Correos is the Spanish public company which until recently held the monopoly for postal services in Spain, a market that was completely liberalized in 2011, in line with a process promoted in the entire Union by the European Parliament. Even so, Correos remains the main operator in Spain, having started a gradual but constant process of modernization, repositioning and updating in the last decade.

About a year ago, the company’s Marketing managers decided to carry out a project, following the sales strategy for new products and parcel services, to increase web site traffic and boost e-commerce trade, which are sales on the Internet.

The process has involved, at first, breaking a series of internal barriers in an organization that is still quite traditional, with a strong inertia (nearly

three centuries of history), an important number of employees (more than 60,000) and a business model based on paper.

A changing organizationThe letter and parcel market has declined for some years since the emergence of the digital world, emails and social networks. The new products currently offered by the company (personalized stamps, urgent parcels or the sending of registered faxes with digital certificates by email, to name a few) are not very well known by clients and the market share in the parcels market in Spain is only 7.5%.

The Correos Group has several specialized companies in different sectors at its disposal (Correos for letters, Correos Telecom for telecommunications, Chronoexpres for urgent

How can you develop and strengthen, in a short space of time, the digital positioning of an historic Spanish company such as Correos? How can you transfer a technological and innovative image, close to customer needs, by boosting a 2.0 digital identity linked to the revitalization and the repositioning of the brand?

Reinventing the postal system: how to build the online positioning of a paper company

Brand

Strategy DocumentsC09/2011

Cases

Document prepared by Corporate Excellence with reference to, among other sources, the intervention of Alfonso Prieto (Manager of the Sales and Networks Area at Correos) and Salvador Suarez (Partner at Territorio Creativo) during the conference “Reinventing Correos: online positioning of a paper company” organized by the EOI Business School on 3r November 2011 in Madrid.

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Reinventing the postal system: how to build the online positioning of a paper company

parcels or Exea for large-scale printing) and bases itself on 4 fundamental pillars:

1. Postal market: in decline.2. Telematic notifications: growing.3. Direct marketing: strong competition.4. Parcels: strong competition.

Within the framework of the 2011-2014 business plan, the Spanish public company decided, as explained by Alfonso Prieto, Manager of the Sales and Online Area at Correos, to gather its 300 middle and senior managers (members of the Board) to present the new online strategy and find out what were the main obstacles, the main internal resistance to this strategic change. Some of them were as follows:

Possible problems with unions.•

A need and opportunity to be active online.•

How to interact and engage with clients online.•

Reception and management of criticism •outside traditional channels.

Comparison of other public companies •within the sector that were online.

An important change with clear objectivesWhat were the main objectives initially posed by Correos a year ago when it launched the project?

They were mainly these:

Reposition the brand, revitalize it.•

Steer traffic towards the web page.•

Cultivate loyalty through social networks.•

Create the virtual community.•

Publicize new services.•

Listen and speak to clients.•

The plan principally followed 6 consecutive phases:

1. Plan: following the objectives outlined above.2. Analyze: the situation of Correos in the web,

department by department.3. Define: the digital strategy and the online

communication to develop.4. Introduce: the management of communities to

link up.5. Launch: special actions to stimulate

communities.6. Grow: the increase of interactions with the

brand and the business.

In the opinion of the Sales and Online Area Manager, without the drive from the Chief Executive of the company, it would have been impossible to bridge the gap and make Correos a wholly digital brand. The first steps consisted in analyzing the sales and digital

communication structure, defining specific plans for each of the digital platforms and communities in the web, according to the media type (owned, paid or earned) and using SEO (natural) and SEM (sponsored) positioning tactics.

A blog was created for Correos about e-commerce in which different elements of online commerce were discussed: marketing, usability, after-sales relationship, legal and logistic aspects. Also, the first report in Spain about the state of commerce within social networks was launched to gauge how Spanish companies make use of the opportunities that this business channel offers, as explained by Salvador Suarez, Partner at Territorio Creativo, the digital consultant that helped Correos design and launch the project.

One of the more prominent dynamization actions was the one developed at the OMExpo (Online Marketing Expo) 2011 in Madrid with the launch of the “I won’t follow you any more” video, in which a post box chases pedestrians asking them to follow him online.

The video reflects something that Suarez insists on: the need to achieve ‘engagement’, the link of the brand with the consumer.

‘Engagement’, the new AdvertisingBrands that don’t bond with their communities will disappear. The management of the Brand Community is gaining ground against traditional Corporate Communication or Advertising itself. ‘Engagement’ with the user, with the client, is the new Advertising.

And to achieve this, it is essential to have a regular relationship with communities, on a daily basis, based on what we already know as ‘Community Management’, but also on special stimulation or dynamization actions. Dynamize and vertebrate are the two keys that succeed in generating a qualified community around a brand which allows it to converse, respond, link, listen

‘Brands that see the

web as an opportunity

to repeat their

traditional advertising

actions only gain fans in

the short-term and

attacks in the medium

and long-term.’

Two pillars to grow a strong community

Source: Territorio Creativo, 2011.

Dyn

amiz

e

Vertebrate

PR

2.0

Converse

Listen

Re-tweetLink

No. of fans

Read

Reply

Mark as favoriteCreate profiles on social networks

Tools set-up

Dis

coun

ts

Com

peti

tion

Cam

paig

n

Pres

ents

Publ

ish

Prom

ote

Follo

win

g Pr

oact

ive

Dev

elop

app

licat

ions

Generate content

Face

book

adv

erts

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Reinventing the postal system: how to build the online positioning of a paper company

and create the content that these communities demand from brands.

One can vertebrate without dynamizing, but one must never dynamize without vertebrating. Brands that see the web as an opportunity to repeat their traditional advertising actions to gain followers, without giving meaning and structure to the community, only gain fans in the short-term which, sooner or later, will stop following the brand and, in some cases, in the medium and long-term, will end up criticizing, or even attacking it.

In the Correos project, an analysis was carried out of how the presence of the brand in social networks affected each department, what “being online” in a proactive and permanent way meant for Customer Care and Loyalty, for Advertising, for Sales, Business Development or Communication.

Overcoming the online/offline dichotomyThe key to managing links or ‘engagement’ is not online or offline, it is both of these at the same time. The capacity of brand followers or fans to link with it via interactions (vitality) or references (influence) is something that has always happened and still happens in real life, although now it happens in virtual life in a different way because the means, the channels and, therefore, the tone and development of the conversation are different.

But the essence remains the same. Indeed, the conversation with the brand communities does not begin or end in the web or outside it, but can start in one place, continue in another and return to the first place: the traffic is both ways, but always in the same direction, the link of brand community through content.

For this reason, the strategy must be global, as is the case with Correos; so that the success online can be reasonably converted into the offline world, so that the attraction of traffic in the digital world translates into concrete results in the real world. Ultimately,

from networks and forums to the web, and from the web to the point of sale, because ‘social media’ is not an independent channel, but forms part of the online environment as a whole, and this, in turn, forms part of the company’s Brand, -Marketing and Communication strategy.

Finally, a fundamental factor is the capacity that a brand such as Correos has in making users recommend other users to become members (MGM, Member Gets Member), occasionally troubleshoot problems with other members, or even publicly congratulate or thank the brand for its good service or efficiency in solving a problem.

Twitter, especially, is consolidating itself, in this sense, as a platform that, on many occasions, is substituting the traditional Customer Care service (the Twitter user is especially consumer orientated, according to the majority of studies), as well as on a corporate level it is substituting the traditional channels such as telephones and emails when using them with the media.

Conclusion: the importance of the CEO’s supportIf there is one essential lesson to be learned it is the importance of involving all departments within an organization, but also, and primarily, the importance of its maximum executive to drive and realize such a strategic project as this one, especially in an historically traditional organization like Correos.

Other important aspects to reinvent the brand were the correct selection of the platforms in which to converse, understand the cultural change that the process entails, the speed of the new channel when gaining clients, the importance of quality and community interest contents and the optimization of the channel for the Customer Service.

Community Management by KPIs

Source: Genbeta Social media, 2011.

-Backweets to URLs- Backlinks-Results-Clicks

- Commentaries: blogs and forums

- Commentaries: I like it (Facebook) and favorites

- @: Mentions on Twitter

Influencia (referencias)

Size (fans)

Vitality(interactions)

Activity (traffic)

-Pages seen-Unique visitors-Rebound rate-Permanence times

-Users-RSS subscriptors-Followers on Twitter-Fans in Facebook-Friends in other 2.0

‘The con-versation with the

brand com-munities does not begin or

end in the web or

outside it, but starts in

one place, continues

in another and returns to the first

place.’

©2011, Corporate Excellence - Centre for Reputation Leadership Business foundation created by large companies to professionalize the management of intangible assets and contribute to the development of strong brands, with good reputation and able to compete in the global market. Its mission is to be the driver which leads and consolidates the professional management of reputation as a strategic resource that guides and creates value for companies throughout the world.

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