EnVeritas Group

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior marketing campaigns and communications manager at an instrumentation manufacturer. Our headquarters is in Germany, but I work in our US office.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with EnVeritas Group?

We wanted assistance with content marketing including starting a blog, SEO optimization, and content for landing pages.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we initially started, we focused on SEO. They helped us shift from targeting keywords to focusing on click volume to our website. This gives us more freedom to tailor our strategy to fit the current Google algorithm. 

What is the team composition?

We have two primary points of contact. Laura (SEO Director/Account Manager) is our project manager and SEO consultant. Becky (Editor, Project Manager, Writer, and Translator) writes a lot of our content and manages the freelance writers. 

How did you come to work with EnVeritas Group?

They started working with my organization prior to me starting in this role. 

How much have you invested with them? 

Our investment fluctuates year to year. We typically spend between $60,000–$70,000 though our annual investment was smaller at the beginning of our engagement. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in mid-2012, and the work is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Primarily, our sales happen offline, so it’s hard to see whether their work is directly correlated with an increase in sales. However, we’ve seen a 20% increase in blog traffic each year since we started working with them. We also track the click-through rates of specific pages on the website. 

How did EnVeritas Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They bring excellent suggestions to the table in order to help us meet our monthly goals. It’s nice to work with a team that is good with both short and long term strategy and planning. We meet every other week via Google Hangouts, and we usually meet in-person at least once per year. Aside from regular meetings, our communication is flexible, and they’re easy to get in touch with. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The ease of communication, responsiveness, and creativity are the most impressive. They take a client-focused approach and it’s clear that they tailor their approach to each individual client. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Right now, there’s nothing they could improve on. Occasionally, we might have a higher volume of work and that sometimes slows the process down. However, for the most part, I’m really pleased. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

It’s all about having open communication, flexibility, and creativity. The goals of SEO are constantly changing, but EnVeritas is very adaptable.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) operates 5,000 hotels globally. In the Europe region, we have around 700 hotels and have a primary objective of driving direct bookings in the region through our e-commerce team. We have an outbound focus as well, looking at hotels in New York, Australia, etc.

What is your position?

I am the e-commerce manager responsible for search engine optimization and focusing on getting our page rankings as high as possible in Google organic results.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with EnVeritas?

We were re-launching our City Hub pages, which are focal points for their particular city. The old pages needed a face-lift, so we moved to a new template in order to have better content, imagery, copy, and mobile responsiveness. EnVeritas was responsible for providing new content for us.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

EnVeritas quoted us for written content creation. I had an idea of what our focus cities would be, as we couldn't cover every location due to budget constraints. We supplied that list of cities and languages to their team. There were a lot of English guides created, but also ones in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Dutch, and so on. Besides the city guides, they produced some informal blog articles around those cities. EnVeritas produced 180 guides over the course of three phases, as well as over 200 blog articles which were featured on our .com page, with a link to the city guides. Most of the work has been published.

I was responsible for getting the content published using our content operations team. We don't have direct access to our content management system, instead having to open tickets and upload material for publication.

How did you come to work with EnVeritas?

We knew that the work would be sizeable in terms of budget, so it was necessary to evaluate a few vendors before choosing one. Three agencies came to our offices and met with me, our manager, and the director of our team. We decided to choose EnVeritas in part because they were already working with our team in America, so they had a positive reputation with IHG.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total cost of their services was $120,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August of 2015. The work was split into three waves. November was the second wave, and January was the third. EnVeritas has finished the work for us at this time. We may start again this year, but we are focusing on getting more coverage for these pages. The content we've produced looks good and reads well, but we're lacking in links which point to it. In this sense, the focus has shifted a little bit, but we may start content creation again.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Translation is a big part of our business, and it's quite easy to translate content wrong, so we have a lot of channels for identifying poor-quality material. I reviewed the English guides that EnVeritas produced, and the ones in other languages were distributed to other team members. They were very impressed with the results: aside from tiny amends, there were no issues.

I appreciated the fact that we had regular Google Hangouts meetings. It's not something that we do regularly in our company, but EnVeritas practices this because they're spread out in multiple locations. It's important to see someone's face, and we had fun within these Hangouts to talk about progress.

It's too early to give any conclusive results, but we have seen improvements in our page rankings. We track how high we rank for keywords like "London hotels", "Hotels in London," and so on, using our SEO tool. When measuring rankings, which fluctuate all the time, it is hard to attribute movement to any one item. Anecdotally though, I can see improvements in our position, which I'm sure are due in part to the new content.

How did EnVeritas perform from a project management standpoint?

We collaborated through Google Docs in order to keep costs down, which worked out fine. EnVeritas set out to complete a specific number of guides within a timeframe. They usually delivered before their deadlines.

What distinguishes EnVeritas from other providers?

EnVeritas gives a sense of being fun to work with. We exchange jokes in emails and can have a laugh in our Hangouts sessions. I've worked with more corporate, formal businesses. EnVeritas was nothing like that.

Is there anything EnVeritas could have improved or done differently?

The process of receiving the content, having to download it, reviewing it, opening a ticket, and loading it again could be streamlined. This involves our side more than EnVeritas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are the InterContinental Hotels Group, one of the largest hotel chains in the world. We operate on a franchised basis and have around 4,900 hotels.

What is your position?

I am the E-Commerce Manager of Team Europe’s digital marketing, responsible for our mid-scale brands and their web presence. In particular, I am responsible for Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with EnVeritas?

The challenge concerned our rankings within Google searches, from an SEO point-of-view. We wanted to optimize content in order to compete with big online travel agencies with bigger budgets.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Their work included writing and translating content into different languages. Once customers reached our site, we wanted to know how we could have better conversions by improving content. The effort had to be completely regional for the European market, and for each country in particular.

How did you come to work with EnVeritas?

We received pitches from several agencies. We had worked with EnVeritas on a previous project as well. They proved to be the best choice based on their offer and our previous positive experience.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

This is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2014. The relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We had a very successful project. There was a pilot phase in the beginning through which we assessed how the content resonated with our head office and individual hotels. After this proved to be positive, we made a few modifications to the process, streamlining how content would be fed to hotels because of the number of stakeholders involved. After that was sorted out, we launched the full project and had very positive feedback from the hotels. They were very happy with the content generated by EnVeritas, and we've seen a conversion increase. We also saw an SEO traffic share increase to the sites optimized by EnVeritas. The results exceeded our expectations. The whole process was smooth, and the content delivered was up to and even better than our standards.

What distinguishes EnVeritas from other providers?

They've provided us with a consistent team. From our experience, the staff turnover in these kinds of agencies is quite high. Having the same people work on our account for a long period has been a great help. The experience of the people working for us was much greater than what we'd seen in the past. EnVeritas employs senior, experienced people on our account.

Is there anything EnVeritas could have improved or done differently?

We would like them to improve their strengths in other geographical regions in order for us to use them globally, especially in China and the rest of Asia.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We are a network of 120 different hotel chains.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the economic director for the hotel group based in Europe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with EnVeritas Group?

We were looking to optimize the hotel descriptions on our website in an SEO [search engine optimization] case, plus making better localization of content. We used to use a specific translation partner, but we were not satisfied with the quality. We were looking for an agency with different processes to improve the quality of content. We began with this objective and because we were very satisfied by the job, we then expanded the scope of work of EnVeritas and asked them to work on full writings for specific hotel mini sites.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

We have hotel properties listed on our brand sites, and they have optimized the content on the brand site. On the other side, we are providing to the hotels a chance to launch a hotel unique mini site. For this, they have done all the writing, and optimizing in terms of SEO for those sites. 

We have also asked them to write an offline communication. They have also done specific content for fact sheets, such as printed documents. They have also helped write “storytelling” for the hotel. We got the idea of creating a story for each of the hotels, by having a customer leave an experience each time they are in a specific hotel. The hotels were supposed to create stories, and they helped the hotel to write the stories. 

What was your process for selecting EnVeritas Group with which to work?

We had pitches from different companies. We liked the way that EnVeritas is organized to get multicultural and international writers, compared to other companies. We liked the process with EnVeritas because we used to have a unique project manager, and a unique commercial contact, who would organize the scope of work, and determine each process depending on the project. We had different projects for each of them, and different processes. We found that EnVeritas is more efficient, and they provided us with a dedicated project team, which has been very good.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

[It was] €200,000 [approximately $248,000].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We started working with them in 2012. We’ve continued to optimize, and to develop the second part of the mini sites through 2014.

Is there anything you can share about the overall performance and the results of the work they’ve done?

We have seen, from external comments, the level and quality of the content they have produced. We have gained some positioning in Google as a result of their work. 

How well do you think they performed throughout the work they produced?

We were really satisfied. It was a pleasure to work with Enveritas Group. Everything ran very fluidly, and they always delivered on time. They were really productive and they gave us some ideas of how to develop the business, the activities, the quality, and the certain processes.

We have increased the level of service month after month, and we finished by having a real team working for us and dedicated to us, and this was really effective. We meet with them regularly, we have constructive discussions on the pure content with a specific team, and everything has been really good. We were very impressed.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

They have really understood the issues of the brand, complexities of the marketing, and the communication vision of the brand. In all of the different work we’ve had them do, we were speaking within the same tone. They used different journalists throughout the world, and their work was reviewed by the same editor to keep the quality, the consistency, and the tone of the writing, so this was really efficient.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We’re a staffing services firm. We provide temporary and full-time professionals to companies in a variety of industries. We’re headquartered in the United States and we have about 400 offices worldwide.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the senior manager of editorial services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with EnVeritas Group?

We needed content for our blogs and websites as well as other venues, typically pieces leveraging our advice around job search, employment, and management related topics. We needed assistance meeting the volume of demand that we had and something we could scale at an affordable price.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

They have written a lot of our blog and website content. At this point, we’ve probably done hundreds of pieces with them, across our lines of business and various distribution channels. Things ranging from 300-word blog posts, up to articles that are 1,500 words or so in length. So, quite a variety of projects, and quite a number of them.

What was your process for selecting EnVeritas Group with which to work?

We did research online, just looking at conversations and reviews about content providers. We looked at different industry awards from respected organizations out there, like the Content Marketing Institute. We tried to get a background in terms of who the main players are out there, what their advantages are, who in general is seen as better than the industry average, which ones have past clients that they are satisfied with. There were two or three different agencies that seemed promising to us, and we did small pilot projects with each of them to get a sense of their capabilities. We went through that with EnVeritas, with eight or 10 sample articles they wrote of us. We were very pleased with the quality and decided they would make a good long-term resource for us.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

[It's been] $200,000 to $300,000. We feel it has been money well spent. We feel like we got a lot of good value from them. I think they fell in the middle of the pricing structure, compared with some of the other content providers that we looked at. We felt that we got more value from them than some of the cheaper alternatives. The ones that were more expensive, we weren’t getting enough for the cost difference, to justify spending that extra amount.

When did you start working with them?

It’s been about a year since we started the pilot project. The relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results and feedback, what can you say about the work they've done?

It’s been very good. We’ve been very pleased with it. We have tried them across various lines of business, various types of writing projects. Enveritas Group has met our needs, and they’ve done a good job learning the quirks of our business, style, and preferences. The customer service has been very good. Anytime we’ve had an issue or want to go back to them about something, they address it very quickly and are very keen to meet our needs and make sure we’re satisfied.

I never have a problem getting in touch with them, or getting a response or feedback from them. It would be difficult for us to do everything that we do on the content side without their assistance. I told them this when we first started working with them that we have very high-quality expectations, and they've done a good job meeting those.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

They have good writers. It’s sort of funny to say, but there’s a lot of companies out there doing this kind of thing. A lot of people think they can be writers and produce blog posts quickly, or have the expertise to comment on the types of subjects we write about. It’s a lot harder to do it than to say that you can do it. I think they have good writers and editors who actually know their way around the written word, and can create compelling content, organize ideas and link them together, who can explain ideas, and who have very clever turns of phrases, and compelling takes on subjects. It sounds very simple, it sounds very basic, but that’s really what it boils down to a can they deliver on what they say they can deliver?

The other thing that we found with them is that we can get some specialized resources from them. If we want to go really in-depth into some complex, or some technical subject areas, they’re often able to source subject matter experts who can talk about things that are very niche. For example, how to program in certain languages or the ins and outs of a certain piece of regulation that affects the financial industry. They have the resources to identify people who can either write, or who can partner with a writer, to put together something that is accurate and makes sense, and resonates with the audience that’s looking for that type of specialized content.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

I think that, when it comes to content and the types of things that we do, we’re always trying new things and always improving. It’s always a moving target, so I will say we continue to push them to do better and better, not necessarily because of any failing on their part, but just because we have high standards, and our readers have high standards. This is sort of a changing ballgame, and we need to react to that. So, I’ll say that they’re always very open and responsive to that type of feedback. They are as up to meeting the challenges as we are. Anytime we’ve asked them to, they’ve done what they can to push the envelope even further. We’ve seen them do really, really good work, so we know they can meet whatever challenge we throw their way.

BACKGROUND

Please give a brief description of your company.

[We are the] Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, [and we have] the following brands: Radisson, Country Inns & Suites By Carlson, Park Plaza, art’otels, Park Inn by Radisson, Radisson Blu Edwardian and Radisson Blu.

What is your role at the company?

I’m the content manager. My responsibilities include updating brand content and promotions on the hotel brand websites as well as manage the hotel website program, WebExtra.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge that you were trying to address when you approached EnVeritas Group?

We needed resources to create and maintain the hotel websites.

What were your company’s business goals for the project?

We were looking to find a nimble, efficient, reliable professional company that produced quality work.  

SOLUTION

Can you talk about the scope of the project?

EVG now maintains more than 1,000 hotel websites with on average of  seven to 10 pages of copy. In addition, they provide an annual review of each hotel’s website making recommendations and conduct SEO [search engine optimization] research to update the meta data as needed.

What was your process for selecting EnVeritas Group with which to work?

EVG had been working with Carlson Rezidor in another capacity to provide destination content. In 2006-2007, the hotel website program was handled by another vendor and we put the hotel website program out to bid and selected a few vendors to be part of a pilot, and give them control as consultant for a group of hotels for six months and see what they would/could do. EVG was one of the finalists in the pilot and were eventually selected as the new vendor to manage the day-to-day updates for the hotel websites.

When was the project completed?

We started working with EVG in 2008 and they continue to be a great partner.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project, and are there any metrics you can share?

EVG meets all set SLAs [service-level agreements] for hotel website development, hotel offers, and simple content updates. In addition, because of their great work, Carlson Rezidor hotels outsources many projects as they can always be counted on to get the job done. We have recently brought them in on a project as they know our tools and can assist in establishing processes and execute accordingly.

How did EnVeritas Group perform?

They consistently produce very high-quality work, are professional, and work with the highest level of integrity.

When working with them, was there anything unique or special about them compared to other companies with which you may have worked?

EVG is a true partner, the partnership continues to evolve as does our business. They are brand advocates and enforce brand standards and elevate any situations, questions, and concerns.

Looking back on the project, is there any area that they could improve or you would do differently?

No.