After three years of providing publicity and marketing services to Whitemud Equine Learning Centre, Diane asked me to rebuild their website, design an enewsletter program and train five of their volunteers on how to use social media tools to promote their upcoming fundraising events.

The new website launched in mid-January and the first issue of Hoofs and Heartbeats, their new enewsletter was sent to their students, alumni, volunteers, and supporters at the end of January 2010. 

I am already getting great feedback from the newsletter and the website. The Board is thrilled!

~ Diane David
Administrative Director
January 30, 2010

The Whitemud Equine Learning Centre, has since sent out six ore more issues of the enewsletter, Hoofs and Heartbeats, with each issue improving on the last. They quadruple their subscriber rate every month. They started their enewsletter program with at just under 100 subscribers on their mailing list. They are now well over 600.

According to the Google analytics program installed on the new website, the website receives 1000 + visitors during the week and more on the weekends -- eight times the number that used to visit the old site. As I write this case study, there are 118 different users browsing around on the new website.

WECLA is in the preliminary stages of mounting a capital fundraising campaign. In order to promote the first three fundraising events: a Mother’s Day Tea, a Father’s Day Picnic and a Summer Solstice Party, the Centre purchased a full service subscription to www.mediainalberta.ca. On April 29, we distributed the first of the public service announcement to the media. The committee then forwarded this public service announcement to 200 or more of the people on their Outlook email lists. They also sent out a newsletter to your mailing lists. Initial reports are that the tickets are selling well.

They also contracted my services to mount an online promotional campaign using social media tools. On Sunday, May 2, 2010, I spent the afternoon with five members of their fundraising committee getting the word out on these events to online communities in Edmonton.

Here’s what members of the “Volunteers of Whitemud” fundraising committee reported about their experience on May 4, two days later: 

I have had success with 4/6 radio/tv stations who will be announcing our event shortly.  I want to thank Marilyn for an excellent seminar, well prepared and professional, and her instruction was most useful in obtaining this coverage for our event!  Thank you.”

~ Valerie Wilson

Marilyn you did a great job! I don’t think I could have done my share without your advice. Thank you.

~ Elaine Gray

In addition to honing our marketing skills, you demonstrated excellent leadership by trying to keep us on track. I look forward to meeting you again”. ~ Anne Marie

See the online postings for these events so far as a result of our efforts. 

More recently, Diane asked me to incorporate a social media network within the new website so that she could communicate more effectively with the board members and volunteers and they can more effectively communicate with each other. I've been researching and developing this website project for the past couple of weeks. All that remains to be done is to meet with Diane meet next week so she can configure the privacy settings and such the way that they are optimized for the users. This social media network will launch on the new website sometime mid-September 2010.

If you'd like to know more about this project visit www.whitemudequine.ca and sign up for their Hoofbeat & Heart Beats enewsletter. You'll be the first to know when their social media network is open for registration.