Winkhaus UK expands marketing support for customers

Leading window and door specialist, Winkhaus UK, are delighted to have received two awards at this year’s National Fenestration Awards, including the Digital Marketing Campaign of the Year for the company’s newest innovation, the AV4 multi-point autoLocking solution.

Building on this, Winkhaus have now released a series of short videos that capture end user testimony of the benefits they have seen AV4 provide, content that has been created for fabricators and installers to use as part of their sales and marketing activity.

Marketing Support

Andrew Wilkins Head of Marketing at Winkhaus UK, “Our company Vision is Guaranteeing our customers success, so for marketing, our focus is to provide engaging content that customers can use in their own marketing and sales activities and provide them with a competitive edge.

As a company and marketing team we were delighted with the recognition the AV4 campaign has received, but knew there was more to capture and share.”

Initial testing with autoLock AV4 highlighted the importance of low operational forces, from which we highlighted the benefits this has for fabricators and installers. For the next phase of the campaign, we set ourselves the challenge of understanding how AV4 would benefit end users, and any advantages low operational force would provide.

Testing against real world conditions

Working with an independent research company, groups of end users were invited to test autoLock AV4 against competitor’s solutions. Andrew continues “we sort individuals who have experienced or who are experiencing the impact of thermal expansion in there.

The group included homeowners and landlords, individuals with arthritis and other disabilities across a wide age range to ensure we had a representative mix. Individually, everyone tested three identical doorsets, with packers installed at the top and bottom to simulate the increasing impact of thermal expansion.

Other than door colours, the only variation between samples was the locking solutions installed. Each user was asked to unlock each door and to stop testing a doorset if it became difficult to operate.

The results were conclusive with everybody choosing autoLock AV4 and being able to operate to double acceptable industry tolerances.”

“Following testing we captured the groups feedback on the testing, their experiences with doors that are difficult to operate, the benefit AV4’s low force to operate gives them and any advantages this will provide them in the future.”

Andrew states, “the insight this research captures into the impact thermal expansion and sticky locks have been invaluable. Everyone involved shared negative firsthand experiences that will now be resolved by including AV4 in future specifications.

Being able to provide this research and content to our customers will allow them to show their future customers the wider importance of the correct locking solution, whilst helping them succeed in a competitive market."

The completed films can be viewed on our website and are available for our customers to download from the Media Downloads section of the Winkhaus Portal, along with all the other assets already available for AV4. Andrew added “The Winkhaus Portal is a real time productivity tool for our customers, allowing access to live transactional data, our full technical product catalogue, and our growing library of marketing collateral.

It’s always up to date, with data drawn from our SAP system and can be accessed at any time. Having the information you require at your fingertips is such an advantage and it’s wonderful to see so many of our customers departments gaining benefit from its content.”

AV4 innovation journey and development

Designed to combat the issues with thermal expansion, AV4 is the turning point for fabricators and installers who are tired of costly call outs to make hinge and keep adjustments.

The AV4 autoLock reduces the force needed to operate by 40% compared to the market leading AV2 and up to 70% compared to competitors' solutions, so when alignment issues occur, AV4 continues to operate where other solutions fail.

For further information on autoLock AV4, the full range of multi-point locking solutions available from Winkhaus or the Winkhaus Portal.

To view the our low force to operate videos, please click the button below or contact marketing@winkhaus.co.uk