I spoke to Cheryl, my contact at Community School of the Arts (CSA). She called with a question and casually shared with me some news. A whopping 40% of their new students came through the new website this fall. At their teachers’ retreat the director shared that many community art schools are letting teachers go and cutting programming back. It is a different story at Wheaton’s CSA; they are blessed to have a waiting list. Cheryl said, “We have gotten a tremendously positive response to the new site, and appreciate the marketing counsel you provided.”
I am proud of the Spire2 team – thanks Andrea and Andriy.
And, Cheryl, call anytime. I am happy to answer any question – especially if you want to share things like: “your work is responsible for solving world hunger,” or “I have five contacts who own companies that need your marketing expertise,” or even, “I am buying you a large quantity of chocolate and it will be at your office this afternoon.”
Spire2 helped CareNet to create their email marketing program last year. We met to follow up just before the one year mark to make sure everything was still going well and to make little changes. One of the objectives was to increase internet donations. CareNet shared that they exceeded their goal, and their electronic donations were up by almost 50% with a month still left in the fiscal year.
Jeffery James in the role of Director of Communication on the board of the Chicago Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC/Chicago)again grew their email list by 30%. By utilizing principles developed from years of experience with email marketing, we once again accomplished significant growth in the size of the audience. Email has continued to grow in importance in reaching and connecting with members and prospective members.
Giving amoung young alumni grew 79.8% over the same period last year as a result of Spire2’s “Where’s the need” campaign. Almost 50% of the young alumni who responded to the campaign gave to the Wheaton Fund for the first time. The microsite developed for the campaign delivered 40% of the responses. Spire2 developed all aspects of the integrated campaign for Wheaton College that included direct mail, email and a microsite. See the campaign.
Spire2’s Jeffery James, acting as Director of Communication for the board of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Chicago Chapter, oversaw email marketing and web communication for the program year ending June 30, 2006. Using strategies he recommends for clients he grew their email list by 34% while maintaining open rates. “It has been a great challenge to communicate with communicators, so I am pleased to see the growth. The IABC/Chicago e-update has become the center of the communications program and a vital link in driving interest in programming.”
Russian Ministries, a Spire2 E-broadcaster client, received a $16,000 foundation grant as a direct result of a recent email campaign. After less than a year, Russian Ministries email marketing program has provided some pretty impressive results, and has been far easier and more cost efficent than traditional communication channels. “It allows us to stay in contact with a broader audience with more timely information”, Lorraine Triggs of Russian Ministries reports.