CSTMR

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP and director of marketing at a financial institution. We provide loans primarily to individuals who can’t obtain financing from traditional sources.

What challenge were you trying to address with CSTMR?

We’re in the process of addressing a challenge around our brand. We needed help with branding and website development to bring all the parts into one.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have three separate affiliates that head different product lines. We’re working with CSTMR to streamline how we take those products to market. The most evident output of that work will be a new, search engine optimized website that represents our three brands.

We started with brand exploration. They helped us refine our market positioning. We then started on website architecture. That phase of work is complete. We did wireframes and information architecture for our new site. As a parallel process, they’re helping us on our verbal and visual brand.

What is the team composition?

We have a primary contact who pulls people in as needed. We’ve worked with three other people who are marketing and SEO strategists.

How did you come to work with CSTMR?

They emailed me. Usually, I would’ve deleted it, but they contacted me exactly at the right time. I had this project on my mind as the email arrived in my inbox. I went to their website and learned about their work and saw that they were a credible firm via their case studies. I had a couple of intro conversations with them. We looked at multiple firms, but I chose them because of the relationship we built during the vetting process. They were very eager and interested in collaborating with me in solving problems. I told their CEO about a current issue we were having with our website, and he offered to have his team think about it and get back to me. I wasn’t even a client at that point. That showed me that once I was a client, his team would go above and beyond to make sure that my team had what we needed to do our jobs. That’s been the case in working with them since day one.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re spending $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

I’ve been a delighted customer since we started working with them. Their work on information architecture delivered what we wanted as a client but also helped us see things in a new way and see opportunities we may have missed. As marketers, we should be able to do information architecture by ourselves, but bringing in external perspective is helpful to get out of our comfort zone. The work has been really collaborative. They’re plugging into our team and adding resources. I’ve been really pleased with that as well.

How did CSTMR perform from a project management standpoint?

We usually communicate on a daily basis. They’ve been excellent. Everything has been on time. I had to get used to working with more free-flowing deadlines, which I’m okay with because deadlines move all the time. Things aren’t late, but it’s a different work style than I’m used to.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very patient. They take the time to understand your problem and find proactive solutions for solving it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

For clients that need or expect more diligence around deadlines, that would be one area of improvement needed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take the time to get to know your counterpart’s work style. In the early phases, any tension or miscommunications may be due to the fact that you’re blending work styles. My main contact is a very indirect person, and I’m a very direct person. We both were feeling tension from that, but once we learned each other’s work styles, it’s been smooth.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the EVP for a small community bank. I’m in charge of retail banking and marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with CSTMR?

Although we’re a small bank, we wanted to show our customers that we were just as capable of providing all their services as a bigger bank. As a result, we needed a marketing team with innovative, out-of-the-box ideas to help distinguish us from our competitors. We didn’t want to be like every other bank in the area; we wanted to be different. We wanted resources to develop a new website, create marketing assets, and make a marketing strategy.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, they designed our new website around our company’s strategy and overall mission, which involved changing our domain name and site management. After migrating content from our previous site into the new version, they revamped the pages with new ideas to ensure a user-friendly experience. They recommended showing real people on our site to let people know who we were and promote our services. Not only did they include our staff information, the conducted client interviews to get testimonials. Additionally, they optimized our verbiage, modifying our content to maximize our search rankings.

Beyond web development, they expanded our digital marketing efforts. Their strategy featured a marketing calendar to coordinate our outreach, a monthly email communications bulletin, and social media management. They used Constant Contact and Buffer, respectively, to handle our emails and social media accounts.

Over the course of the engagement, they’ve also designed press releases, ads, brochures, and business cards. They currently create all of our marketing collateral and communication pieces on an as-needed basis in addition to refining our site page by page. They plan to implement AdWords in the future.

What is the team composition?

We work primarily with their co-founder, who serves as our main contact, in addition to an SEO specialist and a person who manages our email bulletins. I know that, behind the scenes, they have other people who do their design work.

How did you come to work with CSTMR?

Their CEO reached out ours. At the time, we had interviewed several marketing firms but didn’t feel that any of them had any new, innovative strategies. We researched the company before setting up a conference call with their team and liked their originality. Soon, they sent us a proposal, which we fine-tuned until eventually engaging them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend $10,000 per month for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work began in March 2017 and is ongoing. We're on a yearly contract with them.

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

We’ve been really happy with their work because it helps distinguish us from our competitors. It’s just different from what every other bank in the area is doing. We’ve gained a few customers who wanted to meet us from our staff bios, and our monthly bulletins have a 33%–35% open rate with few lost subscriptions. In terms of SEO, we’ve made significant strides in increasing our rankings. They track all the data for us and provide a detailed quarterly report about our number of clicks and content engagement. I pass the report on to our board of directors so that they can see where we are.

How did CSTMR perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very organized. About 3–4 times a week, we communicate through Basecamp, which allows us to exchange information on our projects, make changes, and approve them. Anytime I need marketing materials, I post the specs on Basecamp, and they design it, keeping the look and feel consistent with our brand. I send their suggestions to our respective business development team to sign off on, and then they implement the changes to the website.

They also conduct a weekly video chat to provide status updates, and after the call, they compile a detailed review of the meeting, including pending projects and any next steps. The calls range from 30 minutes to an hour.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their design skills because I don’t have to give them a lot of instruction. I mostly give them the ad specs and general details, and they’re creative enough to produce an appropriate ad that hits the mark on the first try.

They’re also very knowledgeable about digital marketing and have helped us navigate the technical side. Their site changes, email marketing suggestions, and responsive analytics tracking are considerably strong.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be prepared to allocate the proper time and energy to the project to make it successful. CSTMR can only do so much, and if the customer isn’t responsive or doesn’t provide feedback on their suggestions, then it can be difficult to move forward. One of the things that keep us on track is the weekly meetings, which provide a clear list of tasks for their team and ours. While CSTMR’s team understands and can accommodate the customer’s needs, the customer must be prepared to put in the work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a communications specialist at Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority, a public entity risk pool.

For what projects/services did your company hire CSTMR Digital Marketing?

We needed to develop a new website, member portal, and CRM. We also required additional communication and digital engagement functionalities.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to replicate our existing member engagement tools while also enhancing in-house capabilities and member experience.

How did you select this vendor?

They were suggested by a consultant that helped us identify our needs and potential vendors. We considered three proposals and selected CSTMR based on the agility of their proposed solution and our chemistry. We felt that they would be a true partner and not just a service provider.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

After an initial discovery phase to fine-tune the project’s scope and parameters, we’re now in the development phase. Final deliverables will include a website, member portal, and CRM/database. 

What was the team composition?

Approximately 10 people have worked on our project thus far.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Though we’re still in the development phase, we’re looking forward to having a much easier, more beneficial platform for both our team and users.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They’ve executed very well. We have regular communication and weekly Zoom meetings to coordinate, answer questions, and get updates. Basecamp allows us to share documents and monitor daily tasks.  

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re accessible, easy to work with, and committed to our organization. Rory (CEO, CSTMR Digital Marketing) and Jack (Co-Founder, CSTMR Digital Marketing) have been true partners every step of the way. They and their remote team invested time to understand our needs and the tools we wanted. They’re an extension of our team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Thus far, I have no suggestions for improvement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

uLinkremit, a money transfer platform of UniTeller Financial Services, Inc. UniTeller Financial Services, Inc. is a leading Remittance & International Payment Processor based in the United States.

The uLink platform safely processes money transfer, bill payment, and phone reload transactions originating from the United States to a payment network of over 175,000 paying locations worldwide.

For what projects/services did your company hire CSTMR?

Digital and content marketing

What were your goals for this project?

Reduced customer acquisition costs Transaction and customer acquisition related goals Country specific growth

How did you select CSTMR?

Thorough research of ad agencies, company portfolio, and case studies

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Advertising campaigns - implementation, optimization, and management, Automated marketing, Content development, and more

What was the team composition?

We generally work with anywhere between 5–6 members of their team but there's an entire army of gifted individuals that work on the backend to keep the ball rolling.

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

Advertising is just one of many touchpoints we have to talk about our brand in an engaging and creative way and at uLink, we believe it is a rather powerful one. From the time we onboarded CSTMR to work, we have made nothing but progress.

Progress in not only implementing an ad strategy that’s on-target but also one that has clearly helped us achieve our year-end goals with a lower CPA, year after year. With everything from well thought out and well-optimized advertising campaigns that reaches our audiences, to automated marketing tools, blog strategy and content, and so much more. They’ve really helped bring our brand to life.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

CSTMR has a talented team of individuals that are highly skilled in their areas of expertise. Their project management is on point! They make it easy for us as a client to keep a track of all the ongoing projects and next steps.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

• Their ability to utilize data to optimize our ad performance across multiple channels.
• Their highly talented team
• They have the ability to shine and produce results regardless of any challenge thrown at them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that I can think of. We're very happy with the outcome.