Case Studies

Almost every marketer claims
they can boost your leads & sales
.

I'm one of the few who has the numbers to prove it.


72% lift in paid conversions
for a critical landing page

The Situation

LivePlan is the #1 business planning app in the world. They needed some help getting more conversions out of a highly-optimized, high-performing page that was critical to their funnel. They hadn’t touched it in a while, and didn’t have any specific ideas about what to do next. They wanted a fresh perspective.

The Solution

I did a heavy amount of in-depth customer research, including interviews, surveys and mining voice of customer data like reviews. Then I used that data to create a customer journey map that allowed me to better picture what the audience was thinking and feeling as they made their way through LivePlan's funnel.

The audience was frustrated by trying to write a plan on their own. Totally fed up.  They needed an easy and quick solution, but also needed to feel confident their plan would 'wow lenders and investors.' Plus, these folks were skeptical -- they needed proof that LivePlan would work for their exact industry.

I re-vamped the messaging, tweaked the layout and wrote new copy that joined the conversation happening in their heads as they hit the landing page.

The Results

The data team at LivePlan A/B tested a few new versions of the landing page.  After the first test we got a 65% increase in paid lift (that's the page to the right).

They ran a second test that included industry-specific messaging. The new landing page preserved almost all of the original - I only changed the hero section. This resulted in an additional 72% lift.

By the end of the testing, I had increased paid conversions by a total of 183%  (this includes the first lift plus the second lift).

Dustin is the secret weapon in our marketing toolkit...[his] deliverables are always well-presented, on-target, timely, and ultimately, drive positive, bottom-line results.

John Procopio
Director of Marketing, LivePlan

Revised email copy
re-engages 32% more lenders

The Situation

Kiva.org is a major micro-lending organization that helps low-income entrepreneurs across the world. Most Kiva users fund a loan, get repaid and then fund another.

But there’s a small number of folks who don’t relend their balance right away, so their money just sits in their account. Sometimes, for months.  And of course, Kiva wants its lenders to be as engaged as possible. Or at the very least, be aware that they have money still in their accounts.

My job was to test out new e-mail messaging that would encourage these folks to relend their money.

The Solution

After gathering input from Kiva lenders through an email survey, I hypothesized that there were three main barriers that were preventing folks from relending:

  • feelings of being overwhelmed by decisions on who to lend to
  • not having time to make a proper decision on which loan to support
  • an incorrect belief that they would be charged some kind of admin fee

And so based on that information, I began forming hypotheses on how to re-engage past lenders. We tested a variety of messages using strong emotional appeals. This included leveraging urgency as well as sending segmented emails (based on past lending patterns) to make the decision to relend easier. But ultimately, adjusting the tone used in the email resulted in the biggest boost in re-engagement and relending.

The Results

The analytics team at Kiva tested a variety of messages. Here's one example of the results I got for them:

Increase in Unique Opens:32%
Increase in Unique Clicks: 32%
Increase in Action Rate: 33%
(statistical significance of 99%)
Increase In Overall Loan Volume: 18%


2,718 new inbound inquiries using
genuine, personal storytelling

The Situation

Alaska.org is a stunning website filled with pages of detailed content that helps travelers plan a vacation to “America’s Last Frontier.”

For for those who’d prefer not to arrange the trip themselves or are overwhelmed by all of the information out there, Alaska.org offers to put them in touch with the best Alaska-based travel planner to help them plan and book their trip. The site gets tons of traffic and a steady number of daily subscribers who opt-in to their newsletter.  But Alaska.org knew they could be doing a better job of connecting with travelers on that list -- they wanted more people to reach out and engage.

The Solution

I followed a process of Research, Strategy and then Copywriting & Content Creation. I uncovered that huge percentage of visitors to the Alaska.org site were independent travelers going on road trips, who shunned 'tourist traps' and travel agents in general. But they struggled to plan their own independent getaways because the state of Alaska is a huge place.

I worked with the owner of Alaska.org to create an engaging, personal email autoresponder series that helped the audience realize they could solve their planning problem simply by hitting reply. It also helped them realize the value of working with a travel agent.

The Results

After running the autoresponder for one year (March 2015 to 2016), here were the results:

Total new inquiries via email: 2,718
Subscriber inquiry rate: 40.6%
Average email open rate: 43.9%
Average email click rate: 8.9%

“I got into this project thinking I was hiring a writer to write some email newsletters. The research Dustin did into who our customers are was probably the biggest breakthrough I’ve had in understanding our customers in ten years. There’s a whole science behind the reader’s psychology that you’d never know about if you don’t do this for a living.”

Bob Kaufman
Alaska.org

13X more blog subscribers
with influencer marketing

The Situation

Grabr is a travel startup that wanted to launch their content marketing program with the right foundation. They had already been blogging, but wanted to get even better results.

The Solution

I built a content strategy for them that relied heavily on leveraging influencers within the travel space. These established, well-known writers already had loyal followers that perfectly matched the ideal Grabr user. 

The blog traffic quickly grew. And we were able to convert these visitors into subscribers by offering targeted ebooks and popups that were personalized for each Grabr persona.

The Results

Relying almost entirely on social media, total blog traffic increased by 165% while new subscribers increased by 1,338% in just 3 months.