Getting Sirius About Audience Segmentation: How Sirius XM Broke into Radio and Dominated the Air

AMAKC Brings SiriusXM to Kansas City

The American Marketing Association – Kansas City Chapter hosted two speakers from SiriusXM and local celebrity John Holt at their spring seminar on May 21, 2019. The event, titled Getting Sirius About Audience Segmentation: How SiriusXM Broke into Radio and Dominated the Air, was held in Reigner Auditorium at the KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park. The location provided an intimate conversational setting between the audience and SiriusXM presenters. John Holt from Fox4 Newmoderated the event and following a brief introduction turned things over to the keynote speakers.

Marc Richards, vice president, discussed SiriusXM’s subscription business model and contrasted it with most media businesses that make money from advertising. Before attending the seminar, audience members probably didn’t see the parallels between SiriusXM and other media subscriptions like HBO and Netflix. Marc shared the successes of partnerships within the auto industry which enabled the
installation of SiriusXM into dashboards of new cars. Did you know 80% of new vehicles have SiriusXM hardware installed?

Barbara Gmerek, sales director, then shared marketing strategies and tactics to keep consumersengaged. With a churn rate of less than 2%, most SiriusXM consumers come from purchased subscriptions following the free three month trial that comes with the purchase of a new vehicle. Key to consumer satisfaction is the level of curated channels that SiriusXM provides. With the average consumer spending 100 hours a year commuting to work, the importance of providing a range of content is evident. SiriusXM offers more hundreds of channels featuring every genre of music, talk show, podcasts, and even an audio book channel. Offering range of content for each consumer segment is key to SiriusXM’s success. There was considerable discussion about the acquisition of Pandora, completed by SiriusXM late last year.

Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) is the world’s largest audio entertainment company, and the premier programmer and platform for subscription- and advertising-supported audio products. With the recent addition of Pandora Media, the largest streaming music provider in the U.S., SiriusXM reaches more than 100 million people with its audio products and services.

The Annual Seminar is the premiere event in the AMAKC programming calendar, bringing marketing insight from some of the most successful companies in the world. In addition to SiriusXM presenters, executive level speakers from brands like IKEA, Nike, Disney, Google, Southwest Airlines, and others have helped Kansas City marketers understand how to big brands run their integrated marketing
communications campaigns.

AMAKC would like to say a special thank you to this year’s sponsors: Hallmark, Spectrum Reach, Emfluence, ProPrint Digital, Plexpod, RSM Marketing and The Fiddly Fig.