Memphis Ice Machine Company: What’s Cooler Than Ice Cold?

A 1300% Increase in Ice Machine Rentals Thanks to Inbound Marketing, HubSpot CRM, and a Future-Forward Rebrand

Family owned and operated since 1977, Memphis Ice Machine Company has built on a long tradition of excellence. As long-lived titans in the local restaurant refrigeration industry, Memphis Ice hadn’t updated their sales and marketing strategy in years. When sales began to slow, they knew old-school marketing tactics wouldn’t cut it anymore. It was time for a change.

Memphis Ice needed a cool new approach to marketing and more leads coming through their sales pipelines, so they partnered with Sauce Agency to optimize their HubSpot CRM, implement inbound marketing, customize their web design, and rebrand.

Want to know the details of how Sauce Agency helped this 45 year old business achieve a 1300% increase in Ice Machine Rentals?

Grab an ice cold beverage and keep reading.

The Problem

Fewer leads were coming through Memphis Ice’s sales pipeline. The first assumption might be that this is a very mature industry with few competitors, in a very saturated market. The intuition and depth of experience from the family ownership told them they needed to embrace new strategies and leverage digital tools to fill the pipeline again.

Memphis Ice reached out to Sauce in late 2019, when no one could ever imagine that a global pandemic was just around the corner. The next year—2020—would wreak havoc on the restaurant and hospitality industries they serviced. Without a fresh sales and marketing strategy in place, Memphis Ice would be facing a disastrous outcome.

A sales pipeline in drought. A pandemic on the verge of threatening their entire customer base. Memphis Ice needed their new sales and marketing strategy now, and Sauce was cool as a cucumber and up to the challenge!

Sauce Solutions

Inbound Marketing 

Step one for Sauce was to build Inbound Marketing strategies to attract, engage, and delight Memphis Ice's future customers. Inbound strategies are carefully crafted with science and data, and the customized touchpoints aligned perfectly with Memphis Ice’s people-first mission, making it a natural integration into their customer experience. 

Sauce created and developed content and strategies for a weekly blog, The Scoop, that educates customers on every aspect of ice, refrigeration, and commercial kitchen appliances. Who knew Ice could be so interesting? Well, Memphis Ice did, and now, so do their customers.

In addition to providing a service to visitors, the blog is the basis of a weekly newsletter, and also positions the Memphis Ice website for search engine optimization (SEO) through keyword research and deployment.

The Scoop is an ongoing inbound effort that Sauce Agency continues to generate. It's a valuable resource to the Memphis Ice audience as well as a critical tool for understanding prospective customers' interests, behaviors, and needs. 

Hubspot CRM

From a pipeline that was barely a dribble to a steady stream, as Memphis Ice quickly discovered, a dedicated CRM takes inbound marketing and sales enablement to produce next level results. HubSpot Marketing Hub provides a centralized platform for all marketing communications, as well as a clean process for hand-off of Sales-Qualified Leads to the Memphis Ice Machine Company's business development team.  

In addition to sales and marketing process support, using HubSpot enables Memphis Ice to provide custom experiences to every contact through in-depth contact segmentation and persona targeting. This creates a positive chain reaction for sales enablement. By providing the right information and resources to convert leads, close deals, and drive revenue, leads generated through inbound marketing reduce the workload and shorten the sales cycle for Memphis Ice’s business development team.

Rebranding

Memphis Ice Machine Company is a family heirloom. As a future-focused company steeped in local history, they needed a brand that blended the past with the present.

The Logo

The Memphis Ice logo doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, the timeless circle stamp shape reflects the company’s long history of serving the MidSouth. The classic design sets Memphis Ice apart from the modernizing downtown Memphis landscape, proving that old school is always cool.  

The Colors

Shades of ice blue evoke a fresh, contemporary edge while darker blue anchors the design and suggests confidence, integrity, and stability—hallmark values for Memphis Ice. A snow white accent highlights the design for that effortless, retro feel. 

The Font

A combination of vintage script and clean sans serifs plays into the historic-meets-modern appeal of Memphis Ice. 

The Takeaway

Approachable, dependable, and always timeless, Memphis Ice’s brand is a complete reflection of their values, mission, and vision for the future. As a final step, the Sauce design team introduced a Brand Style Guide to ensure brand consistency across all channels. 

Website Redesign

With the rebranding complete, Sauce was equipped to apply the brand new design to the Memphis Ice website.

The website redesign wasn’t just aesthetic, though. Team Sauce implemented StoryBrand strategies to organize the design, write website copy, and structure navigation. 

Through StoryBrand, Memphis Ice can share clear, consistent messaging. Sauce positioned Memphis Ice as a guide, so their expertise and empathy saturated every line. The user experience is priority #1, so every point of friction was removed to ensure smooth interaction at every touch point.

Results You Can Measure

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Memphis Ice Machine Company needed to be strategic about how they pressed on, especially as many restaurants and service-based businesses struggled to keep their doors open. These types of businesses account for a sizable portion of Memphis Ice business. The decision-makers at Memphis Ice chose to stay the course with their marketing efforts during the economic uncertainty of the pandemic. While no one is happy about the many great restaurants and service-based businesses we lost during this time, we're proud to report that Memphis Ice Machine Company's decision to invest in their marketing strategies resulted in year-over-year growth in 2020.

Economic hurdles aren’t a thing of the past—supply chain disruptions, inflation, and market instability have impacted Memphis Ice Machine Company in 2021 and 2022. By continuing to invest in growth tactics for their business, including inbound marketing with Team Sauce, Memphis Ice has successfully navigated these obstacles, and continued to #GrowSmarter in spite of them. The result? Increased revenue growth and a solid foundation for the future.

2022 Metrics

Memphis Ice Machine Company: Keeping The Mid-South Cooler Than Ice Cold Since 1977

Memphis Ice Machine Company, a full-service distributor, provides MidSouth businesses with all things related to ice and refrigeration. Basically, they’re pretty cool. 

Memphis Ice knows that for restaurants and businesses, ice isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. But many business owners are too busy to hunt down the right ice machine, much less maintain and repair it. Researching the right machine for a business’s needs takes time, and there are many factors to consider—budget, volume, and ice shape, just to name a few. Choosing the wrong ice machine can lead to costly repairs and insufficient ice—not what business owners and managers have time for. 

The teams at Memphis Ice are experts in sales, repairs, and rental services with one goal: to never let businesses run out of ice. 

Their sales teams aren’t interested in the hard sell, they’re interested in building a relationship that delivers top-quality results. Clients know they’ll get the cold, hard facts about the best product for their business, no questions asked. 

When it comes to repairs, Memphis Ice technicians are ready with on-site or in-store repair, and provide transparent quotes to keep clients in the know about what to expect and when to expect it.

If clients need a temporary ice solution, ice machine rental services are available at low monthly rates. But a low price doesn’t mean low quality. The Memphis Ice rental agreement ensures businesses have ice at all times—even in the middle of repairs. 

Thanks to Memphis Ice, restaurants, commercial kitchens, and businesses across the MidSouth enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having ice machine experts right in their own backyard. 

Unwavering accountability and the passion to go above and beyond isn’t just a choice—it’s who Memphis Ice Machine Company is.