Gannett marketing operations grows digital subscriber base with Asana

Highlights

Challenge

• When Gannett brought campaign production in-house from an external agency, the Marketing Operations team could initially handle 50 to 70 campaigns per month across 200 markets.

• Their goal was to find operating efficiencies to scale up the number of campaigns with the same resources.  With information spread across apps, it was challenging to set timelines, track campaign progression from start to finish, and measure how resources were being used.

Solution

• Marketing Operations brought campaign work into Asana. 

• Instead of using a mix of emails and software platforms, Asana gave them a central place to collaborate where they could see all projects in flight.

Outcome

• Increased campaign execution to 120-150 per month via operating efficiencies—2.4 times the initial capacity of 50-70 campaigns per month.

• Saved 389 workdays—1.5 years’ worth of full-time work—by centralizing communication and automating steps in Asana.

• Used Asana reporting to quantify team performance and individual workloads to identify automation opportunities and strategically invest resources.

Having one centralized ecosystem that brings all doers and stakeholders together has really accelerated our understanding of the work we do and the speed in which we do it. ”

Seamlessly scaling campaign workflows

Gannett’s Marketing Operations team now manages 120-150 campaigns per month. By managing campaign execution in Asana, the team moves faster with standardized best practices, streamlined workflows, and quick access to important campaign data.

Streamlining and executing campaigns at scale

Today, Asana is the official platform Gannett’s marketing team uses for end-to-end campaign management. This creates a single source of truth for all campaign work, which helps the team optimize workflows and move faster, together.  

Clear processes keep work on track

• The Marketing Operations team standardized best practices by creating templates for their most frequently run campaigns. This gives them pre-vetted workflows they can kick off with one click. 

• Asana projects map out dependencies so the sequence of work is clear. When the team wants to iterate on a template or create a new one, they use workflow builder to visualize how a project will move through phases.

Automations help marketers move faster

• The team uses forms to speed up request management.

• The team also uses rules to automate steps like routing requests, scheduling due dates, and assigning tasks.

Improved visibility aligns campaign stakeholders

• Stakeholders are added to the Asana project as collaborators, giving them visibility into campaign plans, status, and discussions. This transparency has strengthened the partnership between Marketing Operations and the rest of the organization.

• To keep information about a campaign in one place, the Marketing Operations team attaches documents to tasks instead of emailing them. They also use the Asana for Outlook integration to attach emails to a task as a comment, making sure conversations don’t get lost.

The team tracks additional metadata about campaigns with custom fields—for example, to indicate which sub-team is responsible for certain tasks.

Whether a campaign has a 3-day or 30-day turnaround, tracking many different types of projects in one unified ecosystem has been tremendously helpful for us.”

Spotting blockers and keeping campaign work on track

Now, centralized information helps the Marketing Operations team zoom out, report on their performance, and spot opportunities to be more productive. With all data in Asana, the team gained an understanding of how they operate and where they can improve—empowering them to make shifts that more than doubled their productivity.

Efficient reporting helps teams adjust quickly

• Leaders and team members can see a high-level view of work with Asana portfolios, which group campaigns by type, such as channel. Within portfolios, marketers assess and communicate campaign status on a monthly and quarterly basis.

• To understand campaign request volume, the Marketing Operations team uses reporting dashboards and a “campaign request” project, which shows the number and type of requests received from business partners.

• The team can run specific reports across all campaigns using custom field data. 

Insight into team workloads improves resource management

• Asana’s workload feature lets leaders see team capacity and individual teammates’ workloads in real time.

• That means leadership can measure individual bandwidth, see where teams lack resources, and notice where projects get stuck—then make calculated decisions about where to invest in growth or automate a process.

The ability to democratize information in Asana, rather than silo it, has enabled conversations about why we work the way we do — and has been crucial to our growth.”

Increasing reach, increasing connections

As Gannett grows its digital subscriber base and optimizes its print business, the Marketing Operations team will continue running campaigns in Asana to bring them closer to their quarterly and annual subscriber goals. 

What was built in Asana yesterday is never permanent, so marketing can continue to iterate on processes and find powerful new ways to connect with subscribers. Gannett's reach is already unmatched. By transitioning campaign work into Asana, Marketing Operations is ensuring the continued success of Gannett’s mission to strengthen communities on a local and national scale.