Calendar Club

My working relationship with Calendar Club spans over 6 years and includes the development of online marketing strategy, management and administration of email, paid search and affiliate programmes, as well as driving inbound social media and blogging marketing campaign development. In addition, I have acted as the primary contact for media relations - including digital, print, radio and TV -  and managed select advertising campaigns for the stores. The project management of an ecommerce platform shift in 2009 for CalendarClub.co.uk resulted in an initial year on year lift in conversion of over 300% in the first few months, due to SEO and content improvements.

Calendar Club are well-established, seasonal retailers having been on the high streets of UK and Ireland since 1998. With over 300 stores opening between September and January each year, they are a recognised brand, popular with both shoppers and retail landlords alike. In 2003, CalendarClub.co.uk was launched online and, in 2011, with 9 years of ecommerce experience to draw upon, added personalised calendar products to their offering with the launch of MyCalendarClub.co.uk.

Both the stores and website offer hundreds of calendar and diary titles with such diverse subject matter as dog breeds, mum’s planners, sport, models, humour and celebrities. The online shop carries roughly double the number of store titles and it is this extended product range – currently over 2,700 titles – that enables the company to boast that they are Europe’s biggest calendar store. CalendarClub.co.uk have seen solid, consistent growth through the implementation of crucial marketing programmes including email, paid search and affiliates. More recently Facebook, Twitter and a company blog have also been added to the mix to help engage customers, extend customer service support and increase brand awareness. These programmes together contribute over 55% of sales revenue for the online company, with the remainder coming from channels such as natural search, 3rd party retailers and telephone sales.

“"Having worked with Natalie for 6 years, I have seen her work successfully in several complementary roles for Calendar Club including marketing, merchandising & e-commerce project management. Her attention to detail and overall knowledge of marketing & online business has been extremely helpful in moving the business forward. We are confident that Natalie always has our best interests at heart and is as enthusiastic as we are about seeing our business progress."

Scillyflowers

Scillyflowers owners Ben and Zoe Julian have been shipping Scented Narcissi and Pinks from their family run farm on the Scilly Isles for the past 20 years. Based on the island of St. Martins, the flower boxes are sent by 1st class post, offering a little piece of island paradise to flower lovers across the UK. The mild climate on the Isles of Scilly supports flower crops almost all year round, with the traditional crop of Scented Narcissi harvested between October and April. May to October sees a crop change to Scented Pinks, an English summer favourite with a beautiful cottage garden perfume. Their e-commerce business now handles over 90,000 boxes of flowers every year.

Bilby has been running a paid search campaign on Google, Yahoo! and Bing (Yahoo! and Bing merged mid-April 2012) on behalf of Scillyflowers for the past 3 years and has seen continual year on year improvements in stats. The primary objectives were to reduce costs, increase revenue, improve CTRs (click through rates) and conversion rates, with a view to optimising all other key metrics along the way. Gradually, poor performing keywords/ad groups have been eliminated from the campaigns with the result being a lift in the average annual CTR of over 800%; an average drop in CPC (cost per click) of 33%; revenue increase of over 200% and a CPA (cost per action) drop of 41%.

In addition, Bilby regularly use analytics to monitor paid search against organic performance and are looking to work more closely with Scillyflowers on future SEO projects.

“"We have worked with Natalie since she started Bilby marketing in 2009. We tasked Natalie with running our PPC advertising and she has really made a spectacular difference to our results. Natalie has achieved this not only by her thorough knowledge of online marketing but by taking the time to really understand our business. We very much enjoy working with Natalie and appreciate her professional, straight forward approach so much so that we are currently working with Natalie to increase the amount of work she does for us."

Chris Cowen

Chris Cowen began his journey to becoming a qualified counsellor in 2001 after an extensive career in accountancy, sales, management and business consultancy. Having achieved his counselling accreditation with the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP), Chris now has an established counselling and life coaching practice that requires a targeted, local marketing approach. Since July 2009, Bilby has been running a small Google Adwords geo-targeted campaign, focussed on a limited radius around Exeter in Devon, as well as advising on SEO and offline marketing strategy. During this period, the paid search campaign has seen a 22% drop in the CPC (cost per click) for the Adwords campaign as a result of improved relevancy, keyword refinement and a general Quality Score lift; a 35% lift in the number of average pages per visit on chriscowen.co.uk, a 37% increase in average visit duration and a 19% drop in the bounce rate.

“"Natalie brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to a very professional approach. Over the 2 years that she has been helping me develop and implement an on-line marketing strategy, I have always found her very able and knowledgeable about her subject areas. But she is also willing to work outside of these areas where the situation requires it, while being fully open about that fact. This makes her a great external resource who I can rely on and who is totally trustworthy."

Skyworld Aviation

My brief for Skyworld Aviation was to review the existing website and marketing campaigns and give specific, practical advice on how to improve the volume and quality of traffic to Skyworld.co.uk, including a focus on increasing industry visitor numbers. The review centred on SEO, site content, social media and blogging, culminating in a report that offered practical and targeted strategy, actions and tactics for reaching set objectives.

With 16 years of trading under their belt, Skyworld Aviation is one of the leading regional aircraft marketing organisations worldwide. Skyworld is unique in that it predominantly specialises in used ‘regional’ aircraft, whereas other aircraft marketing organisations deal in any size aircraft, making their B2B marketing requirements highly specialised. Skyworld is ‘the’ company for aircraft in the 19-120 seat category and, unlike other regional aircraft marketing firms, has the ability to provide extensive complementary consultancy services to a level including fleet evaluation, aircraft performance data and in depth market intelligence data. To date Skyworld have concluded 450 transactions on behalf of 150 clients across 50 countries.

““I have recently engaged Natalie of Bilby Marketing to assist with our online and emarketing strategy. Natalie has so far demonstrated an extensive knowledge of SEO optimisation / web marketing and applied it within a good understanding of our niche business. She has provided Skyworld Aviation with recommendations for our future online development as well as offered advice on immediate changes that can be made to our current setup until we are in a position to make more permanent changes. Natalie is very personable and has easily grasped the nature of our industry sector with a realistic expectation of budget constraints! Many of her suggestions have already been put in place and have reaped immediate results. I look forward to our continued business relationship as our online presence evolves.”

Landlord Action

Working with Landlord Action over a two year period, Bilby Marketing helped to hone the existing paid search campaign on Google Adwords, as well as setting up and administrating further Yahoo! and Bing campaigns from scratch. The agreed objective was to reduce costs whilst increasing CTRs (click through rates), help to reduce bounce rates and as a result improve the overall quality of phone enquiries. Despite a huge increase in competition during the given period, the CTR lifted by over 50%, average bounce rates dropped by 12% (a new site was launched during this period) and within the first 6 months the average CPC (cost per click) dropped by 17%.

Landlord Action was established in 1999 in order to help landlords with expert advice on landlord/tenant issues. The company was founded by Jonathan Chippeck, a landlord with over 20 years experience, and Paul Shamplina, who has worked within the legal system as a bailiff since 1987. Paul is recognised as an authority on landlord/tenant disputes, having appeared on TV shows such as ITV’s Tenants From Hell, BBC1’s War At the Door and BBC London’s Inside Out as well as having performed countless radio and print press interviews. With a number of industry awards in tow, they are a respected source of legal services for landlords in a highly competitive field.

“"Natalie makes my job easier. But, more importantly, she has made our website's SEO and PPC campaigns MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more efficient. After nearly a year of working with her, she has become indispensable to our company. Highly recommended!!"