Mach III Website Focused on Customer Care
Mach III has been successfully designing and manufacturing clutches, brakes, and
torque limiters for decades. But the family-owned Company, which humbly started in the
basement of its founder, has historically found it difficult to uncover prospects who could
benefit from Mach III's unique, often one-of-a-kind, custom solutions. That has changed
with the smart utilization of the Internet.
Several years ago, Mach III set forth a plan to leverage the power of the Internet to help
companies with a unique problem -- find Mach III. The plan started with the execution
of a well-designed website that not only clearly detailed the Company's products and
services, but was constructed using "best practice" techniques to help ensure that the
individual pages were properly indexed by the various search engines. Page content
was optimized for keyword density, which has resulted in high, organic placement for a
number of popular search terms.
Mach III's catalog, with engineering specifications, was also presented online.
Next, a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign was created for an additional set of specialized
keywords by product category. That campaign has increased traffic to the site
considerably.
But what has been the payoff? Has the web delivered any sales? Those questions are
answered through the third component to the Internet plan -- web tracking analytics.
Mach III takes advantage of Google Analytics to track not only visitors and page views,
but also to track specific "campaigns," such as requests for catalogs. Approximately
60% of all catalog requests and application form submissions through the website
originated from visitors to the online catalog.
Since the beginning of 2007, Mach III has converted 27% of catalog requests into
qualified prospects, and of that number, 26% have become new customers. Each new
customer placed, on average, initial orders in excess of $3,000. "We continue to see a
dramatic increase in leads from the website over the last two years. In fact, we've been
able to decrease our outside sales force from 12 to 1, while increasing sales and
profitability," notes Lesli Riehmann, President.
Mach III continues to fine tune and expand its focus on customer care via the site. The
Company generates an HTML Email newsletter spotlighting recent applications of Mach
III products to help customers face unique challenges. The emails are only sent when
Mach III has a new, compelling story to tell. The open rate has been higher than the
industry average at 37%, and the click-thru rate averages 12%. The industry average
for click-thrus is 9%.
Mach III Clutch, Inc., for over 60 years, has designed and manufactured a wide array of
standard and custom designed clutches, brakes, and torque limiters. The Company is
headquartered in Ludlow, KY, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio.
