About YOU.
We don't want to talk about us. We want to listen to YOUR story. Tell us here.
But in case you're interested, the timeline below details the nuts-and-bolts of RayCollective's evolution.
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Today.
RayCollective is an award-winning growth marketing and demand generation agency that accelerates revenue through sharp creative, demand generation, and data-driven execution. Over the past two decades, we’ve built an unmatched perspective on what drives real business outcomes.
Our full-stack approach spans strategy, creation, and deployment—executing cross-platform, cross-channel growth programs that help clients scale smarter. The result? Tens of millions in increased revenue.
We work with global brands, high-growth startups, and even other agencies, often managing the entire marketing and revenue engine as an outsourced growth partner.
Milestone
Over 17 "Best of" local and national awards presented to clients in web design, marketing and industry categories. -
2002 - Opened a little web design shop.
RayCollective namesake Daniel Ray worked up through a top Atlanta ad agency and sensed the growing shift from print and broadcast-only media to web. If you didn't have a "web address" on your company business card, you "weren't keeping up with the way modern business was done". Yet nobody really knew how to get it done, so we figured it out.
Using the same best-practice principles learned in the print world, our reputation grew as a company who produced really beautiful websites. Plus, there wasn't much competition back then, so we really ramped up quickly.
Milestone
First official client: an HVAC company from New Jersey. The second? A minor-league hockey team. -
2004 - E-Commerce
The e-commerce boom hit, and everybody wanted their own online store. The process was complex requiring cart systems, payment gateways, advanced hosting and security - plus somebody to manage it all. We packaged the process and helped owners launch thousands of products.
But just because you have an online store doesn't mean anyone will visit it.
Milestone
We custom-built modifications to the stock cart system for faster checkout, upsells and better overall usability, all later officially adopted by the platform provider and patched into thousands of online stores they powered. -
2005 - SEO, SEM and Promotion
Our growing roster of web design and e-commerce clients now needed promotion and traffic for their sites and we expanded for the first time into true digital marketing. Through SEO, we secured top Google rankings for clients - and held them there.
We leveraged Google Adwords PPC program, then still in relative infancy and full of fresh opportunity. It became a major source of quality traffic.
We further designed extensive print assets for client promotion, becoming well-known for our print-production and graphic design services which marked an early step towards going full-service.
Yet back in the digital space, it was clear that better optimized sites would squeeze out more revenue from the volumes of newfound traffic.
Milestone
Winner of the Best Chapter Site Design by The Make-a-Wish Foundation for pro-bono design and development of their Atlanta chapter website. -
2006 - Behavior, Statistics and Tuning
With hundreds of thousands of site visitors and behaviors to watch across all clients, there was an ample test bed for experiments. We watched and reacted to data while constantly adjusting layouts, designs, product placements and copywriting for maximum opportunity.
There was no such thing as "best practice". We were defining it.
Milestone
Featured in e-commerce store development stories in Time Magazine, Elle and Cosmo. Three client e-commerce sites were later acquired by larger companies. -
2008 - Leadgen, Conversions & The Wild West
Our ability to maximize conversions got noticed. RayCollective partnered with a lead generation and customer acquisition firm from Denver specializing in affiliate marketing and email. We took the lead on creative strategy and influence, designing hundreds of landing pages, emails and banners for their web offer programs.
They were an email powerhouse. By the next day, emails and pages we designed would see tens of thousands of views. A huge network of affiliates would concurrently be running the banners. We saw instant, massive floods of traffic - and data. Hundreds of thousands of leads were gained through the assets we designed and managed. On day #3, we'd be adjusting creative and copy and see conversions increase even more.
The massive volumes of traffic had never before been seen, and might actually never be seen again. Yet it acted concurrently as a test bed for our creative experiments and put RayCollective at ground-zero as master practitioners while launching a new term and industry: CRO, Conversion Rate Optimization.
This great success was an integral piece in our partner being acquired by one of the largest interactive firms in the world.
Milestone
Enjoyed the rock-star treatment at leading industry trade shows. In-office TV interview with reporter and future ESPN personality Cari Champion on achieving success online in a down economy. -
2009 - Affiliate Marketing, Traffic and Data
Our reputation and relationships with affiliates and publishers flourished. Affiliates are paid a commission for generating an action. RayCollective maximized conversions. As such, we became a partner to both affiliates and affiliate networks providing conversion-ready creative.
While the volumes of quality leads rolled in, buyers and salesman perpetually pushed for higher-quality, easier-to-close leads.
This marked an integral turning point: sales teams were recognizing the purpose and power digital marketing had on leadgen and could begin making demands on the types of leads most preferred.*
We expanded our landing pages and created qualifying conditions for traffic moving through the pipeline. Lead volume decreased, but the quality, value and payout per-lead for affiliates increased.
Per the cause, we became deeply involved in media buying and acquisition of traffic sources most likely to generate quality leads.
At this point, both social media and mobile marketing began to have an increasing influence on marketing and design.
Milestone
*Salespeople actually talking to marketing people? It was a day that went down in history. We were there. And it's a relationship that now endures. -
2010 - B2B and Consolidation of Marketing Services
While we had long worked with B2B companies on general services, we expanded wholeheartedly because B2C people had products with a LTV of $20,000 vs $79.99.
We brought the very best of our colorful B2C experience into the white-and-texty world of B2B because businesspeople are people, too. Thankfully, we were just as comfortable in a tie as we were in flip flops.
Instead of performing more singular services for B2C and B2B, now we were delivering a more full array as a bona fide marketing and advertising shop.
Milestone
Featurette in Inc. magazine. -
2011 to Present - The Marketing Technology Boom
Marketing automation entered the landscape as one of the best online B2B marketing tools introduced up until that point. Yet providers themselves admitted a majority of their users couldn't really use it to best effect. In particular, the built-in DIY asset builders had office personnel who failed art class "designing" public-facing assets. The entire machine required conversions to gain leads so they could be nurtured, yet conversion tuning wasn't even in the equation. Just as we had done for affiliates, RayCollective began to support B2B marketing automation users. Naturally, since we were already in the platform and had "a marketing aptitude" (as our clients put it), a whole lot of marketing automation campaign strategy and platform management fell to us.
Elsewhere, new martec began spouting up everywhere, and every RayCollective client seemed to be subscribing to a different handful each month. CRMs, social management, ad delivery platforms, data, email, affiliate management - we had over a hundred logins to different platforms across all clients.
It gave us a unique perspective on how to maximize ROI from the good ones...and which ones aren't worth the pixels they are printed on:).
Milestone
Consulting martec vendors on practical platform improvements, then watching them roll out to thousands of subscribers. -
Today - Full-Stack Digital Marketing + Advertising
Marketing channels don’t exist in a vacuum. Leadgen, design, traffic, nurture, social, SEO, SEM, content, data analytics, email, buckets of logo tennis balls dropped from the ceiling at trade shows— it all either works together effectively, or bounces away and rolls under a table, never to be seen again.
Decisions are no longer inspired by single touch points. It’s an omni-channel experience where influence is achieved over time as people consume content across devices and mediums. Your big break won't come from a single sales email. Today, it probably happens when you touch them with your familiar brand as they browse Facebook while sitting on the sidelines of their kid’s soccer practice.
Hire us for one thing. Or hire us for everything. But either way, remember that “marketing” is always one cooperative channel and RayCollective keeps it all in singular view...and under one roof. -
Milestone - Meeting You.
Let's get growing:
