Customer Relationship

Marketing

Chris Frey

Director/Advertising Development

Gannett Co., Inc.

Develop a new advertising selling channel to grow revenue beyond the time honored, dependency of:

• Physical sales calls

• Inbound calls to us

• Historically limited outbound telephone sales

The selling magician hadn’t kept up w/ technology and needed a new trick

The CRM Strategy

The goals • Manage larger numbers of accounts;

and send hundreds of emails and faxes

• Move parts of inbound to outbound

• Empower sales reps – self serve their own sales campaigns

• Improve tracking of outbound efforts

• Frugal technology approach for ROI

The CRM Strategy

A computer application built for account executives:

• One database of customers and prospects

• Customer contact management

• Can target customer behavior and/or business characteristics

• Sends hundreds of sales e-mail and fax messages at a time

• Organizes sales follow-up

The CRM Tool

CRM Sales Process

Telephone sales on steroids

• “Send plus Phone”

• Select 100 or more accounts each week: lapsed, non-advertisers, or scheduled contacts

• Select sales message to e-mail or fax

• Follow-up with sales calls Mon – Wed

• Recruitment goal – touch every customer over a month

Reasons

• New competition – huge wake-up call, most vulnerable business segment, least degree of customer relationship

• Largest potential customer base of any advertising category

• Lower share in some types of businesses

• Fit models of business-to-business selling

• CRM expands a finite sales resource

Moving on to real estate, then retail

Recruitment Focus First

Putting the CRM Puzzle Together

Case Study

Sioux Falls Argus Leader

Putting the CRM Puzzle Together

It’s not the technology

It’s the people, organization

and willingness to change

and do things differently

Making CRM Work

Advertising - Organization Changes

• Sales team/compensation

• Transient to ledger recruitment

conversion

• Expecting turnover

• New types of hires

• Sales management – new training

Making CRM Work

Advertising - New Selling Tasks

• Disciplined contact gathering

• Outbound calling

– New for an inbound recruitment staff

– Telephone selling Real Estate agents

– Telephone relationships

– Selling voicemails

– Soliciting return calls

Advertising - Memorable Quotes

• “I can’t stand this, I want out of whole

program!” (Employment Sales Representative)

• “You gotta be kidding me, how many extra

accounts are we going to have?” (Employment Sales

Representative)

• “Oh my God, they still don’t get it! Will

they ever get it??” (Marketing Analyst)

• “I’m going to kill them!” (Classified Advertising Manager)

Making CRM Work

Making CRM Work

Marketing – Database Leadership

• External data supply – Understanding the merging customer &

marketing data (D&B)

– Customer files lead to customer & prospect marketing

• Data “consciousness raising” Task force and commitment across departments

• “Standard Bearer” role Training, FAQs, and enforcement

Making CRM Work

Marketing - Communication Support

• New B to B selling materials • Direct response orientation

• Simple messages

• Customer benefit (not our product) headlines

• Calls to action

• “Scriptability”

• New graphics software/training

• Greater calendar planning discipline

Making CRM Work

Business Office Support

• Customer database Operational data integrity (getting the bills out)

to

Operational plus marketing data integrity

• New data role w/ account setup

• Account data cleanup role

• Data gate-keeping

• Transient to ledger recruitment conversion

Making CRM Work

IT Department Support

• Business system database – leadership and reporting on data conditions/integrity

• Keeping things running – Network conditions/upgrades

– Application database administration

– User installs and training

– Troubleshooting email/faxing channels

What are people saying • “CRM helps me make over 400 contacts a month. It would require

a lot more work to do what we do without it.” (Employment Sales Specialist)

• “It allowed me to reach new customers and bring in new revenue I never thought was there before.

(Employment Sales Specialist)

• “CRM is an important tool to help my employment team reach new customers and generate additional revenue. We’ve taken a whole new approach with the employment segment and made it fun for all involved by offering new promotions on a regular basis. I can’t imagine not utilizing CRM to target new business in all segment advertising. Bring on Real Estate!”

(Classified Advertising Manager)

.

Results – Sioux Falls

Results – Sioux Falls

Before After 300 Accounts + Transient 2,774 Customers in CRM

Average account list: 100 Average account list: 500

(Per Employment Specialist) (Per Employment Specialist)

Average outbound calls:1,600 Average outbound calls: 2,705

(Per team, per month) (Per team, per month)

Limited non-customer prospecting Goaled on non-customer contacts

One ongoing promotional offer Fresh monthly offers

Two competing publications One competing publication

Results – Gannett

• Installed in 15 markets and growing

• Significant, incremental monthly revenue

reported

• The application technology investment is

recovered every month

• 40,000+ customer contacts developed

over 60,000+ CRM advertiser accounts

• 25,000+ monthly email/fax sales messages

sent followed by 30,000+ phone calls

Final Thoughts

Implementing technology like this • Not for the faint hearted

• What are all the departments needed and

affected?

• What work processes everywhere will be

affected?

• What jobs will be created, changed and even

possibly eliminated?

• Communicate a vision to create community of

stakeholders across the departments

• Cross train/expose the technology to all the

stakeholders