FEATURED WORK

INCREASING VALUE, FOR A POPULAR PLATFORM.

Transforming Intuit’s small business email platform to be more effective

OVERVIEW

When Intuit created Demandforce, their ad-tech platform for small businesses, they still needed compelling and strategic creative that would increase appointments and keep customers engaged year-round. Because small businesses aren’t marketing experts, they approached us to create a year-long calendar of agency-quality content (both design and copy) to feed their platform. After an intensive research phase, we created turn-key marketing solutions–including unique content, strategy, and creative–for over a dozen verticals all the way from automotive to nail salons.

CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE

Not only did we study up on industry white papers and trade publications, but we also hit the pavement to talk to individual business owners in each vertical, learning about their specific industries, their most popular promotions, and high and low seasons.This helped us create a strategic calendar of promotions and other value-added content to deploy over the course of a year.

EMAIL VERTICALS

- AUTOMOTIVE
- CHIROPRACTIC
- DENTAL
- LIFESTYLE
- NEW YEARS
- OBGYN

- OPTOMETRY
- ORTHODONTICS
- PODIATRY
- PRIMARY CARE
- SPA & SALON
- VETERINARY

APPLYING BEST PRACTICES FOR EMAIL, PER INDUSTRY

We then devised a calendar of email interactions that would keep them relevant to their customers, but never an irritant.

CONTENT STRATEGY

With a clear understanding of Intuit’s small business audience, we developed a multi-layered content strategy to help them engage their customers with scheduled content that educated, entertained or provided value to their customers. Industry research revealed unique insights into seasonal, service-based purchasing tendencies for customers in every vertical. We leveraged those insights to create compelling pieces of content that helped consumers stay smart, and induced them to pay a visit to their providers even in the off-season.

ANATOMY OF AN OFFER

Our UX for promotional emails was designed to induce readers to action, providing an immediate understanding of the offer and the value it provided. These templates were also flexible, allowing clients to customize their offers and their copy according to the needs of their own business needs.

MODULAR TEMPLATES

Small business owners know their business better than anyone, so we made sure that the templates we created were flexible enough to accommodate the local considerations of their operations. That meant a fluid back-to-front end integration that empowered them to plug promotions of their own devising into the agency-quality creative we provided, making Demandforce a fully automated marketing machine that could help any small business, anywhere.

RELATED WORK

Tiger Direct

FEATURED WORK

BRANDING TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

TigerDirect rebrands to increase B2B marketshare

OVERVIEW

TigerDirect, known as one of the oldest and largest consumer retailers of IT hardware and software products wanted to diversify their sales and appeal to a B2B audience. We were commissioned to reposition and rebrand the company to make a leap as the “cheap” consumer retailer to the strategic partner SMBs and enterprise companies can trust with their most complex IT technology needs to move business forward. As part of our strategy, we partnered with Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, to become our spokesperson to hep catapult the brand forward.

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BRANDING

In order to truly differentiate themselves, we helped TigerDirect examine their competition, and undertook a rigorous audit of their current brand. We uncovered that they had no single, galvanized message that spoke to their constituency, since their entire focus had been centered around price.

We helped TigerDirect redefine a new vision for the future and anchored their new brand DNA around their new mission which in turned become the rallying cry that would unify the company around a key message that would define what they stood for and what they needed to do to win.

Our goal wasn’t simply to give TigerDirect a brand makeover, but to set the foundation that would evolve the company from a transactional model to a company that focused on delivering value and establishing profitable relationships through the daily delivery of their brand promise.

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LEAD GENERATION

With the new “Do More, Better” brand in place, we partnered with Kevin O’Leary to create an integrated lead generation campaign that would entice prospect down a marketing automation funnel and reward them with premium content through each of their interactions. The content consisted of a campaign where Kevin O’Leary would share his Wonderful Business Tips. We created emails, landing pages, cheat sheets and a video library that users would access the deeper they engaged in the campaign.

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VIDEO CONTENT

Video became a huge component of our rebrand to help build trust and create value through engaging video content that prospects, customers, partners and employees could learn from and enjoy. We created a marketing launch video that unveiled the new brand, as well as hundreds of videos with Kevin O’Leary and his Wonderful Business Tips series.

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We now had all of the components and content that we used in our social media strategy to help promote the new brand and create maximum engagement across TigerDirect’s social media properties. We launch the new social media brands with the “Ask Kevin” contest, where users would be able to interact directly with Kevin O’Leary and ask their business questions and get answers. The campaign got great traction and immediately the participants engaged and won all sorts of cool things in the process.

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SALES ENABLEMENT

With the new brand and marketing programs in hand, we developed TigerDirect’s partner program, demand generation portal and sales collateral to help them transition into a B2B technology reseller and nurture their relationships. We helped them create a tiered partner program, with a defined sales and onboarding sequequence with automation of follow up emails, notifications, landing pages, sell-sheets, brochures, call scripts, shipping inserts and much more.

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RELATED WORK

Rafael Soberal

Rafael is a hands-on creative leader with over 20 years of building award-winning initiatives at public holding companies and startups. An expert at conceiving and directing comprehensive brand initiatives, digital products, and data-driven marketing programs, Rafael creates transformative brands that connect business value with consumer behavior. Rafael started his career at Ogilvy & Mather building global creative campaigns for IBM's Small Business Agenda, e-business, Thinkpad, Netfinity servers and Intellistation. Rafael left the comforts of Ogilvy for the excitement and challenges of creative startups. The first was The Concept Farm, which he helped to become one of AdAge’s fastest growing small agencies. He then partnered with the farmers to co-found La Finca Creative, a Hispanic creative agency that soon won national acclaim and AdAge gold awards. Rafael continues building high-performance creative technology agencies that accelerate business growth and spearheading various purpose-driven initiatives.

Adrian C. Tennant

Co-founder of Blue Kite, Adrian Tennant is an Internet pioneer with a track record of establishing and growing digital businesses internationally. Adrian was a TV producer working for Discovery on Shark Week in the early 1990s when he first encountered the Internet. After returning to London, Adrian established Alchemy Digital in 1996, which differentiated itself with a user-centered design philosophy. Adrian led consulting and e-commerce engagements for clients including Dell, Ericsson, GE Capital, ITV, McVitie’s, Philips, Sony, Twinings Tea, and Wyeth. Based in the United States since 2006, Adrian has been involved in startups and managed technology, digital strategy and production for two advertising agencies. As Chief Experience Officer at Blue Kite, Adrian leverages his entrepreneurial experience, developing strategic research processes, facilitating tests sessions and formulating data-driven insights. Adrian is a member of the Neuromarketing Science & Business Association and User Experience Professionals Association.

Terri Cordova-Hewitt

Terri Cordova-Hewitt is a marketing and communications professional working in integrated marketing planning, brand strategy, public relations and social media. Terri has 20 years of both client and agency experience with organizations including USF, Westfield Corporation, Moffitt Cancer Center and Empath Health (formerly Suncoast Hospice). An entrepreneur too, Terri established an e-commerce boutique, leveraging social media channels to grow her audience. Terri’s role as RICG’s Chief Strategy Officer encompasses group account management, strategic planning, bilingual test moderation and developing breakthrough consumer insights.

Christopher DeSantis

Christopher DeSantis is the founder and CEO of RICG where he has partnered in developing data-driven strategies for companies such as Disney, Prudential Financial, Genworth Financial, Nickelodeon Suites Resort, OppenheimerFunds, SunAmerica, and Mohegan Sun. The communication programs and workflow processes Christopher put into place have played integral roles in helping clients market themselves more effectively and efficiently, while simultaneously delivering unprecedented returns on investment. A serial entrepreneur, Christopher has served as mentor and coach to innovative digital and social media businesses in New York and New Jersey.

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