Every holiday season, the Fort Worth Zoo gives people two ways to give something more meaningful— 1) memberships that unlock a year of Zoo adventures and 2) adoption packages that support the care and feeding of Zoo animals. But keeping the campaign fresh, relevant, and exciting year after year—while still driving results—is no small feat. In 2024, the Zoo leaned on Schaefer once again to make that magic happen, and this time, we focused even more on the impact behind every gift.
Rooted in Purpose, Refined by Data
We took a more mission-driven approach, focusing on the deeper impact of each gift. With the campaign headline “Share the Wonder, Support the Wild,” we highlighted the joy of giving and the tangible support each purchase contributes to the Zoo’s conservation efforts.
To reach more high-intent gift-givers, we employed a full funnel media plan, including OOH, paid search, paid social, email, display, and publication placements, while layering in new strategy — including, but not limited to:
Addressable geofencing to target households based on census and demographic data
An extra Cyber Monday email to tap into deal-seeking holiday shoppers
Mid-campaign budget and media optimizations to boost performance
Making the Mission Tangible
We led with gifted memberships as the hero offer, positioning animal adoptions as the cherry on top — complete with an animal plush and coloring kit. Creative assets leaned into emotion and mission, from dynamic carousel ads to emails that reinforced the dual benefit of every gift.
Behind the scenes, we monitored performance daily and weren’t afraid to adjust in real-time. When we saw a dip mid-flight, we reallocated dollars, refreshed messaging, and fine-tuned our media approach to finish strong.
Impactful Messaging, Strong Results
Ultimately, the campaign rallied to deliver big:
Gift membership sales exceeded goal by 13%
4% YoY revenue increase
283K+ clicks and 9.7% CTR across all channels—well above industry benchmarks
Meta carousel ads drove 1.17M impressions, 14.5K clicks, and 14.7K engagements
At Schaefer, we like to stay nimble and take a hands-on approach to managing media campaigns. And with this Holiday campaign, our team made fast, strategic adjustments that pushed the campaign across the finish line—and then some.
For the first time in Zoo Run history, the event sold out before the early bird deadline—an unprecedented achievement that highlighted the power of creative storytelling and strategic media execution. Zoo Run is a beloved annual event that brings families and the community together for a fun and unique experience, and this year, Schaefer was tasked with generating results that were bigger and better than ever. The challenge was to not only maintain strong engagement but to expand the event’s reach beyond typical Zoo attendees of families and children, drawing in audiences like millennials and Gen Z.
Blending Nostalgia with Modern Appeal
Schaefer developed creative that embraced a nostalgic, vintage-inspired look—featuring hand-drawn illustrations of iconic Zoo animals seen along the race path. The campaign’s warm color palette of cream, forest green, and pops of orange created a visually striking identity that stood out across all platforms. The tagline and pun, “At Run With Nature,” tied everything together, reinforcing the event’s unique charm and appeal.
Executing a Full-Funnel Media Approach
To ensure the message resonated with the right audiences, we executed a full-funnel media approach, leveraging out-of-home placements, paid search, paid social, email, text, streaming video, and local publication advertising. By starting the campaign earlier than in previous years, we maximized visibility and engagement right from the start.
Capturing Attention and Driving Engagement
The campaign struck a chord with families, fitness enthusiasts, and younger audiences alike. The nostalgic yet fresh creative direction resonated with attendees, while our precisely targeted media strategy guided users seamlessly from awareness to registration. The results? A historic sellout and an overwhelming response from the community. Even more, over 2,000 people indicated via a form on the website that they would have signed up if spots had still been available.
Unprecedented Demand and Community Excitement
Sold out before the early bird deadline—a first in Zoo Run history!
118% to goal for revenue
48% increase YOY in landing page visits
+13% increase YOY in Paid Search clicks, with a 43% CTR
3.24M impressions on Paid Social, with a +63% YoY increase in clicks
Pushing Boundaries Year After Year
Zoo Run 2025 wasn’t just another successful event—it was a record-breaking one. Year after year, Schaefer finds new ways to elevate the campaign, keeping it fresh, engaging, and more effective than ever. After selling out for the first time in 2024, we took it even further in 2025—proving that a bold creative vision and a smart, strategic media plan can drive unparalleled results.
Creative That Captivates, Strategy That Delivers
By blending a standout, retro-inspired creative approach with a meticulously executed media strategy, Schaefer helped Zoo Run achieve its most successful year in 26 years. The combination of visually compelling design and precision targeting didn’t just fill the race—it created excitement, expanded the audience, and set a new benchmark for future events.
Featured Case Study
Racing to New Heights: Historic First Time Sell-Out for Zoo Run 2024
Zoo Run 2024 marked the event’s 25th anniversary, and it was the perfect moment for a creative campaign to bring the excitement of this beloved event to life. The main goals included driving awareness and filling registration spots, with an…
Icon Golf is a premier luxury golf and travel club that offers its members exclusive access to some of the world’s most prestigious courses and destinations. With a focus on camaraderie and unparalleled experiences, Icon Golf provides a white-glove touch that transcends traditional golf memberships. The organization prides itself on creating a community where members can enjoy the finest in golf, travel, and connect with like-minded individuals.
Despite its exceptional offerings, Icon Golf faced challenges in effectively communicating its unique value to potential members. The existing website needed an update that improved UX and better aligned with the luxury aesthetic the brand embodies. Additionally, the absence of a member portal created a segmented experience for both prospective and existing members. Icon Golf partnered with Schaefer to develop a comprehensive digital solution that would enhance membership sales and streamline internal operations.
Goals
Develop a clear positioning strategy
Improve web navigation, responsiveness, and intuitiveness
Update the design to align with the luxury and sophistication of the brand
Unify the member experience through a member portal
Streamline the conversion funnel by integrating CRM platforms and Hubspot
Approach
Schaefer designed a visually stunning website that instantly connects visitors with the brand’s lifestyle and identity. We began by formulating a clear positioning statement that emphasized Icon Golf’s unique selling proposition, highlighting the camaraderie and exclusive experiences offered. This foundational messaging was crafted to resonate with the target audience and integrated across all communications for a synergistic effect.
As the primary gateway for potential members, the site was developed with intuitive navigation and responsiveness across all devices, ensuring shorter paths to essential information and a better user experience. The dark color palette and sleek typography elevate the brand’s luxe feel, while high-quality imagery showcases the more intangible benefits of membership, like adventure and connection. Engaging visuals further focus on Icon Golf’s four key offerings, piquing curiosity and encouraging deeper exploration.
To unify the user experience, we equipped the website with a robust member portal platform. This enhancement allows for seamless interaction, improved communication, and personalized content for members.
On the backend, we improved internal operations by integrating the website with Icon Golf’s CRM system, HubSpot. This update streamlined the sales funnel, automated prospecting efforts, and improved internal efficiencies.
Results
The new website’s intuitive design and navigation led to longer visit durations and higher engagement rates, effectively communicating the brand’s value proposition to potential and current members.
66.9% increase in sessions
68.3% increase in engaged sessions
62.8% increase in new users
By integrating the website with HubSpot and the new member portal, we were able to streamline internal processes and reduce the time and cost spent on manual updates, allowing the Icon Golf team to focus on enhancing member experiences.
Every year, Texas Ballet Theater (TBT) launches a season filled with a combination of performance styles, from mixed repertoires to storybook ballets to the beloved holiday tradition, The Nutcracker. And each year, the organization builds revenue goals based on factors such as previous success, attrition, new-to-file trends, name recognition and more. In the last few years, all performing arts organizations have been rebuilding after, for some, more than a year of no programming. It is more critical than ever that these goals be met, which is a challenge we do not take lightly.
Benefits of a Integrated Campaign
As TBT’s agency of record for over five years, we have the pleasure of guiding the organization strategically through a merriment of creative and media targeting each year. This level of integration is ideal, as it allows the team to work on one cohesive plan for success and be proactive with optimizations along the way. We cannot overstate the importance of messaging, design and ad placement all aligning to drive success.
With a robust overarching season revenue goal as well as individual performance goals, we knew this year needed to be on point. Pun intended.
A New Creative Solution
Each year we establish the creative concept for the season which reflects the individual performances, incorporates artistic direction from TBT and provides a consistent look for the entire season. This season, we created custom typography for each performance title to elevate the distinct nature of each performance and provide an additional asset that incorporated elements from the storyline or theme of each ballet. The titles were paired with a wash of color for each performance, and when viewed together created a vibrant kaleidoscope that reflected the varied nature of the range of performances. The ability to utilize a key color and title treatment to support individual performance campaigns beyond dancer imagery alone gave our team a broader range of assets to leverage across mediums.
What We’ve Learned
A benefit of the tenure of our relationship with TBT is that we are able to learn more and evolve every year. We always tell new clients that they are the experts in their field, and we are here to learn and assist. But as we learn more year over year, we build industry expertise that becomes invaluable.
What we continue to see is that video outperforms static ads, which is no surprise when you are promoting a moving art form. We also know that the more digital assets you have, the more opportunities you have to improve visibility, engagement and the overall effectiveness of each deliverable. Video content can be costly to produce, so we focused on creative solutions that maximized the available resources. By incorporating animation, we were able to support each performance with repeatable textures that expand our campaign assets.
Because of this, we were able to produce more formats and sizes to test against each other by incorporating animations and movement in post production. Additionally, we chose to sunset some static ad units in order to focus on video.
Enhancing Ticket Sales
From a media perspective, we adjusted flighting to focus on awareness tactics early and conversion tactics during peak ticket sales, which is traditionally within the final weeks of the promotion.
We also implemented an institutional campaign throughout the year to boost awareness and increase website sessions unrelated to ticket purchases, which in turn allowed our retargeting pools to grow and improve our ticket sale campaigns.
Where We Landed
While we are delighted to see the success of last year come through, it was with intention that our team set out to achieve and surpass these revenue and new ticket buyer goals. The Year of Splendor proved to be successful all season long, seen most notably in The Nutcracker & Alice in Wonderland performances, where goals in both Dallas and Fort Worth were exceeded.
Final revenue exceeded annual goals by 24%
Final revenue increased from previous year by 25%
Opening the season with a new work (which is inherently more challenging to sell due to no name recognition), ROAS was 5:1
The Nutcracker in Dallas finished at over 140% to goal
The season closed with Alice in Wonderland which had almost 10,000 patrons attend clearing goals by over 30%
Promoting a new season each year has its fair share of challenges, and that’s what keeps us going. We’re proud to be a long-standing partner of Texas Ballet Theater and can’t wait to share in their continued success for years to come.
As the holiday season approached, Schaefer faced the familiar challenge of driving revenue for the Fort Worth Zoo through membership and adoption gift purchases. In a marketplace brimming with options, our task was to set the Zoo apart and exceed year-over-year revenue goals for an offering that had remained consistent for a long time. Our strategy focused on positioning the Zoo’s offerings as unique and meaningful gifts, highlighting the value of membership while also reiterating the experiential aspect of these presents.
Positioning for Audience Impact
Emphasizing memberships over adoptions in both messaging and media was key to maximizing revenue. The campaign aimed to convey that the Fort Worth Zoo offers versatile gifting options, from a tangible present for under the tree to a membership for year-long experiences.
We know that the target audience, composed of Zoo-goers and potential members, already enjoy visiting the Zoo with their families. However, they might not have initially considered Zoo memberships or adoptions as compelling gift choices. The campaign’s goal was to shift the audience’s perception, portraying Fort Worth Zoo memberships as a perfect holiday gift due to their numerous benefits, including unlimited admission, free parking, discounts and access to special events. Zoo adoption packages, featuring plush animals, certificates, coloring kits, and more, not only make for delightful presents but also support animal care and conservation efforts. These offerings were positioned as experiential gifts that fostered a lasting connection to the Zoo, encouraging family enjoyment throughout the year.
Showcasing a Unique Gift Experience
Creatively, we met the challenge of maintaining freshness for a campaign that recurs annually as well as distinguishing the campaign in a crowded holiday market. Unconventional elements took the spotlight, with a memorable neck-bending giraffe as the hero visual and playful copywriting like “A Gift Above the Rest” as the primary headline. The campaign also tapped into the universal appeal of baby animals by featuring the recent giraffe births through secondary imagery and messaging to visit the Zoo often while the babies are still small.
Additional supporting imagery featured the immersive membership experience and the physical adoption package complete with plush animals. This comprehensive visual approach provided a well-rounded perspective of the gift options.
Results
As a result of the strategy, creative concept, and media plan working in sync, the campaign was wildly successful. We succeeded in setting the Zoo apart in the bustling holiday market and surpassing revenue goals for both gift offerings.
New and gifted memberships in 2022 were almost triple in quantityand revenue as compared to both goals and previous year sales.
Return on investment for the campaign as a whole was nearly 10:1.
Emails were the top-performing channel, driving a 69% increase in revenue over 2021, led predominately by a Black Friday sale.
In conclusion, Schaefer’s ability to break through the saturated holiday market with a creative and strategically aligned media plan led to an exceptional year-over-year increase in revenue. The campaign not only met, but exceeded goals, emphasizing the power of unique creative and effective media planning in achieving outstanding results.
For a leading third-party manufacturer, rising above the competition began with a new marketing campaign.
The Situation
Argon Medical Devices came to Schaefer with a need to create awareness for its brand and various product lines. Its key objectives included elevating awareness of Argon Custom Product Solutions (CPS), a division that offers private label and third-party manufacturing capabilities to clients.
Goals
Increase awareness of the Argon corporate brand and Argon CPS brand
Educate and engage a global Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) audience
Generate qualified leads at the top of the funnel to handoff to the sales team
Build loyalty and differentiation with precise, customer-centric messaging
Strategy
Argon CPS faced two crucial challenges: First, its awareness in this crowded market was low. Second, in a sector that is heavily driven by price, Argon CPS needed to position itself as a premium brand that brought greater value to customers through an unmatched mix of expertise and capabilities.
Solution
Schaefer developed a strategic campaign that differentiated Argon CPS by promoting its superior level of service, quality, and customization. The new tagline “Build It Better” laddered up to and tied-into the existing Argon corporate brand messaging.
Core messages highlighted attributes such as design and testing capabilities, US-based manufacturing facilities, and Argon’s ability to collaborate with client product development teams. Campaign graphics used upscale visual patterns to underscore the client’s endless customization capabilities and showcase specific product categories.
We then deployed a media strategy for email, social media, digital and online industry publications that carefully homed-in on a global audience of manufacturers and decision makers. Careful audience targeting ensured minimal waste — and maximum results.
Results
Our digital and email tactics carefully targeted recipients by geography and title, allowing us to track campaign results with a high degree of accuracy that:
Generated more than 36K website sessions from 31K+ new users
Achieved 3.3 million targeted impressions in less than one year
Achieved a 6% Paid Search click-through rate, 1.8x the industry benchmark
Launched 463K emails, opened by 20% of recipients
Tracked clicked-through rates of prime prospects, including Marketplace Optimization (MPO) click-through rates of .86%
Summary
Differentiation is always important – especially in categories driven by price or viewed as commodities. By elevating Argon CPS above the industry norm, we strengthened its appeal to higher-end device manufacturers who value quality, service and collaboration.
The Charles Schwab Challenge is one of the longest-running PGA TOUR invitational tournaments. The highly-anticipated event brings together top golfers from around the world to compete at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. The historic course and club has hosted the event every Memorial Day Weekend since 1946, making the Charles Schwab Challenge one of the premier events on the PGA TOUR year after year.
Rising to the challenge
Coming off a global pandemic, 2022 was a year of transition for the Charles Schwab Challenge. People were still embracing intimate gatherings and with the tournament being played without fans one year and with limited attendance the next, the tradition of attending the Charles Schwab Challenge wasn’t top of mind for many fans. Additionally, 2022 ushered in a new pricing model for the tournament and increased revenue goals that required a shifted approach to marketing from awareness-based to conversion-focused.
An integrated campaign that drives conversion
Before partnering with Schaefer, the tournament utilized more traditional mediums to promote the event to a general North Texas audience. But as we prepared for the 2022 tournament, Schaefer recommended a more granular approach to targeting individual ticket buyers by splitting the audience to focus on two primary markets — avid golfers and social attendees. The goal was to create a more integrated campaign that not only got people excited about the tournament, but spoke directly to each audience’s particular area of interest wherever and whenever their needs arise. By leveraging a more individualized approach to messaging and targeting across tactics such as paid search, retargeting, geofencing, and paid social, we were able to capitalize on the buying period leading up to the event and increase opportunities for conversion.
Creative that can adapt to audience needs
If we had to achieve one thing to make this campaign successful, it was adaptability. A robust media strategy meant the creative needed to scale across a wide variety of mediums, from high-level awareness spaces like streaming TV to high-intent micro moments in the customer journey. That meant keeping design elements functional. So we opted for an abstract reference to course topography. The organic shapes allowed us to create compelling composites that featured the most important textures of the experience — environment, competition, and up-close views of the PGA TOUR’s best players.
Since we were targeting two audience sets, it was important that the messaging be specific yet modular. The line, Texas’ Best, extended across both target audiences while communicating the notoriety and pride North Texans have for the Colonial tournament. It also worked well with new player announcements.
The tournament field greatly impacts ticket sales. Top-ranked players and fan favorites draw big crowds, but player commitments can finalize weeks and sometimes days before the tournament. To improve performance, we build every concept to accommodate on-demand optimizations and leveraged that flexibility to announce new player commitments, some finalizing in the eleventh hour of the campaign. In the final weeks leading up to the event, we saw a big uptick in action, selling 80% of tickets in the last 30 days.
Results
Moving the tournament from more traditional mediums to a digital-first, multi-audience campaign allowed us to reach people at every touch point – connecting the dots across channels to guide consumers from I-want-to-go to I-want-to-buy. Overall, our campaign strategy outperformed industry paid media standards in Sports and Recreation to produce nearly 14K in daily ticket sales and $1.2M in revenue.
A few top channel results include:
Paid Search: 16% CTR, 31% CVR and $3.72 cost-per-conversion Industry Average: 8.8% CTR, 5.9% CVR and $31.50 cost-per-conversion
Email: 39% open rate out of 575K+ emails delivered to a qualified audience Industry Average: 20.5% open rate
Display: 0.11% CTR on location-relevant geofencing campaign Industry Average: 0.08% CTR
In Spring 2021, the Fort Worth Zoo was ramping up to unveil their new habitat, Elephant Springs. The habitat, which is home to the Zoo’s Asian elephant herd and a greater one-horned rhino, is part of the Zoo’s Wilder Visioninitiative. With opening day on the horizon, the Zoo needed a way to generate excitement and communicate the truly immersive experience to new and returning Zoo goers. After all, Elephant Springs is more than a habitat. It’s a destination worth visiting.
Opportunity
After more than a year at home, people were ready to look forward to something big. And the grand opening of Elephant Springs was the perfect way to delight and excite animal lovers everywhere. Featuring wildlife and environmental details unique to the natural habitat that inspired it, we wanted to highlight this much-awaited encounter as more of an adventure than an exhibit.
Goals
Increase awareness and excitement for the opening of Elephant Springs
Boost ticket sales from both new and returning customers
Develop a campaign that extends beyond opening day
Approach
Some of the best things in life aren’t things at all. They’re places. Filled with the sights, sounds and even splashes that make a place unique. Drawing inspiration from Elephant Springs’ authentic environment and immersive nature, we decided to focus the campaign around capturing the playful and engaging way both people and wildlife experience the habitat.
The only problem? We had to imagine it. To ensure the campaign was ready in time to promote the exhibit as soon as it opened to the public, we had to envision the experience based on renderings and small-scale models. The habitat has no shortage of water features — large pools and waterfalls designed to create new opportunities for animal enrichment and soakers that allow guests to interact with the herd directly. Alongside the Asian elephants that now call this habitat home, we decided to make water a main character in our campaign.
Creative
Working with wildlife is tough. Patience, flexibility and creativity are essential to capturing key frames and moments that can be utilized in the campaign. We partnered with zookeepers to create fun enrichment opportunities that allowed us to photograph organic moments of the elephants getting acclimated and enjoying their new yard. In the end, we were able to provide the Fort Worth Zoo with a full stack of assets that could be used for years to come.
To build excitement for the new exhibit, we created a delightful soundtrack made entirely of the splashes and features of Elephant Springs, composing a soundscape as adventurous as the environment.
Results
Opening a new exhibit attracts people from all over the state and beyond. To help meet the Zoo’s annual goals, we created a robust omnichannel campaign inclusive of traditional and digital media, including streaming audio, video and TV. Seeing an opportunity to expand awareness, we partnered with Visit Fort Worth to co-brand ads in Texas Monthly and on billboards across Texas. Additionally, we targeted travelers throughout DFW and Love Field. Because this was an awareness campaign, our success was measured in tickets sold (attendance), impressions served and reach across the state.
200% increase in website sessions
242% increase in new users on the Elephant Springs webpage
5.6 million website pageviews
1 million website sessions
681.3k new users on the website (16% increase in sessions and 22% increase in new users)
600K general admission tickets purchased and over 23k memberships/renewals sold during the campaign run (April – July)
The Fort Worth Zoo met their annual attendance goal in three months early
16% increase in organic search and direct channel traffic to the website
Mobility and innovation districts are places where pioneers make critical advancements in logistics and supply chain modernization. It’s also a place where technology breakthroughs are developed that can affect billions of people. They are critical to advancing how consumer and commercial operations move forward to improve lives everywhere. The challenge with innovation districts is communicating a tangible concept that resonates with valuable audiences and encourages entrepreneurs, scientists and business leaders to utilize the district’s capability.
We partnered with the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone to create a flexible identity package that communicates all the intangible benefits this testing ecosystem can provide mobility visionaries and their teams.
Making Intangible Value Tangible
We partnered with the MIZ team and entered into extensive discovery sessions to better understand where MIZ stands in the market and how we can highlight their value proposition and boost awareness of the one-of-a-kind opportunity that the MIZ offers mobility innovators. In marketing the MIZ, our first charge was to articulate the opportunity that the MIZ offers to technology innovators by creating a vision for something that did not yet exist.
Through this discovery the Schaefer team identified that the AllianceTexas MIZ was a genuinely unique blend of people, places and things, structured in a manner unlike any other innovation zones. We leveraged this differentiation into a defining position and archetype to inform the subsequent brand identity and campaign creative development. This allowed us to tangibly define the value that the MIZ brings to entrepreneurs and innovators that elect to use their district and capabilities. Ultimately, this helps the MIZ advocate for new businesses and create long term partnerships with innovative companies that bring jobs to North Texas and innovation to the mobility industry.
Messaging Full-Scale Innovation
We crafted “Innovation from the Ground Up” as a key message to clearly position the opportunity of the innovation zone. It nods to the full-scale capabilities of the MIZ and communicates it as a place where mobility innovators can push the boundaries of now to discover what’s next and do it all—ideation to implementation—at the MIZ.
Deploying a Detailed Digital Activation
We launched the updated identity with the “Innovation from the Ground Up” campaign, which introduced the MIZ as the premier, pioneering testing, scaling and commercialization ecosystem. The campaign solved three key communications requirements: promoting the MIZ brand, communicating the surface capabilities, and promoting the airspace utility. This reflects the total MIZ ecosystem and communicates it as a flexible, utilitarian space that is open for business across the mobility industry.
We developed a multichannel digital marketing plan to launch the “Innovation from the Ground Up” campaign, utilizing paid media, native and sponsored content, email drip campaign and display banners. For paid ad placements, we strategically chose publications that resonated with our target audiences in the logistics, aviation and entrepreneurship industries. The campaign also engaged prospects directly through a targeted email campaign, which encouraged website form fills to contact the MIZ to use their testing ecosystem. Ultimately, the digital strategy is successfully creating extensive brand awareness and driving both engagement and conversions from high value prospects which has yielded new business partnerships for the MIZ.
Early Results:
300% increase in form fills MoM since beginning of campaign
82% increase in Contact Us form fills
Display impressions increased nearly 200% MoM resulting in 141% more clicks
Golf is a timeless sport that brings people together to enjoy camaraderie and pristine, cultivated greens. But, what happens when you add luxury travel and experiences into a premium golf membership? You get Icon Golf – an esteemed golf and travel membership that takes players around the world. Icon needed to revamp their brand to generate more memberships, so they partnered with the Schaefer team to refocus their sales efforts with a full-scale, multichannel digital campaign and a new website.
In 2020, Icon invested in increasing their sales from 250 memberships to 1000. So, they partnered with Schaefer to revamp their brand, generate more memberships, and focus their sales efforts with a full-scale, multichannel digital campaign and a new website to meet their very aggressive goal.
Goals
Grow Icon Golf membership database from 250 to 1,000 in 18 months.
Refresh the brand identity
Develop a content marketing strategy
Build a CRM to streamline lead generation and membership management
Improve online user experience
Prioritize sales efforts
Roles
Strategy
Creative
Digital
Branding
Positioning
Client Services
Partnering to Develop a Structured, Integrated Sales Process
We began our relationship with Icon Golf on the ground level as they were initiating the formal development of a structured sales team. This allowed Schaefer to partner directly with the Icon team to merge sales and marketing efforts. Icon’s previous marketing efforts were primarily functioning by word-of-mouth and leveraging connections with existing club members within their portfolio. While this approach was successful, there was an opportunity to expand their sales efforts through digital automation to reach a wider audience.
We started by evaluating each medium against our overall goals and the need to fill the funnel with awareness initiatives and convert interested prospects into members. We found that paid search and streaming audio and video proved successful for building awareness, and third party publication emails allowed us to hit a very targeted audience that was ready to convert.
A Refreshed Creative Platform
We recognized an opportunity to reinvigorate their creative platform to better communicate the unique benefits that an Icon membership provides. Icon Golf offers members full privileges with an expertly curated collection of private golf clubs as well as luxurious member experiences and fully planned quests to exotic locales. So, Icon Golf is much more than a golf membership – it’s a full-package of golf and travel – and communicating that was the central challenge of updating their creative.
When creating the updated creative platform, we focused on the luxury aesthetic and benefits of an Icon Golf membership. We wanted the design and language to reflect the elevated perks and nature of the membership, all while highlighting the relationship-focused aspect of joining Icon Golf. The camaraderie between Icon members is a key strategic imperative, so we had to make that central in the updated creative deck.
We created the concept “Legendary is Within Reach” as our primary branded language alluding to the potential for legendary moments with legendary people, on and off the course.
A New, Optimized Website
The central piece of Icon’s rebrand was optimizing their website to generate more qualified leads. Previous to our relationship,the Icon Golf website was split into two different URLs – Icon.Golf and IconGolf.com to satisfy internal marketing objectives. However, this split up their traffic and made consolidating valuable lead information more difficult. So, we combined their properties into one streamlined website. To increase the site’s performance, we implemented key SEO and content updates targeted at their primary audiences.
Our team also redeveloped the site with crucial user experience updates to improve site accessibility and usability aimed at generating form fills from qualified leads. To improve usability, we simply added header and footer navigations to improve the overall user experience. In addition, we employed site tagging to capture key user behavior metrics in order to continue to drive future data-driven site optimization opportunities. Finally, we placed CTAs throughout prominent areas of the website so that users could always and easily make direct contact with the reps at Icon Golf. The final result is a website that supports Icon’s strategic marketing goals by generating more engagement and qualified leads.
Creating a Centralized Lead Strategy
To continue to round out the lead generation strategy, we implemented a CRM strategy to accurately target lists of valuable, interested leads with compelling emails. We connected key data sources – the Icon website, MailChimp, and Salesforce as well as other lead collection points to ensure that our data automatically fed into the sales process and reduced the work the sales team needed to do to generate more memberships.
We created a variety of emails around the central message “Legendary is Within Reach” that ultimately guided leads to complete a form fill and capture valuable data for converting more leads.
To round out the digital strategy for Icon, we created a multi-channel paid media strategy that targeted valuable audiences in paid search, paid social media, display banners and email. In addition, we cultivated strategic partnerships with golf publications and outlets to secure high-value placements in front of the most highly qualified audience.
Results
In 2021, Icon Golf had their best year ever, setting a record month for membership sales in December.
Reached 85% of their new membership goal in under 9 months
Last Click Attribution:
31 new memberships driven directly by campaign paid media
$450k in revenue
Total annual revenue surpassed 1.7 Million, resulting in a strong ROAS of 7:1
