The Client: - A small French restaurant with excellent food and an elegant comfortable atmosphere, highly rated by ZAGAT, located in Newport Beach, California.

The Challenge:- The restaurant is situated on a large boulevard with poor parking possibilities, hidden between several small stores. Due to the location the restaurant could not survive from only the walk in business.

Assets: - An old never updated mailing list of around 230 records

The Action:

1. We designed a simple and very attractive Web site using photos from the restaurant itself, and posted the menu with images of the meals.
   
   
2. We implemented two marketing programs, a "Become a VIP" and a "Request for a Reservation" program. The "Become A VIP" program is free, it requires a registration and has a survey attached. Once a VIP, the patron takes advantage of special offers and preferential treatment. The "Request For A Reservation" program allows patrons to announce their visit and avoid waiting time and notifies the restaurant when it cannot accommodate any more reservations.
   
   
3. We designed an email template using all major elements of the Web site (i.e. colors, page arrangement, collateral information, navigation etc.).
   
   
4. We sent an introductory email to the initial mailing list inviting existing patrons to become a VIP. Around 40% of the emails bounced but, to the client's surprise, almost everybody receiving the email turned out to be faithful to French cuisine and responded enthusiastically to the invitation.
   
   
5. Following the introductory email we continued to send event invitations, (i.e. Valentine's Day, Bastille Day, Halloween, New Year's Celebration). The enthusiastic owners started designing special campaigns like "The Alsace Cuisine" in autumn, "The Beaujolais Nouveau" week with special menus being offered along with the regular menu.

The Result: : - Now the restaurant has a solid opt in mailing list of over 1200 patrons and sends an invitation to a special event at least once a month. We visited the restaurant during the week and every time around 7 o'clock almost all the tables were occupied. A visit on the weekend needs a reservation.

For traditional events like New Year's Celebration, we are being asked to turn off the reservation system weeks before the event.

The Client: - A classical ballet company with approximately 100 dancers, volunteers, instructors and sponsors.

The Challenge: - When preparing a performance, the company goes through tough times and needs organization. The dancers have rehearsals, usually not all together, volunteers have to take care of the preceding fundraising events, the costumes, the venue etc. The friends of the company need to be invited to both the fundraising events and the performances. Donations have to be collected, and due to the fact that all the decision makers are artists, the chaos was endangering the very core of the organization.

Assets: - An updated list of over 300 members, all related in some way or another to the company

The Action:

We designed:

1. A Web site for the company with modules for the sponsors, volunteers and friends of the company and an image gallery, with short movies from the performances.
2. A very simple email template exclusively for administrative emails, using the company colors, logo and slogan.
3. A second email template specifically for fundraising and concert invitations.
4. A special procedure for the artistic director, the head of volunteers and the president of the board, so they can contact us easily with email broadcasting requests.

We segmented:

1. The mailing list into senior company, junior company, instructors, volunteers, sponsors, board of directors, and friends of the company.
2. The senior and junior company before every production into smaller lists, depending on the roles the dancers are being assigned to (flowers, ghosts, snowflakes, pas des deux, etc.) In this case the dancers can appear in more than one single list.

At the request of the people in charge we continuously send administrative emails to specific groups, (i.e. changes of schedule for groups of dancers, instructions on the technical rehearsal for the instructors, meetings for the volunteers and staff, etc.).

We also send event invitations to all the friends of the company and give them the opportunity to purchase the tickets online.

The Result: - The company runs its main business without the organizational commotion, nobody shows up for rehearsals two hours earlier. Friends of the Company never miss a performance or a fundraising event.