MACANUDO WEBSITE REBUILD
Macanudo is one of the most renowned cigar brands in history, but their old website didn’t reflect their status. To better convey their gravitas and for their website to have better SEO ranking, we rebuilt macanudo.com from the ground up. Within this project, I crafted all of the website copy as well as the supporting emails for the brand CRM.
In doing so, I had to create a new voice for the brand that reflected Macanudo’s impressive legacy while staying relatable enough to entice new fans into the category. I was also tasked with coming up with a consumer-facing name for the family of cigars that do not currently fall into their new product designations.
Brand History
A big part of the challenge for the website was reframing the history of the brand in a way that was digestible to readers. On the old website, the brand history was told linearly, with dozens of small events that were historically significant to the company, but not necessarily interesting for those visiting the site. Instead, I crafted a brief brand history that pays off the new brand tagline: Evolution of an Icon.
Lineup Re-Name
Another unique challenge with this website was working with the client on a consumer-facing name for a loosely-defined product lineup. The Inspirado lineup was all about being bold, complex and crafted with no holds barred. M by Macanudo was an infusion of flavors married with premium tobaccos. And then… there was everything else. They had a name for the rest of the cigars internally, but it wasn’t something they wanted fans of the brand to see. After working with the client, I came up with the new designation: The Legacy Lineup. The Legacy name serves as an homage both to the cigars that made Macanudo an icon and to the cigars more indicative of where the brand had been in the past.
It’s All About SEO
Before our digital production team got involved, searching “macanudo cigars” would send fans to a number of online cigar retailers before serving them our website. We couldn’t have that.
So, I worked extensively in SEMrush, with our social team, and partnered with a few sister sites to secure the proper keywords and backlinks for a better Google ranking. The result speaks for itself. Google “macanudo” and see what gorgeous website pops up first.
CRM FTW
After building this website with no new content or promotion in the foreseeable future, we knew we needed to create a consumer journey to increase our web traffic and user time on site.
Our solution? Use our CRM software to craft an EMOB (early member on-boarding) series sent to new users, and to reintroduce our current database members to what Macanudo has to offer. It was on me to write the copy for these emails and utilize all of the tools in our new HubSpot toolbox to snag fans’ attention and get them to interact with the final build.
