Zenbox Marketing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for the Santa Fean magazine and we are a 50-year-old publication. My role is a digital content creator. I am in charge of all things digital, including social media, website, email marketing, as well as Google Ads.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zenbox Marketing?

The publication was recently purchased by a new publisher and we took the opportunity of that transfer of ownership to revamp and rebuild the website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It was a complete build, pretty much from scratch. The previous owner had built the website years and years ago in HTML and there was no live content on the site. Every previous issue that he had on the site was linked to a third-party provider with a PDF version of the issue. 

We had to completely build a new site with live content. There were seven different sections of the magazine so each section had its own landing page. We also created article pages and we launched with 60 different articles and they went live immediately. Half of those were from old issues, with the oldest coming from 2009.

It was a very large and comprehensive website with an incredible amount of content. It is the biggest website that I ever built or have been associated with.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two main people and they were Ava (Founder) and Lucas (Creative Director). Ava was my primary point of contact and she worked back and forth with her team. They were both fantastic.

How did you come to work with Zenbox Marketing?

A big priority for us was to use a local organization, as the Santa Fean magazine, our main mission is to promote local businesses. Out of the local businesses that were web developers and marketing agencies, Zenbox Marketing was far beyond the best choice for us. 

I had worked with other web developers in Santa Fe and New Mexico and I was not as impressed with their work. I knew Ava and Lucas personally before hiring them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

It was between $9,000–$10,000, but I am not aware of the final invoice number that went straight to our accounting team.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Zenbox Marketing in August 2020 and then launched the website in October 2020. I’ve never done a website build that is this extensive in that short amount of time.

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

We’ve been receiving emails and comments on our social media about how beautiful the website turned out, how easy it is to use, and how fun it is to explore.

From metrics, we saw in the first three days 1,000 page views, which for a town in Santa Fe, has 70,000 subscribers. That’s a pretty significant page view for us which is great. The average session duration was about 6 minutes for the first week. People are spending a lot of time exploring which is great also.

How did Zenbox Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We met on a weekly basis just to keep track of the projects. They also added me as a user in their Trello. I was then able to monitor from afar how the project was going and what they were working on.

The project management was seamless and they are excellent at communicating. I never felt like I was out of the loop or that they were difficult to get a hold of. They were wonderful to work with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For me, it’s all about personalities. I was very impressed with how Ava and Lucas were able to manage the varying personalities and points of view that happen within an organization. Part of my job as the project manager and the liaison for this was to try and manage those and in some cases, I was getting frustrated.

They were able to handle everything with grace, appreciation, thoughtfulness, and care. Even if the feedback they were getting was completely the opposite of what was discussed the day before, they handled those unique personalities really well.

I was really impressed with how they handled everything and what the end product was. We have a beautiful website and how quickly they are able to get things done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I usually try to find areas of improvement for people, and I really don't have one for them. The entire process was just such a joy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Put your full trust in them. You won’t regret the products in the end. They really, truly are experts in their field and will guide you through the process really nicely.