How Showing that you Care Can Start Sales Conversations

The year 2020 has brought a lot of pain and confusion due to the pandemic, but also many opportunities for companies to show compassion and generosity. And that willingness to help others can sometimes reap rewards in the marketplace.

That's exactly the story my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, Adriel Sanchez, CMO at Newsela shares.

Newsela provides instructional content to K-12 schools in the United States, serving 35 million children. 

What do they do exactly? They take content from reliable sources around the web and incorporate changes to make it ready for the classroom.

First, they rewrite every piece of content at 5 different reading levels, so in a single class every student can access the content at their own reading level. Then, they surround content with instructional support for teachers, so it would be easy for them to embed the content into their lessons. And finally, Newsela attaches the content to individual grade standards by state (over 130K in the US), through machine learning, algorithms and human intervention.

Newsela is both business-driven (they are a for-profit company) and mission-driven (making education better for as many teachers and students as possible).

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Doing What is Right for Your Customer

Newsela went from one to four products in January, 2020, with great plans of expansion. Then the pandemic hit in mid-March and education was one of the hardest-hit sectors. Most schools around the US closed.

Many teachers and students were unprepared for the shift to remote learning, with some school districts panicking over what to do, as they lacked the resources to implement remote education.

Although Newsela has four stakeholders (Education Administrators, Students and Teachers, Investors, and Newsela employees), they could not serve the immediate interests of all four at the same time during the COVID lockdowns. 

Adriel says they decided to do the right thing for the schools above the business needs. So they provided their entire product portfolio for free to students and teachers. No conditions, no questions asked. All schools had to do was ask for it.

How did they implement the plan? They came up with three phases to their response to the crisis.

1. Provide the product for free and get the word out.

This phase included a message from the CEO and social media outreach. Word got out quickly and in the first 7 days 15,000 schools signed up. At the end of the program, two thirds of US schools (about 90,000) had signed up for some component of Newsela.

2. Make sure the product was adopted.

Adriel says that it wasn't enough to give away the product. They needed to make sure people were using the platform and getting value. 

During March and April of 2020, virtual classes were new to teachers. So Newsela deployed training 7 days a week and had 1 to 1 coaching for teachers and administrators. A lot of people were exposed to Newsela's team and people really appreciated the support they provided.

If they provided that kind of support for non paying customers, how would it be if they paid? This focus on customer service paved the way for future sales conversations.

3. Start sales conversations.

By June 2020, Newsela was preparing to turn some of those free users into paid subscribers.

The fact that they had given the product for free, no matter if the schools were open or closed, gave them trust and credibility with their customer base. People really felt supported.

"Timing was very important," Adriel