Case Study: Propeller Design and Marketing
Propeller is a successful Australian design and marketing firm that integrates more than 50% of the web sites they develop with Campaign Monitor. In less than 2 years, email marketing has grown to constitute more than 30% of their annual revenue and has become a crucial component of their portfolio. We recently had a chat with Propeller founder Damien Buckley for his thoughts on the experience.
Getting the idea to re-brand Campaign Monitor
Damien: From first using Campaign Monitor to send Propeller Graphic Design & Marketing's inaugural 'Destination' newsletter in March 2005 it was immediately obvious that this was a product we could sell. The system is 'Email Marketing for Dummies' easy to use, provides enough statistical analysis to satisfy the most sceptical of clients and to borrow from fairy tale parlance, was priced 'just right'.
The re-branding process
Damien: When we first began offering email marketing as a service we ran Campaign Monitor under a home grown 'e-news express' brand. With the arrival of Mailbuild and a proven track record with Campaign Monitor, 'e-news express' didn't really fit anymore, wandering away from our umbrella 'propeller' brand. A journey back to the obvious resulted in the birth of PropellerMail - PropellerMail Pro for Campaign Monitor and PropellerMail Lite for Mailbuild.
New logos were developed and dropped into the admin interface and every newsletter we design now sports the 'powered by PropellerMail Pro/Lite' logo. We're working on a dedicated PropellerMail site to allow us to float PropellerMail in its own pond rather than as just a sub-plot on our main site.
Rolling out the product to their clients
"Campaign Monitor allows us to offer a full service email marketing program to our clients without writing a line of code"
Damien: The ability for our clients to log into their reports for each campaign we send makes the demo and pitching process so much easier.
Having the possibility to 'own brand' the client reporting system is just cream; simply add your own logo and tweak the colour scheme to suit. On logout, our clients are directed right back to the page of our choice - as far as our clients know, they never left our site
Add to the mix, easy to use and install subscribe forms and campaign display scripts and we have the tools to fully integrate email marketing into every website project we do - the team at Campaign Monitor have considered pretty much everything. It allows us to offer a full service email marketing program to our clients without writing a line of code. Also, the freedom of having no lock-in monthly fees common with other providers is something our clients really appreciate.
The results
"Today, email marketing accounts for roughly 30% of our revenues - all reflective of how important a part of our business Campaign Monitor has become"
Damien: Over 50% of the websites we developed in 2006/07 are fully integrated with either a full service or DIY email marketing system and we've had nothing but positive feedback from all of our email marketing clients - some of them abandoning their traditional advertising (i.e. newspapers etc) altogether.
Having the ability to run both Campaign Monitor and MailBuild as an 'own-brand' product has undoubtedly enabled us to progress much further into email marketing than would have otherwise been possible - with the net result that today email marketing accounts for roughly 30% of our revenues - all reflective of how important a part of our business Campaign Monitor has become.
Closing thoughts
Damien: Some may consider our strategy risky in terms of having our eggs in one basket - its true enough and something we don't take lightly. Over the past couple of years we feel we've developed a solid relationship with the Campaign Monitor team, finding them helpful, responsive and always open to feedback - good or bad.
In fact, on numerous occasions I've had good off-topic advice from their team on subjects of no value to themselves. It's good to know they've got our back and besides, we know where they live ;)
Related topics
- Ideas you can use when pitching to your clients
- How to charge for email marketing
- 4 reasons why web designers should offer email marketing as a service
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We called it Campaign Point, developed our own identity, then set about pitching to our client. It's been a big success.
David Kelly
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