How Analytics Is Transforming Customer Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs are crucial.

The goal of loyalty initiatives is to engage, not pander more products to frequent buyers.

But how do you determine if your loyalty program is working well?

Use data to steer your customer loyalty program in the right direction.

McKinsey found that “executive teams that make extensive use of customer data analytics across all business decisions see a 126% profit improvement over companies that don’t.”

“By instituting a loyalty program, you not only improve customer appreciation of your business, but you also increase the chances that existing clients will share this joy with those close to them,” says Steve Olenski, a senior creative content strategist at Oracle Responsys.

Upgrade your loyalty program. Let’s explore how.

Focusing on Retention

One primary mission of loyalty programs is to increase customer retention. You want buyers to remain with your brand after they make a purchase.

For your business, higher retention means a steady flow of revenue. And it cuts down on your costs to constantly acquire new customers.

Therefore, your loyalty programs must be effective. They need to serve a real purpose for the consumer, not just your bottom line.

To provide the best customer experience, fuse data into your retention strategies. It will impact how your team approaches the buyer.

“Influencing customer loyalty in this way doesn’t require magic, it requires data – usually data that you already have but aren’t using to full advantage. Regardless of industry, most organizations today generate mountains of data,” writes Mike Flannagan, vice president and general manager of Cisco.

Uncover the correlation between customer characteristics and purchasing behavior. Assign your team to analyze the current data of your most valuable customers. And learn which characteristics these customers have in common and which traits are dissimilar.

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Consider data an ongoing process of observing, acting, and learning. Improve your loyalty programs by taking action on your insights. Measure success by monitoring your customer lifetime value, loyal customer rate, and redemption rate.

Start with retention. And let the data guide you to customer loyalty.

Targeted Product Recommendations

Research shows that “customers that are actively engaged with brands and their loyalty programs make 90% more frequent purchases, spend 60% more in each transaction and are five times more likely to choose the brand in the future.”

Sending targeted product recommendations is one way to keep customers engaged. Because if they are not receptive to certain products, consumers will feel more inclined to take their business elsewhere.

Integrate real-time purchase data with historical purchase data to make specific recommendations. For example, if a small business bought payroll software from you, their team might be interested in purchasing your series of on-demand accounting webinars.

“Consumer data must be analyzed to create highly targeted product recommendation offers. Analyze consumer data such as demographics, lifestyle, products purchased by category and type, frequency of purchase, and purchase value,” states Larisa Bedgood, director of marketing at DataMentors.

It’s key not to draw wild conclusions from one piece of data. Just because a Florida resident buys a winter coat doesn’t mean he wants to be flooded with similar recommendations. The consumer might have bought it as a gift for a friend living in Michigan.

So, gather multiple data points in order to make intelligent recommendations. You don’t want to frustrate loyal customers.

Your brand also can take a different approach. Use social proof to your advantage. If consumers are hesitant about particular products, remind them that other people are buying the product, too.

Home Depot uses this tactic by displaying a list of bestselling inventory. It persuades the customer to join the crowd.

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Sift through your analysis reports. Uncover the best product recommendations for your customers.

Timely Promotions

For customers, loyalty takes effort. They receive lots of promotional ads everyday to try products from other brands. Appreciating your consumer’s urge to resist the hype is important.

Mobile phone carriers lead the way in baiting consumers to switch their services. AT&T offers cell phone users up to $650 in credit just to say bye to T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon.

To keep their loyalty, customers will hold your team accountable. They expect timely promotions that not only fit their buying habits but also their lifestyles.

At the end of the day, you want to deliver the right offer at the right time. This will increase the likelihood of the promotion redemption.

Monitor the sales data to learn when promotional codes are redeemed. Do your consumers use promotions more often in the morning? Right after a sales announcement? Or during summer months?

“By creating a time-sensitive sales promotion and having a good grasp on your target customer demographic, you’ll be able to incentivize the right actions, get them to respond, and grow your business in the process,” states Humayun Khan, former content marketer at Shopify.

Moreover, analyze your reports to discover the best product promotions. A timely discount matched with the wrong product won’t be useful for the consumer or your company.

Segment your customers to offer relevant discounts for multiple channels—in-store, online, and mobile. Every loyalty member doesn’t have to receive the same offer.

For instance, Starbucks offers its Gold members the opportunity to earn double stars. The coffee company surprises its loyal consumers on a different day each month. This technique increases the excitement and prepares customers to spend more money on a particular day.

Don’t wait for your competitor to offer your customers a good deal. Start creating your own timely promotions.

Personalized Rewards

Everyone likes to be rewarded. It signifies that you’ve done something commendable. And incentives compel you to continue the rewarded behavior.

Recognize the value of your customer’s actions. Because that’s what you’re rewarding.

You can offer perks based on monetary transactions, shopping frequency, or even survey responses. It’s all about showing appreciation for consumers’ actions.

But it’s your team’s job to appropriately reward customers. Don’t expect people to buy $1000 worth of services in one month if your highest service retails at $10.

In addition, manage your loyalty members’ expectations. They shouldn’t expect your brand to give away free Beyonce tickets every day.

Personalized rewards ensure you’re giving your customers what they desire. It also shows that you are truly invested in the customer experience.

Send a simple email survey asking consumers what type of incentives excite them. Or conduct social media listening to identify useful prizes that can make your customers’ lives better.

Dick’s Sporting Goods sends emails asking customers for their opinions. The company uses the information to improve its inventory and customer service.

Remember to focus on maintaining positive relationships with your consumers. Because that’s the ultimate goal for loyalty initiatives.

You want people to feel comfortable with your brand. Aim to offer rewards that bridge the gap between the consumer-brand relationship.

“A significant aspect of customer loyalty comes down to your likability. People will almost always remain committed to a brand if they believe they’ve developed a genuine and mutually beneficial relationship,” says Entrepreneur contributor Dave Thompson.

Tailor your rewards to satisfy your customers. Offer them something special.

Analyze Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty can lead to retention. That’s why your team must use data to drive your loyalty programs.

Give consumers targeted product recommendations they can’t resist. Send promotions at the right time. And personalize rewards so the customer feels part of the brand.

Look at the data. Improve customer loyalty programs.

Did you know? With Kissmetrics, you can find your most valuable customer segments. Analyze customer behavior to understand where they’re coming from and how to acquire more of your best customers.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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Link Building Mistakes and Penguin 4.0: Weekly Forum Update

The aftermath of Penguin 4.0 has been…surprisingly peaceful! In the days after Penguin was announced last Friday, many members of WebmasterWorld reported that instead of a hurricane, all they got was a stiff breeze.

But Penguin 4.0 also seems to be a slow beast – Gary Illyes only recently announced on Twitter that the penalty-lifting part of Penguin should be taking effect soon.

So I hope you’re ready to follow the news for the next couple of weeks! It could be a bumpy ride, and our communities are a great place to get caught up.

Everything We Know About Google Penguin 4.0 So Far

If you were asleep or on vacation last week and missed the announcement, Penguin 4.0 is here. You can catch up with the above article by my colleague, Ann Smarty. She’ll be updating it as new questions and answers arise. You can also get links to news and discussion in SEO Chat’s Penguin 4.0 discussion thread.

If WebmasterWorld is more your style, the experts are watching their sites like hawks as Penguin continues to leave its impact.

September 23rd, when Penguin was announced, ryandiscord and ThomasHarvey of SEO Chat were looking at the SEO weather forecasts. As ryandiscord phrases it, “Nothing crazy,” was happening. But the theory of Penguin 4.0 was appreciated. Ryan also wrote,

“What I like about this update is that the results of a clean up can happen much sooner. I think it may even be easier to spot which links are being caught if it is page level.”

Users on WebmasterWorld had a similar reaction. SnowMan68 wrote,

“Well that was underwhelming. WTF!”

Ebuzz lent credence to the idea that Penguin is rolling out slowly. They wrote,

“I’ve not seen ANY change in my Penguin hit sites. It might as well not even be announced,”

on September 25th. Robert Charlton had exciting news to share on September 29th, though:

“Gary Illyes in ongoing discussion with Barry at SERoundtable, as clarified that the algo has been rolling out in phases, and that the phase in which demotions will be removed started late yesterday afternoon, ie Sept 28, 2016.”

Penguin 4.0: Some Things Change, Some Things Stay the Same

So webmasters haven’t noticed many changes to the health of their sites yet. There are other things about Penguin which haven’t changed with 4.0. You can take a look at all the things that have stayed the same in this Threadwatch update. Disavow files, for example, should still be used.

Everyone at Google is firm about the fact that Penguin will not do disavows for you. Google was also quick to add that manual link-based penalties will still be given out to sites that Penguin doesn’t quite apply to.

Link Building Mistakes of the Pros and Newbs

With Penguin rolling out, now is the perfect time to talk about link building techniques!

This is an AWESOME thread from WebmasterWorld where users are talking about what techniques don’t work and what tactics are mistakes in the modern era. I can’t tell you how many newbie SEOs ask on SEO Chat,

“What are the best practices for link building in 2016?”

You can answer that, and more, with this thread. I dunno about you, but I’ll be sharing this link far and wide – and probably for years. So what are some techniques that don’t work? Martinibuster cites “publishing your actual outreach template in an SEO article” as one of them.

“Being transparent makes some people feel good about what they do… However, publishing search strategy specifics in public has been known to cause a response from Google.”

Graeme_p writes that

“One thing I did many years ago was to put footer links in free WordPress templates. People used them and I did get links that helped at the time. It worked for a while…but later on it probably looked spammy.”

Keyplyr agrees:

“I did that back then as well and many years later it has come back to bite me.”

Here’s one of my pet peeves that engine and martinibuster discuss: chasing PR and DA! Martinibuster writes

“Nowadays I know there are many who are chasing DA, even though Rand Fishkin discourages the practice of using Domain Authority for judging a site’s worth, describing it as the number one link building myth…”

Bing Academic and Movie Search Has an Intelligent Autocomplete

Bing has developed an intelligent autocomplete for its academic article and movie database searches. This intelligence

“…understands the intent [of a search], and generates suggestions based upon the user input. It won’t give a response until it reaches a trigger point of understanding the intent,”

writes WebmasterWorld’s admin, engine. It’s a pretty neat paper! We take Google’s autocomplete function for granted, and this paper will help you understand that as Bing details the specifics of its development.

What’s really interesting is that this technology may be the first step in analyzing the web beyond links. Give it a read!

Is AI Getting in the Way of Google Understanding Your Site?

This is an interesting thread from WebmasterWorld, a spin-off of their Penguin discussion. As part of their announcement, Google said that they wouldn’t be commenting on future Penguin refreshes. MrSavage writes that Google’s behavior could be creating too wide of a disconnect between engineers and their product.

“…Perhaps it’s as simple so the staff don’t have to field…questions anymore…They are hardly concerned about whatever results are showing. The fact you can search something and get a number 1 or 2 result that are articles completely void of one or more of your typed in search terms tells me they don’t give a S behind closed doors…”

We see webmasters, all the time, who use automated tools and are then unable to fix the mistakes they create. Is Google doing the same thing?

Perhaps integrating Penguin into the core algorithm and creating RankBrain are the first steps towards an automated (and ultimately inhuman or outdated) search engine. How important is the human element? Share your thoughts!

SEO: So, What DOES Work?

Several discussions on SEO Chat have been popping up in this same vein. SEO is changing – the things that used to work don’t, and the things that do seem to create very small returns.

This is especially true in local SEO. Gazzahk writes,

“Manipulating Google SERPs is an increasingly difficult thing to do. My website used to dominate all my SERPs both locally and globally. Heaps of links to link bait made my money pages dominate…”

Today, though, he ranks better outside of his local area than he does inside of it. Besides content and links, what are the keys to great local rankings?

One thing that KernelPanic, an SEO Chat mod, brought up in an earlier discussion is reviews. Maybe, some day, local reviews will eclipse links in importance. What do you think?

Design Your Marketing Emails For Being Opened on a Smart Phone!

On Cre8asiteforums, user earlpearl tells the story of a recent email campaign they ran.

“On a recent large email blast our email provider gave us info I hadn’t seen before: Percentage of Opens by Device. On that blast 92% were opened on a smart phone…KABOOOM!!”

It was a revelation – turns out that the recent emails were unreadable on a smart phone! The tiny screen shrunk the text down and scrambled it into gibberish.

“Next job: Change ALL the emails. ALL of them!”

earlpearl writes. User iamlost has a TON of great suggestions for how to optimize your responses, newsletters, promos, and more for smartphones. Check this thread out for a mobile UX wakeup call!

The post Link Building Mistakes and Penguin 4.0: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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Check Out This Video: Put Your Dongle Away

Technology has changed the meaning of many words over time. When we picture a Tablet, we no longer think of the great stone slabs that the ten commandments were written on, for example. Trolls aren’t multi-coloured dolls with frizzy hair, but rather angry people on the internet. But technology has also given us its share of words — and few are funnier than the word dongle.

The etymology of “dongle” is actually largely unknown. The Atlantic posited 7 theories ranging from adaptations of poetry to, literally, someone making it up. Regardless of its origins, the word is a common part of our tech lexicon. It’s also very funny if, like myself, you are blessed with the sense of humor of a small child. Say it aloud. Dongle. Accentuate the ‘o’. Doooongle.

It’s a funny word.

But, as Zoom would like to point out, it’s also a word that is slowly being forced out of our lexicon by wireless products usurping the need for dongles. Dongles, at their core, connect two pieces of technology together. Wireless is changing that. And Zoom contacted the hilarious Tripp and Tyler to point this out:

Why I Love This Video

To me, this video is a work of art. I’m always a big fan of companies that can cram as much tastefully presented innuendo into one video as possible, and Tripp and Tyler hit a homerun. To me, the real star of this video is the poor guy at home on a conference call, trying to understand what’s going on, and why everyone keeps talking about their dongles. The confusion-to-disgust pathway on his face before he quietly hangs up the phone is perfectly executed.

Tripp and Tyler have a long history of parodying office culture, especially remote working, as their more popular viral video A Conference Call in Real Life shows:

This video currently has just under 14 million views, and I know I’ve personally seen it five or six times.

Know Your Audience – And Who They Laugh At

For many people who work in offices, the dreaded “do I have the right connection to make this projector work” issue comes up almost daily. Doubly so if you tend to speak at a lot of conferences, or travel often. Projectors always seem to require the connection you didn’t remember to pack, and I can speak from my own experience that many a frantic trip to the nearest Staples or Apple store has been made mere hours before a big talk to a packed house. It’s no fun, and Zoom is working to solve that by making connecting to TVs and projectors easier.

But how do you get this point across in an industry crowded with solutions to everyday office woes? Look at who your audience is already laughing at. Tripp and Tyler have a loyal following among office grunts like myself. The Conference Call video is basically an accurate representation of 20% of my week, and their other videos, like Email in Real Life (a clever advertisement for Workfront) are all spot-on office jokes that are easy to relate to. For Zoom to get their point across, partnering with Tripp and Tyler was an easy win. Take recognizable faces that produce a very specific type of humor for a very specific audience, and get them to use that humor to talk about your pain point.

The dongle jokes are hilarious, but the underlying joke in the video is simple — people hate trying to find the right connector to connect to every device in their life, and for presentations, Zoom makes that easy. Simple, effective, and no dongle needed.

Earlier this month, our own Katie Nielson confessed to a deep love of Key & Peele – any internet comedians that keep you coming back for more? Tell us in the comments!

The post Check Out This Video: Put Your Dongle Away appeared first on Vidyard.

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The Most Popular Types Of Videos On YouTube [Infographic]

YouTube now has more than 1 billion users and thousands of high-reach content creators to partner with, making the Google-owned social media video platform and network  one of the largest sites in the world and a goldmine for socially-savvy digital marketers.

Simply producing and publishing engaging videos, however, doesn’t always guarantee that a branded or brand-sponsored YouTube video will be viewed, liked, and shared. So how can marketers ensure that audiences will be receptive to their YouTube videos?

Which Types of YouTube Videos are the Most Popular?

YouTube has become increasingly inundated with content. Its users watch millions of hours and generate billions of views each day with an average viewing session at 40 minutes on mobile. So today’s most successful brand marketers must know which type of YouTube videos are most popular with audiences and understand how to develop highly-shareable “viral” campaigns around these ever-evolving viewer trends.

To determine the most popular types of YouTube videos, Mediakix first identified the top 300 YouTube influencer channels, then analyzed each content creator’s videos from the first half of 2015 to ascertain which videos received the highest number of views and social engagements. Based on these findings, we distilled the most popular YouTube videos down into the following 13 categories:

An Important Note For Marketers:

While taking advantage of these findings and trends can offer an advantage over competitors, marketers should keep in mind that providing genuine value—either through entertainment or information—is key to developing impactful YouTube videos and YouTube video campaigns.

 

What type of video do you (or, okay, your audience) view most on YouTube? Share with us in the comments!

The post The Most Popular Types Of Videos On YouTube [Infographic] appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to Add Real-Time Communication to Your Existing Marketing Stack

Let’s think back to the early days of social media for a moment, and how it impacted our marketing.

Not only did it bring the potential of massive free exposure, it radically increased transparency as well. Every good or bad customer experience suddenly became a potentially viral story. And thus the relation between business and consumer was changed, forever.

But social media isn’t at the top of the digital food chain anymore. As of 2015, messaging apps have overtaken social networking apps in monthly active users.

In 2015, messaging apps overtook social media platforms in monthly active users. (Image Source)

This balance tip coincided with a few other developments: Facebook’s launch of Messenger for Business, WhatsApp announcing a move into B2C communication, an increasing reliance by businesses on message-based communication tools like Slack, and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) entering a critical phase. The last point was nicely illustrated by AlphaGo wiping the floor with our human champions in Go.

Chris Messina, the guy who brought us the #hashtag, noticed the interplay between these developments, and concluded in a post on Medium that we’re at the brink of another revolution in B2C relationships.

Where before you would use your messaging apps for simple interactions with friends, the above developments allow them to be used for real-time conversations with businesses as well – whether that’s with a service rep or an intelligent chatbot. He dubbed this new era of B2C relationships ‘conversational commerce’.

So, how can you take advantage of this development? How can you integrate real-time communication into your existing marketing stack?

First, let’s clarify why you’ll want to jump aboard this trend in the first place. Then we’ll share some ideas and company examples that will help you start off today.

The Promise of Real-Time Communication

For years, marketers have known the power of ‘now’. Pay attention to the banners and billboards you’ll run into throughout the rest of the day, and notice how often they’re filled with maxims like ‘instant access’, ‘same day delivery’, and ‘quick checkout’. Immediacy strongly impacts our buying behavior.

Amazon Prime, a prime example of our desire for immediacy. (Image Source)

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli shares an experiment into our weakness for ‘right now’ with two groups of participants.

Group A was asked whether they would rather receive $1,000 in 12 months, or $1,100 in 13 months. Most chose the 13-month option; because where else will you find an investment option with a 10% monthly interest rate?

Group B was offered a slightly different choice. They could choose to receive $1,000 today, or $1,100 in one month. Here, most people choose the $1,000 today option. This is remarkable. The choice is basically the same – except that the $1,000 today targets our weakness for wanting things right now. That’s hyperbolic discounting, our irrational preference for what we can get now over what we can get in the future.

Real-time customer service has a similar effect on our preference for right now. According to a Forrester Research study, 57% of online customers leave a website if they don’t receive a quick answer on their question.

This was confirmed in a case study with Intuit, the company behind the financial products QuickBooks and Mint. By placing live chat for real-time support during its checkout process, Intuit increased its average order value by 43%.

From “Interaction” to “Relation”

A major benefit of communication via messaging apps is that it results in a permanent and low-barrier connection with the customer.

Once a phone call with a customer is over, the connection is broken. That is not the case with email, but email has a high barrier to contact compared to writing a message on Facebook.

A permanent low barrier connection promises a major increase in customer interaction – keeping your business top of mind and always accessible.

Also, when a conversation picks up again, it happens within the context of a messaging thread. This makes it easier for support reps to understand the situation and provide a good answer. While emails and phone calls are mere snapshots, messaging threads represent long-term relationships.

Lower Costs per Interaction

As mentioned above, the existing messaging thread will prevent duplication. Things become more efficient when customers don’t have to repeat their issue with every service handover – not to mention more pleasant.

At the same time, advancements in natural language processing fuel expectations of chatbots soon solving many support questions that humans are tackling at the moment. Not all, of course. But a modest 20% would already represent a huge gain in efficiency.

We’re still some years away from scenes like in the movie Her, in which we’re having natural conversations with smooth sounding chatbots that are indistinguishable from those with humans. What is closer and easier to picture, however, is a sort of ‘chat cyborg’ – a human service rep that uses AI to deliver a superior service.

When a question comes in, AI runs it through the database of customer interactions and offers answer suggestions to its human colleague. The human serves as the last check, and can choose to override the suggestions or adjust them. The AI learns from the answer that is given, as well as the response from the customer (was it the right response?). That way, the chat cyborg is continuously growing in smarts and efficiency.

Now let’s look at how you can start with reaping the fruits of these developments today.

How to Get Started With Real-Time Communication

Live Chat on your Site

Web chat has been around for some years, but is developing fast together with the abovementioned trends. You implement a live chat window on your website, through which visitors can reach out and receive support.

Live chat offers many of the benefits described above, such as the power of instant support and minimizing duplication. What makes it especially powerful is that the chat is available at a critical moment in the buyer’s journey – on the website.

A customer might be ready to buy, but has some small concerns or questions before doing so. With live chat there’s no need to delay the purchase, since questions can be resolved on the spot.

A great example of how to do chat right is Apple’s live chat service.

Live chat is an important ingredient in Apple’s service setup.

If you’re an Apple user, I recommend you try it out next time you have a service question. You receive full and detailed answers in no-time, which suggest they make use of an intelligent knowledge base in the backend.

Facebook’s Messenger for Business allows live chat providers to connect to their platform, and tools like Telegram and WeChat are open for this as well. We can expect tighter integrations between website chat and messaging support in the future.

Rogers connected its support team with Facebook to help customers via their favorite channel.

Messaging support

Messaging support is very promising, simply because it’s so darn convenient for consumers. They send a question through their favorite messaging app, and receive an answer in their back pockets.

For this to work, you need to hook up your support team to your messaging channels – be it Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, or a combination – and let your customers reach out to you.

One example of a business deploying large scale messaging support is Livecrowd, a Dutch company offering next-level customer service and experience for mass crowd events. Think festivals, football matches, or concerts (see Beyoncé’s concert page below). Such events are major logistical challenges. A quick and easy way to advise visitors about transport or safety is invaluable.

Messaging support is perfect for customers on the go, such as music event visitors.

Another messaging example from the Netherlands is KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines. Since a few weeks, they’ve added Facebook Messenger support to their booking process.

This makes it easy for flyers to check the status on their flights and ask support agents any questions:

Managing your booking with an app you’re already familiar with.

When you’re booking a flight and are logged into your Facebook account, you can select to stay updated about your flight through messenger. When you have a delay, for example, you receive an update on the app. You can also receive your boarding pass through Messenger, or ask questions to the KLM service team directly.

As you can see, part of KLM’s messaging support is automated. Which brings us to the next application.

Chatbots

Chatbots are a hot and exciting area of the tech industry, mainly because they’re fueled by advancements in machine learning.

Slack allows you to connect an existing chatbot to your team or build one with its own logic, while Facebook’s Chatbot API allows you to build a bot for Messenger. There are also plenty of third party apps that allow you to set up a chatbot fairly easily, such as Motion AI.

One example of the extensive use of chatbots is Call of Duty. Players can connect with Lieutenant Reyes chatbot, and solve a not-so-easy-to-solve puzzle. This chatbot sent over six million messages to its gamers in total.

Chatbots will only become more interesting with the continuous advancements in machine learning. The more intelligent the chatbots become, the more customer interactions can be left to them.

How to Get Started

Make a comprehensive communication plan.
To get started with real-time communication, you’ll need to integrate it in a comprehensive communication plan. Ask yourself: What channels make sense for me and my customers?

Set up a dedicated service team.
The fact that conversational commerce is based on text means that compared to phone, more interactions can be done per service agent. But you’ll also have a lower barrier for contact, so you can expect the number of customer interaction to rise. You’ll need a dedicated real-time communication team to support this.

Empower frontline employees.
In real-time communication, speed is king. Zendesk stated that customer satisfaction in live chat dropped after 30 seconds of waiting. Since you’ll be having so many customer inquiries requiring fast responses, it’s essential to empower your frontline employees to resolve issues themselves. The number of cases that require involvement from higher up should be minimized.

Set up communication guidelines.
That doesn’t mean your real-time communication should be a free-for-all. On the contrary, it takes directed effort to maintain a consistent voice across all channels. Like The Economist maintains a style guide for its articles, you should require a style guide for your real-time communication as well. On what level of familiarity will you communicate? If you’ll speak in English, will it be British or American?

Play together with your other channels.
In the world of conversational commerce, one-on-one conversations will cover a much wider area of topics than before. That’s why your frontend employees need to be well aware of all external communications. Whether it’s social media, content, email, or performance marketing – your real-time communication channel needs to be in sync.

Track key metrics.
One key benefit of written communication is that it can easily be tracked. Most live chat solutions, for example, have standard integrations with analytics solutions like Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. With them, it’s easy to measure key indicators of quality communication: first response time, handovers per issue, service ratings, etc.

Conclusion

We really do seem to be at the brink of another revolution in the relationship between businesses and customers.

You can start reaping the benefits of real-time communication today, by taking the first steps with website chat, messaging support, and chatbots. Happy chatting!

About the Author: Pascal van Opzeeland is CMO of Userlike, software for website and messaging support. He and his team share tips about customer communication on the Userlike Blog.

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Why Video Is The Answer To Employee Communications Teams’ Prayers

What’s on your list of “Wants”? Other than a unicorn or a nice ice cream sandwich. Is video on that list?

Wait, that’s probably a silly question. EVERYONE wants video. So let me rephrase: If you’re part of an employee communications team, is video on your “Needs” list? If it’s not, check your forehead – that ice cream sandwich might have given you permanent brain freeze.  

Did you know that even as far back as 2012, 93% of internal communication professionals believed that video was becoming essential to internal communications? And that sentiment is only growing stronger year after year: video is no longer a nice-to-have for internal communications teams. It’s a must-have.

Video solves an abundant number of challenges that internal communicators face every day. It’s why communicators who are in-the-know make sure to fold their hands and pray for video every night before getting in bed, or wish upon the first star they see, or use the wishbone during the holidays to try to make their video dreams come true. Sound over the top? Let me tell you all the ways video will make your communications more powerful:

It fixes engagement problems.

Brace yourself—this might scare you: 70% of US employees have admitted they aren’t engaged at work, according to one study. While you may not have known the exact number, and it may fluctuate, you’re probably not all that surprised. One of the biggest challenges communicators face is how to reach employees who are too busy, too bored, or too uninterested in what their company has to say.

That’s where video can help. Think of all the video you watch; we enjoy it so much that we watch 4 billion videos on YouTube per day, and we spend 6 billion hours watching video on YouTube per month. Nothing speaks to us the way video does; it’s personal, it’s relatable, it feels human in a way that text never can. It’s why people watch how-to videos on YouTube instead of reading a big manual. Simply, video is the next best thing to being there in person. There’s a lot of science that explains why, and if you’re interested, check out this blog post.

Our love of video means that we demand it in our workplace, too. A recent stat showed that 59% of executives would rather watch video than read text. You can bet that number is comparable for your whole employee base.  So why stick with the traditional tools? Lengthy emails just aren’t cutting it anymore, and your important messages are likely just getting deleted. Even text-based Intranet pages may not be enough: In a survey from only a few years ago, only 13% of employees said they used their company’s intranet daily, while 31% said they never do. If you’re relying on email and Intranet, you need to strengthen your strategies with video. Give employees what they crave, and you’ll find that employee engagement strengthens.

Video can be offered on any channel or device, anywhere, for a unifying and engaging experience.

Have you stayed away from video because you’re afraid to put confidential information on YouTube? Don’t let security concerns scare you away from video. All you need is a video platform for your business. Instead of residing on YouTube, you can embed your videos right into your Intranet pages, or offer your videos on “sharing pages” that seamlessly fit into your Intranet or website for a clean, distraction-free experience.

You can even add a video experience into your emails, which has been shown to increase email open rates and engagement (especially if you include the word “Video” in the subject line of your email). You don’t have to worry about whether it will be too big to send or if it will appear properly for everyone. All you need to do is add a thumbnail image, or “splash screen” of your video (along with the play button to indicate it’s a video) into the body of your email. Then when your audience clicks on it, it can open up on an Intranet page of your choosing, or a clean and distraction-free “sharing page” like this one that we created for one of our event videos.

You can even create a Video Hub, which acts like a video library on your website or Intranet (which can be locked down for employees only). A Video Hub is can be organized into topics, creator, video styles, or anything else you like, and it’s searchable so if you or your employees are trying to find past content, it’s all there right when you need it. Probably sounds a lot more tempting than what you’re using now, right? Here’s an example of what a section of our own Video Hubs looks like, or explore the full hub for yourself.

The bonus? Employees can access them on any device, and from any location. So if some employees are based in regions where access to YouTube is banned or limited, they can still get all the vital information they need.

Video gives you unmatched data that you can act on for better results.

What are you doing now to determine if your employees are really engaging with your messages? Are you checking whether your emails are being opened, or how much traffic you’re getting on certain Intranet pages? Those are all well and good, but they’re a starting point. Just because an employee opens your email, how do you know she read it? If someone lands on a certain Intranet page, did the page just sit on their screen while they did something else?

Video on the other hand, gives you what you need to know about your employees and your content. Get aggregate data on each video, like where your audience dropped off. Did they stop watching after 10 seconds? Or did they watch 80% of a 5-minute video? Were there any parts they skipped or rewatched? All this data tells you what kind of content is working and what isn’t, so you know what your employees are interested in, which messages to strengthen, and which ones don’t resonate. This “digital body language” of your viewers gives you a true indication of their engagement – perhaps even truer than asking them, since “body language” doesn’t lie.

You can also find out what individuals are watching, and even see a history of their viewing behavior. Why is this helpful? Well, imagine you created a video or series of videos that every employee needed to watch to the end in order to meet compliance needs. This data will tell you exactly what you need to know.

With true information on how audiences and individuals are responding, you’re better equipped to strengthen your content and employee engagement in the future.

You can get employees engaged in a two-way conversation.

Gone are the days when employees will accept getting messages, goals, and company values relayed to them in a one-way “communication”. Employees want to feel like they’re a part of something, that their work matters, and they are valued and heard. That’s how they become more engaged with a company, work harder, and feel more satisfied and connected.

Video can help you create exactly the experience your employees are searching for, because with video, you can offer a two-way conversation in ways that other mediums don’t allow. What do I mean? If you’re using a video platform, you can add calls-to-action onto your videos to get employees to take an action you want them to take, like visiting a page, watching another video, and more. Or you can include a form in a video to ask your employees their feedback and opinions. (If you like the sounds of that and want to see what else you could do, you might want to check this out.)

These kinds of two-way interactive elements in your videos can help you strengthen your relationships with employees so that your communications feel more like conversations and less like trickled-down mandates. Try it for yourself. You’ll see what it can do you for your company –  you might even notice a 20-25% jump in productivity by employees who now feel more connected.

Video is more efficient—and helps your employees be more efficient.

Imagine if you could share vital company information more quickly than ever, and have it be remembered. Well here’s an interesting fact: 65% of people are visual learners. And another one:

one minute of video is the equivalent of 1.8 million words. Which means your employees can absorb a lot more vital information in one minute through video than they could in any other medium. And they’ll not only enjoy it, they’ll remember it, too.

This is just the beginning of how video can help your company become more efficient. Think about Town Hall meetings and company updates with the executive team. Instead of getting everyone together in another location, setting everything up, and trying to get through all the technical delays or other hiccups of these kinds of events, you could offer key messages in video form, whether it’s live or on-demand where employees could digest them at their leisure.

Or, think of complex material you need to educate your employees on. Communicators know the golden rule of “show, don’t tell”, and video is perfect for that. Suddenly employees can see for themselves how something is supposed to work, instead of having to read and puzzle through tons of text. For example, show them where the fire exits are in case of an emergency, instead of having to create and email maps that some struggle to follow or remember. Show them through a screen-share video how to complete a benefits enrollment form, and suddenly the benefits team, and the employees filling out the forms, will breathe a sigh of relief. And these are just a taste of the ways video can help.

Video can help you create brand awareness and loyalty.

In a previous blog post, I talked about how images that elicit emotional responses cause our brains to release a chemical called oxytocin. This chemical helps us form empathy, leading to emotional connections, and even helps to build trust in a product or brand. What does this mean in terms of video? Well, it’s full of images that elicit emotional responses! When we see people on camera, we imagine that they are conversing with us. We see their body language and non-verbal cues, and we relate to them in ways that words on a page can’t re-create. We start to feel emotionally connected in their story…which helps build awareness, trust, and other positive emotions.

What does all that lead to? When employees feel positive emotions toward their company, they feel more loyal. They’re willing to work harder, think more positively, and connect in ways they wouldn’t otherwise. These engaged, happy employees create better, more innovative work.

Beyond emotional connection, when you offer your videos in a branded sharing page, Video Hub, or in a video player that is branded with your company’s logo and colours, you’re highlighting again and again who these communications are from, and creating a sense of unity for your employees – you’re all working toward the same goals, sharing the same values, and upholding a strong culture together. That’s a pretty powerful message.  

Video can help prove the ROI of communications and comms teams.

Did you know that, according to IABC, 60% of internal communicators are still not measuring internal communication? It’s probably not a big surprise – the effect of communications has always been hard to nail down and measure. There are no sales numbers, no quantities to hit, no closed deals that you can definitively say occurred because of employee communications.

But with video, you have some effective tools to helping you prove the return on investment of your work and your team. With the data that is provided by a video platform, you have clarity on how much employees are engaged, and how that engagement strengthens over time. You can illustrate that you are creating better and better content that resounds with employees, helping your team and other employees achieve greater productivity and efficiency, and strengthening employee loyalty with your brand. Video offers you the opportunity to start qualifying and quantifying things that once seemed impossible to do so, so you can not only prove your worth, but feel your worth.

All of this—and it’s cheaper than you might think.

You don’t need to get tons of fancy cameras and lights and equipment and green screens and a production teams…your videos can be as simple and inexpensive (or as fancy!) as you want or need. You could get one great camera and clean out a meeting room to create your video shoots, or you can even use your own phone! Our own CEO sent out a company-wide video that he shot on his own phone as he was walking down the street, and sent it through email. When we clicked on it, it opened in a sharing page, and we were brought right into the experience. We felt like we were part of of the action, matching stride-for-stride with our CEO, hearing his thoughts and feeling his excitement. While I can’t show you the video (being an internal message, it’s confidential, after all!), it was a pretty powerful experience (much more so than a boring old text-based email would be!)

So go ahead! Don’t just wish for video—ask for it! Your prayers may just be answered, especially considering at least 87% of executives believe video has a great impact on an organization!

Do you use video now at your organization? How has it helped you connect with your employees and strengthen your results?

The post Why Video Is The Answer To Employee Communications Teams’ Prayers appeared first on Vidyard.

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New Vidyard Interactive Player Makes Videos More Engaging

Going beyond email gates and surveys, Vidyard enables dynamic in-video content such as real-time pricing, social media updates and choose-your-own-adventure demos

KITCHENER, Ontario – September 28, 2016 – Vidyard, the video platform for business, today launched its new interactive video player, giving marketers, sales teams and others users powerful tools to improve viewer engagement.

Organizations that aren’t using Vidyard’s new player for their B2B video campaigns are limited to annotating videos with small text boxes in a corner of their video. With Vidyard’s advanced annotations powered by HTML and JavaScript, the possibilities become nearly endless. Users can add real-time pricing to videos so that it’s always up-to-date, integrate other services such as help desk ticketing software into video, overlay lead capture forms and surveys, or insert a “buy now” button directly in the player to convert customers while their full attention is on the product or service.

“Video in and of itself is already more engaging than other media, but when you add interactive features, the experience becomes that much richer,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard. “Like personalization, interactivity pulls the viewer in to the content and makes them part of the story while providing deeper insights into what they want.”

Powerful capabilities with Vidyard’s new interactive player include:

• Choose Your Own Adventure: Guide customers on their own unique viewing journey by allowing them to choose which videos they would like to see next or directing them to additional resources like content assets and webpages.
• Lead Capture: Add a fully customizable form to any part of your video, and the information entered and detailed analytics about the viewer’s engagement will be pushed directly into your Marketing Automation Platform.
• Calls to Action: Turn a regular video into a powerful lead generation tool with call-to-action events. Pop-out CTAs capitalize on the value of an engaged viewer, and Final CTAs for post video actions such as signing up for an event. Setting these up are easy with our WYSIWYG editor.

With its new advanced annotations and interactive video capabilities, Vidyard continues its record of innovation in the video marketing industry. Vidyard is the only video platform provider to offer advanced interactive video, video personalization and audience engagement insights fully integrated with leading marketing automation, CRM and business analytics solutions.  

Check out this example of the new interactivity features:

About Vidyard

Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com

The post New Vidyard Interactive Player Makes Videos More Engaging appeared first on Vidyard.

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A/B Testing vs Multiple Variant Testing: And the Winner Is…?

During the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, Mahe Drysdale rowed 2,000 meters (1.24 miles) in just 6 minutes and 41 seconds.

However, despite his impressive performance, the world record-holder nearly lost the race.

In one of the closest finishes in Olympic history, Drysdale won by mere millimeters.

Have you ever seen anything like this!?

Mahe Drysdale takes single sculls gold… just! https://t.co/Lwvrwbys18 http://pic.twitter.com/5nY1L7cc7q

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 13, 2016

In contrast, Great Britain’s Men’s Eight team rowed the same distance in just 5 minutes and 29 seconds—over 70 seconds faster than Drysdale’s time!

What’s more, the Brits won by more than a half second.

That might not seem like a huge margin, but in the Olympics, a half second is a big deal.

So, why was Britain’s team so much faster than Drysdale?

The answer is simple: they had more oars in the water.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking, This is all well and good, Jake, but what does rowing have to do with online marketing?

Well, it turns out that conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a lot like rowing.

The more oars you have in the water, the faster you’ll make it to your goal and the more likely you are to beat out the competition.

The Secret is Testing Multiple Variants

Over the years, CRO seems to have become synonymous with A/B testing in the minds of many marketers.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. A/B testing is a form of conversion rate optimization. You have a page and you want it to perform better, so you change something and see if it improves your results.

But here’s the thing, A/B testing isn’t the only way to do CRO.

It might not roll off the tongue as nicely as “A/B testing”, but if you’ve got enough traffic, A/B/C/D/etc testing can allow you to produce meaningful results much more quickly.

For example, Optimizely recently studied and reported on the factors that defined the world’s best testing companies.

Guess what the 4 biggest factors were?

1. Testing the things that drive the most revenue
2. Testing every change
3. Testing to solve real problems
4. Testing multiple variants simultaneously

Does #4 surprise you?

Apparently, the most effective CRO doesn’t come from A/B testing—it comes from testing multiple variants.

Essentially, A/B testing is like the Mahe Drysdale of CRO. It works and it can even deliver amazing results.

But, it’s only two oars in the water—there’s no way it can compete with an 8-man team.

To put this in more concrete terms, according to Optimizely, just 14% of A/B tests significantly improve conversion rates. On the other hand, tests with 4 variants improve conversion rates 27% of the time.

So, if you test 4 variants, you are 90% more likely to improve your conversion rate than if you just ran an A/B test. However, 65% of CRO tests are—you guessed it—A/B tests!

Why Testing Multiple Variants Works Better

Basically, there are two reasons why multiple variant testing outperforms A/B testing: 1) it’s faster and 2) it allows you to test more variants under the same testing conditions.

Multiple Variant Testing is Faster

Sure, you can test the same things with a series of A/B tests as you can with a multiple variant test—it just takes a lot longer.

When you run an A/B test, you can really only learn one thing from your test. Your variant will either perform better, the same or worse than your original.

And that’s it, that’s all you can learn.

Now, if you’re smart about your A/B testing strategy, your results can teach you a lot about your audience and make your future tests smarter, but you’re still only learning one thing from each test.

On the other hand, with multiple variant testing, you can try out several ideas at the same time. That means you can simultaneously test multiple hypotheses.

So, instead of just learning that a hero shot with a smiling woman outperforms a shot of a grumpy man, you can also see if a grumpy woman image drives more results than the grumpy man pic or if a happy man outshines them all.

Or, you can try multiple combinations, like a new headline or CTA in combination with either the smiling woman or the grumpy man.

Running all of these tests simultaneously will allow you to optimize your page or site much more quickly than you could with a long series of A/B tests.

Plus, running a test with multiple variants will greatly improve the odds that a single test will deliver at least one positive result, allowing you to start getting more from your website sooner.

Multiple Variant Testing is More Reliable

Another problem with successive A/B tests stems from the fact that the world changes over time.

For example, if you are in eCommerce and run your first A/B test during October and your second test during November, how do you know if your results aren’t being skewed by Black Friday?

Even if your business isn’t seasonal, things like differences in your competitors marketing strategies, political change or a variety of other variables can make it difficult to directly compare the results of A/B tests.

As a result, sometimes it can be hard to know if a particular A/B testing variant succeeded (or failed) because of factors outside of your control or even knowledge. The more tests you run, the murkier your results may become.

However, with a multiple variant test, you are testing all of your variants under the same conditions. That makes it easy to compare apples-to-apples and draw valid, reliable conclusions from your tests.

What Does Testing Multiple Variants Look Like in Real Life?

To show you just how testing multiple variants can improve your CRO results, let me share an experience we recently had with one of our clients.

The client wanted to get site traffic to their “Find Your Local Chapter” page, so we decided to add a “Find Your Local Chapter” link to the client’s footer. That way, the link would be seen by as many people as possible.

Makes sense, right?

So, we put together something that looked like this:

At first, we figured we would just put the link in the footer and run a test to see if the link made a difference.

But then, we started wondering if there was a way to make the link even more noticeable. After all, getting traffic to this page was a big deal to the client, so it made sense to emphasize the link.

With that in mind, we added color to the link:

Now, this idea seemed logical, but at Disruptive, we believe in testing, not gut instinct, so we figured, “Hey, we’ve got enough traffic to test 3 variants, let’s take this even further!”

The problem was, the client’s site was a designer’s dream—modern and seamlessly designed. To be honest, we had a bit of trouble selling them on the idea that creating a page element that interrupted their seamless flow was worth testing.

But, eventually, we convinced them to try the following:

 

It was very different from anything the client had tried on the page before, but we decided to run with the idea and include it in our test.

A few weeks and 110,000 visitors later, we had our winner:

Not surprisingly, adding the “Find Your Local Chapter” link increased page visits by over 60% for every variant—that’s an awesome win, right?

But here’s the thing. With our original, strict A/B test, we would only have discovered that adding the link increased traffic by 63%.

On the other hand, by including a couple of extra variants, we were able with the same test to discover that—contrary to the client’s belief—the more our link “interrupted” the site experience, the more traffic it drove to the chapter page.

Sure, we might have reached the same conclusion with several more tests, but we achieved these results much more quickly and reliably than we would have with an A/B testing series.

Should You Test Multiple Variants?

When it comes to testing multiple variants, there’s only one real reason not to use it: your boat is too small.

Think about it: if the entire British Eight Man team had tried to cram onto Mahe Drysdale’s boat, they never would have made any forward progress.

The same idea applies to CRO.

As great as multiple variant testing is, if you don’t have enough traffic, a test could take months or years to complete.

In fact, in true multivariate testing—where you test to see how a large number of subtle changes interact to generate your conversion rate—you want at least 100,000 unique visitors per month (for more information on multivariate testing, check out this great article).

On the other hand, you need far less traffic to simultaneously test multiple page variants.

To see how long a multiple variant test will take on your site, try out this VWO has a free sample size and test duration calculator from VWO. If the time frame makes sense for your business, go for it!

Conclusion

Whether it’s Olympic rowing or CRO, the more oars you have in the water, the better your results will be.

Although it may be tempting to limit CRO to A/B testing, testing multiple variants will allow you to improve your conversion rates more quickly and reliably than you could with a series of A/B tests.

You’ve heard my two cents, now it’s your turn.

Have you tried multiple variant testing? What was your experience like? Did any of the data in this article surprise you?

About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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