Bestway Wholesale

Bestway is the UK’s largest independent cash and carry, serving communities across the nation for nearly 50 years. They could see the huge potential of using WhatsApp to interact with their customers.

Bestway identified WhatsApp as a great addition to their current communications channels due to its high levels of engagement. With more than 40 million UK users and Meta reporting a 98% open rate on all messages, WhatsApp far outstrips other methods, with second-placed email lagging behind with an average of 22%.

Bestway could see the huge potential of using WhatsApp to interact with customers offered them and approached b2b.store about creating a private channel using WhatsApp’s more powerful API.

Bestway set up a customer WhatsApp channel that shared marketing promotions and campaigns. The ambition was to get more eyes on existing marketing collateral in order to achieve greater customer engagement with promotions and, ultimately, lift sales across its depots and online.

This includes sending PDFs of weekly offers, digital deal brochures, and one-time-only supplier offers in messages.

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Increasing promotional reach with B2B WhatsApp

opted-in convenience retailers

more spend generated compared to SMS

avg. monthly messages sent

How are Bestway using their channel?

How did Bestway get so many retailers to follow their channel?

Bestway already had permission to send marketing messages to their customers, so registered any active accounts to their new WhatsApp channel. Initial messages were sent out to their audience, introducing the channel, its purpose and providing people receiving the message with a clear opportunity to opt out if they wanted to. Very few customers decided to leave, resulting in an impressive number that ranks their channels as one of the biggest of its kind.

Has Bestway's WhatsApp channel been a success?

Without a doubt. Nearly 18 months after its launch, Bestway’s WhatsApp channel has grown to such a point that the wholesaler sent out a month-high 625,000 messages during 2024 and now places WhatsApp at the heart of its marketing campaigns. The driver for this has been the channel’s sustained high open rates, which dwarf those achieved elsewhere, with WhatsApp’s effectiveness clear for all to see. More than 20 different suppliers have also used the channel to pay for messages to promote campaigns, special offers and new products, with peak times particularly popular.

What are the additional benefits of using WhatsApp?

Creating and establishing a WhatsApp channel with high engagement opened up a new, lucrative revenue stream for Bestway to take advantage of. The channel quickly had more than 22,000 convenience retailers opted in receive communications, with suppliers offered the chance to purchase messages to the channel – not just covering Meta’s messaging costs using the API service, but also securing a tidy profit. A further benefit is the reduction in print communications Bestway needs to create, with WhatsApp messages replacing a certain proportion of what was produced previously.