Update about Marketing Activities in 2nd Half of 2017

LibreOffice has turned seven on September 28, 2017. When we launched our first press release on September 28, 2010, our entire mailing list was quite small: 200 recipients gathered from different sources with journalists and media contacts from all over the world.

During these seven years, my main task has been media relations. One of the most important objectives has been the improvement of the mailing lists, both in terms of quantity and quality.

Today, after seven years, the size of the database has changed dramatically, as we have almost 19,000 email address in our mailing lists, which are targeted based on country, platform (desktop, iOS, Android, mobile, cloud) and focus (security and reviews). In 2017, we have started to target industry analysts, but this list is far from being complete.

Based on geography, we have 6 global lists (journalists, analysts, teams), 70 lists for Europe, 30 lists for the Americas, 5 lists for Pacific, 21 lists for Africa, 18 lists for Asia Middle East, 17 lists for Asia, and 24 lists for Asia Far East. In addition, around 5,000 records are updated and 2,500 are added each year.

Lists are global by country, plus each country – when possible – has a specific list of people who opened a previous press release. Thanks to this targeted database, we have a hit rate around 30%, twice as much as the global PR industry.

For major announcements, individual emails are sent to friendly journalists with a specific angle. I am connected to over 2,000 journalists via LinkedIn, and I have regular contacts with many of them.

Of course, taking care of mailing lists would not be enough without a monthly average of 50 personal contacts with editors, via email and/or phone, and over 100 answers to specific requests (pictures, statistics, review related questions and other info about TDF and LibreOffice).

Another project I have been working at is the production of basic slide decks on different subjects, which can be used by community members to create their own slide decks for presentations. At the moment I am working at updating the following slide decks: Project History & Background, LibreOffice & Competitive Presentation, Document Standards & Open Document Format, Advantages of ODF vs OOXML, Migration Protocol & Training Protocol, plus Useful Slides for Presentations. I also have less organized slides about Digital Citizenship, or the relationship between Technology and Individual Freedom of Choice.

Community members are warmly invited to send me an email to check if I have something which can help them to add some beef to their presentations. In fact, in some cases I test slide decks – adding new angles and concepts – in front of small audiences, before releasing them “officially” on the wiki.

Looking forward, I plan to bring analyst relations up to speed (as media), and improve community-focused activities, supporting the organization of local events and participate when it makes sense budget wise. I would also like to facilitate NLP (native language projects) involvement in the project, helping the integration of local communities within TDF and fostering their growth when they are small or even completely missing.