The German Alpine Club celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. When it was founded in Vienna in 1869, the association focused mainly on Austrian territory. Today, it is one of the world’s largest mountain sports clubs as well as an important sports and nature conservation association with around 1.3 million members. Mountain sports such as hiking, mountaineering, climbing, touring skiing or mountain biking are promoted, but especially also the safety of the athletes as well as the corresponding professional advice. In the mountains, the DAV is significantly involved in the infrastructure of huts, climbing facilities and trails and, as a nature conservation organization, is actively involved in the preservation of alpine habitats. In order to effectively support and communicate the extensive activities of the association, Thomas Bucher, department head of DAV public relations, and his team decided to use PressFile.
ERP CRM replaced
As head of department, Bucher organizes the holistic press work of the German Alpine Association. His tasks include setting up explicit distribution lists, maintaining contacts, answering various inquiries, as well as sending individual press releases or organizing press conferences. In addition to the core tasks of PR, “we also look after social media and parts of the DAV website, but also around 120 publications a year – from the annual report to brochures and individual press releases,” he describes his field of activity. “Before we discovered PressFile for PR organization, we were using ‘Navision’ – an ERP system from Microsoft. However, the software was or is simply not built for the purposes of press relations, and so our core PR tasks turned out to be extremely cumbersome, such as distribution list maintenance. For this reason, we started looking for a special organizational tool for PR that would simplify the work involved in maintaining distribution lists and contacts,” Bucher continues.
PressFile offers the right software for DAV PR
To provide significant support for public relations, the communications team opted for PressFile’s PR software in May 2015. In advance, the team defined necessary features that the future PR CRM absolutely had to have: “We got a solution that was simple and easy to use – a press release sending and contact maintenance tool without a lot of bells and whistles. Plus, cloud-based PR software with a direct link to our in-house email wasn’t very common at the time and was a huge advantage for our communications. With PressFile, we could no longer just send press releases from the workplace, but on the go,” says Thomas Bucher, summarizing the advantages of PressFile. In a direct comparison with the competition, PressFile proved to offer all the crucial functions that fit the association’s requirements to date. “PressFile convinced us with its holistic cost-performance package,” Bucher continued.
PR & public relations become much more efficient
The DAV communications department uses PressFile for communications management around the dispatch of press releases as well as for maintaining contacts and building up press distribution lists. “PressFile is on the one hand easy to understand and on the other hand the software offers interesting possibilities to create individual distribution lists. In addition, PressFile offers a very good filter function. For follow-ups, for example, we can easily select editors or journalists in the distribution list based on individual criteria. This way, we avoid unnecessary e-mails that might even scare off our target group.”
The organization of the public relations work of the German Alpine Club is made more efficient and much easier to use with PressFile. Especially the processing with regard to the creation of new contacts as well as the distribution list assignment have changed for the better and can be implemented much faster. In addition to requiring little training to use the software, Thomas Bucher and his team are also very satisfied with PressFile’s goal-oriented customer service. “In the case of rare complications, we have always been advised quickly and well. PressFile’s support quickly fixes individual software problems and delivers optimal solutions within a short time. For example, in the case of an upcoming personnel change, the PressFile team immediately takes care of the changes in the PR CRM system. The service is really fast and there has never been a situation where we have not received an authoritative response,” Bucher continues.
Would you recommend PressFile to a friend?
“Yes, in fact I already have! In summary, PressFile is clever, simple and user-friendly. With quick and correct training, it works with distribution list maintenance and mailing management,” says Bucher.
https://www.alpenverein.de
The German Alpine Club e.V.:
As early as 1869, German and Austrian mountaineers founded the German Alpine Club as an “educational bourgeois mountaineering association”. To date, the DAV has grown to become the largest mountain sports association in the world and one of the largest sports and nature conservation associations in Germany with 1,289,641 members in 356 independent sections and a foundation. Here hikers, sport climbers, conservationists, hut keepers, family groups, ski mountaineers, expedition participants and culture lovers find like-minded people. They are united not only by the joy of movement in nature and the desire for summit experiences, but also by the common goal of preserving the unique mountain world for future generations. At the DAV, an association run on a voluntary basis, what counts most, in addition to political and ideological independence, is the great expertise in all areas of alpinism.
