Over the past 15 years, Melton International Tackle has grown from a school project to one of the world's most well respected retailers/catalogers in the high profile world of big game fishing tackle. While attending the USC School of Business Tracy Melton participated in the Entrepreneurship program. As part of the program he was given the assignment to "start" a fictitious business. Combining his love for big game fishing with his interest in business, Tracy developed a range of jet head style trolling lures (that would eventually become know as Melton Jets) to build his project around. Eventually earning an "A" on the project, Tracy realized that there was an opportunity to pursue his dream of actually establishing a high-end big game fishing tackle business. With the input and guidance of Christopher Hall, one of the former managing partners of Harbord Tackle Supply in Sydney, Australia, Tracy put together a 12 page catalog featuring a limited variety of hard to find, custom trolling lures along with a small selection of high end tackle from manufacturers such as Shimano, Penn and Fin-Nor. This small publication was distributed to 10,000 anglers throughout the US with the initial orders, being filled by Tracy and shipped out of his parent's garage. From these humble beginnings Melton International Tackle increased its volume of busy to a point where a 1994 move to a commercial warehouse in Los Alamitos, California was necessary. Keeping a personal touch, every member of the staff took orders and handled customer service inquires. In addition we were consumed with producing catalogs in 1994 (52 pgs.) and 1996 (88 pgs.) and increasing circulation to 100,000 internationally. The 1997 edition of the Melton International Tackle master catalog was 102 pages in length and was mailed to over 150,000 of the world's most serious big game anglers! It was at this juncture that we began to expand our offerings and our horizons. The Melton Rods rod shop was opened in Feb. 1997, where we continue to build some of the very best fishing rods for a variety of angling situations. Featuring a range of rods from inshore light tackle to heavy tackle stand-up and tournament angling Melton Rods quickly became one of our staple products and today can be found onboard many of the world's top sportfishing boats. We also began our search for a proper headquarters. We had found that as our reputation grew, more and more customers would find us in our commercial warehouse and come knocking to get a look at our world-class product range. This was flattering, however this made it difficult to service our walk-in customers properly and continue building our mail-order business. In November of 1997, Melton International Tackle moved from a little warehouse to Anaheim, Ca. The location featured a 2,500 sq.ft. retail showroom, at the time, enabling us to adequately showcase the world's finest big game fishing tackle. By early 2006, it was obvious that we had outgrown the building we occupied, seeing as business had quadrupled since we moved in eight years prior. It was sometime around mid 2006, that we started looking for the next Melton Tackle headquarters. After months of searching far and wide for a building that would accomodate our operation, we found our new location. Located only about a mile away, the new building fit the bill, allowing for ample space to effectively serve retail customers and mail-order customers alike. Mail-order operations occupied the building in September of 2007 and found the new building to be more than adequate to house our inventory, sales, rigger, customer service and warehouse teams. Lastly, we have continued to offer our customers the very best in customer service and product selection, allowing us to become one of the world's most well respected and fastest growing big game fishing tackle catalog/retailers.

1. Sitebrand Case Study Melton Tackle
High-end catalogue sellers Melton Tackle generate a huge
conversion lift using Sitebrand’s web and email solution to
deliver relevant online experiences.
www.MeltonTackle.com Melton International Tackle began in 1992 after founder Tracy Melton created the company
Privately owned, multi-channel catalogue as part of a University business project that incorporated his love for fishing. In no time,
company for high quality fishing/tackle
products Melton was operating an 18 page mail order catalogue out of his garage. Today, Melton
Location International Tackle has grown to offer the finest fishing/tackle products available with
Headquartered in Anaheim, California
exclusive manufactures/products found only through MeltonTackle.com, their two
showrooms (Hawaii and Anaheim) or via their annual catalogue.
www.MeltonTackle.com
Keeping focus on visitor needs and customer experience
Key challenges:
Customers of Melton International Tackle are loyal to the fishing/tackle company because
Need to deliver personalized online
experience of the premium quality of products sold and the personal relationships built through
Low conversion rates for new and
catalogue, phone, and in store orders. Melton
returning visitors
Grow email database and increase email International Tackle has always made it a priority to “We wanted to speak to our
delivery rates customers in a relevant way.
deliver the best customer experience possible.
Solution: We take pride in adding
Since MeltonTackle.com was launched in 2000, the
Segment&Serve™ Web Personalization additional value to our site for
company has made every effort to ensure the online
Segment&Serve™ Email Channel our customers and Sitebrand
Targeted messaging to specific segments experience replicates the high quality service, is an extension of that”
Sitebrand reports to track results and ROI expertise and knowledge found in traditional Melton
of web/email campaigns Jason Levine
International Tackle sales outlets. Jason Levine, Director of e-Commerce
Results:
Director of e-Commerce for MeltonTackle.com,
Increased conversion rate for new and
returning visitors began using third party tools to help showcase products, descriptions and reviews to
Rapid growth of email database through
enhance the online experience and drive site conversion. It was then Levine was referred to
loyalty program
Improved email delivery and Sitebrand Inc., a leader in personalizing customer experiences with relevant messaging.
conversion numbers
Lost shopper/navigation campaigns to drive
upsell opportunities Several weeks later, Levine and Melton International Tackle found themselves building their

2. Sitebrand
online marketing strategies around Sitebrand’s web personalization and email marketing
channels. MeltonTackle.com’s challenges included a need to deliver a personalized
experience to each web visitor, to grow conversion rates for both new and returning visitors,
to boost the size of their email database and to see an increase in deliverability on
email sends.
Figure 1
Figure 1:
Sitebrand controlled dynamic content
appears in Zone 1, under the main
navigation on the home page of
MeltonTackle.com. New visitors,
returning visitors, email loyalty
campaigns (and more) launch in this
embedded content zone when
triggered by any number of
segmentation rules.
Segment traffic by displaying personalized messaging to different audiences with unique needs. The ability for
Melton International Tackle to offer relevant messaging to its world-wide traffic is critical to providing the best
customer service possible.
Driving Home Town Sales
As a result of delivering geo-targeted messages to visitors with Sitebrand’s
“ Sitebrand treats
MeltonTackle.com like it’s
Segment&Serve™, Melton International Tackle acknowledged an increase in conversion
rates, most notably in California. “Our California business has jumped as a result
their own business … of using Sitebrand” says Levine. Levine and his team had identified thousands of California
The big thing about based visitors browsing MeltonTackle.com every day but had no way to differentiate that
Sitebrand’s support team experience from any other visitor around the world. Digging deeper into analytical reports,
is they care about Levine discovered a large segment of California visitors used Spanish as the primary
“ success.”
our language in their web browsers. Levine believes this simple Sitebrand campaign plays a
huge role in the Melton International Tackle’s online success. “By presenting either content
Jason Levine
Director of e-Commerce or a greeting message in Spanish, we’re able to start a framework for dialogue with our
visitors. That’s part of the personal touch Melton International Tackle is known for and
Sitebrand helps us achieve this in the online world”.
Online Customer Service Is A Top Priority
“Above average customer service is an absolute must. It’s something we feel very strongly
about” Levine cites. Levine attributes the company’s steady growth to the ongoing
relationships they’ve built with customers year after year. Initially, Levine struggled to bring
www.sitebrand.com

3. Sitebrand
the same level of customer service to MeltonTackle.com as found in their stores or over the
phone. Levine believes the personalized feeling Sitebrand has given visitors is a big reason
why web sales have grown to represent 50% of total business. “We’ve seen a steady growth
in our online sales since launching our site in 2000. We’ve been able to quadruple our sales
Figure 2:
year over year.”
Sitebrand’s collapsible content in Zone
2 appears in category pages, above
actual brands and various products.
Choosing The Right Partner
Melton International Tackle use this
content zone as a way to further “We really liked Sitebrand because they talked about earning our business. We think it’s the
engage visitors with relevant right approach to take with clients because we look at it from the same perspective with our
messaging pertaining directly to the
customers.” Levine describes the process of working with Sitebrand from the initial referral
individual web session in campaigns
promoting top selling products and call all the way to ongoing weekly meetings, “The sales process was great. I was never left
highlighting their vast inventory.
wondering and Sitebrand made so much sense for us.” Although software integrations can
often be troublesome, Levine couldn’t be happier with the smooth and quick transition
Sitebrand offered. Within days, Sitebrand was live on MeltonTackle.com with the
professional services team sharing best practices, tips, and proactive online marketing
advice to help Levine succeed. Levine concludes, “Sitebrand genuinely care about
Figure 2 their clients”.
Growth from multiple campaigns
As noted in Figure 4, three of the top performing Sitebrand campaigns generated incredible
percentage lifts between 47-61% for revenue incurred. The Shopper Navigation campaign
alone added an additional $12,461 within a one month period. This campaign appeared as
collapsible HTML within category pages of MeltonTackle.com (Figure 2). Each campaign and
subsequent conversion increase ran between March 30 – May 1, 2009. With a professional
Collapsible HTML campaigns target visitors with services team ready to optimize your online marketing strategies and a versatile tool that
relevant messaging within MeltonTackle.com category
can launch an unlimited number of campaigns, the investment in Sitebrand is telling.
pages. These campaigns react to lost shoppers (high
number of page views), specific keywords used, and
navigation history. MeltonTackle.com has been able to Figure 3
convert additional site traffic, reinforce
essaging/branding, and reduce bounce rate/shopping
cart abandonment with collapsible HTML campaigns.
“ [Sitebrand] know the ins and outs
of email marketing. They are
the pros.
”
Jason Levine
Director of e-Commerce
MeltonTackle.com product pages feature message reinforcement campaigns as well as company branding campaigns
to help drive sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Campaigns running in Zone 3 are often specific to the
product being viewed and reactive to the visitor’s entire shopping session.
www.sitebrand.com

4. Sitebrand
Figure 4
Campaign Revenue Lift %
New Visitors $5,011.10 51.70%
Return Visitors $5,112.87 47.31%
Shopper Navigation $12,461.33 62.39%
Customer Loyalty $1,842.03 13.69%
Prior to using Sitebrand’s email solution, Melton International Tackle used an email service
from their previous e-Commerce provider. “They were limited with what they could do for us”
says Levine. “After speaking with the Sitebrand team, it became clear they would be a great
partner and could help us achieve our goals”. Some of Melton International Tackle’s initial
goals were modest:
About Sitebrand View in browser & forwarding email capabilities
Admin reporting (Links clicked, unsubscribe numbers, etc…)
Retail focus
Nine-year track record of helping
E-tailers and multi-channel retailers
Once these needs were met, Levine was able to roll out more effective email strategies.
convert more visitors into online or
in-store buyers. Levine elaborates, “Once we could clearly see what was going on with our email reports, we
were able to relate and communicate to our audience. It’s much better having Sitebrand run
Unique real-time technology
Solutions use advanced predictive our email channel.” He goes on to say “We look at our partnership with Sitebrand as
technology to personalize the someone specializing in email rather than using a bolt on product”.
website experience of every visitor in
real-time.
Melton International Tackle sends more than 200,000 emails annually with as
Comprehensive services many as four separate emails per month (often more during peak fishing season). Having
Solutions are backed by professional
services to ensure fast time to ROI. Sitebrand’s email expertise has been an advantage for Levine and his team. Levine and
Melton International Tackle spend significantly less time on email sends and accomplish
Headquarters
Sitebrand better results. Levine credits the Sitebrand email team with their tips and knowledge sharing
227 Montcalm Street, Suite 200 as a big reason why the transition from email vendors was so smooth. “Sitebrand has made
Gatineau, QC, Canada J8Y 3B9
it very easy for Melton International Tackle to send emails. They know the ins and outs of
Phone email marketing. They are the pros”.
1-800-975-0820
Fax
1-866-357-9375 Our success is their success
It’s no wonder Jason Levine and the Melton International Tackle team are thrilled with
Email
Sitebrand’s impact. Email marketing now accounts for roughly 10 per cent of overall sales
business@sitebrand.com
while online sales make up more than 50 per cent of total sales. As both web and email
Sitebrand and the Sitebrand logo are registered trademarks sales continue to grow, Levine can’t help but marvel at the professional services from the
of Sitebrand. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners. Sitebrand assumes no responsibility for Sitebrand support teams. “Sitebrand treats MeltonTackle.com like it’s their own business …
the accuracy of the information presented, which is subject
to change without notice. © 2009 Sitebrand. All rights reserved. The big thing about Sitebrand’s support team is they care about our success.”
www.sitebrand.com