SFIMA Educational Session Sponsored by TheUseful Highlights Online Marketing Success of Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Discovery and Science
BOCA RATON, Florida, (PRWEB) March 21, 2006
The online marketing program that helped produce a dramatic turnaround at Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Discovery and Science was the subject of an educational forum on March 9, 2006 at the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association (http://www. sfima. com/) (SFIA) meeting. The event was sponsored by TheUseful (http://www. theuseful. com/), a results-based Internet marketing services and technology company.
“Creating a dynamic, vibrant and user-friendly web site was a critical step in revamping both the image and the business performance of our museum,” said Marlene Janetos, Vice President of Communications and Marketing for the Museum of Discovery and Science (http://www. mods. org/), who delivered the presentation. “The decision to completely redesign our web site in order to make it more useful to a potential museum visitor was one of the best decisions and investments in time and resources we’ve made. Being a not-for-profit, we always need to find ways to provide better customer service and having a web site that can provide up-to-date information about our exhibits, films, programs and special events is critical to the business. As a result, over the past three years we’ve experienced net revenue surpluses, reversing a trend of annual operating losses by increasing sales of memberships, school field trips, group tours, camps, facility rental inquiries, ticket sales and other revenue-enhancing opportunities via our online marketing initiatives.“
After its redesign, the museum’s web site experienced a 15-fold increase in daily page views. Enabling e-commerce and other improvements to the site led to increased membership renewals and to a net revenue increase of 4,000 percent from the museum’s facility rental business. Opt-in e-mail marketing initiatives facilitated promotion of special events at the museum’s Omni theater and improved communications with museum members and the broader community.
Ms. Janetos’s presentation, entitled “Integrating Online Marketing: How to Increase Traffic, Drive New Membership, Ticket Sales and Event Bookings through Website Redesign and Viral Marketing,” was attended by more than 80 SFIMA members.
“Sponsoring an educational event that highlights the business value of well-designed and executed online marketing programs, such as the one conducted by the Museum of Discovery and Science, plays to the heritage and strength of TheUseful,” said Michael Mathews, Senior Vice President of Marketing at TheUseful. “Since our firm is in the business of helping companies succeed through the effective use of integrated online marketing campaigns, it’s important for us to shine a bright light on those organizations that have reaped the rewards of online marketing done right.”
TheUseful (http://www. theuseful. net) is a results-based Internet marketing services and technology company that delivers tens of millions of high-quality customers and qualified leads to the Fortune 1000 community each year – all on a pay-for-performance basis.
Media Contacts:
Dennis Dailey, Marketing Communications Manager
TheUseful
(561) 843-1568
David Domeshek, Senior Counselor
Porter Novelli
(508) 873-7068
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