As the marketing coordinator for Amherst’s recreation department, my job was to advertise the new classes, events, and community activities each season. By Fall of 2018 I had been working for the department nearly a year and I knew I wanted to hit the ground running for our busiest season!
Site Redesign
See my blog post, Reflecting on my First Website Redesign: LSSE.org
This project was at the top of my to-do list from day 1 and it was one thing I had the most fun doing and learnt the most from.
From an SEO standpoint the old website had been in shambles, so I made the decision to have the website completely rebuilt. Below were some of the most glaring issues:
Technical SEO
- Unfocused sitemap
- Duplicate pages left active
- Incorrect use of redirects
- No Robots.txt file
On-Page SEO
- Content sparse
- Title tags not optimized
- Multiple H1 tags per page
- No usage of alt text
- Missing meta descriptions
It was important to address Technical SEO issues first to lay a good groundwork for later tackling the many On-Page SEO concerns.
After addressing those concerns, I picked a front page layout and worked with developers from our software host, Vermont Systems, to upload and set it up.
With the release of the Fall programs, we saw a dramatic increase in registrations via the website. I was happy to view this as one metric of success! Next I had to make sure our printed marketing material was just as successful …
Fall Program Brochure
This Fall issue of our program brochure was both our shortest in page number and highest grossing in ad revenue our department ever produced.
After creating the previous season’s brochure, I had clear changes in mind to improve the Fall issue:
Key Changes
- Reduced page count
- Standardized program information
- Adhered to style guide
- Clearly labelled advertisements (and, in turn, sold more advertisements!)
By maintaining a clear style and keeping word count down, the Fall 2018 brochure was inexpensive to produce, easier to browse, had more available ad space, and was more visually appealing.
See the Amherst program brochures from other seasons
Email Retargeting Campaigns
I introduced email retargeting campaigns to our marketing plan. The department began sending out Mailchimp campaigns I designed.
I formed a list of 2,000 email addresses of families from our recreation software’s CRM. Using Mailchimp in conjunction with the CRM, I was able to target our email list based on a family’s program history.
Email campaigns and social media outreach proved instrumental in broadcasting the Fall programs release. With a new user-friendly site, users were being directed to valuable landing pages and could find information more easily.
