E29 Marketing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a department head at Prince of Peace Enterprises

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Prince of Peace is a proud owner and distributor of iconic brands. We represent over 700 products and 100,000 outlets around the US, servicing more trade channels than any other distributor. We sell gourmet, health food products, and more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire E29 Marketing to accomplish?

• Brand Strategy
• 360 GTM Plans
• Campaign Measurement and Optimization

SOLUTION

How did you find E29 Marketing?

• Online Search
• Clutch Site

Why did you select E29 Marketing over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Full Service Agency

How many teammates from E29 Marketing were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Key deliverables we look for are: 

• digital media activation- including recommended channels & spend and media management
• community management 
• social media content development and tracking, 
• campaign development- photoshoots, video production, trade show assets 
• sampling and influencer management- Identifying the right places to sample and the right influencers to represent the brand 
• measurement and reporting.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Based on new research, E29 was able to quickly develop a campaign to activate against our core consumer, launching multiple channels simultaneously. The campaign led to the identification of our best marketing channels to focus on and deliver strong ROI.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Strong client service mentality going above and beyond expectations.

What was your primary form of communication with E29 Marketing?

Virtual Meeting

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

E29 brings a depth of knowledge to our Go-to -Market plans. Each channel is lead by an individual with years of experience in the industry. The team is dedicated to the business and our success.

Are there any areas for improvement or something E29 Marketing could have done differently?

N/A

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing at Olli Salumeria. We're a 12-year-old company that sells salami made in the US with antibiotic-free meat and no nitrates or hormones.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with E29 Marketing?

Our company was still in startup mode, so we had never done any marketing. I was brought on to grow brand awareness and elevate who we were as a brand. We brought on E29 Marketing to help us grow our presence on digital and social to get our brand out there.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

E29 Marketing provides us with digital marketing services, including social media marketing (SMM) and paid and organic search. First, we discussed our goals, objectives, and who we are as a brand. We also took them through our history and researched our competition in order to stand out from them. E29 Marketing came back with marketing ideas for positioning ourselves in the market.

Once we decided on a course of action, we worked together to determine how to grow our base business. We discussed different areas of our business, such as snacks and antipasto trays, and how we wanted to elevate those in the back half of the year. Initially, they ran a bridge campaign using existing assets and stock imagery. Later, we did a photo shoot of our products. Now, E29 Marketing is responsible for designing all creative assets.

We work on our content strategy together monthly, discussing how to raise awareness and educate people about our brand. The team creates a monthly content calendar for us. They manage our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, including the post calendar and responding to comments. 

The team has created a campaign around our snack products, highlighting them around the back-to-school period. They’ve run a campaign to promote our antipasto trays for the holidays, which we wanted to promote because they’re a differentiator for us in the market. E29 Marketing has also worked with our PR team on a campaign around National Salami Day. 

Currently, we’re working together on a plan for the front half of 2023. We don’t want to go dark on our platforms, and E29 Marketing knows our goals for next year. The team is taking learnings from this year’s campaigns and applying them to next year’s strategy to ensure we use our marketing funds more effectively and efficiently. 

What is the team composition?

We work with Terra (Group Account Director), Carol (Strategy & Planning), and a creative strategist. For our paid and organic search campaigns, we work with Annabelle (Project Coordinator) and Stephani (Paid Media Strategist). Another teammate does work in the background to evaluate our paid search. 

How did you come to work with E29 Marketing?

We interviewed different marketing agencies and reached out to E29 Marketing. I had worked with Amie (Owner & CEO) in the past, and I knew E29 Marketing would be comfortable working within a budget. They were very results-focused, not just on impression numbers, but how they tie back to sales and the bottom line, so we chose them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1 million, including the campaigns, activations, and agency fees. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around June 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve recently reviewed our results to date, and we’ve seen an increase in our impressions thanks to E29 Marketing’s work. They help us stay ahead of the curve. Thanks to the National Salami Day campaign, we had a spike in sales and web traffic that day, got a lot of local media coverage, and saw our competition copying us and posting about the day. Since we only started the campaigns in mid-July 2022, we don’t have the full picture of their impact yet. 

How did E29 Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They deliver on time, respond to our needs, and stay within our budget. Although they keep realistic goals, they go above and beyond when emergencies come up to meet even the tightest of timelines. 

We primarily communicate through a weekly Zoom meeting to catch up on everything. Additionally, we email each other constantly and occasionally use phone calls and text messages — no form of communication is off-limits. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

E29 Marketing is the whole package. They help us spend our budget wisely, determining the right thing to spend on for our brand and sales. The team ensures we don’t just spend to spend; they guarantee we invest in the right places to get some key learnings. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

While we’ve had learnings on both sides, I’m 100% satisfied. We’re a smaller company, and there are some assets we can’t provide. However, these limitations have never been a roadblock; instead of throwing their hands in the air, E29 Marketing focuses on solutions to work around the issue. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be fully transparent with them and open to new ideas. There may be some things you haven’t thought about that E29 Marketing might bring to the table. They’ll be fully transparent and help you meet your goals and drive sales for your business.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I oversee a food and beverages company's digital activations for sports and active brands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with E29 Marketing?

We were trying to build brand awareness by activating with influencers. At the time, we had trouble getting our voice and brand out and about, so we partnered with E29 Marketing to help spread our message.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

E29 Marketing helped us with two social media influencer campaigns. They were responsible for coming up with the big ideas, partnering with influencers, amplifying the content, and reporting results. First, they provided campaign proposals for two of our brands. They looked through their influencers database and narrowed the options to about 100 per brand. 

Then, we went through a series of reviews to narrow the lists to 18–20 options for each brand. E29 Marketing provided a database and dashboard to see if the influencers lined up with our core demographic, including age, gender, and interest. We looked for talent within the lifestyle, fitness, and working out interest demographics. 

The team reached out to influencers to see if they were interested in partnering with us. We landed with 7–8 influencers per brand. They activated the influencers and handled the contract signing. The team shared a brief with the participants to let them know what we were looking for. When the influencers created their content, we went through a series of reviews and approvals to ensure that all copy and creative were up to par with our brand standards. The content went live on social media, and we were able to repurpose the influencers’ posts for our own social properties. 

Lastly, E29 Marketing amplified some influencers’ content with social boosting to reach more users. The team wrapped up by letting us know the performance of both campaigns and provided recommendations of what we could do better for our next steps. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three teammates from E29 Marketing; Amie (Owner & CEO) helped us kick off the project; Shantelle (Account Director) was the account manager; Anabelle (Project Coordinator) managed the project. 

How did you come to work with E29 Marketing?

I believe they were a referral. We sent them an RFP, letting them know our business challenge and what we were trying to achieve. In return, E29 Marketing gave us a brief for two brands we wanted to activate again. We were aligned on the spending we wanted to leverage for the campaign, so we partnered with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $65,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–July 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our impressions increased by over 175%, and cost per click (CPC) came in at 30% below the estimated cost. E29 Marketing’s service was great; our account manager was very interactive. The team got off the ground running very quickly and was very proactive in keeping me in the loop. Moreover, they understood the ask and the brief very well.

How did E29 Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

I’d give their project management a fairly high score. They gave us daily updates, keeping us updated on any changes. The team was also responsive and proactive. We typically communicated via email. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

E29 Marketing’s pricing made the most sense to us because they included everything paid in the overall cost of their services. They also had a great database of influencers that targeted our niche audience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have helped us fulfill orders to the influencers. We shipped the products ourselves, which was a little tedious. If we could have sent everything in bulk to E29 Marketing and they had distributed the products to the influencers or created a care package based on the products we wanted to share, that would have been a great touch to add to their program.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about your ask and communicate it early because sometimes it might get lost as the project progresses. Therefore, reinstating the ask repeatedly can be helpful so that the message doesn’t get lost.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

SugarRoti developed and sells pre-measured Indian spice blends from its e-commerce store. I’m the co-founder and co-CEO, together with my partner, co-founder and co-CEO Bina Motiram. We launched SugarRoti in January 2021.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with E29 Marketing?

Our challenge has been marketing to customers in a purely digital space. We reached out to E29 to develop our marketing strategy and approach. As we launched, we focused particularly on digging deep and coming up with our voice around our brand guidelines. Then, we homed in on how to take that carefully curated voice and thread it across all of our channels in all of our operations, particularly on our website, where the brand guidelines should work in perfect synchronicity. Finally, E29 helped us ensure that all is reflected in our organic social media as well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of work was to come in and really take the lead on creating a marketing plan and a footprint around it that related to our launch in a purely e-commerce digital setting. After identifying our core target audiences and building from the marketing plan, E29 went into deep work and created our brand voice, which was the first and most important deliverable.

They also helped us reflect that brand voice in our brand guidelines — all the way to the font and colors we use. They developed the narrative of our voice, which was critical because it was truly the root from which all of our collateral flowed. Thus, they played a key role by helping us really understand our brand, what we bring to the table as founders, and how that synergy is reflected in our company and products.

Since our launch in January, they’ve helped us build KPIs around all of our marketing. As we’ve moved on to paid marketing on Google and Facebook, they’ve helped us to start at the top of the funnel and then go deeper to deploy our dollars in a careful, targeted way so we can get those potential customers to our website and convert them into purchases.

What is the team composition?

Amie (Owner & CEO) is our main point of contact. She has a team that steps in and out; there are four people across different functions who are instrumental in helping us.

How did you come to work with E29 Marketing?

We had done a lot of research trying to find smart, practical, and effective marketing partners in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and food launch startup space. My partner and I did research separately, so I can’t recall where their name came up.

When we put them on our slate of companies to look at, the fact that they were a women-owned company was really important to us because we were also a women-and-women-of-color startup.

They also had really great experience in the food startup and CPG space — they have great connections in the marketplace. Then, when we met them, they were just very smart, articulate, and practical. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $25,000. I think it’s still coming and going.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in November 2020 and are still working with them, thinking about what’s next and how we continue to evolve.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As part of the deliverables, they developed this great KPI tool. It’s an extremely detailed Excel spreadsheet in which we’re able to put in our proposed goals and then see how we perform based on the data. We can sort of keep our eyes on the prize and see where we’re falling behind and where we're meeting our goals, which has been really helpful.

Furthermore, the fact that they’re so data-driven allows us to get true KPI measurements to make sure that we’re getting the value of all of our marketing dollars and marketplace efforts.

How did E29 Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s been excellent. They’ve really helped us to develop good discipline and protocols around that. We’ve been having standing meetings. They’ve been amazingly effective at communicating and ensured that we had a considered agenda to follow up on any action items. They work well with people, and we’ve really appreciated the ones they brought into our business. They’re just a real well-oiled machine.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My partner and I are tough customers since we’ve both been executives at other companies and we’re very involved in the details. E29’s team is very respectful, but they absolutely bring their industry experience to bear in terms of challenging direction, questions, and assumptions that we bring to the table. It has helped us learn the space. Also, bringing the fact that we’ve never been CEOs, they’ve helped us step into that role.

In that sense, they’ve just taken the lead and been a trusted advisor. Amie in particular has been a terrific partner and business guidepost for us as we’ve gone through the process of launching, building brand awareness, and getting conversions and sales back to our website. We’ve been very lucky to work with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s just the nature of an ad agency model. Their billing model is always challenging because an agency has to pay a team. The secret sauce is to figure out a way that makes sense for an early-stage company to make it affordable while they can still ensure they’re meeting their revenue goals. Therefore, being project-based or having project-driven deliverables is sort of limiting given the inherent challenges to that model. However, E29 has been great to work with and has tried very hard to be creative as we spend our scarce dollars in this really critical area.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do your diligence around what is an agency and what does it mean to work with an outside agency versus an in-house marketing resource — where you’re maybe using a consultant or group that fills in for an employee — so you can be more astute on how to set up the relationship. It’s better to be able to break down the inherent challenges of an agency versus an outside partner than learning them as you go.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as a brand manager at Foster Farms. It is a consumer goods company that sells chicken.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with E29 Marketing?

We were launching a low-carb chicken crust pizza, and we decided to hire E29 Marketing to work on our media plan, creating digital assets for our digital partners and helping us with our social media platforms.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

E29 Marketing did a photoshoot and sorted the talent for it, getting in a diverse range of people trying the pizza product. Then, they led an influencer campaign for us. The team found different influencers online that were relevant in the low-carb keto space to send them samples of our products. Those influencers would create content that we could reuse on our platforms.

They also created a media plan to find the right places to put information and the ads they designed. They did digital banners, product detail pages for our website with their copy, and more digital assets. On top of that, E29 Marketing helped us optimize the placement of particular video buttons we had to get the best click-through conversions. 

We are now working on a new launch campaign for the chicken crust pizza, driving another wave of marketing and promotions. E29 Marketing is doing a digital 15-second ad video. We plan to launch it in Q3 this year.

What is the team composition?

At least 10 people are working on the project.

How did you come to work with E29 Marketing?

We were looking for agencies that were in the Bay Area because Foster Farms had previously worked with some companies that weren't local. It ended up being harder because of the different time zone.

E29 Marketing helped us because they were already familiar with our company — they were located on the West Coast and would be close enough to have in-person meetings. E29 was also willing to take our budget for our new launch compared to other larger companies. The hope was to do business and expand exclusively with E29 Marketing if the project went well.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent under $1,000,000. The investment for the paid media was around $600,000, and we have invested around $400,000–$500,000 for the hours and assets.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in April 2020. The partnership has become ongoing because we are pleased with the work E29 Marketing has executed and the results.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of work that E29 Marketing provides is great. We like the videos that they create with the talent we have. They're also able to create good content for our Instagram and Facebook accounts.

We measure success with several KPIs, including coupon downloads, click-through rate (CTR) conversions, and landing page costs. The landing page performance has improved week over week since we started it. Spotify is one of the items that E29 has ended up bringing in for audio completion rate, and it’s been extremely well received.

The brand live study measures the reactions of the people who have been exposed to our ad video, including their sentiments over it, if they have heard the brand before, and how likely they are to try the product. We’ve seen a 30% increase from people who have watched it. That’s also positive feedback.

How did E29 Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We do a Zoom call once a week, and E29 Marketing maintains an Excel spreadsheet that speaks to all the ongoing projects for the different divisions of the company. It also has what deliverables they may need from us, tracks the timeline of where they are, and monitors the budget for each project. It's been great being able to have dialogues on a consistent basis. 

Once E29 Marketing sends us the first round of creative, we provide feedback within a week to a week and a half. We go back and forth with different iterations to make sure that we are aligned on any changes that could potentially happen and may require us to push the timeline back.

We also have a KPI workbook that we go through every month, which is something new that I haven’t experienced with other agencies. The point is that E29 Marketing digs into the details, and I think it’s very helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

E29 Marketing is very knowledgeable on paid search, keyword research, and different tactics. They come with a holistic approach versus sticking with the status quo, and they figure out new ways to drive awareness or trial for our products.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't know if I would do anything differently. E29 Marketing does a great job of communicating. When things aren't working, and they feel our money isn't being optimized in the best way, E29 Marketing figures out how to move it and use it.

Any advice for potential customers?

E29 Marketing enjoys when they are working with a client that isn't just looking to them to have all the answers. They like to be equally engaged. I recommend having your own ideas and thoughts. From there, you can dwindle it down to what will work for you based on your restrictions, budget, and timeline. 

Keep in mind that you can’t always have everything you want. E29 Marketing wants to have consistent feedback and a dialog with you. Therefore, be open and willing to connect with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director, Integrated Marketing of a food & beverages company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Food manufacturer

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire E29 Marketing to accomplish?

• Generate sales

SOLUTION

How did you find E29 Marketing?

Other

Why did you select E29 Marketing over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from E29 Marketing were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Plan, buy, optimize, manage, and measure retail media network and paid search.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Positive return on ad spend

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management is excellent with clear project plan for all deliverables. Account management is very responsive.

What was your primary form of communication with E29 Marketing?

Virtual Meeting

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

They offered a great service and stood out for their expertise and great value.

Are there any areas for improvement or something E29 Marketing could have done differently?

Asks lots of questions that sometimes seems excessive.