Inside Atlas 2021: Marketing & Sales

Virginia Beach, VA — We all experienced changes over the past year plus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our marketing efforts were no different! We generally focus on building community and have traditionally devoted much of our marketing to foster face-to-face interactions on-premise and at conferences. The past year provided us an opportunity to improve other ways to communicate with our customers and prospects.

Marketing

The marketing focus for this year was to update messaging to reflect the current environment and trends in the marketplace; enhance communication channels to connect with the market remotely; and realign our sponsorships with Atlas’ values and contribute more significantly to the organizations we support.

We updated our website with a focus to better describe company news, product updates, service descriptions, and training events. We implemented a “Company News and Announcements” blog while also reorganizing information to hopefully provide an easier path to discover documentation and archival resources. For more timely messaging, we are also more consistently posting announcements through our social media channels.

Since we all weren’t able to meet at conferences, our Operations and Events team successfully implemented new ways reinvent the experience virtually. For Atlas hosted meetings, we were able to use new platforms that allowed for serendipitous conversations within our communities. o retain the spirit of these events, we implemented online requests for the promotional items we often distribute at conferences and shipped orders directly to our customers during online events.

In addition to sponsoring the virtual conferences within the community, we also reallocated travel funds to further sponsor professional development. These sponsorships include:

• ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership program to host two cohort sites

• Council of State Archivists (CoSA) “In Conversation With…” educational webinar series

• Distinguished Achievement in Access Services Award

• RUSA Stars Publication Award

• TEACHx Symposium - hosted by Northwestern University with the focus on innovative experiments in teaching and learning.

Sales

With much of our sales efforts moving into the virtual environment, we were able to invite greater participation of experts from our Training & Library Solutions (TLS), ITS, and Development to meet with customers. The scheduling flexibility inherent in virtual meetings has proven beneficial enabling broader participation and better communication.

Entering the year, there were many questions about end-user needs, budgets, and more. All things considered, we are very pleased with number of new licenses signed over the past year. By the numbers, we added

• 8 new Aeon licenses

• 2 new Ares licenses

• 13 new ArchivesSpace hosting licenses

  • 7 included Implementation Services

  • 6 included Data Migration Services

• 9 new Access Services Concierge licenses

• 3 new Aeon Concierge licenses

• 27 Additional training, custom, and development services projects

Looking Ahead

We are better prepared for 2022, whether we we continue to meet virtually or return to in-person visits. Our best marketing continues to be the personal interactions we have with our customers. We are gratified by the customers and prospects who inquire about our services based on past support, presentations, and the information that we provide. We remain committed to enhancing our communication and building our relationships within our community now and in the future.