Goals & Objectives
RYZ is all about community and without an active and vibrant community their business model would fail. With a strong and experienced leadership team in place, the only missing link to success for RYZ was online marketing and social media plan. The overarching goal was to increase community memberships and engagement, and to grow merchandise sales.

Measurement
Using Webtrends web analytics, SwellPath created a series of custom variables and reports to measure the success of the community growth and member engagement. These included obvious metrics like the number of new memberships, but also more specialized metrics, like the number of votes cast per member, and the number of designs submitted. Additionally, the standard ecommerce, merchandising and campaign related metrics were also key performance indicators. Data was collected, analyzed and pushed to stakeholders in customized scorecards and dashboards.

Strategy & Execution
SwellPath developed a comprehensive plan for acquiring members through search engine marketing, social media marketing, viral marketing, buzz monitoring and outreach, and social media marketing. Search marketing came through search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on major search engines. Social media networks were treated as extensions of RYZwear.com; sub-sites where entertainment, promotion, discussion, and service all would occur. SwellPath developed customized solutions for each major network, and specific strategies and timelines were conducted for each. All valuable content and conversation on RYZWear.com was broadcast to all networks. Buzz-monitoring was conducted to ensure any external discussion about RYZ was quickly identified. SwellPath worked with RYZ’s community manager to ensure proper responses were made, compliments and thanks were given when due, and discussions about the brand were cultivated to keep the conversation active.

Results

• Over 300% growth of the community month-over-month
• Plus 200% growth of Facebook followers month-over-month
• Beat sales expectations month-over-month
• Vibrant community activity on and off-site

Testimonial
“We would have been spinning our wheels for months without SwellPath” says RYZ CTO Scott Tanaka, “they helped us focus on what was really important to our success. We spoke with several agencies, but no one really offered to design a solution to fit our needs. We didn’t know exactly what our marketing needs were, but we knew they were unique. SwellPath was able to isolate our target market by creating these extensions of our community, and then speak to these consumers in a personalized way. It was amazing how much buzz, activity, and engagement came out of their efforts.”