As the population ages, Hoveround addresses a growing need in the market, offering powered wheelchairs and scooters that enable independent personal mobility while ensuring safety and comfort. The company is currently the largest vertically integrated direct-to-consumer power wheelchair manufacturer in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands of customers. Hoveround directly controls all of its own manufacturing, sales, delivery, and customer service – a unique value proposition in its industry.
With demand for personal mobility products growing at a rapid pace, Hoveround saw a need to scale its online operations in an efficient way, by expanding its web presence and generating more qualified leads through its site. Hoveround's target audience, seniors, is most easily reached by traditional direct marketing channels, such as DRTV and direct mail but these channels had reached a plateau in terms of results. At the same time, with a robust and successful television advertising strategy already in place, Hoveround wanted to improve the relationship between its offline and online efforts, and maximize the synergies between the two. Online presented an opportunity extend Hoveround's reach - increasing consumer access to compliment both offline media efforts and continue the conversation those efforts facilitated.
Hoveround knew it needed a highly effective, highly scalable program that was also extremely cost-efficient. After conducting a thorough agency search, the company selected iMarketing Ltd. to launch a comprehensive search engine marketing (SEM) strategy and cost per acquisition (CPA) program to boost online leads and ultimately, sales.
A major factor in Hoveround's decision was iMarketing's proven relationships with affiliates and publishers, as well as its willingness to work closely with Hoveround's offline agencies - ensuring a holistic approach to maximize ROI across marketing channels. iMarketing's commitment to complete transparency was also a driving factor, assuring Hoveround that it would have much -needed insight into its marketing activities, budget, and results.
"We had information about lead volume, but knew we needed to go deeper in order to understand the quality of the leads we were getting online – and if they were truly turning into sales intakes," said Jeffrey Hilton, Director of Marketing at Hoveround. "We were impressed by iMarketing's willingness to look at our campaigns at the micro level, and really determine the return of every single marketing dollar we were spending – while sticking to a predetermined budget."
iMarketing worked closely with Hoveround to identify its specific needs, and zeroed in on the following key goals for the online marketing strategy:
Simplify the conversion process
With the majority of Hoveround's consumers in their 70s who were not frequent Internet users, it was critical for the company's online experience to be as simple and as seamless as possible. iMarketing planned to design a user-friendly, information-rich request process in order to increase the chances of a higher conversion rate, from site visit to form completion.
Improve the quality of information to the consumer
iMarketing knew that the key to a successful sales inquiry – and subsequent purchase – was to ensure that the consumer could easily find the information needed to make an educated decision, and get through the research and purchase process.
Continuously test and reinvent creative to support consumer needs
Knowing that the best test of creative impact comes from audience feedback, iMarketing planned to develop a series of targeted emails and subject lines for use by individual vendors for testing with their own target audiences. To improve click-through rates, this would also include an offer for a mailed DVD Information Kit, and a straightforward call to action. As part of its commitment to synchronizing efforts with existing campaigns, iMarketing also sought to leverage Hoveround's existing, successful television ad creative to ensure message consistency and reinforce brand recognition.
Integrate lead tracking into existing purchase process
With a program to improve lead generation online, iMarketing also wanted to extend many of the same elements across Hoveround's traditional media channels, enabling them to better determine what drove in a lead and ultimately, a sale. This also would include designing an immediate feedback mechanism to quickly identify which sources were delivering the highest quality leads, while tracking the consumer at all stages of the conversion process – including understanding where consumers were being lost. The goal was to be able to determine the cost per qualified lead and sale by vendor on a daily basis, while also distinguishing between web and phone leads.
iMarketing started the program with a thorough assessment of the marketing initiatives already in place. This included interviewing the agency that managed Hoveround's television spots, as well as reviewing existing online activity in order to organize current campaigns, determine areas of improvement, and implement changes to the overall approach.
Early on, it became clear that Hoveround needed to improve the quality of its leads, increasing its ability to transform an inquiry generated by the company's online campaigns into a qualified sales opportunity. Because Hoveround's online lead generation is driven primarily through email marketing campaigns, iMarketing placed a heavy emphasis on its CPA program, providing the company's publisher network with email and banner ad creative that would more successfully convert leads into intakes, or sales. The first direct email campaign was launched in November and featured clear, concise messaging, and an offer for Hoveround's free DVD Information Kit, "Five Steps to Freedom." This drove people to the Hoveround site to register (via web form or toll-free number) – with some high-level benefits displayed on the landing page – but allowed them to get the information they needed directly from the DVD, reducing (and in some cases, eliminating) the need for website reading.
With subsequent campaigns, iMarketing continues to analyze and optimize the creative to regularly improve performance. In addition, iMarketing works directly with the publishers and affiliates to help them optimize their own campaigns. The agency works in a fast loop with Hoveround to determine whether leads are being converted, and shares the information immediately with publishers to make changes as needed. iMarketing also implemented stringent rules with the publishers, providing Hoveround with more flexibility to reward more successful vendors, cap vendors when testing them as new sources, and compel vendors to pass along publisher identifiers so they could track lead quality right back to the source.
"Hoveround's call center has an amazingly fast turnaround time when it comes to responding to incoming requests, so we know within just a few days whether or not a publisher is delivering the results we need from them," explained Keith Kochberg, CEO of iMarketing. "The fact is, it's not enough to have tremendous volume – in the end, these leads need to be generating sales. If a publisher isn't delivering, we either adapt their campaigns, or cut them loose. It's that simple, and it allows Hoveround to have very tight control over their marketing spend and ROI."
In addition to the CPA initiative, iMarketing implemented a pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing strategy for Hoveround. The effort kicked off with a thorough review of keywords, optimizing them to ensure that Hoveround was effectively capturing traffic from people who were searching for relevant products. The keywords are managed on an ongoing basis to keep Hoveround's spending within pre-defined targets, and to make the most of their investment. As with the email campaign, Hoveround's search strategy has a heavy emphasis on testing, with iMarketing continually creating attractive offers that go beyond simply "free," and instead bring out the company's most compelling differentiators – including quality of service, speed, and ease of use. In addition, iMarketing optimized Hoveround's landing pages to help improve conversion rates, and continues to test them to achieve the most effective balance of text, graphics, fonts, and positioning to increase the ease of the customer experience.
Hoveround saw an improvement in its statistics within just two months of working with iMarketing. Today, iMarketing has reduced Hoveround’s cost per qualified lead by 5 percent, while increasing the overall number of leads by nearly 60 percent. At the same time, email leads have grown by a whopping 89 percent, with the cost per qualified lead dropping by close to 19 percent. In the search channel, lead volume year-over-year has expanded by 16 percent, and costs per lead decreased by 10 percent.
In addition, the success of the campaign has encouraged more email publishers to test and run the Hoveround offer. This has resulted to the addition of more than ten new vendors to the marketing mix, enabling Hoveround to increase the number of lead opportunities, reduce risk, and inspire publishers with a more competitive spirit. .
