equals3 wins Sail Croatia

equals3 has been retained by Sail Croatia - the UK's leading Yacht Charter Agency specialising in the Adriatic region.

equals3 will be responsible for managing the businesses online operations and significantly ramping up business sourced online.

Rob Passmore, Managing Director of equals3 added "We're thrilled to be working with Sail Croatia. We're confident we can make a significant contribution to their bottom line through enhances online results." He added "as with all our clients, we're obsessively focused on growing online revenues and will be looking for a minimum 10% increase in top line for the business".

Gross Profits Rise by 50%: The Hidden Croatia Case Study

The Challenge

Hidden Croatia Limited is an award winning specialist tour operator, focused exclusively on the high end Croatia market. Hidden Croatia’s General Manager, Anthony Johnson, knew they needed to exploit the internet as a distribution channel to build their revenue profile.

“We’ve seen turnover sourced from the Internet rise
from 30% to 70% since working with equals3”
Anthony Johnson,
General Manager,
Hidden Croatia Limited.

“We don’t currently have ecommerce, but we knew the Internet was a key research tool for customers and a critical step in the sales process. The challenge was to grow sales sourced from the Internet in a traceable and accountable way, without increasing our costs significantly,” adds Johnson.

The Strategy

equals3 began the relationship by implementing our proprietary ‘Online Revenue Audit™’; a 30 point audit of all the factors effecting Hidden Croatia’s online sourced revenues. This highlighted four key strategies for improving revenue performance for the business:-

1. Improved business analytics to be able to see what worked and to enable informed decision making, especially considering sales we completed on the phone rather than online.

2. Increased traffic volumes, by getting the existing marketing budget to work harder and reduce cost per visit.

3. Streamlined website to channel potential customers through the site to critical lead actions, and begin the sales process

4. Expanded lead options, opening up the options for beginning a dialogue with the business.

Expected revenue improvements, timelines and key performance metrics where agreed before any work was implemented, to ensure clear accountabilities and expectations.

Johnson adds; “The main thing for me was distrust of the hundreds of SEO companies out there. I am constantly bombarded by SEO companies each promising fantastical results. equals3 approach has been to first understand our business and to then execute against an agreed implementation roadmap. The depth of the solution presented by equals3 far exceeds the superficial promises from traditional online agencies and has at all times been delivered in clear English”

The Implementation

equals3 implemented the strategy in tight collaboration with Hidden Croatia. The steps were as follows:-

1. Launched a redesigned website, bringing the product to the centre of the site and with simplified navigation.

2. We built out a systems theory based reporting structure to manage the online business model and react rapidly to changes and optimisations.

3. Grew traffic into this nearly optimised site. Included implementing conversion tracking on Pay Per Click spend and optimising heavily as well as building out the site’s visibility and relevance to organic search.

4. Expanding how potential customer could interact with the business. We built out a ‘contact console’, providing leads more choice in terms of how them began a dialogue with the business. This included email, phone, call back and online chat, as well as a personalised PDF brochure which could be downloaded.

The Results

The revenue improvements have been significant for Hidden Croatia:-

1. 50% increase in traffic from PPC activity, without increasing budgets

2. 35% reduction in cost per visit

3. 30% increase in conversion of site visits to leads

4. Sales sourced from the Internet rise from 30% of turnover to 70%

“We’ve been thrilled with the improved revenue results from on-line”

Anthony Johnson adds “we’ve also been comfortable with the costs involved – to have hired these skills inhouse would have been prohibitively expensive, as would working with multiple agencies in each field. The results speak for themselves”.

equals3 is retained by Hidden Croatia through our Outsourced Internet Management service.

Cheapflights.com Commercial Director Establishes 'Revenue Agency'

After three and a half years serving as Commercial Director UK of Cheapflights, Rob Passmore, has left to set up 'equals3' - a new breed agency focused exclusively on growing client's online revenues.

"The timing is right. Many clients are stuck between working with multiple specialist agencies or hiring vast on-line teams to cover the required skills - with one option you end up with a huge staff bill and the other, poor accountability and weak communications" says Passmore. "equals3's integrated approach means we operate as an extension of your business, with clear accountability and a ruthless focus on growing your turnover", says Rob Passmore.

And his launch clients seem to be agree. Anthony Johnson, General Manager of award winning specialist tour operator Hidden Croatia says "equals3 offers our business something unique. Rather than working with partners in PPC, SEO or web development expertise, we're working with a single partner held accountable for maximising our on-line turnover. We've already seen a stepped improvement in revenues from our site since working with them."

So what's so unique about equals3's approach? "We start with our propriety 'Online Revenue Audit™', which reviews over 30 factors effecting a clients on-line commercial performance. We then quantify the revenue gains possible and develop tactical action plans for realising these gains. Its an extremely rational, transparent and structured approach."

In fact Passmore is so confident in the revenue impact of his agencies approach, many of this clients work on a performance related remuneration package and all of his contracts have only 7 days notice for clients. "The onus is squarely on us to add value or be dropped - its extremely clear where the buck stops - with us."

"In an era when online activity is all about transparency and ROI, its about time agencies responded to this and altered their business models to be became aligned to adding value, rather than cost."

Launch clients also include Sprice.com, the travel search engine, Balkan Holidays, the tour operator & Baydon Hill, a foreign exchange business.

About Rob Passmore

Rob’s career in digital began 12 years ago as a graduate recruit to Saatchi & Saatchi’s Internet division. Rob was promoted to deputy managing director before he was head hunted to AGENCY.COM, an OMNICOM digital consulting business, to head up their digital marketing practise in Europe.

There, he built revenues from under £1m to over £9m, and helped develop the internet strategy for British Airways, OneWorld Airline Alliance, Barclays Bank, Heineken and the Ministry of Sound.

Rob has also served as the Commercial Director of openDemocracy, where he developed a sustainable revenue strategy for this not-for-profit organisation and secured $5m of funding from the Ford Foundation.

Most recently, Rob served as the Commercial Director of Cheapflights.com for over 3 years. With commercial responsibility got the UK market, during a period of aggressive revenue growth.

Rob has spoken at many industry events (such as eye4travel) and has experience across the travel, finance, FMCG, telecommunications and media.