Vantage Travel: Web

My current employer, Vantage Travel, is a large international travel company that direct markets luxury vacations to seniors. Vantage's strategy focuses on selling travel aboard the river ships the company owns and operates in Europe. At the same time, the company offers a range of other travel products, so that loyal customers have one stop shopping for their travel needs. The company's web presence contributes with niche-leading customer service software, easy online booking, and aggressive lead generation. As Senior Interactive Producer, I've been heavily involved in building all of these capabilities during my tenure. I work under the Director of Interactive Marketing and with a project manager in the IT department to orchestrate contributions from the creative department, the IT department, and several outside vendors. Vantage's public web site received 3.6 million visitors in 2007 while generating and qualifying leads monetized at over $1.5 million. Interactive marketing efforts continue to generate impressive return on investment despite the economica climate of the past few years, and in 2009-2010 my team launched improvements, including a personalization and wish list system.

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Vantage Travel: E-mail

Complimenting Vantage's web presence are aggressive e-mail marketing campaigns that push unsold inventory, generate leads, communicate to booked travelers, and maintain the customer relationship. I worked with Experian's Cheetahmail subsidiary to run promotional campaigns, and with Waltham, Massacusetts-based Clicksquared for customer communication campaigns. Together these programs resulted in almost $20 million in revenues in 2007, while significantly reducing volume in the inbound call center. 2009-2010 have seen migration of Vantage's e-mail operations to a new vendor, Direct Services, Inc. My role in working with this vendor has included writing business requirements, designing application flow for the bulk e-mail platform, writing logic for dynamic e-mail campaigns, and project management of the transition from our previous vendors.

Tachyon Publications

San Francisco-based Tachyon Publications releases literary science fiction titles from about thirty past and present authors. They needed a web presence capable of direct sales, but much more important to them was connecting with present and prospective distributors. The site I developed for them serves as an attractive catalog showcasing their range of titles to potential resellers and a news outlet to update readers and buyers on new offerings.

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Pink Pages Directory & Pink Magazine

Based in Chicago, Pink Pages was a family of urban lifestyle publications including a business directory, a lifestyle magazine, and a web site. I served multiple roles in this small company: magazine art director, advertising traffic, print production manager, interactive designer, and sometimes editorial contributor. Pink Pages' web strategy was aimed at wooing potential advertisers to the print publications, and in this it succeeded. Page counts in both publications nearly doubled over the course of my employment with the company.