Press Release: 12th May 2008
Green 4 power Mash Media’s communication with the exhibition world

Green 4 are delighted to announce that Mash Media has become their first user in the media sector of their integrated solution for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ecommunications.  Green 4 approached Mash Media after entering the media and events marketplace back in December 2007. Being the leading publisher of magazines and directories for the exhibition, event and conference industry, Mash Media’s publications provide listings for all current exhibitions worldwide, databases of suppliers to the conference and exhibition world, analysis of the latest news and trends and much more.

Before talking to Green 4, Mash Media had an extremely disparate data situation. They used Maximiser, a contact management system, which was the main system used for their sales process. A system called Oak was in place to manage all their subscriptions and also Sage accounting package. They also had scattered Excel Spreadsheets containing data about their subscriptions and apart from that, everything was paper based from production through to invoicing.

At the heart of Green 4’s CRM solution is Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a market leading solution that has thousands of installations worldwide. Green 4 have taken this platform and developed it to cater for various data feeds so that data can be help in one central repository, giving a single, centralized view of all customer details and interactions. For Mash Media, this means that they will be able to integrate all their existing transactional systems into Microsoft CRM.

The system will replace Maximiser and so Mash Media’s sales team will have be able to use the rich sales process functionality contained in Dynamics CRM. The system is deployed as an extension to Outlook which is a huge benefit when using the solution as a sales process tool.  This brings CRM functionality directly into Outlook so that CRM contacts and Accounts appear in the user’s address book, in addition email can be tracked in CRM from within Outlook. Users can also use their calendar to schedule appointments, with the ability to synchronize this with CRM. Using the inbuilt workflow tools you can generate tasks that can be useful for follow up activities.

The system provided by Green 4 will hold all the details of companies and individuals who have bought adverts in certain publications and will also manage the database of subscriptions which will make marketing and profiling this data much easier. Mash Media will quickly be able to run reports for ABC to monitor subscription levels.

With the data in place, Mash Media will be able to use the integrated ecommunications tools to promote their magazines, directories and related events to targeted, profiled audiences. They will have the relevant knowledge about subscribers of certain publication so will therefore be able to use the segmentation tools to created audiences for specific campaigns. Green 4 will work with Mash Media to create reusable, branded email templates, uploads these into CRM so that Mash can simply select which template they would like to use and populate the template with content and images by uploading this straight into CRM.