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Relevance is the biggest factor when it comes to moving the needle. But “the reality is that for most companies, the majority of your visitors are unknown,” says Andrew Jones, analyst at VentureBeat. A recent VentureBeat Insight report shows that this number hovers as high as 95 percent.
In our latest webinar, “How to boost user engagement 300 percent,” Michael Powers, vice president of product at CBSi, and Ken Peltzer, Thrillist Media Group’s vice president of technology, talk with Jones to break down what it takes to turn anonymous users into power users.
1. Start with anonymous data
Behavioral data is more important than ever before, because there’s so much more to capture and use. Surprisingly, even data from anonymous users can be employed to show relevant content to every unknown visitor who lands on your site.
“We give anonymous IDs to everybody,” says Peltzer. Data points are tied to a unique ID that can be kept with the user as they come back to the site or browse more pages. The data can connect to an email address when it’s provided, so you can begin to segment those new users right out of the gate and build audience profiles based on the collective behavior of anonymous users.
2. Deliver relevant content
When anonymous users are segmented with machine learning, you can deliver a more personalized experience with relevant, engaging content on every visit — based on their past behavior or based on the behaviors of similar users.
A stream of relevant content leads to more engagement and even more specific data about what those users are interested in, helping you orient the experience around the things they’re paying attention to.
3. Get the email address
Sephora is the digitally savvy master of turning visitors across channels into “power users” — members who spend more than 2.5 times what average customers do. Then there are what the brand calls “superfans,” who spend an astonishing 10 times more.
What Sephora does well at every stage, Jones says, is collect information from customers in exchange for providing value. From the start, visitors are offered a percentage off purchase if they sign up for the email list — and visitors sign up in droves.
It’s also essential to give visitors an opportunity to sign up over a wide variety of contexts and across channels in order to help them engage more closely with the relevant content you’ve delivered.
4. Onboarding
Onboarding, regardless of what industry you’re in, is one of the most critical stages of customer engagement. But one size never fits all.
With the ability to bring in browsing data from when a visitor was anonymous, you can start to segment right away, sending relevant content from the moment they sign up and moving users down the funnel more quickly.
Powers notes that you aren’t limited to browsing data: “It’s good to provide the user a lot of ways to give you signals around what they’re paying attention to — Like buttons, Follow buttons, what they comment on, what they post in the forum,” he says. All of these are valuable sources of data that can be fed into the first wave of emails you send to keep your customer engaged.
Peltzer notes that details such as when a visitor signs up and where they came from also provide essential information. “A one-size-fits-all for a welcome email or an onboarding email doesn’t work, he says. “You really need to tailor it to that specific user’s experience on your site and how they got there.”
5. Turning users into power users
Machine learning can uncover the patterns in user content consumption that mark a potential VIP and let you apply that insight at a greater scale and more readily than ever before.
“Knowing what kind of content has resonated with VIP users and the content they engaged with that ultimately made them your most loyal, valuable, or most engaged fans,” Jones says, is your most powerful tool.
VIP users have followed a particular path to get to where they are. If you can discover the commonalities between those power users and are able to guide other users who are not in that same segment to reach that level, they’ll contribute to your bottom line, making for a more profitable company. It comes down to understanding what it is that has driven people to that stage and replicating that experience for other users.
For more in-depth insight into the techniques offered by Thrillist and CBSi and a deeper discussion of the technology you need to find and keep your VIPs, check out our free webinar!
Don’t miss out!
Access the webinar on demand right here.
Attend this webinar to:
- Learn how to boost user engagement and retention by 300%
- Discover how predictive technology can be applied against email, website, and mobile deliverables
- Get the scoop on how digital marketing is changing, and fast
Speakers:
Michael Powers, Vice President of Product, CBSi
Ken Peltzer, Vice President of Technology, Thrillist Media Group
Andrew Jones, Analyst, VentureBeat
Moderator:
Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat
This webinar is sponsored by Boomtrain.