Happy New Year!
By: Casey Boatman
What’s that buzzing sound?
All aboard! What a ride around the sun we’ve had at Iron-Point Marketing (IPM). Our office in Golden, Colorado is full of snowy cheer and quiet humming. In fact, everyone who recovered from the Christmas party last week is honing the dry erase markers and covering our whiteboards with big dreams for 2013.
Growth could be our middle name here at IPM. We started out 2012 with about half of the 19 team members we have now. Our design team doubled in size and our coding teams have grown considerably to keep up with the demands of our clients. Our internal marketing team has matured as well. We’re excited about our 2013 marketing campaigns.
Emails for a Brave New World
Since August alone, our team of email developers has been busy. We’ve produced over 100 mobile-friendly emails. From those 100 emails, 30 million were sent to 6.2 million unique recipients in, wait for it, 16 different languages. Lead by Trever Santora, the email development squad has overcome plenty of obstacles to earn their field-tested regimen.
”Industries who advertise with email have a big mystery on their hands. The customer’s screen size.” Santora said. “The emails we coded for clients in the past few months are built for both smaller screens, like on an iPhone, and larger screens on a laptop or desktop computer.” For example, a customer who opens an email on their phone will see fewer images, less text and bigger calls-to-action than they would on their 27” desktop screen. The data already shows an increase in click-through-rates that exceeded previous desktop-only email averages by 20 to 30 percent. That number is expected to climb as mobile adoption increases year-over-year.
Future Friendly & Responsive
Looking at an entirely different web dev discipline, our front-end team who creates websites, has positioned themselves with the latest best practices and workflows to meet similar trends..
”I think folks would be shocked to know there’s a marketing production shop that puts so much grit and grind into creating web pages and emails for consumption on phones, tablets, desktops and more.” Santora said. He explained, “Our front-end team is just beginning to explore what is possible with new tools and development languages. HTML, CSS and Javascript will allow us to build newsworthy websites in 2013.”
Cutting Edge Design
None of this would be possible without our talented, in-house, design team who worked tirelessly to meet the needs of our clients in time for the coders to do their jobs. An eye for detail, the design team, worked tirelessly to design emails, landing pages, templates— both client side and internally.
Not only has the design team been busy creating the entire email collateral for Fortrust, our newest client, we captured design from Seagate and guided them into mobile design. The team designed email templates for Seagate, fully optimizing emails for them.
”We opened up Seagate to mobile design, set the standard for their email presence and optimized their email design,” said Jake Wakefield who heads up our design team.
Sales! Sales! Sales!
Iron-Point’s success can be attributed, in part, by co-founder, Michael Fung, who heads up business development from our Portland, Oregon office. Like any successful business, ROI is always the goal. We continue to operate debt free and welcomed four new clients while establishing our partnership with Eloqua.
Measurable Online Presence
The Marketing Communications team at IPM has worked tirelessly building and managing our online presence. Since May, our Twitter following has increased by 35% and our engagement efforts on Facebook, Google+, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and SlideShare continues to thrive.
The IPM blog continues to inform and engage marketers throughout the industry. Sometimes light-hearted but always informative, the blog helps clients and prospective customers learn about marketing automation and mobile demand generation and it helps us at IPM keep a pulse on the industry.
Success Nothing to Bark At
Jasper, the younger, much smaller, cousin to Prax, the English Mastiff (200+ lbs of twisted steel) collectively soothe the Golden team with playful antics, loud snores and the occasional flatulence. Jasper joined the team earlier this year and we couldn’t be more thrilled to influence this Scottish Terrier’s love-hate relationship with the laser pointer.
The two lovable mutts are part of the IPM culture. According to the American Humane Association, staff morale and worker productivity increases by bringing pets to work. I guess their presence contributes to our camaraderie, team building, and, ultimately, our success.
It’s all because of you
With 2013 only hours away, we’d like to say Thank You to our customers, our followers and our team of dedicated marketers, coders and designers, along with our friends. Your support in 2012 gives us the fuel to continue our growth, and inspire our innovations in the coming year.
Check out what IPM has going on: http://ironpointmarketing.com/