Paul Dykes – number 45 in PrintWeek’s Power 100 - has moved from head of print, production and data quality at Aimia, where he worked on the Nectar Card, to be Bicester-based Webmart’s new category director, a role in which he started around three months ago. He also spent 11 years as a print buyer at Matalan.
He plans to improve Webmart’s direct mail (DM) offering, especially personalisation and return of investment, digging more into the data of clients’ customers.
He told PrintWeek he was drawn to Webmart because “it seemed like a company that’s going places that’s fun and vibrant and that really enjoyed print”.
“I’ve known Simon (Biltcliffe, Webmart chief executive) for a number of years and see him regularly at the PrintWeek Awards. They really wanted to invest in DM knowledge," Dykes said.
“We want to move it beyond a salutation to be a targeted set of communications across categories. It's about working for the client to cross-sell and up-sell opportunities in terms of a data set and make sure that they spend a lot of money.”
Damian Sorgiovanni joined as customer services director earlier this week after spending six and a half years working for print management company Charterhouse.
He will bring his experience of managing teams to boost customer service to large clients and help mentor and develop customer service teams.
Sorgiovanni told PrintWeek that he share's Webmart's ethos and loves its commitment to staff development and its customer-centric approach.
“We've got some rapid growth forecast and I'll bring in some different perspectives as to how to deal with those bigger contracts, what sort of information they are interested in from us on a regular basis and how it is best to present that,” he said.
“I'll also bring my experience with international team management, and will be looking to the future on that.
“I've got a great team that I'm really excited to be working with. The passion for customer service is absolutely evident here and there's a lot of expertise as well.”
Biltcliffe said his new hires were “two of the best people in the UK print management market”.
“I’m delighted. Both have exceptional and complementary experience to the talent we already have in the yellow sheds and strongly believe in the win-win ethos of Webmart.”
The circa £30m-turnover company is also opening a new 'Printerest' showroom in September, which it said will inspire clients and suppliers with samples and ideas.
Clients will be able to discuss the future of print and marketing in the room, which Webmart said will house a training area and innovative marketing collateral and print displays.
Since the start of this year, Biltcliffe has offered free mentoring and advice to print start-ups in the form of 10-minute sessions via Skype over a three and a half hour period from 6.30am every Monday morning.
