2014 called and it wants its metrics back. If you’re still just relying on cost per lead, you’re leaving money on the table. Register now for this VB Live event and learn what metrics helped Publisher’s Clearinghouse transform conversion and become the fifth-largest game publisher on the market.
“The ultimate measure of success and ROI is the retention, engagement and lifetime value of your customer,” says Jason John, CMO of Publisher’s Clearing House. “So it really helps us rally around the lifetime value component and understand what’s driving that.”
For John, this has a lot to do with focusing on what’s best for the customer, where they are in their customer journey, and what you need to offer to make them satisfied — and willing to convert. And that’s how PCH has gone from the lottery company that triggers amused nostalgia to a major game publishing company with a huge ecommerce business.
They do it without an ecommerce storefront, because customers are essentially self-selecting. “It’s all about interjecting those commerce purchase opportunities as they’re being entertained within our customer funnel,” says John. “It’s all built into the customer experience.”
Based on what customers are playing, what they’re searching for, and what they’re viewing, the opportunities show up as spontaneous, personalized recommendations. Essentially, customers are qualifying themselves as leads.
But PCH doesn’t let customers do all the work. The company keeps real-time tabs on all customer activity to determine exactly the moment when a user is ready to be tipped over into converting, with a project called optimized customer models, or OCM for short.
“We run at least a series of five models a day on every consumer in our database,” says John. “It starts to score people on what properties they’re engaging with more, if they’re active in emails, and if so, how active, and can they afford to get another email before they unsubscribe?”
These models work together with decision trees to determine if a user gets an email, when they get an email, and what the content of that email is.
For instance, he explains, if a customer is engaged strictly with the lotto property, but hasn’t interacted with the search and win property — a search overlay that offers sweepstakes entries — they’ll get lotto content rather than search and win content in their next scheduled email.
That’s moved PCH from 0 percent trigger-based emails to 25 percent of the emails they send. “That has really significantly improved our conversion engagement rates with our audience,” he adds.
There are obstacles to overcome, however. A major one is the need to have all of your tools and databases talking to each other in a clear and cohesive manner.
“That means the data you’re collected in your registration forms is talking to the data that’s collected in your onsite measuring tools which is connected to your transaction ordering systems,” John explains. “Just having all those systems and tools speaking to each other so you have an accurate picture of the consumer lifecycle and where they’re at has really been the key challenge.”
Join Jason John, LendingTree CMO Sam Yount, and VB’s own Stewart Rogers for an in-depth look at new ways to identify the leads that impact revenue.
Don’t miss out!
In this VB Live event, you will:
- Understand how to generate quality opportunities
- Build the right marketing KPIs for defining lead quality and lead conversion
- Define a conversion strategy that builds retention
Speakers include:
- Sam Yount, CMO, LendingTree
- Jason John, CMO, Publisher’s Clearing House
- Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat
Moderator:
- Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat