EXIM
SCOPE
Full-service digital marketing
MY ROLE
Creative direction, graphic design, UI design, usability research, UX strategy, marketing strategy, copywriting
MY DELIVERABLES
Multi-channel design collateral, reports, web interface
CONTRIBUTORS
Shannon Turner, project manager
Ellen Haynie, marketing strategist
Ellen Heo, production designer
TOOLS
Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator
The Export-Import Bank of the United States is one of the federal government agencies responsible for increasing the international sale of U.S. goods and services. To do this, EXIM focuses on providing the support that businesses need to export safely: education and compliance guidance, protection from non-payment, and access to the cash flow required to complete orders.
To effectively serve more than 33 million businesses across the United States, EXIM’s Outreach and Education division was created specifically for companies that meet SBA’s small business criteria. However, the division was struggling both to connect with these companies and to communicate EXIM’s value proposition. EXIM hired our team to create and execute a multi-year digital marketing strategy to secure and nurture new leads.
THE CHALLENGE:
Although EXIM has been a federal agency since 1934, it suffers from an awareness problem: qualified business owners don’t take advantage of its offerings, because they don’t know they exist. Our team proposed an inbound marketing strategy to naturally attract relevant users without relying upon brand recognition.
With offerings like “Export Credit Insurance” or “Working Capital Loan Guarantees”, EXIM’s name and services were so niche and confusing that prospective customers didn’t even know to look for them. To combat this, all marketing materials and strategies needed to center the business owner’s problems first before naming the solution, inviting an audience that was thus already motivated to learn. Targeted educational content was created and advertised across a variety of social media and streaming platforms, as well as the networks of partner trade associations, publications, brokers, lenders, and other industry leaders.
In each campaign, users were given the opportunity to fill out a form and receive their desired content in exchange for their personal information. All collected lead data was funneled into a single source, HubSpot, which integrated with EXIM’s CRM of choice, Salesforce. Data collection and user scoring was carefully structured to reflect EXIM’s qualification requirements, ensuring a smooth transition for sales qualified leads.
The design team was involved from day one to ensure that all collateral and templates worked towards the same high-level strategy; I was a key member of this group brainstorming due to my understanding of our KPIs and user behavior, often bridging the gap between strategic needs and creative ideas. To get us started, I created the leadgen webpages, cross-promoting thank you pages, email blasts, and other digital collateral. I also created supplemental diagrams and wrote reports for the client, to ensure they were fully briefed on our approach and progress.
THE CHALLENGE:
The cornerstone of our inbound strategy was providing users with a steady stream of new content that was easy to understand, met legal compliance requirements, and could be created rapidly yet maintain a high level of quality.
When the campaign began, EXIM had a collection of ~25 core documents from many disparate sources; these had radically different design and content styles. To ensure our campaign was cohesive, included only high quality materials, and could be expanded easily, I first created a design system. I approached this process similarly to a website design, in which multiple types of collateral all pulled from the same master set of InDesign typography styles and layout components. All existing EXIM materials were then redesigned using the updated style.
25 documents was a good start, but our campaign always needed fresh content. Producing entirely new material is always a difficult prospect for financial products, but EXIM being a government body meant requirements and regulations that added further complications. A key part of my role became digesting dense information from lengthy legal documents, then reformatting or rewriting that content and getting it approved by EXIM’s legal council. Only then could it be converted into infographics, brochures, and white papers.
As the campaign went on, it became apparent that exporters needed much broader information than just EXIM’s products. To get small business owners excited about prospects overseas and capture entirely new leads, I ideated a series of beginner-level guides focusing on various markets and industries in conjunction with the International Trade Association. This degree of collaboration was new to both agencies, but received with great enthusiasm.
THE CHALLENGE:
Small business support is a critical piece of EXIM’s congressional mandate, but it was not reflected in the agency’s web presence, which focused primarily on appealing to EXIM’s large business clients.
When the EXIM web team indicated they were open to a redesign, our team was asked to consult and provide recommendations that complimented our small business focus. First, to determine how well the current website was serving its user base, we executed task-based usability testing. We recruited:
10 members of the public, with no knowledge of EXIM, for unmoderated testing conducted via UserBob
7 exporters and 3 insurance brokers from EXIM’s database for moderated testing with me, conducted via Zoom
For both sets of participants, we identified 10 tasks to complete across a variety of high-profile areas of the site. We also installed HotJar on EXIM’s site to passively collect real user performance data.
Testing data revealed many of the same themes as our marketing campaign: users couldn’t necessarily name what they were looking for, struggled with too much information that didn’t speak to their needs, and couldn’t easily take the next step to progress through the lead lifecycle. Many users also felt that the site didn’t connect with its intended audience, and would prefer a redesign to make it more appealing.
To support the EXIM team as it worked through its redesign process, I created a variety of design mockups that utilized styles from our collateral design system, demonstrated how to incorporate users’ feedback, and included intersection points with our inbound marketing strategy. Once the redesign was complete EXIM opted not to perform post-launch testing, but the site has since become a major source of leads for the campaign, indicating that users are also interacting with the site and converting at higher rates than they were previously.
