Case study: University of Antwerp
Smart.pr has been available in Belgium since 2019. In addition to the online software that made us market leader in the Netherlands, we also provide a database with more than 4,000 Belgian journalists. One of the very first customers was the University of Antwerp. Curious about their experience, we visited Peter De Meyer, their spokesperson. What followed was a lively conversation about public relations, software-and underwear...
CAN YOU TELL US BRIEFLY ABOUT YOUR WORK?
After eight exciting years in newspaper journalism, I moved "to the other side" in 2010 and started working as Press Officer at the University of Antwerp. Soon after, I also took on the role of spokesperson.
As spokesperson, my goal is to get the mountain of information out via the right channels and reach the right audience. That includes social media, but certainly also through press releases. Traditional media remains very important, and press releases are still one of the key ways to get news to the right people.
As a higher education institution, it's important for the University of Antwerp to be visible. Alongside education, we also conduct scientific research, and we want to share those results with the outside world. That's what I work on every day.
HOW DID YOU MANAGE YOUR PRESS RELATIONSHIPS BEFORE USING SMART.PR?
Before Smart.pr, we worked with Outlook and Excel. The biggest problem was that Outlook required a lot of manual work. That was often a source of frustration.
We also kept press lists in Excel, but they quickly became disorganized. There was never enough time to update them or invest in searching for new contacts. These lists had been compiled over the years, but there was never really a policy behind them.
HOW DOES THAT WORK NOW?
Smart.pr is now our back office. We imported all our lists into the Smart.pr address book. They're now stored safely and neatly organized. What's more, part of those contacts are automatically kept up to date by Smart.pr. That saves us a lot of work.
With Smart.pr, we also have insight into bounced emails. Before, these weren't visible right away-or we'd receive 20 or 30 bounce notifications in our inbox, without the time to replace the addresses.
The media world is constantly changing. Journalists change jobs faster than their underwear, so keeping up manually is almost impossible.
HOW DID YOU SEND PRESS RELEASES BEFORE?
We used to send press releases via "regular email." In other words, we would send them from Outlook, without much formatting. It was difficult to design a professional-looking release in Outlook, let alone include photos or videos. For the university, it's important that our communications look professional and polished. The Smart.pr software helps us with this.
HOW DOES SMART.PR HELP WITH THAT?
With Smart.pr, creating a press release is much less error-prone, it takes less time, and the result looks much better.
We can also add photos and short videos. That adds real value to our press releases, and it's fun as well. If you send a good photo, the media will often use it directly. That works to our advantage and allows us to influence our image.
Our goal now is to distribute as effectively as possible, whereas before it was more about "sending something out because we had to."
With the campaign data, we can make better decisions. For example, we use the stats to decide whether or not a certain topic is worth sending out. Before, that was purely based on gut feeling. Now we can also identify trends, like in which periods press releases are opened more often.
HOW DO YOU LIKE WORKING WITH OUR JOURNALIST DATABASE?
We can now reach very specific journalists. In addition to science and culture, we can generate attention for specialized topics, such as animal rights and animal welfare. For example, we found 106 journalists in Persfilter who write about animal welfare. In the past, we would never have found many of them.
We also have access to journalists' personal inboxes, not just generic newsroom addresses. Another example: for a publication on heritage (statues and old paintings), I personally don't know any journalists covering conservation techniques. But in Smart.pr, I immediately found 28 who do. Our release was picked up right away by a specialized Dutch website.
With Smart.pr, we now have a much broader range of journalists we can reach. In our old workflow, we had solid reach among Flemish journalists, but now we've expanded to Dutch journalists as well. That's a big step forward, and for us very valuable because many Dutch students come to Antwerp. The extra reach in Dutch media is fantastic.
WOULD YOU RECOMMEND SMART.PR TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS?
Absolutely. The software makes drafting and sending press releases to the right people much easier. When, like us at the University of Antwerp, you're sending press releases on a wide variety of topics, you can really benefit from the countless keywords in the journalist database.