My previous experience as a creative director taught me the value of teamwork. Collaboration brings so many different viewpoints together, creating a stronger final product. I have always been a confident and willing leader, but am just as happy following someone else’s lead. My experiences working remotely on the following projects were some of the most rewarding collaborations of my digital marketing education.
Project 1:
Primate Protection Program
Objective:
Invent a fictional nonprofit and create a digital marketing plan while building out their website.
I was eager to propose an organization that helped relocate captive chimpanzees throughout the USA. As a passionate animal activist with previous experience working at sanctuaries, I was confident I could offer my team original content and an educated story to build off.
I crafted a compelling value proposition that clearly stated the goal of our fictional nonprofit, as well as the benefits and argument for supporting the organization.
I developed a clear brand voice aligned with the organization’s identity. As with many animal sanctuaries, one must balance between hope and urgency- clearly showcasing the problem while offering a solution.
Working with my team, we selected the five most important objectives for our organization to succeed in its mission. Knowing the cost of safely transporting and caring for chimpanzees, we decided to create a hybrid business model that appealed to individual donors while also reaching out to larger companies and available grants.
After conducting extensive research on our competitors, our team narrowed down our key themes/topics and selected relevant keywords to incorporate into our content for strong SEO.
We identified the best digital marketing channels to use at each stage of the marketing funnel and created audience segments with corresponding custom messaging for each group.
I created A/B testing for social media posts to analyze whether our audience responds better to hopeful, positive messaging or urgent/desperate content highlighting the plight of the chimpanzees.
As the core objective of this organization is to raise funds to transport stranded chimpanzees, I proposed offering three separate ways to give:
- Symbolically “Adopt” a chimpanzee, receiving newsletter updates on the individual chimpanzee selected. The incentive for this allows the donor to feel more directly connected to the animal they are helping rescue.
- Donate directly to the organization, receiving a receipt for a tax deduction.
- Purchase Merchandise
I worked with my team to build wireframes for the website. Once the skeleton was there, I wrote the bulk of the content and edited/provided the images used.
You can explore our website by visiting Primate Protection Program.
Having previous knowledge of the plight of captive chimps, I developed a backlinks strategy and identified relevant articles from highly reputable sources to incorporate and link to throughout our website. I recommended reaching out to these sources inquiring to be linked in articles where our organization could offer a solution. I wrote a sample e-mail to National Geographic’s journalist, Rachel Fobar.
Once my team collectively put their findings on their respective slides, I created a cohesive format for the presentation, selecting colors and fonts that fit our organization’s cause (reminiscent of the jungle or an ideal chimpanzee habitat). I chose photographs that would keep our audience engaged while we presented and made sure all important information was easy to read.
After a few rehearsals, we delivered our presentation successfully and received a perfect review and credits.
To view our presentation in full, please click here.
Project 2:
Vuori BreakPoints
Objective:
Market a Loyalty Program for a business to re-engage past customers and encourage future purchases.
Tasked with creating a loyalty program for a business of our choice, my team selected the activewear brand Vuori. Diving right in, we immersed ourselves in the company’s story and became familiar with its values and identity.
I volunteered to create the customized portion of the loyalty program, playing with surf lingo to craft the name BreakPoints in lieu of Vuori’s association with the California surf lifestyle.
To encourage loyalty program sign-ups, a series of rewards unlock immediately upon completion of the subscription… Most notably, a 10% discount code that can be applied to any purchase. This encourages new members to make a purchase right away, driving up the number of orders.
Email alerts with seasonal discounts and flash sales will follow the next day.
In order to keep loyalty members active, I developed a points system broken into three tiers. In the first tier, every dollar spent translates to 1 point. After crossing the 150-point milestone, subscribers enter Tier 2 and unlock additional benefits, including an increased points earning of 1.5 points per dollar spent at Vuori. The final tier is unlocked once 1,000 points are earned, unlocking premium rewards such as access to exclusive events and increased earnings of 2 points/dollar.
This system encourages members to stay active with the promise of “Spend More to Earn More,” driving up the frequency of orders and AOV.
Our loyalty program’s point-based system incentivizes members to earn points in order to unlock different levels of free swag. Members are able to spend their points immediately or save up for access to luxury products.
Our team designed this loyalty program aiming to increase “Customer Stickiness” by adding value on top of their monetary purchases.
In doing so, Vuori has the ability to better retain customers and foster loyalty.
By improving customer retention rate and repeat purchases, Vuori can continue to raise AOV.
Even though our team chose to use Display Ads in multiple levels of the marketing funnel, we decided to highlight the use of this platform in the Awareness stage of our campaign.
Reviewing our audience segments, I used Google’s target audience tool to select the ideal demographics, interests, and placements to reach our customers. In order to achieve our specific objectives of increasing impressions and clicks while improving CTR, our ads needed to reach the correct audience and communicate the correct message.
Promoting a Loyalty Program isn’t just selling products, it’s convincing people to buy into the culture and aesthetic of the company… wanting to live like the brand. The use of still images communicates a clear message without risking the loss of someone’s attention span to grasp a concept (like a video ad might).
Vuori’s audience is divided into the fashion-forward trendy trainers and the adventure-seeking sustainable shoppers. With overlapping values and interests between the two, I decided to create ads that cater to each, and one that caters to both.
When trying to boost AOV and sales, the most impactful stage for a retargeting campaign is the Interest/Consideration stage of the marketing funnel.
We chose Facebook for retargeting because as a lifestyle brand, Vuori’s audience is highly active on social media. This platform is more community-focused, allowing space to highlight the values, lifestyle, and culture of the brand that will in turn convince people to join BreakPoints.
This campaign specifically targets people who follow Vuori’s page, repeatedly visit the website, engage with a post or abandon their cart.
I opted to use trendy, younger women for these ads, as they are the main demographic and guiltiest culprit of impulse shopping on social media.
As the elected slide designer, I was responsible for the graphics and overall aesthetic of this project as well.
To view our entire presentation, click here.
Kate M. Thompson 