This turned out to be much more than strategy and design to raise our game online. It’s a full-blown business strategy offering a clear path for greater revenue and market share by more effectively engaging our core customers. A home-run.”
– Lisa Alpert, Vice President of Development and Programming
Green-Wood Park Foundation
There are two kinds of marketing projects: Light-under-a-bushel or lipstick-on-a-pig. Green-Wood was decidedly the former – fantastic cultural programming, amazing historical archives, spectacular location. But their marketing communications and internet presence were drab representations of a truly enchanting and magical brand.
Once we dove into our initial analysis we realized pretty quickly that Green-Wood had other challenges, too.
First, like many cultural and historic destinations, Green-Wood’s visitors became highly qualified customers. Only they didn’t they use this fact as a springboard for more attendance, revenue, or donations. They weren’t even capturing customer data. Indeed their most viable growth opportunities were slipping away – every day.
Key art we designed featuring a simple strategic message to address market research indicating people didn’t know whether they could “just walk in.”
A second challenge was a related but separate issue concerning a series of high-risk business and data security risks that no one had identified until we uncovered it as part of our internal technology capabilities assessment.
Rising Tide undertook to gain a comprehensive understanding of the goals, challenges, resources, and opportunities facing Green-Wood in their efforts to not only raise their brand profile but to grow attendance, revenue, contributions, and membership.
Stakeholder interviews
Primary and secondary market research
Technology infrastructure assessment
Data and content inventory & analysis
Project video we produced for leadership includes glimpses of an online annual report we designed as an example of new branding opportunities.
We delivered a 103-page report covering the full spectrum of customer engagement, plus detailed recommendations for how to grow the customer base by connecting and extending the on-location experience with digital channel support and tools.
Our research revealed a major gap in customer retention and retargeting, effectively expiring the customer lifecycle almost before it had begun. The remedy was to develop and prioritize customer data capture methods both on and offline, and in a way that married digital engagement with the on-location experience.
Concept work of mobile support for the on-location experience, the recommended priority to close the growth gap even beyond a website redesign.
Website design itself proceeded directly from the customer strategy, prioritizing the advantages of getting connected online as way to significantly enhance the visitor experience, and thereby connecting Green-Wood with its most qualified potential customers.
Before
We assessed the current website as text-heavy, difficult to navigate, and critically passive – lacking engagement or amplification of the location experience.
After
An immersive visual brand experience prioritizes online engagement as an essential component of the location visit in order to capture customer data.