[Case Study] Telecom Marketing Team Benefits from Digital Marketing Consulting Package
The Challenge
Interstate Telecommunications Cooperative, Inc. (ITC) is a cooperative that provides telecommunications services to rural areas in eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota. As of 2020, the company launched a fiber optic expansion into a portion of Lincoln County, Minnesota, not yet served by ITC.
In mid-2019, the marketing team at ITC identified the need for a solution to raise awareness, generate interest, and automate communication to people living in the Lincoln County Project service area.
Unfortunately, the marketing team had been using an email marketing software that didn’t allow for email automation. ITC also needed an email software with powerful contact management capabilities to better segment its current and prospective customers.
Additionally, the ITC team was ready to go “all in” with Facebook and Google advertising methods in order to raise awareness to about the fiber-optic Internet that would soon be available to Lincoln Co. residents.
ITC had the marketing team. They had the plan in place. They just needed help executing it.
Enter 9 Clouds’ consultation and training package.
The Solution
The partnership between ITC and 9 Clouds allowed the ITC team to hit the ground running after setting up a few basics, such as:
- Setting up Google Analytics to track and evaluate data
- Putting the Facebook pixel on ITC’s websites
- Creating new digital advertising campaigns to reach Lincoln County prospects
But that’s not where the real magic happened. The meat of the partnership included training from the 9 Clouds team on how to use a more robust email marketing software that would better meet the ITC team’s needs.
This training from 9 Clouds included:
- Creating automated workflow emails triggered by form submissions on the Lincoln County Project website
- Responsibly importing and managing contact data for email segmentation purposes
- Designing and sending the company’s email newsletter using live text and imagery vs. a PDF attachment
With a consulting and training package with 9 Clouds, the small ITC marketing team was able to effectively reach and communicate with their Lincoln Co. audience while creating sustainable solutions they could continue to execute in house.
The team at ITC explains that their new email strategy has grown from an idea into a reality:
“It [email marketing] is a method we had been researching for a couple of years, but with the assistance and training from 9 Clouds, we were able to get the project off the ground. We are now sending monthly newsletter emails as well as specific project updates to our fiber optic expansion project. We are monitoring the email analytics and plan to further customize our messaging in the future. The solution that 9 Clouds proposed is simple to use and was a great fit for our email marketing objectives.” – Katie Heller, Products and Services Supervisor at ITC
The team also adds that the newly implemented email workflows have made their jobs easier. That’s always a win!
The Results
The main goal of this partnership was to equip the ITC marketing team with tools and strategies they could confidently take on themselves. According to our client at ITC, we achieved this!
“The email marketing, social media training, and consultation have helped ITC bring those areas to the forefront of our marketing efforts. We have since transitioned to ITC staff creating and implementing social media campaigns. With that being said, it has been great having 9 Clouds in our corner to assist in our efforts as needed.” – Katie Heller, Products and Services Supervisor at ITC
In addition to the learning, which can’t be measured, this partnership also gave way to some successful digital stats:
- Email open rates: Since starting work with 9 Clouds, ITC’s email open rates have been well above industry benchmarks at a whopping 54.53%.
- Website traffic: The Lincoln County Project website had no historical Google Analytics data prior to working with 9 Clouds, but since then, 49.63% of the site’s traffic has originated from the work that is directly a result of our partnership.
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