HELLO

Over the years I've worked with a number of brand guidelines. Kumon's was one of the best I'd had the pleasure of using. Within those guidelines, I produced dozens of pieces, including these standouts below.

The Canada China Trade Conference (CCTC) was a trade show featuring speakers from prominent digital companies in China & international trade experts from Canada. I was part of a 3-person team, designing all event materials while handling marketing for the event as well.

RESULTS

• Sold-out event (1000+ paid tickets)
• Established authority in Chinese digital space
• PR generated 10+ published news articles

The trouble with being the new kid in town: nobody knows you. I was hired to shift that reality. One way we did that was through the Richway Tech blog.

RESULTS

• 200% increase in organic web traffic
• 40%+ increase in sales
• Increased brand recognition

At Kumon Canada, I managed the blog with the goal of increasing brand awareness & conversions. I was behind all the articles, copy & design. Kumon has many blogs internationally, but the Kumon Canada blog continues to outperform them all, even with no content updates since I departed in early 2018.

RESULTS

• Content increased conversions by over 500%
• Increased traffic by over 250%
• Increased blog engagement by 300+%
Page views + time on site, decreased bounce rate

Through the use of SEO best practices, I also performed a complete overhaul on all pre-existing Kumon blog content and all newly created content moving forward.

SEO TACTICS
Keyword Research, Meta/File Optimization, Images, Headers, Editing, Writing, Link Building

RESULTS

• Increased organic traffic by over 200%
• Vastly improved search rankings for a variety of keyword groups

At first I hated this style of design. But then I realized how fun it could be. After a while, creating these banners was something to look forward to. I designed dozens of these, contributing to the biggest year of cruise sales the agency had ever seen.

Retail travel emails targeted to the cruise market. When I inherited this project, unsubscribes were high, and the list was disengaged. Through a complete content overhaul, strategic tweaks, improved design & better copy, we were able to see a dramatic increase in the amount of leads + revenue generated.

RESULTS

• Decreased unsubscribe rate to 0.13%
  Travel industry avg is 0.24%
• Increase revenue directly from email 18% YOY
  45+ million in revenue in less than a year
• Improved clickthrough rate to avg 5.5% YOY
  Travel industry avg is 2-3%
• Improved open rate to avg 40%
  Travel industry avg is 20%

When I started working with Richway Tech, they were a relatively new agency. So we needed to make some noise about their expertise. In this case, the agency had unique access to the Baidu advertising medium. Baidu ads are like Google ads, only they cannot be purchased by anybody outside of China. Companies who want access would need a broker or agency to act on their behalf.

In this article, we made a case for the Chinese market and used it as a conversation starter on LinkedIn and through email. This extremely simple strategy has made the company very busy, even years later.

RESULTS

• Established credibility in the industry
• Several clients earned

It's usually best to give your articles a fighting chance by checking into the keywords. The keywords "summer learning loss" are pretty valuable in the education industry and thus are very competitive. But there are times where it's important to be part of the conversation even if keyword glory isn't immediately achievable.

So, with this piece, we needed to support a company-wide initiative to prevent summer dropouts - a common trend every summer for Kumon learning centers. We decided to create an infographic to go along with a well-researched article about the perils of summer learning loss.

The infographic doubled as a poster that instructors could print for use in their centers. That year, we reduced summer dropouts by 6% Canada-wide. And in a twist of fate, the summer learning loss infographic became the 1st result in Google images.

RESULTS

• Reduced summer dropouts by 6%
• Infographic made it to #1 in Google images for keywords "summer learning loss"

Kumon has long had the strategy of building 'success stories'. They have used these stories as conversation starters and branded pieces to present an emotional appeal would-be Kumon parents. I must admit, this kind of emotional story telling was new to me. I'm more of a curator than a puller of heart-strings.

So I had to buckle down, interview an 8-year-old who was better at math than I was and dig deep inside my chest to find my soul. The result was the most shared article I produced that year. Behind the scenes, there were at least 5 drafts, so I think this is just the kind of content our audience enjoyed, rather than a testament to my ability.

RESULTS

• Most shared article on Kumon Blog
• Most # of failed drafts by me

There are many education blogs out there. But for whatever reason, they seem to be taking an 'un-educated' approach to blog content. That's why a simple keyword phrase like "why read more literature" was ripe for the taking. And voila, 2 years after the article was originally published, it sits in the 3rd place on Google for the search "why read more literature".

The article also featured an infographic for increased shareability. This was a great tool for Kumon instructors to use in relationship building with their clients. It also encouraged parents to help with the Kumon process at home. I love making content that serves multiple purposes. Just part of my never-ending journey to make the world complete. Getting there!

RESULTS

• Front page in Google (SEO gold)
• Increased conversions in Kumon reading program by 150+%
  People who visited the article and then requested a parent orientation

Cruise Connections was always great at getting better than market prices out of cruise lines. Customers became 'used to' a certain price point, which actually wasn't a bad thing for business overall. However, sometimes, when prices were higher, the audience would tune out. To fight against this, we developed detailed on site content. Part article, part brochure.

When we ran the AmaWaterways promotion without this content, we had very few sales. After the content, we ran the promotion again, directing traffic to the site using email, links from the main site, and various pop-ups. Sales jumped over 300%, with the majority of those leads having visited the article below.

RESULTS

• Increased leads by 400%
• Increased time on site by 20%
• Increased conversions by 300+%

Getting leads in the Nursing Home Brokerage business is akin to finding needles in haystacks. However, the keyword research I did proved that few others were effectively operating in the space. The search volume was low, but given the niche nature of this business, there was still loads of potential.

To attract organic traffic & separate the quality leads from the tire-kickers, I developed a series of emails and high-value PDF content. Using ActiveCampaign, user behavior is tracked and triggered in real-time.

RESULTS

• Increased page visits
• Improved time on site
• More metrics to follow!
  Campaign launched late November, 2019

Contests are great for retail. In 2019, they are great for online use because much of the admin can be completely automated using the correct setup and tools. I devised 2 contests: a major giveaway, and a monthly 'refer-a-friend' contest with monthly winners. Both were administered using the Gleam Contest platform.

The results were staggering - well worth trading for the price of a 2 person cruise vacation. The monthly contests provided great content and engagement with our audience as well.

RESULTS

• Increased email list by over 600
• Improved awareness in the market
• Increase social followers by 2500+
• 10% of entrants became customers