BusinessGateway.ca

An online challenge
Big or small, any organization that plants its flag on the Internet faces the same challenge: how to attract people to its website. William McCullough confronted that problem recently when he took over as National Marketing Manager for BusinessGateway.ca, the Canadian government's flagship online portal for small and medium-sized businesses. A one-stop shop for information on everything from startup financing to export regulations, BusinessGateway.ca has existed since January, 2001. Until recently, however, relatively few small businesses were aware of it.

The e-Marketing mix
That's now changing, thanks to an innovative emarketing campaign planned and executed by cardcommunications. "It's been great working with them," McCullough says of the cardcommunications team. "I've got nothing but good things to say about the work they do. I would definitely recommend cardcommunications to other organizations that are looking to increase their visibility."

McCullough initially solicited bids for an email marketing campaign from two providers. Cardcommunications won the contract, he says, because its proposal was not only better developed but also less expensive than the competition. "With cardcommunications, we were getting more for less," he says.

It's all in the strategy
Two elements of the campaign in particular stood out for McCullough. First, rather than creating a single message and emailing it indiscriminately to a list of Canadian small businesses, the cardcommunications team researched and developed four different messages, each highlighting a specific aspect of Businessgateway.ca. The team sent each message to a separate test group of 5,000 small businesses, analyzing the results to determine which of the four approaches generated the greatest impact, based on the percentage of emails opened, the number of web click-throughs and so on. The winner -- the message that proved most effective in raising awareness of Businessgateway.ca -- was then sent to the full list of 30,000 businesses, minus those who had already received it during the test phase.

Creating more than a pretty picture
Another important factor behind the campaign's success was the high quality of the creative content, which combined catchy headlines, succinct copywriting and colorful, eye-grabbing graphic design. "We knew we were dealing with an audience that sees an awful lot of messages every day, so whatever we did had to be unique," says McCullough. "Cardcommunications really came through for us. And in the end, that meant fewer things for me to worry about. It's not always easy to get things approved around here, but this material has just rolled right though. Everyone who has seen it has loved it."

Adds McCullough: "Our goal from the start was to present an appealing product and to really impress people with what we're able to do. "The campaign that cardcommunications developed for us was just the best possible way for us to get the attention of our clients.”