Simon had set up a CRM strategy at GCap's national station Classic FM, and her promotion will see her tasked with doing the same across the group's other stations.
The group intends to build a central database of 2m listeners within three years, enabling it to cross-sell CD compilations, downloads, books, ringtones and tickets. It will use email as its prime marketing channel, along with mobile and direct mail communications.
Classic FM's database includes 350,000 listeners and generates on average £1.50 a listener. It helped the station to increase subscriptions to Classic FM magazine by 5% and generated 20% of the 'Classic FM for Babies' compilation.
Putting greater emphasis on cross-selling products to its listeners is one strand of a high-stakes change in strategy by GCap, necessitated by falling audiences and revenue.
The other three strands are reducing the number of ads on its London station 95.8 Capital FM from December; relaunching the station in January; and lastly, rearranging its other radio station brands and in particular expanding its Xfm brand.
The idea is to grow station audiences, and hopefully revenue, over the long term at the expense of lost short-term advertising revenue.
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