The 2016 KCDMA AMBIT’s Award show was a great night for the emfluence team and our wonderful clients! This year, the gala was held at the Overland Park Convention Center and was themed with Broadway musicals. Our team selected the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” because…why not, it’s important to have a little fun when celebrating all that hard work! AMBITS are awarded for excellence in direct marketing, meaning excellent creative and excellent results. High Return On Investment is likely to bring home these accolades.
Best in Show
We took home the Best in Show award for our social media campaigns and analytics dashboard work for the Center For Holistic Medicine. CHM had very low traffic to their blog, with almost no social media followers visiting their website initially. Tyler and I ran three side-by-side ad campaigns on Facebook aimed at converting fans to prospects and helping spread awareness of what CHM is all about.
We had a challenge that according to Facebook’s regulations, we couldn’t show the product (pills/bottles)! So we focused on the doctors’ faces, some of whom are well known in the holistic community. We didn’t use any discounting, we simply focused on the way CHM addresses health needs in a unique and holistic way.
Results of the Campaign:
- Branding & Awareness – 64,000 impressions! Blog traffic went up by 97%, the number of social media visitors jumped from nearly zero to 2,000 visitors in the first 6 weeks.
- Increased Facebook Audience – 26% increase in Facebook Likes
- Increased eCommerce revenue – Over a 30% ROI and over 90,000 impressions
Three Gold Awards
Essense Design for Search Engine Marketing
- Essense wanted to improve organic search traffic while ranking for highly competitive keywords in the wedding dress sector. Selecting and targeting a mixture of broad match and longtail keywords, emfluence assisted Essense of Australia in improving organic search traffic by 242% and positioning itself as an industry leader.
- By implementing technical improvements, in-depth link building, and prolonged SEO strategy, Essense Designs has improved its online brand recognition and expanded its store offerings for soon-to-be brides. 242.22% increased in non-branded search sessions period-over-period. New users improved by 245.47%. Best of all, email signups improved by 226.99% and store locator uses improved by 4,469.76%. All goal completions improved by 402.81%.
Roasterie Cyber Monday/Sunday email in Promotional Email ($250K category)
With all the expected email traffic on Cyber Monday and the possibility of falling between the cracks, The Roasterie wanted to test sending a “sneak peek” email the night before a flash sale lasting just one day: Cyber Monday. They sent an email at 5:00PM on Sunday, November 30th and again at 5:00AM on Monday, December 1st. With the additional sneak peek email on Sunday night, they grew their revenue from this campaign 47% year over year! The campaign’s return on investment was 1980%, making nearly $20 for every $1 invested.
Center for Holistic Medicine in Social Media Brand Awareness (Same campaign as the Best in Show)
Four Silver Awards
MarksNelson CPA Relaunch for Search Engine Optimization
- MarksNelson sought to become an online thought leader after many years of offline marketing efforts. Working with emfluence, MarksNelson was not only able to improve web traffic and goal conversions, but to position itself as a local thought leader that Moves Forward with unique marketing efforts in the accounting space.
- Working with MarksNelson marketing manager Amy Hoppenrath, emfluence began with site wide keyword optimization and technical improvements, specifically highlighting each individual accountant and service page to improve non-branded rankings. Broad match keywords relating to “accounting” were implemented via on-page keywords, meta data, local search citation building, and off-page link building efforts.
- Campaign baseline traffic averaged 497 monthly organic visits/month and 850 total visits/month (November 2013). November 2015 increased organic search by 96.18% and all traffic by 144.59%. Goal completions increased by 142.86% since November 2014 (no goals setup in 2013). MarksNelson saw a 62.75% increase in non-branded organic search traffic and a 62.79% increase in non-branded organic search goal conversions. All traffic increased by 105.85%! Goal conversions increased by 66.09% and goal value increased by 2,072%. We maintained a bounce rate of less than 20%, an industry leading metric.
Proven Winners Email Newsletter for an Email Series
- Proven Winners wants to be more than a plant supplier. They aim to consistently send smart, useful content marketing via an email newsletter 1-2 times per month. In 2015, we revamped the program with a newsletter redesign in April and campaign to re-engage (or trim out) inactive subscribers in August.
- The redesign included an easier to skim layout and a mobile-responsive, modular design. The re-engagement campaign was aimed at those subscribers who had been on the list but not opened or clicked in 12 months. We re-engaged 3%+ of those “silent subscribers” and cleaned out the rest in order to drive up response rates.
- Combined, these efforts saw major lifts, not just in percent-based metrics like open and click-through rate, but in raw numbers like total clicks through to the site and website revenue. Their primary sales outlet is via retailers, so they don’t overly promote sales in their content marketing, but this revenue demonstrates direct ROI for the newsletter.
Visage Fashion Show in Social Media Brand Awareness
- Promotional products don’t have to be dry – Visage wanted to show how fun they are! They definitely had fun with the video and came across as real people, enjoying their products, which is a big part of why the video was watched and shared.
- They posted to YouTube and created a native Facebook Video Ad. They supported the Facebook campaign with LinkedIn and Twitter posts, encouraging prospects to watch (and share) the video.
- The total campaign reach was 33,645, of which 30,932 viewed the video. Almost everyone who was served the video ad watched it! Plus, the average viewer watched 14 sec+ of the video, more than 5 times the average video attention span.
Houlihan’s Gluten Sensitive Campaign for Consumer Integrated Marketing
- Houlihan’s needed to get the word out about their new gluten-friendly menu items in their trademark quirky “tone.” They took to Pinterest, Facebook & Twitter with both paid and organic posts, featuring their delicious gluten-ous minimus food items. They also adjusted their Search Engine Optimization and Google AdWords efforts for their website to include targeting people searching for gluten-free options and healthy food choices in general.
- Their primary objective was – of course – diners! They measured the number of gift cards purchased and reservations made through the website, which increased 25%+ during the campaign. The number of conversions (gift cards/reservations/email signups) from social media sources jumped 114% or more than double their typical conversion rate.
Two Bronze Awards
Proven Winners Pinterest Contest: #PWinMyGarden for Consumer Integrated Campaign
- Proven Winners asked gardeners to show off their own gorgeous gardens, using the hashtag #PWInMyGarden. The best garden photos posted to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram by August 31st would receive $200 towards even more beautiful Proven Winners plants.
- We incorporated emails, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and an insert mailed with all plants ordered online. These user-generated photos filled Proven Winners’ page and feeds with PW plants used in real gardens around the country and created a sense of community between those posting with the hashtag.
- This campaign’s primary goal was to turn customers into advocates for Proven Winners, sharing their products on their behalf. They ended up with over 200 submissions, shared across 3 channels. (The total exposure in impressions is hard to estimate, given the broad audiences of each channel and entrant.)
Proven Winners Hydrangea Wreath Video for Consumer Integrated Campaign
Proven Winners wanted to give their audience a chance to do something festive and creative with their holiday floral arrangements. The DIY video shows how to easily assemble your own beautiful wreath with Hydrangea foliage.
The Hydrangea Wreath “How to” video ran for 2 days and had a post reach of 4,445 impressions, 1,396 video views (32.3% view rate) with the full completion of the video of (5.01%) and created 167 new page likes at .36 per like. Average view time was :23 (or 32% of the total run-time)
133,960 people reached within 2 days totaling 33,807 video views and generating 1,879 page likes. The CPA for each page like was also only $0.36!