Mack’s Prairie Wings Grows Ecommerce Revenue 76%

For more than three decades, Mack’s Prairie Wings has been the world’s premier waterfowl outfitter. The family run business grew impressively from a small section of apparel in McCollum's Hardware Store into a regional powerhouse retailer. 

‍The Opportunity: Serve Customers Online

While Mack’s boasted exceptional quality, a sterling reputation, and a vibrant legacy in the brick-and-mortar space, the company lacked a robust digital presence. Mack’s partnered with Tadpull to rebuild its ecommerce site. They knew that in order to compete in the marketplace they would need a solid foundation with the capabilities of collecting key data points so they could deliver personalized experiences to their loyal customer base. ‍

The Strategy: 

Build a Solid Foundation 

In 2017 Mack's brought-on Tadpull as an extension of its team to rebuild its website to be centered around an ecommerce experience, which meant strategically implementing NetSuite as a sophisticated enterprise resource planning system on the backend. In order to create a solid foundation for collecting and activating data, the Tadpull team:

• Fixed prior site errors: Without built-in logic on the inherited site, the Tadpull team manually re-directed hundreds of thousands of URLS so that the business would have a proper foundation from which  to work. 
• Built a custom web-app to rename images in proper syntax: The custom web-app made possible a herculean effort of cataloging a huge number of retailer-provided images within NetSuite. The app defined where the image should live in NetSuite and properly named them so that parent and associated child SKUs were logged in the ERP.‍
• Fixed technical SEO terms: The Tadpull team made backend SEO adjustments so that Mack's would trend higher in Google search. The team also used keyword data to drive content creation that drew in the right customer. 

In the months following the relaunch, Mack’s saw dramatic improvements in site traffic. That traffic continued to grow month over month, an average of 20% for 15 consecutive months.   

Personalize and Optimize

Once traffic to the site was consistent and growing, the Tadpull team focused on conversion-rate optimizations. They made granular changes to help improve the site experience for customers such as making the navigation more user-friendly. They also implemented logic on the backend that made customers aware of how much quantity remained for a product, nudging customers to purchase if an item had low stock.

A Team Approach

As the partnership grew and deepened, Tadpull took on more responsibility, affording Mack’s the ability to keep their internal team compact. 

Tadpull was responsible for setting the technology roadmap and the overall ecommerce strategy, as well as managing daily omni-channel campaigns and operations against Paid, SMS, Email, CRO, SEO, Referral, and more. 

The Success Story

In 2017 Mack's recognized they needed to bring a partner onboard to help grow their ecommerce business. In four short years, after partnering with Tadpull, they can compete with retailers such as Cabellas and BassPro but with just a fraction of the in-house human resources. 

By using the Pond software, Tadpull was able to gather and parse zero- and first-party data so that Mack's could better understand its audience base and make profitable decisions. 

Now, more than 60 percent of web traffic comes either direct or via SEO, which helps the company predictably drive traffic to the site, avoiding sudden dips in unforeseen social media algorithm changes. Tadpull actively helps Mack's avoid over-spending on paid media and uses email and other channels to nurture customers and drive high LTVs.

“Tadpull made the impossible possible for Mack’s Prairie Wings … I can’t say enough good things about Tadpull, they are what we consider our marketing and ecommerce team. Anything we want developed or done in NetSuite, they are the ones we call on.” - Debbie Pinckard, CFO for Mack’s Prairie Wings 

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