Mittelbayerischer Zeitung GmbH (MBZ) is the largest media company in the area around Regensburg, Germany. In addition to various news products on the web and print, the company also offers a variety of online platforms and services for citizens in Eastern Bavaria. The lead publication is Mittelbayerische Zeitung newspaper. Since October 2021, the “Mittelbayerische Zeitung” has been part of the “Passauer Neue Presse” publishing group, making it one of the region’s highest-circulation newspapers.
Mittelbayerischer Zeitung prides itself for on-time delivery of its print newspaper, arriving at doorsteps before 6:00 a.m. in the morning. However, when timely delivery is interrupted for various reasons, the publisher immediately sees an increase in customer service calls. Aside from related costs for call processing, late or non-deliveries can lower customer satisfaction and in the worst case, lead to churn and canceled subscriptions.
Addressing the issue, MBZ was looking to notify subscribers immediately upon service outages via email, replete with complimentary access to the digital version of the newspaper. In the big picture, the publisher wanted to increase awareness of the ePaper, while using behavioral data from the campaign for creating targeted upsell offers such as combined print and digital subscription. Most of all, the campaign aimed to reduce churn while raising customer satisfaction among readers.
Working with Selligent has helped us bridge the gap between delivering a quality customer experience with our print publications and in our digital customer service. Plus, we get to collect survey data from known customers to help us further optimize our offering as we move forward.
Andrea Ettl
CRM Manager, MBZ
By connecting Selligent to the in-house SAP system, MBZ was able to trigger a logistics alert when a delivery subscription alert occurred. Affected customers now receive an email alert, featuring an invite to read the day’s paper free of charge in the ePaper app.
As a next step, in cases where predictable service interruptions occur, but the customer’s email remains unknown, the publisher sends a postal letter featuring a voucher code for the ePaper, redeemed on a Selligent landing page. Bringing the initiative full circle, customers are invited to opt into marketing and share personal details, including email addresses, as the basis for automated follow-up with upsell offers sent via Selligent.
To highlight this customer-centric approach and further enhance satisfaction, the customer care initiative is also featured prominently in multi-page advertisements in the print edition. Each click for reading the ePaper is captured in Selligent’s consumer profile as interest in digital reading. And customers who click several times and who opt in are offered an upgrade to a combined print/digital subscription.
The omnichannel integration between online and offline customer care creates a virtuous cycle for gaining rich first-party customer intelligence. “By collecting additional email addresses from subscribers previously unregistered for marketing, we are able to learn more about our readers and their interests, so we can offer more personalized and targeted content at every step,” said Andrea Ettl, CRM Manager for MBZ.
As a subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media and part of BurdaVerlag, BurdaDirect is a full-service agency for consumer dialogue, consumer data, and CRM processes in the publishing industry. Based in Germany, the agency has been a proud partner of Selligent since 2013. With a long history in customer loyalty and customer activation, BurdaDirect also supports customers with integrated data management and cross-media campaigns which are consistently personalized along the customer lifecycle.
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