For more than 35 years, Schecter Guitar Research has worked to become a top-shelf guitar company, and it’s hard to argue that status, considering its history. Originally a repair shop in Van Nuys, CA that provided replacement parts for Fender and Gibson guitars, Schecter eventually started making its own instruments, which are now played in more than 150 countries. Its clientele, meanwhile, ranges from hard-rock household names (Seether, Avenged Sevenfold, Papa Roach) to legacy acts (The Cure, Prince, Stone Temple Pilots).

Schecter remains a pretty small business, currently employing just more than 40 people. So when it was named the official sponsor of the Uproar Festival, a month-and-a-half long trek that took 10 bands all over the United States and Canada, they recognized an opportunity to attract some new customers. But they still needed a manageable solution for their staff. "We knew gathering user data would be key on the road, but were unsure just how we were going to do it," Schecter Vice President Marc LaCorte told MailChimp in our recent feature case study. "It had to be simple and easy, not only for our employees onsite, but also to encourage people to interact with us. We hoped to find an iPad app that would fit this need without much configuration. As luck would have it, Chimpadeedoo was sitting there on the MailChimp site, waiting for us to implement! As soon as I saw it, all my worries were calmed."

Here’s the Chimpadeedoo skin Schecter created for Uproar:

 

Not bad, right? With a couple iPads all Chimpadeedoo’d and ready for action, Schecter hit the road, opting in fans to the company’s newsletter, and entering those same concert goers into weekly guitar giveaways. Here’s what the line to sign up looked like at an average tour stop…

…and here’s one of Schecter’s giveaways, the iPad setups, and some scary band t-shirts:

The Schecter folks created a list for the tour, picked the winners when the trip was finished, and shipped a bunch of guitars. The results? Well, they rocked. Schecter grew its email list by more than 22,000 users over the course of 32 dates, which averages out to almost 700 subscribers per stop! LaCorte was pretty pleased about all this. "Our lives were made simple thanks to Chimpadeedoo and MailChimp," he says.

Additional resources:

Chimpadeedoo feature page

Chimpadeedoo on the iTunes App Store

Chimpadeedoo on the MailChimp blog