Tallwave a digital agency

Tag: Data & Analytics

Categories
Reaching New Customers Strategy

Swift Moves: What marketers can learn from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce

Don't Miss a Beat - Taylor Swift and Marketing Decorative Image

The suspected budding relationship between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce has become a major media moment. Whether you’re team “ Tayvis” or “Swelce” (or you remain unaffiliated), it’s almost impossible to escape the very real effects this speculated pairing is having on pop culture, whether romance is real or not. But what does this celebrity romance have to do with marketing? Well, hang on to your Eras tour T-shirts, because there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

Let’s explore how the “shipping” of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce by both music and football fans alike has sparked newfound engagement within the NFL community and the lessons marketers and growth leaders can draw from this phenomenon. …Are you ready for it?

Electric Touch: The high-voltage power of unexpected partnerships

When marketing strategies get a little stale and your standard playbook starts gathering dust, a creative and unexpected partnership can be an effective way to shake it off. This is an approach Swift has deployed herself in collaborations with unlikely artists like Kendrick Lamar in “Bad Blood.” The media attention on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s apparent joining of forces is a great reminder that successful marketing often involves unexpected partnerships and the value of being open to collaboration opportunities outside of our comfort zones. 

The media attention on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s apparent joining of forces is a great reminder that successful marketing often involves unexpected partnerships and the value of being open to collaboration opportunities outside of our comfort zones. 

While the generated media attention  is great for driving cross-audience awareness for Swift’s and Kelce’s respective personal brands, is there a more substantial quantitative impact behind the hype? Absolutely. Consider this: the NFL, a sports giant with massive brand awareness and a highly engaged core audience, is experiencing increased engagement from Taylor Swift fans because of her connection to Travis Kelce. In fact, the Chiefs vs. Bears game where a cheering Swift first caught the attention of viewers and sportscasters was the most watched game of the week with nearly 25 million viewers, including a 63% increase in female viewers aged 18 to 49, according to Roku. This unexpected alliance demonstrates that sometimes, the most fruitful partnerships come when you’re willing to break the ice and think outside the box.

Emotional Connection: How soulful and authentic storytelling hits different

When it comes to authentic storytelling and connecting with people on an emotional level, Taylor Swift could teach a master class. She’s poured her heart and soul into her music, sharing her life’s ups and downs through songs like “Love Story” and “All Too Well.” Her lyrics and melodies tap into the human experience, making listeners feel like she’s singing about their lives and her uncanny ability to connect with her fans on an emotional level has turned them into a community of loyal followers.

In marketing, it’s crucial to tell your brand’s story authentically. Customers connect with brands that share their values and experiences. Marketers can create emotional connections with their audience through storytelling, relatable content, or simply empathizing with their customers’ needs. Finding that end game of emotional engagement can make all the difference, so don’t be afraid to share your journey and be as fearless as Taylor when it comes to opening up to your audience.

Staying Relevant: ‘Tis the damn season for a reinvention

In marketing, adaptability is key. Both Taylor Swift and the NFL have showcased remarkable adaptability in reaching and engaging their expanding fan bases in the face of an ever-evolving digital landscape. From her country beginnings in Tim McGraw to her pop reinvention in 1989 and her indie-folk venture in folklore, one thing Taylor Swift is known for is her ability to adapt and evolve with the times. She’s consistently changed her style, not just to stay relevant to an evolving audience base but to reflect the evolution of her own identity as an artist and brand. She seamlessly transitioned from country to pop, experimenting with indie-folk, and all the while, leveraging digital platforms to release surprise albums and engage directly with her fans on social media. The result has been a resounding and quantifiable success.

For its part, the NFL has recognized and responded to the shifting media consumption habits of younger generations and embraced digital platforms to livestream games, share highlight reels, and interact with fans in real-time on social media. Travis Kelce specifically has showcased a remarkable ability to engage effectively with a digital-native audience, elevating his status as both a sports personality and a brand. Kelce’s active presence on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok allows him to share behind-the-scenes glimpses of his life, showcase his unique personality, and connect with fans beyond the football field. And New Heights podcast with brother and Philadelphia Eagles center, Jason Kelce, has become a dynamic platform where the Kelce brothers engage with their fans on various topics, including sports, lifestyle, and personal experiences. By leveraging the podcasting medium, they’ve created a space for candid conversations, special guest appearances, and authentic storytelling, further solidifying their status as relatable sports figures in the eyes of their fans. The podcast serves as a prime example of how athletes can use modern digital channels to connect with their audience on a deeper level and bridged the gap between traditional sports and the digital age, appealing not only to sports enthusiasts but also to a younger, tech-savvy audience.

By adapting to the digital era and staying attuned to their fan bases’ preferences, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the NFL as a whole have proven that flexibility, digital prowess, and a willingness to reinvent are essential for sustained success in an ever-evolving digital marketing and entertainment landscape. And you must be ready to pivot and reinvent your strategies to keep up and you can’t be afraid to begin again when necessary.

Crossing Boundaries: Challenging the borders of audience and pop culture

Travis Kelce’s fanbase in the NFL is predominantly sports-oriented. Taylor Swift’s is music-focused. It might be easy to assume that those audiences are mutually exclusive, but they’re not. In fact, Tallwave Product Manager, Anna McKee, sits squarely in both camps. “I’ve been a Chiefs fan my entire life, and I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan since her career first launched. I’ve seen 5 Taylor Swift concerts—two at Arrowhead—and have owned Chiefs season tickets for the last 5 years. I’m right at the center of the Taylor and Travis Venn diagram.” Anna was at the fabled Chiefs vs. Bears game and experienced the phenomenon of this pairing firsthand and then had the experience of watching it from afar catching the Chiefs vs. Jets game a week later. “It was wild how clear the effect was between the two games but in totally different ways. Without the benefit of a TV broadcast to provide a birds’ eye view while I was physically at the Chiefs/Bears game, the conversation was about Taylor the entire time. Whether it was a question out loud or a text or a tweet, everyone wanted to know why she was there, who she was with, and whether it was a PR stunt. Regardless of the speculation, the general consensus with the women I was with was that we didn’t care, we were just excited she was there! Watching the Chiefs/Jets game a week later on TV, the broadcast kept cutting to her, which made it even more real and, in some ways, more exciting.”

“I’ve been a Chiefs fan my entire life, and I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan since her career first launched. I’ve seen 5 Taylor Swift concerts—two at Arrowhead—and have owned Chiefs season tickets for the last 5 years. I’m right at the center of the Taylor and Travis Venn diagram.”

Anna McKee, Tallwave product manager

The steep spike in NFL engagement among women suggests that the apparent relationship has bridged these two seemingly disparate communities, creating a fusion of interests. And Anna’s experience and those like her who are long-time fans of both found another reason to engage more deeply. If there’s one lesson here for marketers, it’s the power of tapping into multiple affinities where possible.

Staying Social: Be a trendsetter, a star

The sudden surge of engagement within the NFL community due to Taylor Swift’s involvement demonstrates the importance of monitoring and staying on top of trends, particularly when it comes to social media. And on that front, Taylor Swift is a force of nature. For example, when it comes to social following on Instagram, Swift’s following outpaces the NFL’s by an order of magnitude. She’s got 273 million, over 9 times the NFL’s 28 million. And Swift’s social power is translating to real gains for both the NFL and Travis Kelce. 

While the NFL is still trying to find its footing on how to maximize its return on the Swift halo effect (posting references to Swift’s presence at the game and then subsequently removing them after receiving some backlash), there’s no question they’ve benefitted. As just one example, with the boon of content focused on Swift and Kelce as a pair, the NFL has seen record views on TikTok content. That halo effect has extended to Travis Kelce, too, helping him pick up 380k new Instagram followers and boosting his podcast into the top spot on Apple’s charts.  

The surface lesson for marketers here is straightforward: an active and engaging social media presence on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok can help you connect with your audience, share your story, and foster a sense of community. This is particularly beneficial for driving engagement with your audience outside of high-intent moments, which can add up to real value over time as it helps cement your brand in the minds of your audience. But there’s a deeper takeaway about the art of timing. As the saying goes, “timing is everything,” and the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce relationship proves this point. Their romance coincided with the NFL season and Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour, leading to a perfect storm of increased engagement. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s easy to anticipate, but marketers recognize the brand-building value of this kind of rare serendipitous moment. The NFL did, too. While every move they’ve made to capitalize on that moment hasn’t necessarily been pitch perfect, they didn’t let perfect execution be the enemy of perfect timing, which is a valuable lesson in itself.

End Game: Summing up 

In the ever-evolving marketing world, we can learn valuable lessons from unexpected sources, just like the budding relationship between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Embrace unexpected partnerships, tell your brand’s story authentically, and leverage emotional connections to engage your audience, including in more casual interactions with your brand. Adaptability, engaging diverse audiences, and capitalizing on pop culture can open new doors for growth. And to complete your mastermind marketing strategy, don’t forget the role of social media, monitoring trends, and be ready to seize those rare and powerful serendipitous moments to propel your marketing efforts forward.

Whether you’re ready to see sparks fly between Taylor and Travis or you’ve got bad blood with this attention-grabbing romance, there’s something to be learned from this pop culture phenomenon. Let’s take these lessons to heart, just as we would with our favorite Taylor Swift songs, and create marketing strategies that create a lasting love affair with our audience.

Are you ready for it? We are. Let’s talk.

Categories
Strategy

From chaos to clarity: Data quality management for actionable insight

Decorative image

Data quality management empowers business success

Data quality plays a crucial role in the business landscape when it comes to informing strategy and enabling growth. As organizations strive to do more (or at least the same) with less, mastering data quality management is imperative. Collecting and analyzing the right data points can help you retain customers, enhance customer experiences, optimize campaigns, boost acquisition, and achieve sustainable growth even as the economy shifts.

But in today’s data-driven environment with evolving tracking technology, compliance demands, and AI disrupting the status quo, problems with data quality and quantity problems are amplified. And these issues come with a steep price: misinterpreted insights, wasted resources, and even concerns with ethics, transparency, and consumer privacy.

Effective data quality management is complex, but it doesn’t have to be. Understanding the causes and consequences of poor data quality, finding a source of truth, building a data-driven culture, and working with the right data enablement partner all come together to empower informed decisions that lead to outstanding experiences. 

Missed opportunities: Causes and consequences of poor data quality

Once upon a time, CMOs and growth leaders spent their days thinking about brand strategy with creative license and assumed success came from stellar messaging. But today, these roles hinge on emerging technology, marketing agility, and driving ROI while expecting immediate results — all of which depend on quality data.

Statistics reported in the 2023 Braze Customer Engagement Review indicate that more than one-third of marketing leaders cite the collection, integration, management, and accessibility of data as their top challenges when it comes to customer engagement.

These data challenges come in many different forms. Here are a few common problems in marketing data quality management:

More data, more problems

Organizations often find themselves drowning in a sea of information in the era of big data. According to the Braze survey mentioned above, a staggering eight out of every ten leaders surveyed admitted to collecting more data than they can realistically use.

Graphic image displaying that 8 out of 10 marketing leaders believe they are over-collecting data.

Data down the drain

With so much data at hand, so much goes to waste. Experian’s most recent data experience research report stated that an estimated 73% of all collected marketing data goes unused. Overcollected and underutilized data can come with high costs, ranging from consumer privacy risks to wasted resources.

Have you stored your historical data from Universal Analytics? The clock is ticking! Learn more about GA4 migration.

Standardization struggles

A lack of standardization and guidelines in your data strategy leads to all kinds of complications. Inconsistencies across systems and departments create confusion, and inaccurate data can mislead decision-making processes. Incomplete data leads to gaps in insights, while outdated data fails to reflect the current reality. This results in unreliable data and an inability to inform strategy.

Disparate times, disparate measures

Fragmented data is a major challenge for many (if not all) organizations. According to a study conducted by Wakefield Research, 441 of the 450 senior data leaders surveyed indicated that data silos exist within their organization. In addition, 311 of the same leaders report they have “trapped” data they cannot access. Rescuing trapped data can open opportunities for actionable insights.

What happens when organizations unlock trapped data? You’ll find untapped insights into user interactions that allow you to create outstanding customer experiences. Learn more about Tallwave’s success with data unification and enablement strategy.

Left brain, right brain

What causes all the data debacles? It could be that marketing people and data people don’t always speak the same language. Braze found that 42% of respondents reported that their top data management challenge stems from working with internal data scientists and IT departments who don’t understand marketing priorities. The second biggest challenge is that marketing talent lacks data skills.

Infographic stating that 42% of respondents reported that their top data management challenge stems from working with internal data scientists and IT departments who don’t understand marketing priorities.

Data mismanagement comes with consequences that can be summarized in two words: missed opportunities. Without a data-driven strategy, you’ll likely end up with wasted resources and miss out on what matters: customer retention, acquisition, and growth.

Seizing opportunities: 4 considerations for collecting quality data

Access to high-quality data enables business leaders to better understand their customers: their needs, preferences, expectations, and buying habits. This understanding helps companies successfully satisfy and engage customers, increase brand awareness, and drive sales conversions.

While ongoing data quality management might feel like an uphill battle, there are a few best practices you can implement to harness the power of accessible analytics. 

Here are four actionable steps to consider:

  1. Align data collection with business goals: Start by aligning your data collection efforts with your organization’s goals and objectives. By focusing on the data that truly matters, you can avoid the trap of over-collection and instead gather the insights necessary to drive meaningful actions.
  2. Standardize data across systems and departments: Establishing data standardization protocols is vital to ensure consistency and accuracy. Implementing standardized data models, formats, and definitions across systems and departments fosters a unified view of the data and enhances its reliability.
  3. Implement data validation and verification processes: Introduce robust data validation and verification processes to maintain data integrity. These processes involve checking for completeness, identifying and resolving inconsistencies, and ensuring data accuracy through various validation techniques.
  4. Invest in data cleansing, enrichment, and visualization tools: Leverage data cleansing and enrichment tools to improve the quality of your data. These tools can help identify and rectify errors, fill in missing information, and enhance the overall value of your data. Additionally, data visualization tools and dashboards give stakeholders the context they need to gain actionable insights from complex data sets.

Understanding and acting upon data compliance requirements are also significant considerations, especially in healthcare. Learn more about HIPAA-compliant web analytics.

Data-driven culture: Collaboration and metrics that matter

To truly master data quality management, organizations need to foster a data-driven culture. This kind of environment empowers leaders to put facts before instincts and take valuable action with each decision.

Unified team, unified data strategy

A data-driven culture is fueled by connection. The symbiotic relationship between data scientists and marketing specialists enables realizing your analytics tools’ full potential, allowing your organization to make data-driven decisions and achieve greater results. When marketing teams and data teams combine forces and truly understand each other, priorities are aligned. 

Prioritizing data quality lets you unlock valuable insights, reach your target audience more effectively, and ultimately enhance customer experiences while maximizing the return on your marketing investment.

The first step in creating a culture defined by data is finding a data strategy and analytics partner who truly understands the metrics that matter. A true enablement partner, like Tallwave, can help you narrow down the most relevant data points to avoid overcollection and support unification. You’ll have access to meaningful insights that drive positive outcomes.


Ready to embrace data enablement? Let’s chat. We can work together to create a unified data strategy that gives you the information needed to implement outstanding experiences. Reach out to Tallwave now.

Categories
Strategy

Healthcare Web Analytics in 2023: Get Your Data In Order

Stylized image of partners discussing healthcare analytics

On December 1, 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a bulletin stating that the use of third-party cookies, pixels, and other tracking technology by healthcare companies may be violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This is in the wake of a year of unprecedented data breaches involving business associates, or third-party vendors, throughout the healthcare industry. 

Bar chart showing a steep increase in healthcare data breaches since 2016
Source: www.hipaajournal.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics

2022 saw over 700 healthcare data breaches impacting more than 50 million individuals. And nearly a third of the ten most significant breaches were due to third-party tracking pixels from companies like Google and Meta (Facebook). While Google and Meta help companies understand their website and other owned properties’ usage, users of the platform have inadvertently also exposed data ranging from personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and financial account information to medical record numbers, insurance account numbers, and more.

Chart showing healthcare analytics data breaches by entity
Source: www.hipaajournal.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics

Such breaches come with hefty financial penalties, including fines, settlements, and other repercussions for the entities involved. But a more significant impact is felt by the consumer whose data has been compromised, as stolen personal information can result in identity theft. And recovery from identity theft is often a long and burdensome process.  

Graph showing a steep increase in the number of individuals impacted by healthcare analytics breaches since 2016
Source: www.hipaajournal.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics

Up until last December when HHS issued its bulletin, it had not provided formal guidelines regarding sensitive healthcare data and HIPAA relative to online tracking technologies. So what does this announcement mean and how can healthcare organizations stay HIPAA compliant?

What do the HHS changes mean for healthcare organizations?

A good starting point is an understanding of the technologies involved and the risks they pose. The HHS announcement specifically speaks to tracking technologies, often third-party, which are generally anonymized. Tracking cookies, specifically pixels, are tiny bits of embedded code used to track a site visitor’s online activity. The data collected from the pixels provides insights that allow the site owner to develop marketing strategies, such as on-site personalized experiences and off-site retargeting campaigns, specific to each site visitor’s behaviors and interactions.

The problem? Many healthcare organizations are using third-party pixels to gain a better understanding of how they can optimize the digital experiences within their public-facing websites and patient portals. And these pixels may be sharing protected health information (PHI) inadvertently with third parties. Most often, the concern lies with pixels on the patient portal, a secure website or application where patients can access and interact with their health data. But PHI can also be collected from the public website and mobile apps in the form of cookies, web beacons, fingerprinting scripts, and other scripts. 

So what constitutes PHI? 

Protected health information is any information related to an individual’s past, present, or future health, healthcare, or payment for healthcare. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Medical records, be they physical, electronic, or spoken
  • Information pertaining to billing, insurance, or of any financial aspect of an individual’s health or healthcare
  • Demographic information
  • Mental health conditions
  • Tests and laboratory results 
  • All information related to an individual’s diagnosis, treatment, or prognosis
  • Anonymous session user ID

As of December 1, 2022, anonymous session user ID is considered PHI.

Anonymous user identification allows the website to anonymously identify unique site visitors without the user having to log in or consent to a tracking cookie. Anonymous sessions are captured and aggregated and can include data such as (but not limited to) the user’s IP address, geographic location, language, device, and mobile carrier, but is generally, as the name suggests, anonymous. However, HHS has deemed that these data points connect the individual to the entity and therefore can be related to the individual’s past, present, or future health, healthcare, or payment for healthcare.

The addition of anonymous session user ID considered as PHI now adds additional complexity to an already confusing data security landscape. Furthermore, in order to protect themselves and their patients, the onus is on healthcare providers to ensure they and their partners are not improperly using tracking technology on the healthcare provider’s digital properties, mobile apps, etc.

How can healthcare organizations keep web analytics HIPAA compliant?

As there is no easy website or mobile app consent solution, it is best to develop a compliant strategy that will protect both the healthcare organization and its consumers. Developing a compliant strategy requires engaging all departments (marketing, marketing analytics, legal, IT, etc.) and ensuring organizational alignment around it. This starts with examining your current analytics tech stack to determine if it meets both the organization’s needs and HHS requirements.

Is Google Analytics HIPAA compliant?

Over 28 million websites worldwide currently use Google Analytics, over four million of which are in the United States. Of all U.S. industries that use Google Analytics, hospital and healthcare companies are the third most prevalent. Google Analytics isn’t the only option for tracking website data, but it has the largest market share, and for good reason. It is robust and intuitive. But Google Analytics has also faced challenges, having been banned in a few European countries due to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) violations. Google did take steps toward addressing the European Union’s GDPR requirements with its recent release of GA4.

So, does Google Analytics meet the new requirements outlined in the HHS bulletin? The simple answer is no. In basic and 360 configurations, GA3 and GA4 no longer meet the HHS compliance requirements. This is primarily due to specific attributes of the data sets, specifically the session and user ID dimensions. 

As a result, healthcare companies are expediting their searches for alternative platforms that will provide organizations with the information they need to measure their digital customer experiences and — more importantly — store that data securely.

After the Universal Analytics sunset on July 1, 2023, you will have a minimum of six months to access your previously processed data. Are you ready to transition to GA4?

What are the best next steps toward achieving compliance?

The first step is to identify and outline requirements for a cohesive transition to a new, compliant platform. The most important of these requirements is a HIPAA-compliant analytics platform provider, one that will be covered under a Business Associates Agreement (BAA). The good news is there are a handful of platforms available that fit this important need. 

Additionally, all businesses are unique and have priorities that must be considered when planning a transition to a new analytics platform. Some examples of priorities might include ease of implementation, tag management capabilities, user limits, integrations with other Google products, and interface complexity, among other things. 

Once requirements have been prioritized across internal teams, analytics owners will be able to guide a best-fit decision.

Whether your organization has been using Universal Analytics for years or you have recently migrated to GA4, Tallwave can help you organize around your requirements, gain internal alignment, and provide expertise on next best options all the way through the implementation and reporting transition. Reach out when you’re ready to learn more.

Categories
Customer Engagement

Developing Nurture Strategies That Decrease Time to Value

Watering can
Photo Credit: Patricia Gortari/Tallwave

Whether you’re nurturing prospects or guiding product qualified leads through a free trial, intentionally crafting their journey allows you to coach potential buyers toward a purchase decision. Weak points in your nurture could be the cause of a low conversion rate.

Understanding the mechanics of a great nurture hinges largely on the concept of time to value (TTV), which refers to the time between when a customer takes an action and when the value of that action becomes obvious to them. TTV can help you diagnose where your nurture might be weak. For example, if you’re seeing low conversions from your free trial, it could be the case that your TTV is actually longer than the trial itself. This concept could apply to many points in the customer journey. Marketo found that 96% of website visitors aren’t ready to buy based on their initial visit. That’s when nurturing strategies come into play. Your nurture strategy helps to move customers through the marketing funnel with touch points that help communicate the value your product or service provides.

Tweaks to the nurture strategy can improve the customer experience and increase customer engagement and conversions. We worked with a SaaS company to revamp their nurture strategy to do just this. Originally, their customer onboarding experience had an ambiguous timeline and the high value actions weren’t made clear. We recommended changes that pivoted to an action-based nurture that reduced friction and personalized touch points. By identifying three critical stages in the trial onboarding period, we divided actions between what we called work, play and commit. We then frontloaded the sign up friction in the work stage. That allowed us to reduce the TTV and move customers through the play stage and toward commitment.

Also read: Uncovering the Root Cause of Low Conversion Rates to Unlock Continual Growth

If you’re trying to improve your customer nurture journey, there are some key best practices to incorporate. Here’s what to know.

Best Practices

Statistics show that 74% of companies are prioritizing improving conversion rates over the next 12 months, indicating this is a more important business need than driving traffic to their websites or even increasing customer lifetime value.

Here’s what to keep in mind if you are looking to revamp your nurture strategy to optimize your conversions and increase customer engagement:

  • Personalize: No one wants to feel like they’re receiving a cookie-cutter message from you so take the time to personalize your messaging based on customer actions. This goes beyond simply addressing them by name and takes into consideration where they might be in the journey.
  • Segment your lists: You can’t personalize if you aren’t segmenting, so be sure to divide your list by specific data points. There are many ways you can do this beyond the basic demographics of age and gender. You can create segments such as location, transaction history, web browsing history, and even device type.
  • Get creative and specific. Create multiple touch points: You should think of your nurture as greater than just one email. Consider all the channels you can use to nurture your customers — email, text message, retargeting ads. Make your communication ecosystem work together to create a world that pulls your customer in.
  • Include a call-to-action: In all your messages there should be a clear call-to-action that helps your customers understand their next steps. Keep it short and compelling.
  • Split test: Develop the practice of being data-lead by A/B testing all of your messaging. It’s hard to be entirely sure which subject line, call-to-action or topics will resonate with your audience, so let the data lead the way.

No one wants to feel like they’re receiving a cookie-cutter message from you so take the time to personalize your messaging based on customer actions.


Validation Strategy Framework

Make your communication ecosystem work together to create a world that pulls your customer in.

Product-Focused Campaign

Educate potential customers on everything your product can help them achieve with a product-focused nurture that highlights your most important features.

 

Purpose: Become a trusted thought leader for your prospects as they advance through the sales cycle.

 

Strategy: Highlight features that solve pain points using case studies, white papers, and internal data.

 

Success metric: You’ll want to determine if customers are using the specific features you’re highlighting for them in your nurture. This can tell you if the features you’re explaining are resonating with them or if you need to find more relevant features for their goals.

Competitive Campaign

A competitive campaign is more aggressive than other nurtures on this list. For this type of a nurture you’ll get specific about what differentiates your product, and what users have to lose if they choose one of your competitors.

 

Purpose: If you have a main competitor that customers are constantly weighing against you, a competitive campaign can work to overcome their objections by educating them about how you are better positioned to help them achieve success.

 

Strategy: Use specific information gathered during sales calls to address main objections without coming across as negative. Any press you’ve obtained or industry intelligence that proves your worth can be helpful here.

 

Success metric: Count actions such as signing up for your trial or upgrades to determine the success of this campaign.

Promotional Nurturing

Promotional nurturing can help move prospects across the finish line with a limited time, exclusive offer that encourages them to act now.

 

Purpose: Promotional nurturing helps you close a sale when you are in the purchase stage of the cycle.

 

Strategy: If you’re working with a big account that could significantly impact your business, offer special pricing or access to upgraded features based on what you know their needs are. For smaller accounts, adding a discount to your email nurture toward the end of the trial stage can inspire users to upgrade.

 

Success metric: For account-based selling, assess how many times you are able to close the sale. For product qualified leads, review how often your discount code has been used.

 

Also read: Optimizing paid media strategies to continually increase leads year over year

Your goal should be to help your customer get the value they are seeking faster by sending the right message at the right time.

How to Assess & Redesign Your Nurture Strategy

Improving your nurture strategy starts with assessing user behavior to identify where you can aid with value realization. This might include collating more data on your users so you can do a better job segmenting your nurtures. It could also include competitive research that helps you identify other journeys your users might be experiencing as they compare your service.

 

Use this research to map your entire customer conversion experience to identify opportunities to increase customer engagement. Then, identify gaps in content and specific trigger points that could reduce the time to value. If you find quick wins, implement these immediately while preparing your campaign overhaul.

The Bottom Line

There are so many ways you can nurture your relationship with your customers to increase engagement, prove your value and turn trial users into paying clients. The key to it all is constantly iterating by using data to understand what your customers are experiencing at each step in the journey. Customizing your messaging to respond to their actions and experiences will help you personalize each nurture touch point, increase customer engagement and prove the value of your product or service.

Categories
Customer Engagement Uncategorized

9 Metrics That Help Measure Customer Engagement

Measuring customer engagement
Photo Credit: Patricia Gortari/Tallwave

Gaining new customers is only half the battle when it comes to sustaining a healthy business — keeping customers engaged and loyal to your company long-term is just as important. Sometimes, that’s easier said than done, especially considering the changing nature of customer preferences.

 

Most companies are challenged with constantly iterating their customer engagement strategies. Oftentimes larger enterprise companies bear more of that brunt in order to maintain market share as more agile upstarts join the scene.

 

Also read: Data Driven Insights Into the Evolving Customer Experience 

 

Case and point: A large entertainment and communications firm – despite having experience that predates the internet – came to us with plummeting retention rates. Identifying the cause of their customer churn was essential to strategizing and implementing an improved experience for the future. By conducting research to understand the end-to-end customer journey, we were able to uncover and map out internal and external stakeholder perspectives at each stage. Using that information, we identified which stages in the journey had the greatest impact on customer loyalty. Then we were able to create a prioritized list of suggested improvements to enhance the customer experience and drive a greater bond between the business and their audience.

 

It’s this kind of work that can make the world of difference when it comes to increasing customer engagement.

 

Reducing friction and inspiring trust are the cornerstones of customer engagement today. A recent Salesforce study found that 95% of consumers said trust makes them more likely to remain loyal while 80% said the customer experience is just as important as the product or service.

 

Reviewing the journeys your customers take helps to identify ways to increase convenience and drive engagement, which is essential for success. Here are some top methods to measure customer engagement.

Reducing friction and inspiring trust are the cornerstones of customer engagement today.

Top Customer Engagement Metrics

There are a variety of metrics you can use to create a full picture of your customer experience and increase customer engagement. Here are some of the most frequently used methods::

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is the leading metric for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is accomplished by asking customers one, simple question to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product or service to a friend or colleague. The rating is on a scale of 0 -10, with zero being “not at all likely” and 10 being “extremely likely.”

 

How to calculate: Respondents are divided into three groups based on their score.

 

  • Promoters: (rated 9-10) are loyal customers who will also refer others to your company.
  • Passives: (rated 7-8) are satisfied, but not enthusiastic.
  • Detractors: (rated 0-6) are unhappy customers and could potentially damage your brand by spreading negative reviews.

To calculate your NPS score, subtract the percent of Detractors from the percent of Promoters. Here’s what the formula looks like: % Promoters – % Detractors = NPS. Your NPS can range anywhere from -100 to 100 depending on your ratio of promoters to detractors.

% Promoters - % Detractors = NPS

How it infers customer engagement: Your NPS score is a good measure of your customers’ overall perception of your brand. Customers who fit the Detractor category are unhappy, these are the customers most likely to speak poorly about your brand to others or leave negative reviews. Customers who fit the profile of Passives are not excited about your business and are unlikely to be loyal if a competitor comes along with a sweeter offer. Customers who are considered Promoters are not only loyal, but will act as ambassadors for your company. It’s best to compare your NPS to others in your industry and also to your past scores to monitor any changes in your customers’ perceptions.

 

Also read: The What, Why, & How Of Customer Behavior Analysis

 

Best for: This classic customer engagement tool is best for gaining a high-level understanding of customer experience and how loyal your customers are.

2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

CSAT is short for Customer Satisfaction Score. It is a popular metric to gauge customer satisfaction levels for a specific product/service or action you took rather than an ongoing customer relationship.. A CSAT score is expressed as a percentage (100% to 0%). Using the results from a customer surveys that ask respondents to “Rate their overall satisfaction with the goods/services they received. Respondents use the following 1-5 scale:

 

1 = Very Dissatisfied (or Very Bad)

2 = Somewhat dissatisfied (Poor)

3 = Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (Neutral)

4 = Somewhat satisfied (Good)

5 = Very Satisfied (Excellent)

 

How to calculate: To understand your CSAT, you’ll want to divide the number of satisfied customers (represented by those who responded with a 4 or 5 ) by the total number of customers.

 

Use this formula to calculate: Number of satisfied customers (4 and 5) / Number of survey responses) x 100 = % of satisfied customers

Number of satisfied customers (4 and 5) / Number of survey responses) x 100 = % of satisfied customers

How it infers customer engagement: Your CSAT score is helpful to measure customer satisfaction after an experience or touchpoint with your business. It’s not typically used to represent customer engagement over time, since it’s a snapshot of how each individual customer was feeling during the exact circumstances of the survey.

 

Best for: CSATs are typically easier to collect than other data points because you’re not asking a lot of your customers. CSATs are also easily understood across many channels of your organization. This makes them ideal for creating company-wide benchmarks that you can update consistently.

3. Customer Lifetime Value

Your customer lifetime value indicates how much your company can expect to earn across an entire relationship with a customer from start to finish. Segmenting your customers by lifetime value can help your company get strategic about the most important groups to engage for long term revenue growth.

 

How to calculate: Before you can calculate the customer lifetime value, you need to know the average customer value. You do this by determining the average purchase value and then multiplying that by the average number of purchases. That first formula looks like this: Average Purchase X Average Number of Purchase = Customer Value.

Average Purchase X Average Number of Purchase = Customer Value

Then, put that number into the following formula: Customer Lifetime Value = Customer Value X Average Customer Lifespan.

Customer Value X Average Customer Lifespan = Lifetime Value

How it infers customer engagement: It goes without saying that the happier your customers are with your product or service, the more likely they are to continue purchasing renewals or upgrades. Focusing on improving your customer lifetime value typically means you’ll surround customers with support and incentives, which can also lead to higher customer engagement scores. Best for: Compare your customer lifetime value to the cost of acquiring new customers so you can understand if your value realization is strong enough to offset the marketing or sales costs associated with generating demand.

4. User Activity

User activity measures how many unique customers are interacting with your product or service in a specific time frame — typically daily or monthly. This is an ideal customer engagement metric for SaaS companies or apps.

 

How to calculate: Calculating daily user activity hinges on accurately defining what you’ll consider a user and an activity. To get a strong sense of how users are interacting on your platform, you might want to count actions such as pulling reports or collaborating with team members instead of merely sign ons or app opens.

 

How it infers customer engagement: By measuring activities that would only happen if the user was engaged — like creating reports, for example — you can begin to understand how often your users are incorporating your features into their lives. If you notice some features are under-utilized, this could be a warning sign that your customers aren’t fully engaging with the potential of your offerings.

 

Best for: This metric is best for understanding what features of your product are most engaging for customers, so you can continue to iterate on these and improve your value realization opportunities.

 

Also read: How to Holistically Map the Customer Experience

5. Visit Frequency

Measuring the visit frequency shows you how often the same customer returns to your site or store location. This helps you to understand how familiar your customers are with your brand and the extent to which they are actively seeking your company.

 

How to calculate: Using Google Analytics, you can pull a count-of-session report to understand visit frequency to your website. Measuring visit frequency for brick-and-mortar locations has historically been more difficult, but new technology, such as Ripple Metrics, can actually measure return frequency in addition to other actions your customers take in store.

 

How it infers customer engagement: If you have many of the same customers returning over time, this shows a higher level of engagement. However, if you have customers visiting your site or location once and not returning, this shows you have more work to do in order to foster customer loyalty.

 

Best for: Visit frequency can be seasonal. For example, if you work at an oil change garage, you might only expect customers to return once every six months. That’s why measuring visit frequency is a good metric for companies that understand what the patterns of a happy customer look like. Gain clarity on the big picture of your customer journey so your visit frequency inferences will be valuable.

 

6. Screentime

Measuring how long a customer spends on your site can tell you how valuable your content is and the extent to which you are helping to make the lives of your customers easier. If your customers spend a long time reading an article or watching a video, congratulations, that means you gave them something to stick around for.

 

How to calculate: Using your website analysis tools, you can pull a report to specify the total time on site or get specific to understand how long customers are spending on each page.

 

How it infers customer engagement: If you notice customers are routinely spending a few seconds on each page, that could be a sign that your website content is not engaging. Typically the first action users take when they realize a webpage doesn’t have the information they need is to close it and move on to the next one. This metric can help you determine what content is hitting home with your customers and what needs more work.

 

Best for: This metric is essential if you rely on content marketing to drive sales or improve the customer experience.

Understanding your customer engagement isn’t always a matter of gathering the most information, but of understanding which metrics to focus on.

7. Pages per Session

Pages per session shows you the average number of pages a visitor to your website reads before they leave your website. Similar to screentime, this metric can show you the extent to which visitors are enjoying your website and gaining value from it.

 

How to calculate: You can determine the pages per session by dividing the total page views by the total amount of sessions for any given time period. If you use Google Analytics, this number should automatically be pulled for you through the program’s standard reporting in the acquisition overview section. To get more detailed, remember to segment by source. You might find that visitors coming from one channel are more heavily engaged, which could influence how you spend advertising dollars.

 

How it infers customer engagement: If you have a high number of pages per session it’s likely visitors to your site are finding a lot of useful information and that you are providing a quality user experience. If you find this metric drops over time, it could signal that you need to revisit your content or maintain your website.

 

Best for: Use this metric to understand how well your website is performing when it comes to serving your customers.

 

8. Churn Rate

Your churn rate measures the number of customers who are concluding their relationship with your business over a set period of time. For example, if you are a service with subscribers your monthly churn rate would show the percentage of users who have cancelled their subscription each month.

 

How to calculate: Calculating your churn rate is simple, just divide the number of customers who have stopped doing business with you by the total number of customers. For example, if you have 20,000 subscribers and 1,000 cancelled last month, you would have a churn rate of 5% for the month.

 

How it infers customer engagement: If you have a high churn rate you can infer that somewhere along the line your customers are becoming disappointed. You’ll need to do some work to understand where in the journey they are seeing less value so you can improve these pain points and extend the customer lifespan.

 

Best for: This is a good metric for softwares or subscription services that rely on monthly recurring revenue.

9. Social Media Engagement

Your social media engagement can show you how interested your customers are in hearing from you and sharing about the work you do. A high social media engagement rate doesn’t always equate to increased sales, but it can definitely help guide your team to know if you’re on the right track in developing rapport, loyalty and strong word-of-mouth.

 

How to calculate: To get a high-level view of your social media engagement, measure your average engagement rate by adding the total number of engagements on a given post (this includes likes, comments and shares) by your total number of followers.

 

How it infers customer engagement: If your social media engagement numbers are low, this could be a sign that you need to do more work providing daily value to your current customers to turn them into brand evangelists. Not all companies rely on social media though, so if your social engagement numbers are low but you have another channel that does well, such as a newsletter, you might want to weigh both sets of metrics against each other before taking action.

 

Best for: Social media engagement can help companies understand how well they are doing when it comes to creating brand awareness and enthusiasm.

Bottom Line

Understanding your customer engagement isn’t always a matter of gathering the most information, but of understanding which metrics to focus on. Every brand should choose a handful of metrics that matter most to their business operations. Depending on your goals, there are only a few metrics that should be tracked regularly to gauge engagement, loyalty, value realization and growth. For the client we mentioned at the start of this article, we were trying to solve for high customer churn. We decided to narrow available data down so we were only focusing on mapping customer satisfaction. We felt this metric could most accurately predict churn. By understanding where in the journey customers were least satisfied, we were able to identify where drop off occurred.

Curious how the evolving customer experience is changing customer sentiment? Check out our recent research report, or contact us today.

Categories
Value Realization

Defining & Maximizing Value Realization For Customers

Lens into customer sentiment
Photo Credit: Patricia Gortari/Tallwave

But when and where does value realization occur? Well, that depends. Value realization can vary by product or service, and – depending on the priorities and needs of the consumer – can be very subjective.

 

Take, for example, a new pair of Nike running shoes. Value realization doesn’t typically occur at the purchase point within the customer journey. Instead, the customer realizes the true value of the shoes when he or she looks in the mirror and thinks, “Wow, these look great!” Or takes them for that very first run and notices an improvement in comfort and support. Or wears them about town and receives a compliment from a stranger or friend.

 

For CPG products like Coca-Cola, value realization may occur when customers take that first sip to quench thirst or receive a caffeine-boost of energy.

Value realization is the idea that there’s some point within your holistic customer journey when the value of the product or service is fully realized. It’s that realization that can illuminate the path for future and ongoing engagement, retention, and opportunities for upsells. Each business has to find and understand where value occurs for their customers and try to measure the moment by proxy. This unveils opportunities for change and innovation to then bring that moment of value realization further up the funnel.

Value realization isn’t always a metric. Oftentimes, it’s more of a concept. It’s an idea that there’s some point within your holistic customer journey when the value of the product or service is fully realized.

Pinpointing Moments of Value Realization

As with most things, you must start the crusade for quick value realization by going back to the basics and evaluating your business’s offering and delivery method inside and out.

 

More often than not, businesses and brands create products and services with their own goals and ideas top of mind. While this may result in experiences that please internal stakeholders, it isn’t always optimized for the customer or end user that you’re trying to engage and reach. Instead, you need to create a customer experience and evaluate value delivery from the perspective of the intended consumer. And in some cases, you may have to manufacture and intentionally test moments to pinpoint specific opportunities to drive or accelerate value realization.

 

For example, we work with a SaaS company who developed an AI-powered search and discovery platform. Right now, they – like many software companies – provide a compelling free trial that strives to demonstrate value in quick, small ways in order to convert trial users to regular users. While they may be able to leverage data to quantify users’ activities, and track and understand customers, an upgrade or purchase doesn’t actually reflect value realization. In fact, a conversion doesn’t guarantee a user has even had a customer experience that includes that coveted moment of truth, yet.

Instead, to truly gauge opportunities for value realization, they may consider building an interactive tool that comes pre-loaded with several data templates. In doing so, a product developer and potential customer can quickly approximate how the tool might work with their environment and enable them to realize the value right away. Airtable and Asana, for example, do this very well.

 

A proactive approach like this can help eliminate ambiguity associated with value realization and give businesses back the reins, by allowing them to manufacture (and measure and iterate!) a singular moment of truth.

 

Also read: How to Holistically Map Your Customer Experience

Understanding the True Value of a Product or Service For Customers

This is easier said than done. It seems simple – most business leaders and innovators think they know the bottom-line value being offered to consumers – but when in the thick of things, striving to grasp the big-picture and bring it to life, the actual value that’s felt by customers can get lost in the larger dream.

 

Also read: Data Driven Insights Into the Evolving Customer Experience

Instagram is a great case study of this. The now-immensely popular and profitable app was first brought to life in 2009 under the name Burbn by Kentucky whiskey lover and hobbyist coder Kevin Systrom. In Its first life, it functioned as a location-based app (inspired by Foursquare) and allowed users to check-in at places, make plans for future check-ins, earn points for visits, and post pictures of get togethers. The thing was – it had so many features that it was too complicated, and therefore, not all that successful. But it had potential. Systrom analyzed and evaluated how users were engaging with the app over time and then brought in a second programmer – Mike Krieger – to help. By leaning into analytics and mapping user behavior, Systrom and Krieger discovered that the check-in features were a complete flop. No one was using them. They were, however, enthusiastically using the photo-sharing feature. So, with a new sense of clarity, Systrom and Kriefer stripped the app down, studied new potential competitors, and released Burbn 2.0 – an easy photo-sharing app named Instagram. The rest is history.

 

Considering that example – where did value realization occur? Systrom brought an innovative idea to life: He enabled people to check into locations, discover new hot spots, create future plans, and earn points by basically drinking. But while he saw value in all the knick-knacks, users didn’t care. It required too many hoops for them to jump through. What they cared about – where and when they perceived value – was in sharing photos that other friends would like. That simple series of actions ­– the intentional sharing and passive yet instant gratification of acknowledgement back – delivered users an emotional and addictive customer experience. That was the singular moment of truth. And value realization, it seems, lay hidden in a much more simplistic experience than Systrom originally thought.

 

With that being said, how can you and your team identify the moment of truth that delivers value realization for customers? And then bring that further up to reduce the amount of time and effort required to recognize value? Here’s a few ways we help our clients do it: 

  1. Apply quantitative and qualitative lenses to your customer journey to determine where moments of truth may lie – not just to convert users into customers, but to drive repeat purchases, upsells, and lifetime satisfaction and value.
  2. Break down quantitative data to uncover moments of customer churn and identify thresholds that transcend customers into advocates and encourage more engaged, continual use.
  3. Interview and engage customers in conversation, both ones who have disengaged and ones who chose to repeat, to outline differences between the consumer groups and identify moments that formed their perceptions.
  4. Artificially manufacture and design moments of value realization that doesn’t necessarily reflect the materialistic product or service, but more importantly, demonstrates the value. Execute competitive analyses to identify opportunities to accelerate time to value.

Create customer experiences and evaluate value delivery from the perspective of the intended customer or end user.

The Bottom Line

Over the years, consumers have grown more differentiating and discriminating about the value they’re receiving and feel less loyal to brands. That means businesses must not only continually improve products and/or services, but truly optimize value realization to occur earlier in the customer journey to maintain wallet share, grow their consumer base, increase customer engagement, and lead the market.

Privacy    Work      Careers
 
Instagram        Facebook        LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn

Tallwave Headquarters

6720 N. Scottsdale Road, Suite 140
Scottsdale, Arizona 85253
(602) 840-0400

Tallwave Headquarters

6720 N. Scottsdale Road, Suite 140
Scottsdale, Arizona 85253
(602) 840-0400

For business inquiries, contact Ed Borromeo, Tallwave Partner at innovate@tallwave.com

For business inquiries, contact Ed Borromeo,
Tallwave Partner at innovate@tallwave.com

Certified Awesome

©2024 Tallwave LLC. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use

Our insights straight to your inbox
Certified Awesome
2024 MSA Partner Trust Badge
Play Video

Bunger Steel

Doing some things and making some impacts