Ragnarok

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing and communications at EverWash, a technology company for the car wash industry. Our platform makes it easy for car wash operators to sell and manage an unlimited membership program at their company.

We also make it easy for consumers to find, purchase, and manage an unlimited membership of their own. This potentially means that a customer can wash their car every day at a participating local car wash location for a low monthly price.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarok?

We wanted to bolster, upgrade, and innovate how we engage and communicate with our members. For this purpose, we signed a contract with Braze to augment how we communicate with our customers. However, we were experiencing a challenging onboarding process due to our organization's technical and resource limitations. We hired Ragnarok to help us develop, implement, and execute the various strategies we wanted to create in Braze.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ragnarok helped us onboard our communication plans, multi-channel messaging, onboarding automation process, and win-back campaigns. We started by addressing key communications and experiences we wanted to improve. Internally, we pinpointed the areas we wanted to work on and then met with Ragnarok and their strategist. 

We discussed our organization’s needs and our internal strategies with the team. Additionally, we provided them with the best practices for the kind of communication we wanted to develop. Our team also provided very early-stage flowcharts and copy examples of what we had been doing and wanted to create. 

From there, the Ragnarok team helped us create our new strategy, starting with flowcharts designed on Figma. Their content team developed the wording we would use in our communication and wrote the copy. Then, their design team created templates for emails, push notifications, and text messages. After testing the templates, we made the strategy live in a collaborative effort between our engineering teams. They also helped move our automation flows from our legacy in-house system into Braze.

Before this project, we could only send email communications to our members and customers. Ragnarok added push notifications and text message communications to our offering of mediums. They helped us get a feature that allows us to create more robust and engaging communication automation to follow members along for more than a single touch point and keep them engaged for several weeks after the fact. Overall, Ragnarok helped update the look and feel and increase the quality of our engagement and communication templates. 

What is the team composition?

First, we worked with someone from Ragnarok’s sales team to figure out the contract. Mary (Customer Success Manager) was our project manager, Michael (CRM Strategist) was our strategist, and Kiyo (Email Developer) was our engineer. Additionally, we worked with Kate (Marketing Analyst) from their reporting team and more people from the design team. 

How did you come to work with Ragnarok?

They were referred to us by Braze as one of their preferred partners. Previously, we worked with Ragnarok on other technical and database-related projects. After the recommendation, we had a discovery call with them and liked what we heard, so we moved forward. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2021–May 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Ragnarok’s work, our email engagement metrics are up across the board. In addition, our open and click-through rates are both on or above the industry average. This is an improvement from before, when we fell at or below the industry average. The team gave a fresh coat of paint to our communication templates. Our emails look a lot better, and our push notifications are engaging and deep link right into the app, creating a more seamless experience. They took our foundations, expanded upon them, and built them up; it was cool to see the ideas they brought to the table. We were pleased with their design team’s creativity and professionalism. 

Thanks to their help, we launched multi-channel messaging for our members. Before working with Ragnarok, we were not communicating early and often enough and were only leveraging email. Now, we can leverage email, push notifications, and text messaging. The team enabled us to have several live, automated onboarding, transactional, and win-back flows. All of our members experience Ragnarok-derived campaigns and messages throughout the membership lifecycle. 

How did Ragnarok perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great at project management; they were always on top of things and very attentive. Mary played quarterback; she ran the show and helped keep everyone on track and focused. Overall, we were really pleased with Ragnarok’s team and how they interacted with ours. They were very friendly, professional, informative, and always willing to help.

We used Google Docs and Google Drive to share assets and collaborate on the final messaging. We embedded a Slack channel within our workspace so we could communicate with them at a moment’s notice. They were always fantastic with availability for meetings on Zoom or quick conversations on Slack. We also exchanged a few emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with Michael — he was a rock star. He always made himself available, grasped our business, and shared his best practices and strategies for our organization. He was willing to go above and beyond, whether connecting with Braze on our behalf or reaching out to us one-on-one and calling out issues he noticed. 

Overall, we really loved working with Michael. If we were to work with Ragnarok again, it would be because of our experience with him. Kiyo was also super helpful in demystifying Braze of our in-house engineers; we leaned on his experience. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We would have liked more transparency regarding how many hours we had left per contractual agreement. A few times, we didn’t realize we were running out of billable hours, and we had to pause to renegotiate. There was one instance when we were caught off guard because we had already run out of hours. However, we addressed the issue with them, and they were much better at managing that moving forward. Other than that, it was smooth sailing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I advise you to do your work on your end with the research for the platform. We needed help with Braze because our team members didn’t have the technical know-how to implement it. Even when we started working with Ragnarok, we realized there were certain fundamental things we needed to do better on our end.

Make sure you have the right people in place and that you’re doing your end of the bargain so the process runs smoothly, and nothing lags. We realized halfway through that we needed to do more learning on our end. When diving into any product, your team should have the right resources to work with Ragnarok and ensure their team is working with people with the proper knowledge.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a cable media company with three main brands, HISTORY Channel and Lifetime. I am the Director of Email/CRM Data & Analytics Strategy. I manage all the email production for all three brands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ragnarok, and what were your goals?

We originally hired them to help us onboard with our new ESP. Since then we have continued a partnership with them on our day-to-day email production. They assist us on producing emails and keeping us up-to-date on email marketing trends.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We interviewed with them and were looking for a team that is well-versed in email, as most agencies are not. We found them to be experts in the field and they had the experience we were looking for with onboarding a new ESP. They were also very familiar with the ESP we switched to, so we knew they would make this transition seamless.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

For the onboarding they were responsible for setting up all our transactional emails and workflows. They also helped to create our HTML master template and worked on the IP warming. Currently they are involved in the full process of email production for a portion of our emails. This includes building the HTML, creating the campaign in our ESP, testing Litmus, implementing any feedback and launching once they receive final approval.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

For the onboarding, we worked closely with the founders. Then for the day-to-day production, we work with our account manager, Ana Imani and her team of producers. There are about 5 producers focused on our account.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The onboarding process allowed us to quickly transfer to our new ESP within 2 months, compared to past migrations which took up to 6 months.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have monthly meetings with the team and are in constant contact through Slack. They are very responsive and can easily reach out to us with any questions they may have.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They have a good size team that allows them to complete work in timely manner but not too big where we don't know all the members working on our projects. Everyone on their team is very easy to work with — they feel like part of our in-house staff here.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

You definitely get more expertise from the founders, so the only improvement would be to have a senior member who has more advance skills than the rest of the team to help with more complex issues. This may be because our current needs aren't that complicated, so this may be just a matter of adding higher skilled talent to our agreement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our Company - Quetext is a leading plagiarism-detection software, providing services to over 2 million teachers, students, and professionals worldwide. By combining advanced DeepSearch™ technology with clear and engaging feedback, we provide our users with the tools necessary to improve their writing. My Position - I am working as Operational Manager for Quetext.com, which was acquired by LTV SaaS Growth Fund

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ragnarok?

Advertising and Email Marketing

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Google Search

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

They have a complete development team for Marketing, Advertising, Sales and Strategy Building and more. We got along with Coltan and Micheal, they moved the project with ease and perfection. Highly Recommended!!

What was the team composition?

We got along with the Customer Success Manager and Strategy expert and their designer for Final Email designs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We are positive about the results as we saw a drop with this year's MRR after Christmas, but it's quite a seasonal app, it will rise back in March.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had planned weekly meets for strategy and review of tasks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their perfection and approach towards the project were impressive.

Is there any area for improvement or anything that could have been done differently?

They are Awesome!!