1) What challenges were you facing prior to using BenchmarkONE?

I purchased a park with the worst possible combination of challenges: Poor location, low customer retention and ineffective marketing, to name a few. We were using Constant Contact to send out newsletters on a mass scale to our contact list; more of a one size fits all approach with mediocre results. I knew that if we were going to grow, I needed to find the right marketing solution to reach more NEW customers and bring repeat customers back in the door.

2) What are the top three features you like about BenchmarkONE?

The CRM is easy to use and makes it simple to stay in touch with all of my contacts and send them the right emails, offers or discounts when they need them most.  We really like the notifications feature. We use it to delegate tasks to our staff and trigger calls when contacts are warm – not cold!! This saves us time and leads to higher conversions on sales calls.

Also, the contact tagging feature has been invaluable. It helps us bucket our prospects and customers by what they are interested in after a website visit, email click, or even when they fill out our website forms. So, if someone visits our “Events” section on the site, we’ve set-up BenchmarkONE to begin sending them information specific to events to upsell them on our events program and trigger a notification to our team. That’s a huge win.

In our business, it’s key to get the most out of our website traffic. With BenchmarkONE, we create specific and tailored web forms that capture the customer’s information and their real needs. BenchmarkONE has helped us build our subscriber list by over 300% and is allowing us to appropriately respond in a timely manner with the right response.

3) What specific problems has BenchmarkONE solved that other Franchise Owners or Small Businesses might be able to relate to?

The biggest solution BenchmarkONE has given my business is the ability to automate personal commutation with my customers that truly feels authentic. No more batch and blast emails.

Like most parks, follow up is a challenge when you have a business to run and you lack the time and resources to dedicate to sending a personal one off email to everyone. BenchmarkONE’s campaigns allow us to automatically send emails triggered based on the response of our contacts. So now we can set it and forget it while still staying connected.

4) What measurable results have you seen since you started using BenchmarkONE?

Sales are up 53% and we were able to lower our monthly marketing spend by leveraging personal automation. Our customer return rate has increased as well as our customer satisfaction ratings. Overall there has been a nice increase in profits and our Peoria location was recognized by corporate with the “Awesome Sales Increase” Award this year.

5) What is the single biggest reason you would recommend BenchmarkONE?
Because it’s a game changer. In this chaotic world of communication, where it’s hard to reach your website visitors and customers in a personal way, BenchmarkONE delivers. It’s not just a “like to have” for small businesses and franchises. It’s a must have.