Long ago, in the days when people communicated with paper and ink, the Business and Government Services (BSG) division of U S West communicated through newsletters. The company
offered its customers and the media quarterly, industry-specific newsletters in eight vertical markets.
Faced with rising costs and sagging interest, the telecommunications company consolidated all the publications into a biannual magazine, pleasing far fewer readers and serving
no particular audiences. Finally, U S West called the whole thing off.
Eventually, "We found that our customers were interested in receiving information directly from us and that they were very much wired," says Kay Zimmerli, marketing
communication team leader for the Business and Government Services division of U S West. "Two years ago, it was only techies who logged on to find out about feeds and speeds.
After we did some research, we found that decision-makers were online looking strategically for new paradigms that will affect the way they do business. It was time to get
interactive."
Even as we travel beyond the nascent stages of the Information Age, many corporations still see interactive PR as putting a static e-brochure online and waiting for branding
magic to kick in. U S West, working with Brodeur Worldwide and a budget of $80,000, had much bigger plans.
The Strategy
After extensive research, including a series of focus groups with high-level participants, U S West determined how best to get out the pertinent vertical market information to
its target audiences - customers, shareholders, employees, analysts and the media.
The team started with an online pressroom, then discussions evolved into a plan to reach customers directly through a series of online monthly magazines in the fields of:
healthcare, financial, federal, education, ISP, and state and local government services; extended workplace solutions; and hospitality, retail and wholesale services.
The team developed the following objectives:
- Unify the communications efforts of the eight U S West BGS vertical market groups by providing site visitors (internal and external) with one look, feel and voice;
- Improve existing customer relationships and foster new relationships/generate new customers;
- Provide a single outlet for the media to obtain/retrieve U S West-related information;
- Influence the purchasing decisions of large business and government decision-makers;
- Develop a system to capitalize on PR activities; and
- Drive traffic to the BGS Web site.
A Step Beyond
Seeking to provide more information - not to mention more objectivity and credibility - the team decided to go beyond the standard content of in-house authors and paid
freelancers. Through Brodeur, U S West formed partnerships with select publications (including Modern Healthcare, Government Computer News and The Chronicle of
Higher Education) to run trend articles for the online e-zines. The publications get wider circulation for their articles and U S West gets content.
"No, we're not going to select a story [from one of the partner publications] that praises one of our competitors and leaves U S West out, but we want to provide more than just
our perspective," Zimmerli says. "Most of the articles we choose are industry stories that don't even mention U S West. We want these e-zines to be a real value that people look
to and trust."
Lessons Learned
Although the numbers are increasing every month (it's too soon for quantitative results, Zimmerli says), it wasn't necessarily a smooth process.
"We learned some things late in the game, and there were quite a few concessions to [make sure we stayed within] our timeframe and our budget," Zimmerli says.
Originally, the channels were being built at Brodeur. When it came time to bring the e-zines into the U S West site, there were some clashes in terms of look and navigation
that required manipulation. Also, the list of stories originally provided a one-sentence headline, which users could click to a couple-paragraph synopsis, which users could then
click to a full story. "Too many clicks," Zimmerli says.
And, heartbreakingly for Zimmerli, hotlinks within stories to product pages had to be eliminated.
"It worked great at first. You could be reading along and click right to a product as you're thinking about it," she says. "But once the articles went to the archives, links
got broken and it was a mess. I thought it was a great idea, but it was one of the concessions I had to make. Not every great idea works out so great in practice."
From the Outside In
U S West developed its e-zines to communicate with media and customers, but it's turned out to be a valuable tool for internal purposes as well.
"Originally as I was watching our subscription numbers climb, I was afraid it was all U S West people signing up because they were supposed to or because they were curious,"
Zimmerli says. "But it turned out to be the opposite. Customers and competitors were signing up, but really not very many internal people did."
Since then, U S West has launched an initiative to increase internal use, and now front-line sales people are using it as a tool, she says.
Kay Zimmerli
U S West
503/425-3321
[email protected]