Monday, December 15, 2008

New Stats for Morris Animal Foundation

Today we reported the latest numbers for the Morris Animal Foundation. Since we launched the search engine friendly site, traffic has gone up 36%. That's just in one month since the launch. Here are other key stats:

  • Traffic nearly tripled (up 171%) compared to this time last year
  • Search Engine Visibility, Total Search Engine Traffic up 458.36% compared to this time last year (More traffic from this source indicates better organic rankings and higher ad click-through rates) and is up 51% compared to October
  • Google Adwords Grant CTR Performance up 80% compared to last month. We achieved significant improvements through optimization of both keywords and ad copy in individual campaigns and as a result we more than doubled the amount of traffic from this source
Contact Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, to see how we can drive sales and leads through search engine marketing and usability improvements.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Fusionbox Adds Staff

Denver, Colorado, December 14, 2008 - Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, with offices in New Orleans, Louisiana is proud to announce two additions to our design and account management teams.

Fusionbox continues to grow and expands its services and client list. To manage new business, Fusionbox has added Lindsey Jamieson as to the team as an account manager. Lindsey comes from now defunct Denver advertising agency, McClain Finlon. “Lindsey came very highly recommended from our contacts at McClain Finlon,” said Ivy Hastings, Account Manager at Fusionbox. “Lindsey was one of the star project managers there and has the upbeat and caring personality we look for in Account Managers.” Lindsey holds a degree in Marketing and Advertising from Colorado State University.

More and more clients have been coming to Fusionbox as a full service advertising agency. “Our focus has always been interactive, but we are seeing clients use print advertising and direct mail to drive clients to the web for conversion,” said Ivy Hastings. “We've been really effective in using print and email for lead generation programs.” To add to our services, Fusionbox hired Casey McAllister to the New Orleans team. Casey is a longtime resident of New Orleans and has developed branding for New Orleans institutions like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Casey is a natural addition to our team. He brings many years of branding and print design as well as web design to our team.

Fusionbox is thrilled to welcome Lindsey and Casey to our growing teams in Denver and New Orleans. Fusionbox team members are among the brightest in the advertising and interactive industry in Denver and New Orleans and is a key factor in Fusionbox's continuing growth and success in the Denver advertising, web design, web development and search engine marketing industry.


About Fusionbox: Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, has helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Our work results in a direct and measurable financial impact on your business. We were founded and built by a business strategist and a programmer. That combination makes our work technically superior and gives us the expertise needed to solve your business challenges and increase revenues instead of just focusing on design. Fusionbox services include search engine marketing, web development, web design, and RIA development. We have offices in San Francisco, Denver and New Orleans. For more information, call 303-952-7490 or visit www.fusionbox.com.


CONTACT:
Ivy Hastings
Fusionbox
www.fusionbox.com
303-952-7490
ihastings (at) fusionbox.com

Monday, December 08, 2008

How We Increased Donations for a Non Profit in a Down Market

In June of this year, Fusionbox took over the management of the Morris Animal Foundation's site from Morris' ad agency. The Morris Animal Foundation funds research to protect, treat and cure animal disease. The agency was not getting results from a pay-per-click campaign that they launched. (CTR was .003%) This was just not the agency's expertise so they referred Morris to us.

Since we have been managing the site, traffic has increased by a whopping 50% over last year and continues to go up by an average of 10% a month. Donations in October were 15% higher than they were last year despite news about the economy.

Here's how we did it:

Our brilliant pay-per-click expert took the list of keywords that the agency had created and cut it down dramatically. That list had hundreds of keyword that were related to obscure animal diseases that were getting no search volume-- no clicks ever. We cut them out. Further, the list of keywords did not include donation-related keywords like, "saving animals", "donate to save animals", etc. Our SEO developed several different campaigns around the key performance indicators that we established with the client. (All of the KPIs tied to the non-profits mission and vision.) One of the campaigns was used to test different donation-related keywords with different messaging. The click-through rate started going up and up. As we monitored the campaign, we gathered data on what worked and what did not and kept refining the messaging and the keyword list. As of October, the click-through rate is at an impressive 1.78%.

One of our goals were to increase awareness with a younger generation. In order to do this, Fusionbox created a social media marketing campaign. The campaign included a Facebook cause and page, a YouTube channel, and a presence on MySpace. Influential bloggers also played a role by posting about the Morris cause and targeted advertising on Facebook rounded out the effort.

We still had one problem, though: organic search engine placement. The Morris site was ranking better for some keywords but our organic rank was not what we wanted it to be. The site that the original developers created used a content management system to control the whole site. (Warning to anyone looking to redo a site: Do not create a site that is 100% controlled by a CMS unless you can change titles and tags for EVERY page.) Because of the way the site was created, it was impossible to write metadata for every page.

So, what did we do? We recreated the entire site to be search-engine friendly from the start. Our strategy included:

Rewriting content to include keywords
Developing seo-friendly code
Creating titles and tags for every page
Developing internal links of keywords
Renaming pages with keywords
Optimizing digital assets
Creating content management for sections of the site that would change
Refreshing the website design to be more modern
Fixing usability issues in the navigation
Creating more calls-to-action to donate
Simplified the donation process
Creating measurable conversion goals

One of the most important aspects of the site was to redo all of the donation forms to measure our efforts. Our Search Engine Marketing team can now determine what keywords are converting best in order to use up our entire Google Grant. Our process has always been to design, measure and refine and now we could walk the talk

The site has been live for about a couple of weeks now and so far, the response is very good. It will take a few months to see the full impact of redoing the site in terms of organic search position, but we're very confident that donations will continue to go up as the economy tanks-- not an easy task.

Lessons learned:
Create your focused keyword list with your goals top of mind
Don't hire an ad agency to do an interactive agency's job. SEO, usability, and web design is a specialized field.
Combine paid, organic and social media tactics for maximum results.
Always design, measure and refine.

Hit me up if you want to discuss how we might help you. All this stuff works for businesses too. Now is the time to shift ad dollars away from traditional advertising to interactive.

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Fusionbox Launches New Site for Morris Animal Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Morris Animal Foundation Works with Denver Interactive Agency to Launch Happy Healthy Cat Website

Denver, Colorado, December 02, 2008 - On behalf of the more than 80 million cats in America, Morris Animal Foundation (MAF) embarked on a mission to provide felines with their share of health care and research. The Healthy Happy Cat Campaign, launched Monday, Nov. 17, aims to help stop suffering and premature death in cats. MAF worked with their Denver web design agency, Fusionbox, to complete the new website.

There are more than 82 million cats in U.S. homes, making them America’s No. 1 pet. However, cats get less veterinary care and research than dogs. There’s also too few scientists studying feline health issues, according to the foundation.

The focus of the new campaign is to raise pet-owner awareness of feline health issues and increase funding for research and scientist training. To achieve this goal, MAF created a dedicated online resource with information on feline diseases and symptoms. Additional features include interactive blog entries and quizzes, MAF research success stories and resources for cat owners.

The foundation previously has funded projects in areas of feline health including diabetes, kidney and heart disease, cancer, urinary disorders, hyperthyroidism and infectious diseases.

Patricia Olson, DVM, Ph.D., MAF president and CEO, said that a tremendous amount of cat health research remains to be done. “Our goal is that the Happy Healthy Cat Campaign will give veterinarians the tools they need to dramatically improve the health and well-being of all cats,” she said in a statement.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition donated $1 million to the campaign in addition to a genetic database of research information to help scientists worldwide develop diagnostics and treatments for the most serious feline diseases.

About Morris Animal Foundation: Morris Animal Foundation, established in 1948, is dedicated to funding animal health research that protects, treats and cures companion animals, horses, and wildlife. MAF has been at the forefront of funding breakthrough research studies benefiting animals on all seven continents. MAF has its headquarters in Denver. Charity Navigator ranks MAF as a four-star charity, the highest rating. MAF is a BBB Wise Giving Alliance Charity Seal Holder. For more information, call 800.243.2345 or visit MorrisAnimalFoundation.org.

About Fusionbox: Fusionbox, a Denver web development company, has helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Our work results in a direct and measurable financial impact on your business. We were founded and built by a business strategist and a programmer. That combination makes our work technically superior and gives us the expertise needed to solve your business challenges and increase revenues instead of just focusing on design. Fusionbox services include search engine marketing, Denver web development, web design, and RIA development. We have offices in San Francisco, Denver and New Orleans. For more information, call 303-952-7490 or visit the Fusionbox website at www.fusionbox.com.


CONTACT:
Ivy Hastings
Fusionbox
www.fusionbox.com
303-952-7490
ihastings (at) fusionbox.com