Engaging Customers
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Talk given at a PPA workshop 'From acquisition to subscription improving the customer experience' in March 2015
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Engaging Customers
- 1. ENGAGING CUSTOMERS From acquisition to subscription: improving the customer experience @samchatwin
- 6. WHY IS THIS?
- 17. ENGAGEMENT
- 18. CONTENT
- 19. ‘Content is king’ Bill Gates
- 22. YOUR CUSTOMERS
- 31. ‘their daily email newsletter of aggregated stories is worth the price of a subscription alone’ Source: econsultancy
- 33. BUILD TRUST
- 40. PERSONALISE
- 42. MOBILE
- 43. The total number of mobile devices is set to number 2.6 billion by 2016 Source: Canalys estimates and forecast
- 44. On average we spend 119 minutes a day on our mobile devices Source: Mobile life report UK
- 45. By 2017, 87% of smart connected devices will be tablets and smartphones, with PCs being 13% Source: www.idc.com
- 46. 37% of online sales in UK are now on mobile, totalling £8bn in 2014 Source: IMRG.org
- 47. In Britain more than 100,000 mobile phones are dropped down toilets every year Source: BBC Radio 2 factoids
- 50. EMAIL
- 51. 91% of consumers check their email on their phone at least once a day Source: ExactTarget mobile behavior report
- 52. 48% of emails are opened on mobile devices Source: Quarterly email benchmark report (Q2 2014)
- 53. If an email doesn’t display correctly, 71.2% of users will delete it immediately Source: BlueHornet consumer views of email marketing
- 56. SPEED
- 59. TEST AND ITERATE
- 60. GET TO THE POINT
Editor's Notes
- I’m Sam Chatwin I’m CD at the digital agency Clock We’re based in leafy Hertfordshire And we create digital things; websites, applications, products of all sorts For a wide range of clients News UK, Hearst, Shortlist Media, Wall Street Journal to name but a few
- I’m going to be talking about improving the customer experience today and specifically about increasing customer engagement in order to improve the experience for your customers and drive subscriptions and sales. Let’s start by having a quick look at where we’re at in the current digital landscape Recently there has been a huge shift in the way people behave online
- The digital space has become how we communicate and interact. And as publishers and brands it’s your window to the world and your single most important point of interaction with your customers.
- Online sales are increasing in the UK by roughly 15% year-on-year and are set to reach £60.25 billion next year in the UK alone.
- But conversion rates The percentage of visitors who go on to purchase are dropping at an alarming rate, from an average high of about 8.4% in 2006 to where we are now which is around 2%.
- So, why is this Why are conversation rates falling so dramatically? There’s a number of reasons
- And one of the main reasons is the sheer amount of choice online Visualization of the internet
- If we look at the fashion sector as an example of the wide variety of choice There’s digital only retailers that have sprung up Like; ASOS and Mr Porter
- You can also go to the traditional department stores online like; Libertys, Harrods or Selfridges
- Or the high street brands, Like; H&M, Topshop or Next
- There’s smaller independent stores, Like; Oipolloi or Oki-Ni
- Or you can go direct to the designers, Like; Finisterre, Howies, Hiut, There’s a lot of choice out there This is just a very small example
- Another reason for falling conversion rates is that We are changing the way we use the web Customers used to make the purchasing decision before they came online They might have been into a department store, a record store or a travel agents to see the choices and options Then once they have made a decision go online to find the cheapest way to buy.
- These days though with the proliferation of choice online, improvements in the ability to present information (through faster speeds, better devices and robust technology) and the amount of supporting content when purchasing that initial decision is now often being made online. And as a result some of these more traditional routes are gone for ever.
- And lastly just because we make it possible for customers to buy online it doesn’t mean they will you only have 3.8 seconds on a landing page to persuade a user to stay, let alone make any decision or visit any further pages. it’s not enough to make it possible to purchase, you need to persuade customers to purchase
- So how do we increase this conversion rate? Well by improving the customer experience And we do this by ensuring the usability of our digital products is first rate but also Through engagement
- Engagement allows us to influence these decisions and ensure people want to buy on our site And it’s engagement that I’m going to focus on today. So lets look at what drives engagement and some specific examples of what you can do to increase it
- So firstly Content Nothing engages your audience like content
- As the old Bill Gates saying goes ‘content is king’ and it really does play a massive part in determining the level of engagement for your customers
- Content can help put your products in context It can give them a back story show who uses them and how they use them It can add a little aspiration and inspiration And general allows the customer to picture how they would fit your products into their lives ASOS Nest
- Storytelling is very popular at the moment It’s essentially the creation of a narrative to weave around products Showing how products get used By people customers recognise or aspire to be like Two example here from ASOS and Air BNB
- Next we move onto one of the most fundamental ways to increase engagement Understanding your customers And what it is they are looking for Doing this will allow you to start a dialogue with your customers In order to create a conversation you need to understand what people are looking for It’s very simple to do, there’s a number of ways to achieve it; with analytics, keyword research, you can see what’s trending on social media As just a few examples
- At the most basic level as an example you can go on to Google and use the autocomplete tool just type in a search term And you can see what people are looking for, As an example of this This is a search I did as part of the research for this workshop I like craft beer so I went onto Google and searched for craft beer delivery You can see what other people are looking for around craft beer
- Once you know what your customers want You can establish your relevance as a brand and answer their questions A customer needs to land on your site and know exactly what it is you offer. A clear proposition is really important A simple, Clear compelling message that states why you are different and worth engaging with.
- To continue with my craft beer example when I selected the second link from google I went through to deskbeers.com. And here’s the landing page A pretty clear proposition I think you’d agree.
- Along with a clear proposition It’s essential that as brands you present a consistent voice So no matter how your customers interact with you Online At the newsagents In an app However your customers access your content they expect the same voice the same standards the same experience and failing at one means failing at all
- Nike are the undisputed masters at this Despite not having any overarching brand guidelines Nike always manage to stay supremely consistent in the tone of their presentation
- If you want to have a dialogue with your customers You need to join the digital conversation Social media and Smartphones have made this easier than ever before Digital has made it essential that you are involved in the conversation And if you want to have any relevance You have to be part of the conversation if you are to engage your customers The one note of warning on this is that rigid paywalls can make it difficult to get involved as articles tend to be difficult or even impossible, to share. On top of this, other websites are much less likely to link to your content if it’s not easily accessible.
- Another reason why a clear proposition is so important is the wide and varied way That your audience can be generated Social sharing Search News aggregators There is a wide variety of entry points to your content
- Customers expect a certain level of service especially when they are paying for content or a service And often a new and useful functionality can be more valuable than additional content
- The key of course is to get the right content and services for your audience. The World Politics Review surveyed their subscribers on the value of their subscription and they said that ‘their daily email newsletter of aggregated stories is worth the price of a subscription alone’ Now, this is an email that has no original content but targets a time poor, niche audience, saving them time whilst providing a valuable source of daily information.
- As a nice example of level of service those deskbeers.com guys again. After setting up an account I decided not to go ahead as I realised that they delivered on Friday afternoons which didn’t really work for me as we finish at 2 on a Friday. They quickly realised I hadn’t completed my order so sent this follow up.
- As we discussed earlier There’s a lot of competitors out there And building trust is key in order to distinguish yourselves. I’m going to show you a two of the more well used ways to build trust.
- Firstly trust through design Google has done a lot of research into something called prototypicality which is when designs look like Something you are familiar with
- Their research showed that the more familiar the design and the simpler the design the more people will see it as beautiful and the more people will trust it
- Another way we can built trust is through social proofing This is when we are persuaded by those around us rather than the brands themselves Probably one of the easiest and most used ways to build trust
- Some examples of easy ways to do this are Recommendations likes sorting by most popular items rating Basically anything that shows other customers use or recommend a service or product
- A good example of this in it's most basic form is for us as a digital agency we put our clients logos on our site
- deskbeers.com example
- Personalisation is a great way to build engagement It’s about using what you know, These days, CRMs are full of great data use this to create relevance to your audience by personalising their experience. Lots of sites still limit their use of data to inserting a name in the header once you’ve logged in You can combine all the data you have including any data about what a customer does on your site and any real-time information like location, device type to target your message and your content. All this will allow you to create a single customer view and improve that dialogue we discussed earlier.
- A great example of this done well is the supermarkets Where they enable you to buy using your favourites This can turn a tedious task into a very quick painless one. The one word of caution with personalisation is to ensure you avoid filter bubbles which is where content gets hidden from customers that might actually be useful to them
- You all know mobile is important but I wanted to show you some stats that really illustrate quite how important it really has become.
- The total number of mobile devices is set to number 2.6 billion by 2016
- on average we spend 119 minutes a day on our mobile devices
- By 2017, 87% of the worldwide smart connected devices will be tablets and smartphones, with PCs being 13% of the market
- 37% of online sales in UK are now on mobile, totaling £8bn in 2014.
- In Britain more than 100,000 mobile phones are dropped down toilets every year. That shows quite how desperate we are to be always using our devices! So we know mobile is important but what can we do to ensure we are making the most of it as a device.
- One way is utilising responsive web design It’s clear that a poor mobile experience loses existing customers and deters prospective customers. Responsive web design ensures a better experience no matter the device or screen
- Pretty much all the sites we have built for the last 5 or so years at Clock have been responsive. Times+ is an example of a very successful responsive site that we have built for the Times that helps them reduce churn in their subscribers.
- Email is an often underrated but really powerful communication tool and especially on mobile Let’s have a look at some stats that help Illustrate this
- 91% of users check their email on their phone at least once a day
- 48% of emails are opened on mobile devices
- If an email does not display correctly (on their smart device), 71.2% of users will delete immediately. So what can we do to ensure we are using email to it’s full potential?
- One thing is to create responsive emails Responsive emails are, like responsive web design, simply emails that look good if you open them on your mobile, tablet or desktop computer And as we saw from the earlier stat, customers will just delete emails if they don’t display correctly
- Another thing is to be Bold In Your Delivery Most customers don’t read their emails. They scan them … and then read, if they’re interested. Bold, dynamic content is the way to catch a distracted customer’s attention. Bold approaches to email can give you more opportunities to engage a customer while also creating a positive lasting impression of your brand
- Digital natives expect thinks to work instantly And if things don’t work they just simply leave Don’t forget you have only 3.8 seconds to attract a customers attention on a landing page And it’s especially important on mobile
- This is a video that I’ll play in a moment that shows the loading speeds for an article on three similar sites The Daily Mail Stylist, which we built And Vogue
- 0.7 seconds main content is loaded on Stylist 1.1 seconds all the imagery and branding is loaded after 2.2 seconds some of the Daily Mail content has loaded At around 4 seconds Vogue starts to load it’s content and it starts with imagery rather than text The Daily Mail carries on loading until after 30 seconds. Don’t forget according to Jacob Nielsen we only have 3.8 seconds to capture a users attention
- Digital is never finished You need to be constantly Measuring, testing, analysing, iterating. There’s lots of processes and tools that you can use these days Obviously Google Analytics is great for measuring A/B and multivariate testing are great for testing small iterations Google Content Experiments is pretty good for that as well Or you can test using online tools like whatusersdo.com/
- So in conclusion, You can improve the customer experience Through engaging with your customers online And you can drive engagement by…
- Creating high quality relevant content
- Understanding your customers and what they are looking for
- Having a clear proposition
- Being part of the digital conversation
- Creating value for your customers and providing a high level of service
- Building trust – through design and social proofing
- Using the data you have available to present useful content, services and products
- Ensure you cater for the devices and screens your customers use.
- Take page speed and loading times seriously as every millisecond counts
- And last but not least constantly Test, measure and iterate As a final word This isn't new stuff really. People haven't changed The medium may be different but the way we engage with people hasn't changed If we want to influence people then we need to engage with them and try and be as helpful as we can.
- Before we break for lunch has anyone got any questions?