Speaking Sensis

Back in November, Speaking Sensis profiled Connie Barbagallo, who had recently joined Sensis’ Sustainability team as a trainer under the WPC Group’s GreenSkills initiative.

After contributing mightily to the production and distribution of Sensis’ new small business guide – Small Business Big Opportunity: Sustainability – Connie’s time with Sensis hit a really exciting high last week.

Last Thursday, Connie (pictured on the left with teammate Dina Karamaloudis) and Sensis were awarded the Best Employer and Employee for green initiatives at the WPC Graduation night. This award is a really clear endorsement for Connie’s contribution to our sustainability commitment.

Congratulations Connie and all the best for your future at Sensis.

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Every August, Telstra reports its annual financial results for the financial year to June (FY10). And that, of course, means Sensis reports as well. So I’m pleased to use this opportunity to give you a brief rundown of our FY10 performance.

First, I’m pleased to say that Sensis has delivered growth (adjusted) in what has been a very challenging year.

On an adjusted basis, Sensis’ EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation) grew by 2.4% to $1.21 billion. This was based on revenue of $2.19 billion (up 1.0%) and expenses pre depreciation and amortisation of $982m (down 0.6%).

I should explain what we mean by ‘adjusted’. During the year, a number of extraordinary items impacted our financial position. These were the transfer of Trading Post to Telstra, the sale of Universal Publishers, the acquisition two businesses in China and the impact of the falling Australian dollar on our China revenue. All of these items have a ‘one off’ impact on our FY10 results. To get to an ‘apples with apples’ comparison between this year and last year, we need to adjust for the impact of these one-off items.

Digging a bit deeper, I found four things really encouraging about our FY10 performance.

A solid performance in a tough year for SMEs and the advertising industry
The first is that Sensis was able to grow in a very tough year. We were operating in markets that were heavily affected by the global financial crisis – both in Australia and China.

Throughout the 2009 calendar year the Australian main media market experienced what may have been the largest decline in its history. The overall market (including online) declined by 8% for the year, while print media specifically declined by 13%(1). In contrast, our Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print revenue declined by 5.1%: a strong result considering that almost all this revenue was earned during the 2009 calendar year.

At the same time, Australia’s SMEs (who make up the bulk of our customer base) registered some of the lowest confidence levels in the history of the Sensis Business Index during this period. And, while confidence has partially recovered, it is still very patchy.

SME perceptions of the economy fell from +50% (i.e. more SMEs with a positive perception) in late 2007 to -72% in early 2009, when the Yellow Pages® FY10 metro canvass was being sold. Perceptions rose in late 2009 (Yellow Pages® non metro canvass), before falling again in May this year: from +24% to -1% in just one quarter(2).

Yellow Pages® remains the growth engine for Australian SMEs… now and into the future
The second notable element of this year’s result was the continued strength of Yellow Pages®.

Yellow Pages® sole focus is on driving sales leads to hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses, most of which are small to medium enterprises. And while this core purpose hasn’t changed, the way we deliver leads has evolved enormously.

These days, Yellow Pages® is much more than print. It’s evolved into a multi-platform lead generation network. Yellow Pages® advertisers can now be searched for through Yellow Pages print, online, online, mobile, iPad and T-Hub. That’s over 14m visits by potential buyers a week(3), with about 70% of searches resulting in the buyer contacting a business.

Those same advertisers can also be searched for through our Whereis® and voice services, like 1234. That’s another 2.3m visits a week(4). And third party sites through which Yellow Pages® can be searched (like Google Maps and Bing Maps) receive many more potential visits every week.

It’s the diversity of this network that gives Yellow Pages® advertisers the edge over their competitors. Through just one company, our business customers can be searched for in print, online, voice and mobile: in directories, general and local search engines and mapping sites.

And there’s a lot more to come, so stay tuned.

Digital is leading the way forward. Our digital innovations are kicking goals.
It’s also been a great year for innovation, particularly in digital media. In fact, digital now accounts for 20% of our Australian revenue, which makes digital a major player for Sensis and the key growth engine moving forward.

The undoubted highlight has been the performance of our mobile services. Sensis’ total mobile usage grew by 80% to 3 million visits per month (15% of total digital usage)(5). Within that, we saw some fantastic growth from our new innovations. The White Pages® Mobile site grew from nothing to 410,000 monthly visits in less than a year, while our Yellow Pages® and White Pages® iPhone apps grew from nothing to almost 600,000 monthly visits in even less time. Even now, months after their launch, the Yellow Pages® and White Pages® iPhone apps are the fifth and seventh most popular free Lifestyle apps in Apple’s AppStore(6). Meanwhile, our more established mobile sites maintained strong growth, with Whereis® Mobile up 43% to 950,000 monthly visits and Yellow Pages® Mobile (not including iPhone app usage) up 56% to 560,000 monthly visits.

We’ve also been able to make very significant improvements to our online sites. We’ve made substantial upgrades to almost all our sites, designed to improve your ability to search our advertiser base and the quality of content you receive. We’ve also added social media sharing capabilities to White Pages® Online, Yellow Pages® Online and Citysearch®. We’ve also added new content to the Whereis® digital mapping database, including national upgrades to road geometry, point of interest features, 3D landmarks, junction views. This is all designed to make using satellite navigation a better experience for users of Whereis® powered systems.

And we’ve backed these many user experience improvements up with new digital advertising bundles, which make it easier for advertisers to profile themselves across our networks in the way they want to. These bundles, such as Purely Mobile Business and Digital Content Maximiser have performed exceptionally well, with uptake of both running well above target.

A big thank you
Finally, perhaps the most encouraging element of this year’s results has been the support of people – the customers and employees that are crucial to Sensis.

To begin with, thank you to all our customers – both users of our products and advertisers – for your unwavering support this year. It was pleasing to see that, despite the many challenges FY10 has delivered, our customers have remained very positive about the services we offer. In fact, today, many advertisers are asking us to do more for them, like providing new value-added marketing services to their businesses. To me, these requests are a real vote of confidence, and I can confirm we’re definitely going to respond to them. We have recognised a number of opportunities to improve the service we provide to our customers and we’ll be relentless in pursuing them. We’re listening, and keen to respond.

As I said before, stay tuned.

Of course, our FY10 performance would not have been possible without the people who are Sensis. It takes a difficult year like this to test any business and I want to really thank and congratulate our people for their commitment, not just to Sensis but to the needs of our customers, over FY10.

Until next time,

Bruce Akhurst

1: CEASA Main Media Report, December 2009
2: Sensis Business Index, May 2010 and earlier
3: All data represents average weekly visits, June quarter 2010. Print data from TMP, Universal Measurement Programme. Digital (online and mobile) data from Omniture SiteCatalyst.
4: Digital (online and mobile) data from Omniture SiteCatalyst. Voice data from Sensis internal call data.
5: Omniture SiteCatalyst, average monthly visits for June quarter 2010 vs June quarter 2009
6: Apple AppStore: Top free apps in the Lifestyle category. Average of daily results for the period 2 August 2010 to 6 August 2010

When I think about the authenticity of maps, I remember being a kid and creating my own treasure maps, pouring coffee over them and then getting Mum to burn the edges so they had that “real” buried-for-hundreds-of-years look.  

While the team at Whereis® don’t rely on coffee (well not in that sense anyway) and we certainly don’t get mum to burn the edges of our maps, we are committed to making sure their authentic and we drive thousands of kilometres across the country each year to keep them that way.

On our travels we record everything a driver might see in the city, regional centre or country town, such as the numbers of lanes, speed limits, turn restrictions, driveway entrances to service stations and road gradient.

As Australia is made up of more than 1,000,000kms of roads and highways with an ever increasing population, new roads, developments and suburbs popping up at a rapid rate, the process of capturing, interpreting, cross-checking and integrating data for Whereis® maps never stops.  

It’s a pretty common misconception that Australian roads don’t change that much and when people ask us about this, they are often surprised to learn that each new release of Whereis® mapping software actually captures between 10,000km and 15,000km of new roads and re-verifies 235,000km per year through continuous research.

In addition to this, our latest Whereis® map, Version 16, also comes with more than 610,000 points-of-interest, customised alerts like speed and school zones, more than 237,000km of roads with addresses, thousands of up to date information from sign posts, extended lane guidance, rail crossing alerts and loads more.

The other common myth is that in-car GPS systems update themselves automatically.  As convenient as that might be, today’s in-car GPS systems, just like our childhood treasure maps, don’t update themselves and the map software has to be manually updated. Thankfully, it’s very easy to do. 

All you need to do is keep the engine running while you pop the data DVD in your GPS device and let the new map data update the system.

So next time you getting your car serviced, either ask that your mapping data be updated or simply order your new software online and do it yourself at www.whereismaps.com

Who knows perhaps with accurate and authentic map data from Whereis® maybe you’ll find that elusive hidden treasure after all…

Learn how SEO, SEM and sustainability can benefit your business as Yellow Pages® experts take to the stage at this year’s NSW Small Business September.

Sensis is a key sponsor in this year’s event, which is an annual celebration of the importance of small business to the social and economic fabric of NSW.

In its fourth year of sponsorship, Yellow Pages® is running a month long series of education seminars targeting SMEs in growth in both greater Sydney and regional NSW.

Yellow Pages® experts will focus on to two key areas – digital marketing and greening up your business.

Experts from our business will talk about how SMEs can leverage mobile capabilities, undertake effective SEO and SEM marketing, provide key insights from a special report on e-commerce in metropolitan and regional NSW (from the Sensis E Business Report) plus sponsor a keynote speaking engagement by Jon Dee on environmental sustainability.

As in past years, Small Business September is an opportunity for people in small business to extend their networks, develop their skills and build links with the many support organisations that exist to promote business success.

I encourage small business owners of any background and industry to get along to these events (most of which are free) to help them build their knowledge and skills in managing a business across marketing, finance and operations.

Our consultants get quite involved in letting their customers know about these seminars and getting along to the seminars themselves to network with SMEs and further understand their advertising needs and business objectives.

Be inspired by over 300 events designed by industry experts to help your business flourish – I know I will.

To register for events – visit www.smallbusinessmonth.nsw.gov.au or call 1300 661 539.

Sock's back. This year we’ve let him loose in the 1234 Call Centre and after being locked in a bottom draw for the past three years he’s determined to make up for lost time.

He exploded (quite literally) onto our screens in 2007 and now he’s back! He’s Sock, 1234’s green, keen information machine. This year we’ve let him loose in the 1234 Call Centre and after being locked in my bottom draw for the past two years he’s determined to make up for lost time.

In 2007 you may remember Sock launching out of an old chest and a laundry dryer before he caught a rash and needed plenty of recuperation in 2008.

Now our gregarious garment has decided that action speaks louder than words. Rather than telling people about the benefits of 1234, Sock is on the front line, providing answers to customers who call or text 1234.

Sock loves working in the 1234 Call Centre and will stop at nothing to impress his new boss, Ryan. Although Sock’s dedication to 1234 customers is unwavering, his cheeky personality remains unchanged from his early days and he wreaks havoc at the Call Centre much to Ryan’s dismay.

Sock is the brain-child of White Pages® Marketing Manager Nick Winbanks and the team of advertisers at DDB Melbourne.

He is a fantastic medium for communicating the benefits of 1234, which is a difficult service to promote as it has no tangible product.

Keep an eye out for Sock as he decides that pens are redundant for Telstra customers looking for answers on the move. And later in the year he takes his dedication to the job even further forsaking his sweet tooth in the process. 

If you have missed the ads and just can’t wait for them to appear, you can view them on the 1234 YouTube site.

Hi again. Well, Winter is here with some great rain for our gardens and dams. There’s a lot of exciting things happening at Sensis. And, to top it all off, St Kilda’s nudging the top of the AFL ladder. Could life get any better? In this update, I wanted to share with you some comments on our two speed economy, an exciting couple of months on the innovation front and a few beautiful sets of numbers.

Australia’s two-speed economy
We seem to have hit an uncertain cross-road in the Australian economy. There are signs of a solid return to growth and businesses in many sectors are performing well.

At the same time, however, confidence has dipped among Australia’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs). While SME confidence grew strongly from its historic lows during the GFC, the June Sensis® Business Index reported a significant quarterly drop in confidence. Confidence is still above the lows of last year, but it is concerning that it has fallen so far: especially when you consider that the chief concern among SMEs is ‘lack of work/sales’.

As we all know, the Federal Election is not likely to be far away. Given the importance of Australia’s SME sector and the millions of people it employs, I sincerely hope that the policies of all political parties will reflect a real focus on support for the SME sector.

A busy time for Yellow Pages®…
On a more positive note, we’re currently finalising the distribution of our Yellow Pages® print Regional and Living Local directories to households and businesses around Australia. As I mentioned in the last report, I’m proud to say that we have taken responsibility for the carbon footprint of all Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories from 1 February 2010. We will offset the carbon emissions through Government accredited providers and projects in Australia.

At the same time, the 2010 Yellow Pages® metropolitan campaign is now well and truly underway. This is one of Australia’s largest customer engagement operations with more than 1,000 consultants developing solutions that help hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses connect with the well over six million potential customers who use our print directories every month¹. That’ real muscle for Australia’s SMEs.

Of course, Yellow Pages®’ value extends far beyond the print directory these days, with millions more searches of Yellow Pages® advertising being conducted in online, mobile and voice every month.

… and a busy time in the labs as well
And we’re committed to building on that value. The evidence of this lies in the ‘run’ of digital innovations we’ve delivered recently. All these new releases further improve the quality and ease of use of our services for buyers and sellers. With so much to report, it’s hard to know where to start, so let’s just jump in.

Early June saw the launch of Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® sites specifically designed for the Apple iPad. It was great to be able to launch these tailored sites (complete with gestural interactions like panning and zooming with a swipe or pinch of your fingers) in time for the iPad launch.

We’ve also released upgrades to our Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® Mobile sites. All three incorporated auto suggest features to make searching easier for users as well as gestural mapping for high end Android and iPhone supported phones. On top of this, we added a more seamless click to call feature for the White Pages® and Yellow Pages® sites. In the case of White Pages® Mobile, this dropped the call wait time from around seven seconds to practically zero. And we also incorporated a range of new features for Yellow Pages® advertisers, including text descriptors, business logo and image gallery capabilities.

More recently, we launched a new social networking feature to White Pages® Online. ‘Save and Share’ lets you save interesting White Pages® listings or share them on Twitter or Facebook. Save and Share is already proving popular, with thousands of shares and a large number of resultant click backs from social networks to White Pages® Online. That, of course, means more potential leads for White Pages® advertisers.

Another exciting online announcement was the launch of an upgraded Bing search engine, which can now include Yellow Pages® listings (in the form of a ‘5-pack’) as part of its search results. This means Yellow Pages® advertisers can now be searched for on both Bing and Bing Maps.

We’ve loaded Citysearch® restaurant listings into Whereis.com. This has the joint benefit of improving the richness of the Whereis® experience, while helping to drive more potential customers to Citysearch® advertisers.

And we’ve launched online behavioural targeting for MediaSmart advertisers®. This gives advertisers the ability to deliver more relevant advertising to people using the MediaSmart® online network, which includes Sensis and Telstra sites and an extensive roster of third party sites.

Finally, we’re seeing great advertiser uptake of our bundled advertising products. Over the last year or so, we’ve released a strong range of new multi-product, multi-channel advertiser bundles such as the Yellow Pages® print and digital bundles and the priority advertiser bundle that spans 1234, Citysearch® and Whereis®. These bundles combine different advertising products into a single package, making it easier for advertisers to broaden their reach and create advertising solutions that meet their specific needs.

A beautiful set of numbers
Recently, there have been some great votes of confidence for what we’re doing at Sensis.

I mentioned in a previous update that Sensis looked like receiving great results on the 2010 Corporate Responsibility Index. The CRI, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is run by the St James Ethics Centre and is used by many major Australian businesses to benchmark their sustainability performance. Well, the results are now in. Our first year entrant score of 79.44% (bronze) last year has grown substantially to 92.51% (gold) this year. This result includes platinum scores (a new rating for benchmark performance) in three of the total six areas: sustainability strategy; integration; and assurance and disclosure. This achievement is a real source of pride and is the result of a strong commitment to sustainability from everyone in the business.

Meanwhile, we continue to see fantastic growth in mobile usage. In June, Whereis® Mobile officially became our first mobile site to hit a million visits in a month². Our other mobile sites – like Yellow Pages® and White Pages® – are also doing well. In fact, the whole portfolio is now being visited more than 3 million times a month², which represents high double digit growth over last June and potentially a huge amount of new ROI for our advertisers.

And on a totally different topic, we’ve been working with Mission Australia on the ‘1234 Project’. For every person who clicks ‘like’ on the 1234 Project Facebook home page, Mission Australia will give a pair of socks to a person in need. Our initial target was 12,340 socks and, in less than a month, we’ve already reached it!

The Human Yellow Pages®
Finally, if you think this update is a long read, spare a thought for Tansel Ali. To prepare for the upcoming World Memory Championships, Tansel, who is our own Australian Memory Champion, has turned himself into something of a human Yellow Pages®. Tansel is attempting to memorise every display advertisement (business card size or larger) in the Sydney Yellow Pages® so that he can recite any business name or number. For the record, that’s 2,306 pages, more than 16,000 numbers and a hell of a lot of reading!

That’s an incredible feat Tansel. All the best for the Championships in China later this year.

Best wishes,

Bruce Akhurst

1: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, April 2009 to March 2010. Base: Australians 14+
2: Omniture SiteCatalyst. June 2010

The word android conjures many images. From the days of early science fiction, androids were human-like machines built to do our dirty work or make up for our failings. But when things went wrong – watch out!

In 2007 they morphed. Android was rumoured (wrongly) to be Google’s first mobile handset. Launched soon thereafter, we found out that Android was in fact Google’s mobile operating system and the marketing collateral featured little green robots. But calling Android a mobile operating system is not doing it justice. It is so much more than that. And this is why the Whereis® Navigator team worked furiously to launch its turn-by-turn GPS navigation app alongside Telstra’s recent market launches of the HTC Desire and Sony Ericsson Xperia Android powered smartphones.

So do all the motherhood statements around Android like its “open source” accessibility and its ability to deliver “seamless integration” between apps and the native operating system really stack up?

We think so.

The ultimate test is always (and always will be) the increased usability and enhanced experiences delivered to customers. Ultimately, functions that are “native” to the device, Telstra and Sensis apps and third party applications may all interact and “mash” together in one big happy family.

That brave new world is all in the future but here are a few examples of what Whereis® Navigator is doing with Android right here, right now …

Firstly, Whereis® Navigator integrates with Android’s voice recognition software, allowing customers to perform voice searches for Yellow Pages® listings and nearby points of interest. It can even be used to bring up a list of traffic events and search for fuel prices nearby! It might sound simple, but there is actually a lot happening underneath the hood here – seamlessly and in the blink of an eye!

This functionality takes advantage of Google’s multilingual voice to text conversion capability converting words like “pizza” to text and then Yellow Pages’ ability to take the result and return pizza results back to the user based on relevancy and/or proximity.

It’s not totally hands free yet (the user needs to initiate the voice function), but it’s getting close.

From there, Whereis® Navigator picks up the baton and provides multiple options to the hungry customer to get to their selected pizza restaurant with options such as “click to call”, “navigate” and “SMS location to a friend”.

And if a user chooses to “navigate”, then not only is Whereis® Navigator launched but in the near future a user initiated “event” such as a click will be captured client side and reported back to the Yellow Pages® team.

The last point isn’t that exciting to the customer – but it is to the Yellow Pages® advertiser who wants demonstrated ROI and evidence that users were actually directed to their business.

Users can also launch Whereis® Navigator from the Android phone’s address book – no weaving in and out of applications and yet another example of the Whereis® application working with and integrating directly within the mobile operating system itself.

There are other things like creating shortcuts, selecting events and addresses from calendar and saving links to the mobile home screen that, when selected, launch Whereis® Navigator and automatically direct them to a favourite destination.

Stay tuned for more news on Whereis® Navigator including what else is on our future roadmap.

Respected business finance commentator Ross Greenwood recently spoke of Sensis as the “great litmus tests for the health of businesses around the country”. Hear Ross speak with Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst about small business confidence and profitability during the current economic climate on Sydney’s 2GB and Melbourne Talkback Radio.

Yellow Pages® data shows the recent cold snap that has hit southern Australia has people rushing to install, purchase and repair heating systems in record numbers.

The number of people searching Yellow Pages® for plumbers and gasfitters, heating appliances and systems, heating repairs and service and firewood hit an all-time high last month.

Seasonally, heating related searches on yellowpages.com.au are at their peak in June. But this year, the sudden drop in temperatures has seen the numbers of searches in some categories more than triple last year’s the monthly average.

In June, searches on yellowpages.com.au in New South Wales for heating appliances and systems were up 200 per cent, searches for heating appliances and systems-repairs and service were up 216 per cent and searches for firewood were up 225 per cent, when compared to the monthly average for 2009.

Similarly, in Victoria, all time highs were experienced with a 95 per cent increase in searches for heating appliances and systems, a 234 per cent increase in searches for heating appliances and systems-repairs and service and a 262 increase in searches for firewood.

South Australian residents haven’t been spared from the cold. yellowpages.com.au recorded a 260 per cent increase in searches for heating appliances and systems, a 257 per cent increase in heating appliances and systems-repairs and service and a 247 increase in searches for firewood, when compared to the monthly average for 2009.

Even Western Australians have felt the chill with searches for heating appliances and systems up 203 per cent, heating appliances and systems-repairs and service searches were up 209 per cent and searches for firewood were up 232 per cent, when compared to the monthly average for 2009.

With the weather warming marginally over the weekend, Australians still have another 8.5 weeks of winter to go.

However, the search traffic to yellowpages.com.au indicates that should the mercury fail to rise over July and August, a good number of households in the south-east of the country will be ready!

Over 4.5 million people make over 13 million searches using the Yellow Pages® Book, yellowpages.com.au and Yellow Pages® Mobile each week.*

* Roy Morgan, Single Source Australia, 14 years and above, last 7 day average, July 2008 – June 2009