Another year, another trip around the sun—2023 has definitely been one for the record books here at Informatics! Before we jet for the holiday, we wanted to take some time to recognize our teams’ many accomplishments from the year, and maybe give you some ideas for your 2024 strategy.
You might already be familiar with one of our biggest accomplishments of 2023: celebrating 25 years in business. That’s 25 years of great design, great marketing and great solutions for our clients—now located all across the country.
A lot has changed in the worlds of digital marketing and web design over that time, but we’re proud of our amazing team for continuing to innovate and push the business forward. (Here’s a link to an excellent article on owners John and Stacie Osako in the Cedar Rapids Gazette in case you missed it.)
We feel strongly that our five core values have been the biggest factor in our success as a company, so this year’s review is categorized by value, so you can see how we’re living them each and every day. We hope you’re inspired to lean into your own values in the year ahead!
People First
Informatics wouldn’t be the place it is without the people who make our culture great. Informatics and our sister company ROC-P continue to grow at a high pace, and we welcomed seven new (awesome) team members this year:
- Gregg Hopkins, Senior Digital Marketer
- Ciera Wallace, Digital Marketing Project Manager
- Erin Gehant, ROC-P Client Success Manager
- David Frank, Project Manager
- Julia Crowley, ROC-P Business Growth Director
- Misti Dinzy, Web Developer
- Jennifer Slaymaker, Account Manager
Our team received some cool awards this year, including Stacie Osako being named a Corridor Business Journal Woman of Influence, and Megan Thomas, who was named to the CBJ’s Forty Under 40 list of up-and-coming leaders.
The Informatics family was also honored to be one of five nominees for Best Technology Company Culture in Iowa as part of the 2023 Prometheus Awards, presented by the Technology Association of Iowa. Although we ultimately lost to Principal Financial, we were proud to be a finalist in one of the program’s most competitive categories. We like to think it speaks to the caliber of people we work with here (and we’re still hiring!).
Wow the Client
It was a creative, innovative year here at Informatics, with our team members creating some of the most exciting digital marketing and design work we’ve ever produced.
That included 16 website launches for some of the region’s leading companies, including Shive-Hattery, ITC Holdings and MobileDemand, along with new mobile apps for select clients.
On the digital marketing front, our teams served up high-impact strategies and campaigns, across a wide variety of channels and a diverse group of clients ranging from Blain’s Farm & Fleet to the University of Iowa to Cedar Valley Habitat for Humanity. We even helped launch a never-before-seen gut health supplement. Is there anything our teams can’t handle?
Our drone services also rose to new heights in 2023, with our Media team using them to capture everything from Wheaton College’s welcoming campus outside Chicago to an intense first-person flying tour of LimoLink’s headquarters here in the Corridor (below). We’re already booking up for next spring, so don’t wait if you’re hoping to improve your aerial footage game in the year ahead.
Improve and Innovate
It was a year of big improvements and innovations, too. Our teams logged thousands of hours of innovation research time exploring new marketing and web tools, from AI-generated content to lightning-fast content delivery systems.
Along the way, our team members earned more than 50 certifications this year, including from HubSpot, Google, Amazon and Microsoft—that’s a lot of high-tech expertise, located right here in Eastern Iowa.
It was also a year for data innovation here at Informatics. As a results-driven firm, we pride ourselves on leveraging data at all points of the sales and marketing funnel, and our analytics experts were on fire developing new ways to do just that. Among our biggest hits:
- Using custom GA4 Explore reports to get a better understanding of user behavior on website pages and find optimization opportunities
- Building customized Looker Studio reporting templates for more robust reporting and enhanced storytelling
- Developing more complex heatmapping strategies with Microsoft Clarity
- Introducing Power BI to aid in our data interpretation by identifying new possibilities and ways to manipulate/mine data
- Introducing market basket analyses as a new service
Although it’s never the goal, our focus on innovation has started earning us some high-profile speaking engagements. Our leadership team was honored to present sessions on marketing and web design at the National Home Infusion Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., and have already been asked back for 2024. Interested in having us speak at your conference? Please reach out—we’d love the opportunity!
Nurture the Business
Our business continues to grow at a breakneck pace, as our clients continue to pass our name along to others (thank you!). We were honored to begin work with 16 new clients from throughout the country over the year, and launched our new in-house SEO studio, called SEO Boost, in response to growing demand for our technical services.
We also officially became a HubSpot Solutions Partner this year, giving us access to exclusive resources and expertise designed to help our clients succeed on the industry-leading CRM platform.
If you’re struggling to configure or maximize your use of HubSpot, we can help. Oh, and did we mention we can waive your onboarding fees with HubSpot by working with us?
Give Back
As busy as our team members are, they still find an immense amount of time and energy to give back to the Corridor community. Our employees spent more than 300 hours of time volunteering and participating with local not-for-profit organizations, including:
- Eastern Iowa Health Center
- Junior Achievement
- Women Lead Change
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Johnson County
- Leadership for Five Seasons (through the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance)
- Waypoint
- YPN
- The Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids
- Hawkeye Area Council, Boy Scouts of America
We were also honored to support the Eastern Iowa Arts Academy (EIAA) here in Cedar Rapids as the second recipient of our Starfish Initiative grant program. We worked with EIAA on much-needed website updates, trained their team on SEO, social and analytics best practices, and even developed a new fundraising video capturing their mission and impact. We are proud to give back to our local community and the organizations that make it a great place to live and work. Stay tuned for more cool initiatives in 2024!
A final thanks to all of our clients, vendors and business friends who continue to work with us or offer us up as a referral—we’re honored to have won your trust. And if you aren’t working with us, give us a call. We’d love to help you meet your business goals in 2024!
Need marketing help in the new year?
Our expert digital marketers can build a high-impact plan that delivers results.
