The Sports Authority Engages Harte-Hanks for CRM

Harte-Hanks Inc announced that The Sports Authority, the largest full-line sporting goods retailer in the United States, has engaged Harte-Hanks to provide expanded customer relationship management (CRM) services. The Sports Authority will rely on the behavior-driven CRM solution of Harte-Hanks, Allink Agent where it will act as the hub of the retailer's real-time, multi-media customer contact strategy.

"Typically, time has been a disadvantage for brick-and-mortar retailers because it is very difficult to respond to customer interactions quickly enough to be effective. With Harte-Hanks on our team, we can now use time to our advantage," said Jeff Handler, senior vice president, marketing and advertising, at The Sports Authority, who cited the breadth of database, direct mail and on-demand expertise at Harte-Hanks were key to the retailer's selection. "Using Allink Agent's real-time analysis to power the print-on-demand and customer information services of Harte-Hanks, we can now contact both existing and new customers within days of their shopping in our stores."

During the recent holiday season, The Sports Authority ran a regional campaign that offered holiday shoppers an incentive to make additional purchases prior to December 25. The firm used Allink Agent to analyze daily point-of-sale (POS) transactions, leverage customer information resources, produce daily mail files, and facilitate print-on-demand and distribution services via a Harte-Hanks regional center.

"We were extremely impressed with how Allink Agent narrowed down the data and looked for very specific information, and then set the ball in motion," Handler said. "We were responding to customers within a week and our response rate was more than 10%, or three times the industry norm. And more than half of those responses were from consumers who previously were not in our database. We attribute much of this success to the Harte-Hanks team. I applaud the team's dedication as it pulled this all together for us in less than a month."

As a rules-based CRM application, Allink Agent centrally manages multi-channel acquisition, reactivation, cross-selling, and retention opportunities nearly instantaneously by integrating a customer's enterprise-wide activity to create a single view of the customer. Drawing on this enterprise-wide reach, companies can analyze all front-office interactions and back-office transactions, recognize significant events quickly, and respond much more quickly to sales opportunities. Unlike many traditional marketing campaigns that contact customers up to six weeks after a significant event, the solutions offered by Harte-Hanks enables retailers to initiate contact with their customers within moments of the customer's interaction.

"This dynamic engagement with a leading retailer really shows how we can leverage our spectrum of marketing services experience, our talented team of CRM specialists, and our wide range of CRM-related services to help a firm achieve great success," said Spencer Joyner, president, software and systems integration at Harte-Hanks. "We look forward to building a strong working relationship with The Sports Authority and to continue delivering prompt, actionable marketing solutions to the retail industry."

About The Sports Authority

The Sports Authority Inc, operates 198 full-line sporting goods superstores in 32 states across the United States. TheSportsAuthority.com Inc, which operates the Web site www.thesportsauthority.com, is a joint venture between Global Sports, Inc and The Sports Authority Inc. The Sports Authority Inc is a proud partner of Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the positive place for kids.

About Harte-Hanks

Harte-Hanks Inc, San Antonio, TX, is a worldwide, direct and interactive services company that provides end-to-end customer relationship management (CRM) and related solutions to a host of consumer and business-to-business marketers. Harte-Hanks and its CRM integrated solutions use technology as the enabler to capture, to analyze and to disseminate customer and prospect data at all points of contact. Its customer-centric models allow the company to be the overall solutions provider for driving traffic to a Web site, call/contact center, or brick-and-mortar location. With premier specialized offerings -- direct agency capabilities to on-demand services, Web page design to e-care, desktop database capabilities to systems integration, personalized mail to e-mail, software products to application service provider (ASP) solutions -- Harte-Hanks provides practical implementation of technology and understands the needs of clients and their customers to deliver best-of-breed solutions. Visit the Harte-Hanks Web site at www.harte-hanks.com or call 800-456-9748.

Contact Carla McClanahan, McCoin & Smith Communications LLC, 972-233-3895, mcclanahan@airmail.net.