Springbox

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at the Austin Parks Foundation. We are a nonprofit organization located in Austin, Texas. Our mission is to improve the lives of the people in our community by making our parks, trails, and green spaces better. So, we

assist with and advocate for funding and volunteerism that the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department doesn't have in order to maintain our parks and trails. I oversee both our development and marketing teams and I help our CEO with long-term strategic planning for the organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Springbox?

It was a twofold project, but mainly, it was an awareness issue of what we were. Our organization is 25 years old this year and we wanted to use that to bring greater awareness to our organization. Because of where we sit within the city and being a nonprofit, we often are confused with the city entity for parks and recreation. So, we wanted to do something that helped get people's attention that then could be parlayed into ultimately raising more funds for our 25th anniversary.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We sat down over the course of a few days in January and strategized in our SpringSolve Workshop. This design thinking workshop was centered on prioritizing specific challenges that face us, and then Springbox dug in to solve them through various exercises and research. It’s an inside process where we had an all-day retreat at their offices with our core leadership and marketing team to dig into our concerns, goals, and challenges. We also looked at what our competitors were doing and how we could implement some of that.

So far, our focus has been around discovering our audience – who they are and what resonates with them in terms of taking action. The output was a recommended strategy from them on how to move forward, which we are currently implementing.

Our hope is that in the future, we can build a new website, but being a non-profit and very cost-conscious, that takes us some time. We are completing processes in little pieces. As of right now, we are looking at our audience database and trying to find ways to mobilize them. Our next phase is to build a messaging strategy. We hope to then use that with our marketing materials to turn over some of the website content and implement some technological assets on our website.

We also would potentially be interested in some digital marketing in the future in terms of optimization. As of right now, our website is more informational and passive, so we want to work with them to make it more action-oriented. We want visitors to be able to more easily sign up for volunteer opportunities, donate, find out about programming, and so on as we grow and become more sophisticated with our marketing efforts.

How did you come to work with Springbox?

I actually worked with them at my previous job with the Livestrong Foundation. We had worked with Springbox to do quite a few total website revamps. I had also worked with a few people within Springbox on various strategic projects. At my current job, we looked at some other groups and decided to work with them for our holistic approach because we weren’t initially sure exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. It made sense to work with them because of their thoughtful approach to projects and because they offer opportunities for clients to think critically and strategize about business problems before launching into them.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent $20,000 so far for the initial strategic insight for the project. Now, we have a proposal of about $35,000 for the messaging project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began talking with them in December 2016 and it is still an ongoing engagement as we wait to start the messaging project.

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

We don’t have much numerical evidence yet as we have been mainly strategizing, but so far, we have all really enjoyed our relationship with them. Internally, across many departments, everyone has really enjoyed their energy and enthusiasm, as well as their way of engaging multiple team members here to get full insight into the problems we are trying to solve. As one can imagine, our biggest struggle is figuring out funding in order to grow. However, this is challenging and a slow process from a non-profit perspective. They’re great at working around our budgets and being conscientious of our thresholds.

How did Springbox perform from a project management standpoint?

They were really great. We utilized Basecamp with them and that's been tremendous. We use that internally as our team, but they set up a separate Basecamp for our specific projects, and they are very thorough. Our account manager does a great job of checking in basically on a weekly basis. If anything, I feel like he wishes I had more updates for him, but he does an amazing job of keeping constant communication, always asking how they can help and be useful. There’s never a lack of communication. When people go on vacation or have other priorities, they are always designating somebody else to run on first for our project and what we're trying to do. It’s been excellent – they are definitely well-oiled in terms of an accounts perspective.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciate their holistic approach to a project. They strike me as people who are interested in long-term investments and partnering with clients for years. A lot of this work takes a long time and you have to constantly be updating and making things better. Not only do they offer a wide breadth of services, but they want to stick around for the long term and see clients grow, which is important to us as a non-profit that has been around for a long time.

Everyone always is about clients and accounts, but it seems like they really care. They have really made it a purpose of their organization to show that they care about the cause that we represent. They're very passionate about the work that we do and they have made that very clear to us. They want to put in the effort and figure out ways to work with us because they believe in our mission.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not so much on their end, but as a marketer myself, I often find myself being the gatekeeper between them and the rest of my organization. This indirect communication can make it difficult to justify the costs of other marketing initiatives to members of my organization. As we move forward, I want to be more forceful and figure out new initiatives together. I don’t think they are opposed to that in any way – it is more due to internal forces. They can give a better explanation some of these initiatives and their importance to people in my organization than I can.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are part of the US National Archive System. I’m the director of digital strategy.

What challenge were you trying to address with Springbox?

We function as an archive but also a museum. Our website was extremely out of date so we wanted to redesign that. We also needed content strategy and UX with both research and design. We wanted to bring things from our archive and museum collections into the digital space. We wanted to provide full access to them for us internally as well as the public.

What was the scope of their involvement?

With what Springbox is doing, we’ll be able to consolidate a lot of our websites and bring them all into a new website. They are building the site from scratch using Drupal. Springbox does really well with their worship formula. We brought in all the key stakeholders from the library: the digital team, archivists, museum curators, education specialists, our people from volunteer and visitor services. Our first workshop was to figure out all the needs of each department. Then we looked at how they’re not being served in the digital space. We talked through different scenarios and were able to distinguish the major audience that would be visiting the site. This was really helpful, not only for our internal folks to talk through things that weren’t working well, but it gave us a much better understanding of what everyone else is doing.

From step one, Springbox had immediate buy-in. Everyone could see how a new website would serve everyone’s needs.

We had a lot of existing content. They did a really thorough audit of our content which had never been done before. There were 50 plus years of content. We looked to see what was working. Springbox is big on using data to support what we think might be working. They could show us what we should include or work on. They also created content in our life and legacy section. We’re diving into subjects of our particular president’s legislation. Springbox has done a lot of work there with content strategists and copywriters.

They’re building out our CRM and the SEO is built in; it best works when we share on Facebook. That’s as far as we’ve gone with Springbox because we handle a lot of that internally. They’ve given us a CMS that will work and is mobile friendly.

How did you come to work with Springbox?

Our library sits on a university campus. I had worked at the university, and I was there when Springbox was leading the major redesign of the university website. Springbox would always come to our meetings to give updates. I knew that if a local agency could tackle such a large project and continuously give us updates, I knew they could tackle this project for the library. There is a lot of bureaucracy when working with a university, and with the library being a federal entity, I knew they would also have the savviness to work with a government organization. There can be a lot of hoops to jump through. We sometimes don’t move as fast, and it’s important to have an agency that understands that but could also be flexible and adaptive to that.

I looked at other companies, but Springbox was always my number one choice. I knew they would be great as far as UX/UI and development. We knew we were going to need a content management system that would have a lot of customization. We needed someone who could do all that in-house which Springbox can do. The library has had previous experiences with agencies who promise all these things, but they end up contracting part of the UX out or copywriting, etc. We wanted an agency who could do all of those things and do each of them well.

How much have you invested with them?

The initial scope of work was $275,000 and we added an additional scope of work for $30,000. We do envision going back to them for other things. We haven’t hit all of the points that we wanted to yet.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2017, and the work is ongoing. We have an estimated launch date of September.

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

Our current site had 2.1 million visitors in 2016 and 2.8 million in 2017. The current political climate and a lot of the things that are being talked about now are laws that this president passed. That drives traffic to our site because people are looking for content about certain laws. We knew this was the time to do the redesign and push that content out. We’re hoping to see the numbers go higher once we launch the new site.

A lot of our internal teams have been in one-on-one workshops doing wireframes, etc. There’s a lot of internal excitement to finally have a site that works for us and allows us to put content out there.

Springbox is really receptive to our needs. They rarely say no. They give us the best option to fit our needs. We understand some of our requests are lofty, but they’re good at coming back with recommendations and solutions, which is super crucial.

How did Springbox perform from a project management standpoint?

We have an amazing project manager. They’re really detail oriented and good at time management. It’s different than having great engineers or account managers. The project manager has been our number one point of contact at all times and has been able to field all of our problems and feedback across the board. I think a project manager can make or break a project, and we’re very lucky to have the one that we have.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re excellent communicators, not just great developers and designers. They’re great to work with. We work really long hours with them with really short deadlines so it can be stressful. They’ve been really easy to work with. That’s my number one thing I look for. They speak to us like normal people and don’t tell us no. There’s no attitude. When we come into the meetings with non-digital folks from the library, that’s really nice. They try really hard to explain so the layperson can understand. That keeps our internal buy-in high which is crucial for us because we’re asking for content across departments and we can’t do our job without them. We have 60 staff members, and they all speak highly of Springbox as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes I feel like our deadlines are too short, but I also understand that we need to keep the ball rolling to launch before the end of the year. They’re really open about why they make certain decisions. If I don’t agree with them, they do a good job of convincing me which I appreciate.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Family Docket is a startup software service company directed at the legal industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with Springbox?

Initially, they helped us with a feasibility study about whether the concept and business idea that we had made sense.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped analyze the competition including how the competition was delivering their service technically since most of them were web or app based programs. They looked for opportunities to improve on what those competitors were doing. They also helped us analyze what feature sets we would need to compete with them and also differentiate ourselves.

They gave us an estimate of how much it would cost to build the solution and how big the market was and gave us suggestions of marketing opportunities that are web based including SEO, lead generators, etc. They provided a 357-slide deck that went through everything we had collaborated on. There were also some initial wireframes included of how the software product would be built. They are currently building the product for us. The end deliverable will be a fully functioning responsive website and the ancillary things that go with that.

They’ve done this for a lot of other companies so they know some of the tools that are available. They’re familiar with how to move up in the Google rankings, etc. For our particular business model, there’s going to be a lot more direct selling that’s going to be a big feature from a marketing standpoint. We will use tools from a digital standpoint in tracking who’s clicking on the site and following up via email. One of the strategies we looked at in the feasibility study was a passive campaign which would include more SEO but we decided an active, direct selling model will be better for this product.

Another deliverable they provided had to do with a branding process. They helped us develop a name and logo and some different versions of that logo. They gave us choices and we provided feedback and eventually made a decision. We are also seeking investors, so they helped us design two pieces for that. One of those pieces is a one-page description that we can send to investors that summarizes what we’re trying to do and the opportunity on the investment side. The second piece was a PowerPoint pitch deck and a business plan document that we partnered together on. I’ve been using it to make presentations about what we’re trying to do and what the product is to get investors and beta testers for the project. Springbox helped with some of the content for those because it had come from the feasibility study, but a lot of what they did was to make it look really professional with our colors and logo, etc. I think that gives credibility to how good the end product could look.

How did you come to work with Springbox?

The owner and I are both members of the Young Presidents’ Organization. When I had this idea, I went to people I know in the organization to get some quotes, and the wide range of those quotes concerned me. Another colleague recommended talking to the owner of Springbox to review the quotes. He felt the low quote was really low and the high quote was too high. He gave me advice to think about going through the business planning process to test the idea to make sure it was viable. Subsequently, we went through that process with Springbox, and we determined that we should move forward with the concept.

Also, it’s nice that the owner has invested with us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent in the six figures so far and we will spend mid- to high six figures to get everything developed.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in September 2016, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

The product isn’t launched yet so there are no metrics. Our connection with Springbox has helped us to raise the needed funding, resulting in 25% of that investment. The owner of Springbox has used his connections to introduce us to more people to help us raise funds. Currently, that’s the most valuable thing they could do for us.

How did Springbox perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent. They’re very responsive. We communicate through email and phone. They use Basecamp, which is nice because you can always go back and look at previous communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Initially, we used someone else on the branding part because I had a connection and I thought the price was good, but I was not happy with the results. I had a conversation with Springbox and I felt they could give me better results, which they did. I didn’t feel the first agency had professional graphics or that they presented the story as well. There were typos and delays, etc. With Springbox, there may be things I will edit because I want to use different verbiage, but it would be very rare to find misspellings, etc. It would be a matter of taste or personal preference if I disagreed with something they gave us. Springbox was head and shoulders above the other agency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When you’re starting to build something that doesn’t exist yet, it’s hard to nail down specifics including cost and timeline. It’s been a moving target, but I feel like that’s part of Springbox’s process where we make changes along the way as we see what we need. I was hoping that more stuff could get done in the timeframe, but I think that would happen with any agency. It’s like building a home. It’s hard to know what everything is going to look like in the beginning, but you need to have the budget for whatever comes. There could have been more conversations in the beginning about how we were going to deal with that. That way, someone who’s a novice like me has a good understanding of it.