In 2009 Telecom stopped all traditional advertising to their business customers. In its place they implemented a direct to customer programme called Business 360 (a quarterly customer communication).  The programme strategy sounded simple: a relevant and ongoing conversation with customers. But the execution of it was far from simple in an organisation built around product-driven targets and traditional marketing processes.

Success was achieved through a combination of factors:
- New ways of working internally that involve collaboration and trust
- Using customer data as a strategic tool, not a mailing list
- Customisation of messages like never seen before
- Continuous measurement and insight poured back into every edition.

The results have been extraordinary and Business 360 communication principles are being held up internally as the way forward for Marketing 2:0:

- Statistically significant reduction in churn of 1.79% after only a year
- Churn continued to reduce even throughout the XT outages when brand trust and preference scores were in rapid decline
- ROI of 736% - for every $1 invested, $7 is returned in retained revenue over a 12-month period
- Up to 1,428 possible variations of the communication based on combinations of value and offer messages and also regional variations.
- For the first time, Telecom was having a whole-of-business conversation with customers rather than a product-centric one.

The Business 360 programme proves that going back to basics of speaking regularly with your customers in a relevant way can be one of the biggest things you can do to reduce customer churn.

It sounds simple on paper.  But doing the simple things within a large, complex organisation is not simple at all.  Telecom triumphed over this with Business 360 and has now made significant progress towards reinventing their marketing model and the way they connect with customers.