Relish Studio

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the co-founders as well as the COO of Carrier App Traffic, a mobile advertising agency. We promote and market apps on our platform and our customers’ phones, usually in collaboration with mobile phone carriers and other agencies. We’ve been in the mobile space for about 18 years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Relish Studio?

At that time, we had zero web presence. We wanted to create a brand identity in order to improve our marketing and recruit better advertising partners. We also wanted to have tools for updating all kinds of online messaging, including social media, in a simple and efficient fashion.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve taken a coordinated approach to creating a successful online presence for our company. They’ve helped us with brand strategy, web design, inbound marketing, and SEO [search engine optimization]. Together, we defined the scope, identified our goals, and built client personas, which set the tone for the brand identity and the resulting marketing collateral. Afterward, they gave us options that ranged from the conservative and middle-of-the-road to the more creative. It was great that they gave us a few different tracks since it helped us see the possibilities. In the end, we felt that the middle ground would best represent our company.

What is the team dynamic?

We dealt mostly with Stu [Co-founder and CMO, Relish Studio], Brett [Co-founder and CTO, Relish Studio], and 1 other person.

How did you come to work with Relish Studio?

We’ve worked with some interesting partners, and Stu was one of them. He reached out to us when he formed Relish. It was an easy decision to work with him again considering our past history. We had created some successful business ventures together, and we were appreciative of his efforts. We also respected his ability to solve problems and achieve objectives.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent $21,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2015, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I must admit I haven’t spent much time measuring their impact. However, I can tell you that having a presence in our space is important, and they’ve helped us achieve that. We now have cohesion and consistency in our messaging. Having a clean, professional, and positive message helps us establish credibility and gives our partners the confidence that we can get the job done. We’ve received compliments on the work Relish has done, which is a good indicator of success.

Since they’ve provided us with effective tools, we can now do things on our own in a nimble fashion. We don’t need a marketing team to manage these tools since they can be handled by account managers, which is an advantage for a small company like us. Even people who don’t typically engage in this part of the business can give input. While I can’t equate it to dollars and cents, their work has put us in a spot to make money.

Initially, I volunteered to take this project on and work directly with Relish. SEO was new to me, so I required a certain level of orientation and simpler tools, which I had to teach to others. I came in with no knowledge of the category, and now I feel like I know enough to accomplish things that are important to the company. They did a great job with that.

How did Relish Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very collaborative. They communicate clearly when setting objectives and meeting deadlines—they couldn’t have made it easier for us. Our team uses a variety of project management tools while they use Basecamp, which is very easy to work with. We have regular weekly meetings. They respond quickly to our questions, so they aren’t handling everything during our meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Trust is the biggest thing, and I trust them—they’ve put themselves in a position where we would defer to them on anything if we had doubts. I don’t feel the need to negotiate with or question Stu if he wants to go in a direction that I’m not quite sure of. So far, he always tells us when something’s right or wrong, and we’ve done the same. If there is any gap, he’s reasonable and meets us in the middle. You don’t always get that with similar companies, where you feel like you need to cover your exposure. In the future, if Stu finds himself in a different industry, we’d probably work with him if we needed those services as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since they’re a small company, I wondered if we could get enough time and effort from their team. We didn’t want to be outsourced to vendors or assigned to junior staff. Despite my initial concerns, they are doing great. Any mild trepidation I had around their capacity was unfounded.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Valen Analytics is an advanced data and predictive analytics firm, serving the property and casualty insurance industry. We are known for building underwriting risk models that help insurers price and assess risk. I am the chief marketing officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Relish Studio?

Our website was out of date and we had done a pretty big pivot in terms of our market and product’s positioning. We’re moving from a packaged-up solution to more of solution selling. We’re breaking apart our individual capabilities so that we can communicate to our prospects all the many ways in which we can solve their problems. It required us to overhaul all our messaging and positioning and the way we talk about our products and solutions and capabilities. We set out to find a web development firm that could produce a great looking modern website, but would also want to partner with us to think through how to make that message come to life on our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started out by outlining the way Valen was messaging and positioning at that time and what the evolution would look like. It was a great collaboration between ourselves and the Relish team. They were passionate and inquisitive about our business and our market, the problems we were trying to achieve, and understanding our customers with us.

They understood that their job is not just to code a website, but to help us win in the market and having a website be our central hub for accomplishing that. We spent a good amount of time making sure they had a very solid understanding of where we were, and where we were headed and why before we created a graphic or a copy for web pages. This was the first phase.

During the second phase, we started to create the website architecture and made sure we had something that was going to support what we needed. Relish’s process for this was thoughtful and organized, which I really appreciated. They stood out in their ability to really think this through with us and create something that was going to work for Valen.

Then there was the final execution. We used the website to do a brand refresh and to revamp our visual presence and professional image. We wanted the website to drive how we would execute our brand across all our other collateral presentations. The third phase was getting the brand look and feel right, making sure all the copy and content supported it, and then the production of the website.

How did you come to work with Relish Studio?

I was doing a broad search of firms. We are based in Denver, like they are, but we were open to Denver based firms or folks elsewhere. They were recommended to us. Given the complexity of our product solution, I needed someone who could understand enough about predictive analytics and insurance to be able to help us simplify that message. It’s a big challenge, and we needed someone who had enough professional background and business acumen. I chose them over the other firms because I felt as a web development company, they had the right level of business acumen, and I really liked the way in which they organized projects. They take the time to learn about you and then walk you through a good, organized project management timeline. We just clicked.

How much have you invested with them?

The website redesign cost between $40,000 and $50,000. We have used them on an ongoing basis for various projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Website traffic has trended up. We have increased visitors who come to the site and submit a form. So, from the known to the unknown visitors. For all of the key metrics, we saw improvement. Organic traffic, time on site, people registering and filling out forms and creating leads for us to nurture; we saw meaningful progress for all of those metrics that we outlined with them at the beginning. 

​​​​​​How did Relish Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re outstanding. I highly recommend them. We communicate by phone, email, and since we’re local, we do get together in person from time to time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve worked with many web development firms over the years. Relish stands out in their ability to be a business partner and not just a tech development firm. They rise to the top for me with their understanding of how important that is. When picking a website provider, not everybody rises to that level.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.