TR Digital Strategy

1. Digital Strategy Case
Abhishek Joshi
Pre-decisional discussion document

2. At a glance
High-level project plan to build digital strategy for global marketing and commerce site ecosystem
Objectives
• Reconcile digital properties and create seamless global experience to empower customers to research and purchase products online
• Manage operating costs
• Increase sales from digital marketing and e-commerce
Assumptions
• Products of acquired companies can be sold under Thomson Reuters brand, and doing so will not impact acquisition and retention
• Customers of all products demonstrate high tendency of browsing and buying online
• Stakeholders are aligned on unifying and standardising branding and user experience across all products
• Sufficient budget, resources and time are available for executing the strategy
• Internationalisation and localisation of all properties can be done
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Approach
• Align with stakeholders on SMART (specific, measurable, agreed up on, reasonable and time-based) goals
• Identify the target customer segments or cohorts
• Identify channels to reach leads
• Design strategy to convert leads to customers
• Test strategy to measure its success by rapidly implementing it on small scale; fine tune where needed
• Launch and scale to full volume

3. Key Questions
Information that will help formulate the digital strategy to achieve objectives
Acquisition
• Who are intended customers?
• Where are customers found?
• What are cost-effective
channels to reach customers?
• How do customers decide to
buy products?
• How do customers buy?
Activation
• What influences customers to
buy product(s)?
• How do customers sign up?
• How do customers change
product(s)?
• How do customers pay?
Engagement
• What are cost-effective
channels to engage
customers?
• How to help customers?
• How to empower customers
to reach us?
• How to upsell/cross-sell?
Retention
• How to convince customers
to renew?
• How to win-back churned
customer?
• How to enable customers to
renew?
• How to enable customers to
refer?
Technology
• Can all front-end experiences
be on common tech stack?
• Can all sites be platform and
distribution channel agnostic?
• Can common front-end
system integrate with different
backend systems?
Customers + Channels Capabilities
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3C - Customers, Channels and Capabilities
Customers - Who are they and how do they decide to buy?
Channels - What are the cost-effective channels to reach, acquire and retain customers?
Capabilities - Can we build the experiences we want to deliver?
Assumption
• We have capability for any implementation

4. Consolidate All Properties on a Single Website
Advantages
• Deliver wholesome and well-integrated solutions to customers
• Reduce costs - eliminate duplicate assets and gain economies of
scale
• Increase revenue - up-sell and cross-sell
• Speed up the development cycle
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Risk Factors
• Could elongate the customer’s journey to discover and purchase
product
• Low revenue/margin generating products could get same real-
estate as high revenue/margin generating ones
• Low-value product can negatively impact brand and sales of
premium product
• SEO value of existing properties could be lost if not handled
properly
Data
• Businesses have been able to cut costs by up to 20% due to consolidation*
References
** Capturing value through consolidation and shared services - Semantic Scholar - McKinsey Research Article

5. Personalise the Unified Experience to Maximise Sales
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Advantages
• Strong emotional connect with multiple customers segments
simultaneously
• Shorten customer’s journey to discover and purchase product
• Increase revenue - up-sell and cross-sell
• Optimise cost per segment
Risk Factors
• Concern over privacy
• Increased cost and extended development time to appeal to
different customer segments
• May cannibalise premium offerings
Data
• 86% of consumers say personalization plays a significant role in their purchasing decisions**
• Retailers have seen 6-10% gains in sales due to personalization***
References
** Learning from Amazon’s embrace of personalization - SPS Commerce Research Article - March 2018
*** Personalisation may be key to compete with Amazon - Business Insider - November 2017