Guide Hires Guide,
Sleeps Better.

Robert Link knows the importance of having an experienced guide when venturing into unfamiliar territory, which is why he chose Alpine to build the Mountain Link website and improve their presence online.

With guides such as the legendary Ed Viesturs on staff, Mountain Link is a premier mountaineering service that offers instructional seminars and guided expeditions. They lead small groups to destinations all over the world, including such places as Machu Picchu, Kilimanjaro and Mount Everest.

The Challenge

The original Mountain Link website was built without a content management system. Even small changes were super costly to make, as they required a dedicated webmaster.

Their client database was LAN-locked and impossible to access remotely, which is unacceptable when you’ve got guides on the other side of the world who need access to that information. Guides will be gone for months at a time, and they can’t just swing by the Mountain Link office to pick something up while in the depths of the Himalayas. They’re planning on attacking the Seven Summits, and the last thing they want to worry about is database access.

The old Mountain Link site was all Flash, all the time. Flash websites may look slick but they are toxic to search engines, who cannot read the words and content buried inside them. Unable to see through the fog of Flash, search engines were skipping right over Mountain Link’s site with nary a glance.

Mountain Link’s previous email marketing strategy was primitive, and involved banging two rocks together. Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad, but they were indeed stuck in the seventh circle of filter hell. Their old tools had limited list management and no tracking functionality, which made it impossible for them to gauge the response to a campaign.

The Solution

Salvaging the great graphical assets from their old website, Alpine rebuilt Mountain Link on Center Stage Professional, a platform that allows them to update and maintain their site without a dedicated webmaster. Center Stage Professional offers a robust statistics package that allows Mountain link to measure visits and leads, which helps them make decisions on how to change their site to increase visibility.

Smart Content Tables for news and events make it easy for Mountain Link to keep visitors informed of upcoming adventures. Alpine’s Slideshow tool lets guides at Mountain Link upload photos to their website via satellite phone, even from the middle of nowhere. The wilderness knows no greater magic than the satellite phone, and to be able to upload photographs with it is pure witchcraft. Alpine can do it, and we do it with minimal contact with the Dark Arts.

Two Databases to Rule Them All

Mountain Link has guides who need access to their site from anywhere on the planet. Literally. Far more than just another pretty face in the crowd, their new website features administrative tools in the background that allow guides to access their prospect and client databases from any point on the globe. Alpine’s hosted database solution allows the people at Mountain Link to travel freely and still be able to update and view a single collection of data. No matter where they are, they can login to Center Stage and grab the information they need.

Mountain Link's prospect-management database alone contains thousands of  contacts. It plugs directly into their call center and integrates seamlessly with Rainmaker, so Mountain Link is able to manage all of their marketing campaigns with ease.

Center Stage Professional also supports multiple administrators with different levels of authority. While some guides are only allowed to view Mountain Link’s client- and prospect-management databases, others have full privilege to update information at will.

What’s more, when someone makes a change to the system, Center Stage Professional makes note of what changes were made and by whom, and allows you to revert back to a previous version if necessary. This can be particularly handy, considering the last person to update the site may have done so from the base camp on Mount Everest, and may not have been thinking so clearly at 17,600 feet.

Route-finding on Mount Google

The guides at Mountain Link may have no problem finding a route to the top of Annapurna I, but they turned to Alpine to help them to the summit of Google.

Alpine’s Center Stage content management software is a great platform for executing their search engine strategy, allowing them to create unique pages tailored towards particular search terms. This ensures that prospects are channeled to the right landing page after they click, whether they want an introduction to mountaineering, are looking to bag the Seven Summits, or are curious what a yak train smells like. Center Stage lets Mountain Link optimize their content with precision, to the delight of search engines everywhere.

Alpine worked with Mountain Link to key in on popular search terms, and helped reposition site content to focus on the right search keywords and phrases to increase visibility in popular search engines. Search functionality within the site was vastly improved as well, helping visitors quickly find the content they need after arriving at the Mountain Link website.

In-Your-Face Adventures

Mountain Link uses Alpine’s Rainmaker email marketing software to send out their Tie-In newsletter, which puts their tales of adventure in front of thousands of prospects every month. Nothing is more inspiring than opening your inbox in the morning, only to be greeted by a report from the depths of Patagonia. Rainmaker helps Mountain Link turn today’s prospects into tomorrow’s adventurers.

Mountain Link is now able to send out email campaigns that are bigger, better and stronger. Membership lists are far easier to build and maintain, and every campaign compiles tracking statistics that make it easier to measure the success of a particular newsletter. Rainmaker gives Mountain Link the tools necessary to analyze their campaign results and strategize on their next web marketing move.