CitySmart using CRM as an accelerator for change

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, Brisbane City Council; Hon. Ian Macfarlane MP, Minister for Industry and Science; Tony Rees, CitySmart Chairman

CitySmart, Brisbane City Council’s sustainability agency, is using SugarCRM to underpin its major business initiatives, from energy efficiency programs, business networking events and community sustainability initiatives.

Starting the conversation

Initially it was a case of ‘right place, right time’ when Evolution Marketing began working with CitySmart.

It started with a call for support from CitySmart to help with the launch of its Watt Savers energy efficiency program.

Crunch time had arrived in late 2014 with CitySmart set to launch Watt Savers, a program designed to help Brisbane SMEs understand, quantify and reduce their energy use.

CitySmart found itself without a SugarCRM partner and problems with the Watt Savers custom built CRM module which read participants’ energy consumption data.

As a SugarCRM certified partner and a Brisbane-based business, Evolution Marketing got the call to help CitySmart fix the problems and launch Watt Savers on time and on budget.

 Sugar introduced us and we started from there.

Our task was to integrate regular data feeds from Energex so CitySmart where able to monitor the energy consumption behaviour for each of the Watt Savers participants. 

Projects that require specialist integration with CRM is something we’ve had a lot success helping clients with.

It’s an area that often enables businesses to be very innovative and provides them a lot of value, so we were very pleased to get involved.

Watt Savers demonstrates the power of CRM being able to integrate data from sources outside the business with data contained in the business to get better understanding of customer behaviour.

As a result of the integration CitySmart were able to demonstrate a 4% reduction in energy consumption for the programs participants.

Understanding business objectives

As Brisbane’s sustainability agency, CitySmart’s mission is to deliver sustainability projects that create outcomes for businesses, households, its corporate partners and the city of Brisbane.

CitySmart is currently delivering $25 million worth of projects, with another $290 million of projects currently in development, all designed to contribute to Brisbane’s economic growth and reduce the city’s environmental footprint.

Dan Hayes, Marketing Manager, CitySmart said the agency was really happy with the work ethic and outcomes of the Evolution team for Watt Savers.

 Their attention to detail helped pick up the intricate issues associated with the meter files.

When our digital agency was looking for a SugarCRM team to partner with to implement our Reduce Your Juice program, I didn’t hesitate in introducing them to Evolution Marketing

Reduce Your Juice is an innovative behaviour change program designed by CitySmart to reach low-income earners and change their behaviour to consume less energy and save money.

The pilot program was to engage 1,000 participants aged 18-35 renting a home in the Brisbane, Logan, Moreton Bay or Redlands council areas to save energy.

Participants downloaded an app via the Google Play or Apple App store and then played three different mini-games over six weeks.

To support the mini-games, there was a program of activities and messages to help participants learn how to reduce their electricity bills.

It required CRM integration, Marketing Automation and Game Analytics – to be delivered over a six week period.

Continuing the conversation

Evolution Marketing took the work of CitySmart’s digital agency, who had developed the creative, web application and game apps, and completed the complex integration and end to end automation for Reduce Your Juice systems.

 From a CRM perspective, all the signups to the program were tracked in CRM, all the marketing material that was then sent to the users via email and SMS was sent from an integrated Marketing Automation platform.

All the behavioural data of how long users played the game was then integrated back into CRM and then triggered related campaigns automatically

For example if a user downloaded the game but had spent less than five minutes playing it they were sent a special series of email and SMS communications.

Dan said from CitySmart’s perspective, Evolution Marketing’s willingness to work collaboratively to problem solve really made them stand out.

 With Reduce Your Juice program being built from scratch like a start-up, Evolution Marketing provided solid logic and reasoning to help us form a solution.

They were flexible to work with us through when we weren’t 100% sure on what the solution would be.

I have found the team – especially Laurent, who led the project for Evolution Marketing – to be committed to helping City Smart achieve our goals.

When the heat was on nothing was ever too much trouble and they were very patient.  The team went above and beyond the call to liaise with their development team to ensure our objectives were met. 

Ben and Darren have been really helpful for more strategic issues.  The Evolution Marketing team are extremely good at building trust, relationship and rapport – we know we can depend on them. 

Partnering for success

Following the success of the Watt Savers and Reduce Your Juice projects, CitySmart realised they could work further with Evolution to establish further best practices across their IT infrastructure.

CitySmart want to use SugarCRM more effectively internally, as well as integrating Act-On marketing automation software for their email campaigns.

“They are already getting some pretty astounding results – something like 90% open rates for the Reduce Your Juice campaign for example. 

What started as a simple client-supplier relationship has now evolved to a formal partnership between Evolution Marketing and CitySmart.

Partnering for Success - Darren Flood –Managing Director of Evolution Marketing & Chair of Brisbane City Council's Environment, Parks and Sustainability Committee Councillor Matthew Bourke
Darren Flood –Managing Director of Evolution Marketing & Chair of Brisbane City Council’s Environment, Parks and Sustainability Committee Councillor Matthew Bourke
We are now working with CitySmart to implement a technology platform to provide a completely Integrated CRM and marketing automation solution.

As we demonstrated with Watt Savers and Reduce Your Juice, the keys to success is to allow businesses to harness and manage the data coming out of a range of complementary technology products.

Many of these are powerful on their own, but when integrated so that they work seamlessly together the whole is greater and a lot more powerful than the sum of their parts.

No single technology can win out any more. Today, it’s about being wherever customers are, giving them relevant messages, delivering on your promises, ensuring each interaction is connected to the next and delivering a great customer experience.

CitySmart are a very innovative and agile organisation leading the Brisbane business community into more innovative and sustainable business practices.

Brisbane is a unique market where business innovation is a key driver. It’s also a very Brisbane thing to work through collaborative partnerships and networks.

The city is leading the charge nationally towards being a sustainable 21st century city and that will be achieved by businesses working together in partnership.

Through our relationship with CitySmart we look forward to helping other Brisbane based organisations achieve high value outcomes through centralising, integrating and automating their CRM and marketing processes in innovative ways.