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The talks never failed to amaze and inspire, but personalachievementacademy.com was less than impressive. The pages were merely slices of images with no written content, and the two dynamic features of the site (a guestbook for kids to register their commitment to being a better person, and a list of the locations that schools could contact to deliver the talks) were unusable.

The Challenge

Represent the Personal Achievement Academy with a website that showed the power of the talks, and gave users the ability to find instructors to deliver the talks and engage with the principles of the organization.

Also, build a site that was easy to update and search engine friendly.

The Solution

Build a WordPress site using the updated branding for the Academy. Create a Location Finder application that automatically synced when contact information changed.

My Role

• Managed the design and deployment with the JPW International Team
• Launched a campaign to get updated contact information from the official locations
• Configured the “weekly lesson” feature to automatically deliver weekly content to site users
• Setup the site’s analytics backend and report on KPIs

Princples/Resources Used

• WordPress
• Project Management
• Email Marketing
• CRM, Database Management
• Usability
• Branding

The site relied on external resources for critical functions such as membership listings and calendar display. While these external resources served their purpose, the Chamber was left powerless to control branding for these external resources.

The Challenge

The Chamber’s web presence needed to match its customer service ideals and reach the community with useful and unified messaging. Also, the Chamber needed the ability to control the branding and messaging of their web presence without relying on outside help.

The Solution

Create a new website with a Content Management System. Include a membership directory and calendar application, and allow the Chamber to manage user roles for different site visitors.

My Role

• Defined the project, objectives, timelines, and release dates.
• Managed the development team at JPW International through the design and deployment of the site.
• Created the content for the pages to maximize relevance to different visitor segments.
• Trained Ontario Chamber staff in use of the site, the membership database, and the calendar system.
• Setup the site’s analytics backend and report on KPIs

Principles Used

• Usability
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Content Marketing
• Analytics
• User Permissions, User Management
• Project Management

When Roland decided to take his martial arts instructor training service, Millennium Training, to the next level, he wanted to let the people who respected him know. He also wanted to segment his Facebook network so that his personal friends wouldn’t be spammed with notices about his business, and vice versa.

The Challenge

Build a Facebook Page to promote a martial arts training business and move a client’s personal contacts to that page for more information.

The Solution

Create a Facebook Page and give existing friends and new contacts a good reason to “like” the page.

Instead of just creating a Facebook page, we created a special Facebook landing page that granted special access to a valuable video series that Roland’s friends hadn’t seen and would find valuable.

After creating the page, Roland notified his Facebook friends with the special offer. We also sent an email to some of Roland’s other contacts to let them know about the page.

Users quickly became a fan of the new page, saw the videos, and many became paying subscribers. Plus, Roland was able to personalize his Facebook profile and move his business messaging to the new Facebook Page without upsetting any of his followers

Tactics Used:

• Email Marketing (CAN-SPAM Compliant)
• Customer Segmentation
• Social Media Marketing
• Landing Page

Technologies Used:

• Facebook Pages and FBML
• MailChimp
• HTML/CSS/PHP

Even though the newsletter has a historically high open rate, we continue to test new subject lines and send times to improve that open rate. One of these tests resulted in a 66% increase in open rate over the newsletter average.

The Challenge

Increase the open rate of an email newsletter aimed at kids ages 8-18.

The Solution

Try a subject line that was short and intriguing as opposed to descriptive.

Our first subject was “Hyper in LA, Dayna Huor.” This subject line gives a matter of fact, news headline style indication of what the newsletter will be about. (I’ve had repeated success with this style for newsletters aimed at older, more time-crunched subscribers.)

Our second subject was “3 sweet videos …” Notice how this subject line is a tease — a brief mention of what the email contains. It says nothing about what they subscriber will learn, or what the email is really “about.”

The second subject line, which goes against traditional email marketing advice, resulted in open rate 66% higher than the other subject line and the newsletter average. Even the click through rate for the second subject was 50% than the click through rate for the first subject. In other words, the effects of the improved subject line didn’t end with the email being opened; users engaged with the email more.

Moving forward, we decided to create subject lines that were brief and seductive. An interesting side note: while this has increased open rates, we find that weaving in an “old style” subject line every once in a while will also get a response. In other words, the variety is appreciated.

Tactics Used:

• A/B Testing
• Email Marketing (CAN-SPAM compliant)

Technologies Used:

• MailChimp
• Excel
• Google Docs

We found out that our client’s webinars drove higher conversion rates than any other marketing activity. These webinars typically ran live on Tuesdays, with a replay on Sunday.

The Challenge:

Grow revenue from this customer segment without requiring our client to do a live webinar every night. (Between the Tuesday webinar and running the rest of his business, our client was tapped out for time.)

The Solution:

Automate the webinar registration, delivery, and follow-up process and drive attendance from the dormant contacts.

Using the marketing automation application Infusionsoft in concert with some other automation applications, we created a conditional process that drove leads through the registration, attendance, and follow-up process for the recorded webinars that converted the highest. We were able to run more webinars throughout the week — and these webinars required no extra time from our client.

Then, we segmented our contact list to include active subscribers who had never purchased, and we began a targeted marketing campaign that used email, phone calls, and special landing pages.

Tactics Used:

• Email Marketing (CAN-SPAM Compliant)
• Autoresponders
• Marketing Automation Software
• Funnel Visualization
• Customer Segmentation
• Conditional Follow-Up Sequences
• Automated calls

Technology Used:

• Infusionsoft
• GoToWebinar
• Stealth Seminar
• Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Excel
• Omnigraffle