This document summarizes a company's experience hosting a hack-a-thon to address marketing challenges. The company wanted to transition to a global delivery model from a geo-centric one, improve campaign execution consistency, and develop a long-term customer journey-based marketing strategy. A hack-a-thon brought together various teams, exceeded time expectations, and identified opportunities to improve processes. Key lessons included the importance of organization, using actual processes to find flaws, and balancing strategic and tactical marketing globally and locally. As a result, several customer programs launched across geographies, CRM go-live was on track, and revenue attribution was completed.

1. Austin@________________

2. Hack-a-thons – Not just
for computer geeks!
Chris Pearson – Global Head of CRM: Sales & Marketing
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3. Agenda
• About hibu
• Marketing Challenges & Goals
• Why Host a Hack-a-thon?
• Outcomes & Lessons Learned
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4. 4

5. About hibu – What we do
• hibu helps communities
thrive by facilitating millions
of connections each year
between consumers who
want to find products or
services locally and the
merchants who provide
them.
• We help companies compete
in the digital world with a
broad range of marketing
and commerce solutions
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6. About hibu – Our Experience
• Over 80 years experience connecting
buyers and sellers
• Focus on hyper-local marketing
solutions for SME
• 1 million customers across the globe in the US,
UK, Spain, Argentina, Chile, Peru markets
• Digital & print suite of products
include:
• Online Display Ads
• Search Marketing
• Websites
• Yellowbook Print Directory
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7. Marketing Challenges &
Goals
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8. Areas of Concern
GEO-centric organization
• Transitioning to Global delivery
model
• Each GEO has their own GTM
Strategy and Technology (or lack
thereof)
“Batch & Blast”
• Prevalence of ad-hoc
communications across the
enterprise
Disparate skill sets
• ie: Certain GEOs had an Agency
model, others did not
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Global
Org
UK
US
Spain
LatAm

9. Areas of Opportunity
Customer Journey
Communication Strategy
• UK introduced the concept and
started to gain traction with Sales
Distributed content
development teams
• Hyper-local requires federated content
production
Increasing Customer Insights
• Business Intelligence & firmographic
data repository built for sales &
marketing teams
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10. Short Term Campaign Execution
Goals
Adoption
• Increase usage/expertise of the
platform across BUs
Consistency
• Uniformity of campaign build
processes & customer comms
BAU
• Support and deliver on only the
highest priority activities
• Based on performance and product
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11. Long Term Campaign Strategy
Goals
Customer Journeys
• Linked programs driving
measurable KPI’s
• Communications defined by
businesses life stage and
product
Multi-channel
• Expanding beyond email -
Display Ad, SMS, & Direct Mail
Segmentation
• Profile data + engagement
behavior
• Owning the “list” 11

12. Why Host a Hack-a-thon?
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13. Drivers
Lack of Progress
• Strategy team great at creating
plan
• Production team great at
supporting BAU
Skill Disparity
• No knowledge or experience
within the company on new
platform
Cost Avoidance
• Sunset existing systems per
contractual agreement
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14. Planning – Expectations & Goals
4 half-day workshops
• 2 days for creative
• 2 days for program work
Laser-focused Audience
• Only GEO Lead Campaign
Managers
Well Defined Scope
• 8 priority global campaigns to be
built
• All customer data & assets will be
ready to go
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15. What Really Happened
• 5 all-day sessions
• Mix of Strategy, Campaign
Execution, & Brand/Design
attendees
• Revamped design process
• Deep-dive into automation,
segmentation and reporting
capabilities
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16. Lessons Learned
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17. Lessons Learned
• Organization is key to
controlling chaos
• Nothing is better at identifying
bad processes than actually
attempting to follow a process
• Crawl, walk, run isn’t just a
cliché
• Modern Marketing is both
strategic and tactical, global
and local
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18. Where Are We Now?
• 6 Customer Programs
running for 3 different
GEOs
• 3 weeks away from CRM
Go-Live
• Revenue & campaign
attribution rules completed
• Detail-oriented attitude
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19. Thank You
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