With Christmas and the New Year on the horizon, it’s a brilliant time to reflect on the last 12 months. We’ve had a mini Christmas party this morning in the office because if you can’t have chocolate for breakfast at Christmas, when can you? We have been laughing and telling stories about 2018, and it’s got me thinking about everything we’ve achieved and how much we’ve grown.
There is no better time to reflect on your business efforts than right now before we head into a fresh new year with a new marketing plan. Here are our thoughts on the last 12 months, we’d love to hear yours. Leave a comment below with a link to your business blog.
Rebrand
After months of hard work, we launched our complete re-brand in September and we couldn’t have been more excited.
With loads of market research, feedback from our clients, our leads and our own staff, we finalised the design and concept in May.
We have undergone a total brand re-vamp and from the feedback from our clients, it’s gone down a treat. Our fresh new look only supports our evolution in the world of marketing automation.
To celebrate our growth and expansion as a world-class digital marketing expert, we thought it was time for a change. We’ve ditched the corporate look and introduced a brand that is reflective of our commitment to our clients, our passion for digital marketing and our fantastic company culture. Also, we updated our website, logo, messaging, colours, imagery and introduced and our new mascot – Zym.
Why?
The new relaxed, but professional branding reflects our team of young and vibrant marketers, our company culture and core values. It also emphasises our commitment to our clients to help grow their business through expert digital marketing software and services. The new tagline, ‘Attract. Engage. Grow’, illustrates that Zymplify is here to support and understand our clients throughout their marketing journey, from start to finish.
We’ve made our website easier to navigate and updated our resource section with a full catalogue of really useful free content.
If you haven’t already, make sure and have a look around our new website and let us know what you think.
“It’s been a great year for Zymplify with our rebrand and redesign of our website,” Carly Warke, our Head of Marketing said.
“The new brand reflects our ‘customer first’ core focus, our ‘solutions’ ethos, and also showcases our vibrant team of expert digital marketers. We wanted to emphasise that we are here to support and understand our clients throughout their marketing journey – and our new methodology is built around that.”
Expansion
We said hello to 11 new members of staff in 2018 and are continuing to grow every month. We already can’t wait to see what 2019 will bring.
Our talented team of marketing and software experts are the best in the business, as we really value their contribution to the team.
We quadrupled our Marketing Team, changed the dynamics of our Client Success Team and welcomed a new manager. There as a new position created and a new Product Manager was appointed, and completely revamped our sales team. We also expanded our development team, who have been working tirelessly on our new platform – keep your eyes peeled for that in the new year.
“2019 is going to be a huge year for us. 2018 focused on listening to our clients and putting their feedback into play, in terms of our brand and working on our product. We’re very excited to launch version 3.0 of our software in the new year, which includes a completely new look, as well as new features and fixes.” Carly added.
Fun times
While we worked hard all year around (we promise we did!), we also had a lot of fun. We are so lucky to have a great team who work well together and also have a lot of fun. At Zymplify, we understand that we have to have some fun as well.
Our head office is situated along Portstewart promenade in Northern Ireland, and we used every opportunity in the summer to have lunch along the rocks. Who doesn’t love fish and chips beside the sea in the summertime? On those really hot days, we snuck out for a cheeky ice cream break in the afternoon. We needed to cool down, after all.
We treat our staff to ‘Fun Fridays’ every so often to blow off some steam. In May everyone got together and played Bubble Football and in September we went to a local outdoor activity centre and fought each other with laser guns.
To round up the year, we organised an office Secret Santa and exchanged the funniest gifts. We all wore Christmas jumpers and had a quick party before getting suited and booted for our annual Christmas party. No one knows how to party quite like the Zymplify employees.
Growing together
Ongoing training for our staff is something we believe in here at Zymplify. In 2018 we saw 5 of our staff members pass their Chartered Institute of Marketing Level 4 qualification and have another 5 signed up for next year.
Giving Back
This year was the first year that we really took our Corporate Social Responsibility seriously. With our business growing and developing so well in such a short space of time, we wanted to continue to give back.
In September we hosted our Macmillan Coffee Morning, along with our sister companies, instaGiv and Landed. Between our own staff members and some other local business, we raised £340. To make things interesting, we had our own bake-off with a twist. ‘Bake for a Day Off’ saw our team compete against each other, and the winning cake won a free day of annual leave. As you can imagine, everyone pulled their socks up and tried their best. It was our Graphic Designer, Johnny, that won with his strawberry Pavlova – it was delicious!
Our staff also got involved in this year’s Salvation Army Christmas Shoe Box appeal and filled shoeboxes with lots of presents for kids less fortunate at this time of year. We loved getting involved in this and hope that where ever they are now in the world, that those children enjoy our small gifts.
Homelessness is a tragic issue in Northern Ireland, and everywhere in the world, but we decided to help those local homeless people in our own community this year. We rallied together and hosted a clothing appeal. A lot of our staff brought in old clothes, blankets, scarves, hats and anything else that could help and donated them to a local charity.
Continuing this ‘giving’ initiative is something we’re going to take really seriously in 2019. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, or if you have any ideas of charities we could help throughout the year.
Thank you!
We couldn’t reflect on the last 12 months without saying a massive thank you to you. To every single one of our clients, our blog readers, our newsletter subscribers, our social media followers and every person who has interacted or engaged with us in 2018.
We have grown at scale, using our own all-in-one marketing automation and services platform. Our team can’t wait to show you what we’ve got in store for you all in 2019.
