How Using Scrum Lead to Success with The Ostic Group

In my last blog, I was talking about how to do twice the work in half the time. It spoke about how we are moving our clients into a framework called Scrum (Agile) and how it is helping to transform the way that we do business. If you want to read it for a reference, you can do so here.

The reason I mention this to start this blog is because this story is about our first client that we moved to this process and what the results were.

Who is The Ostic Group?

The Ostic Group is an Insurance provider in Guelph, Fergus, Elora, and Shelburne. They are a community minded organization that pride themselves on excellent service, having fun, and taking care of all people they interact with. They have been under this title since 1992 but have been serving these communities since 1969.

Before Implementing Scrum

We first started working with The Ostic Group in 2013. For the first two years of the campaign things were going pretty well, but there was a lot of back and forth between the organizations and things didn’t go perfectly smooth. Overall, everybody was happy with the results but we received feedback that sometimes if felt like we were looking for last minute approval and things were being rushed out the door.

Every month we were writing blogs, social media posts, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and sending email newsletters. Everything that we were completing on a monthly basis needed to be sent for approval and then once approved, we could schedule out the work we had completed. Needless to say, there was a ton of back and forth and a lack of cohesion amongst all people a part of the campaign from both companies.Receiving this feedback was incredibly timely.

How We Used Scrum

We were just finishing the book Scrum at Intrigue and were looking for our first client to test this with. So we presented the idea to Ostic that we wanted to change the way we work together as we enter into year 3 of our relationship. We wanted to get all people that would be working on this campaign from both organizations in the room together for 3 hours to plan out the next 6 months of the campaign.

After we had all agreed on the strategy and the content schedule, we would leave and work on the campaign for the next two weeks and then come present all of the work we had completed in two weeks time. Once we had all the content approved in that session, we would take the last week to schedule everything we had completed. They agreed to go through this new process.

So this is exactly what we did. We got everything we needed, came back in two weeks, presented everything, got every single thing approved in that session and scheduled out the next 6 months of the campaign. The Ostic Group was thrilled with the process, as were we. For the first time, we felt like we had full cohesion amongst everybody and we wouldn’t have countless emails back and forth on a monthly basis for the next 6 months.

The Results

The only real question left was, would the results of the campaign change based on the new structure. The goal for the year was to increase online leads by 25%. As I am writing this, we are nearing the end of September 2016 and the leads for the year have increased by over 50% already in this calendar year, so I think it is fair to say that the new process has worked wonderfully 🙂

It is easy for me to say good things about a client success, but the opinion who really matters is that of the client.

You can check out the Google Review below to see what the client has to say about our relationship to date.

September 2016

These guys are great! We knew our business needed a website make-over and a more active presence in online social media to help build our community brand. We were very impressed with the professional and creative manner in which the entire Intrigue team scoped and managed our project from inception to completion. We had key elements that we wanted included in our project and these ideas were met with positive, creative solutions by the entire team. Job well done guys!! Thanks for your help and continued support.

—Mike McKinnon

If you would like to learn more about how Intrigue can help you reach your digital marketing goals, contact us today and we can start the conversation.

Paul is one of the co-founders at Intrigue. His focus is on helping drive the organization to become a leader in local marketing across Canada. He is on the Board at Bracelet of Hope and is a member of the Rotary Club of Guelph. When he is not at Intrigue, he loves travelling the world, and slowly ruining his ear drums listening to live music.