is unique, the company’s clients may want as many as 1,000 visits to national retailers located across the continental United States.
“MyRouteOnline tells me how many stores based on the routing I can get per day,” Jackson said. “So, I know the number of store locations I can offer our clients in a specific time span.”
Jackson describes himself as a “technology geek”, and his experience has made him an online route planning advocate, he said. “MyRouteOnline is one of my favorite programs.”
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