Meghan Keaney Anderson, Director of Product Marketing at HubSpot, presented Personalize the Customer Experience at the Boston Social Media Breakfast this month. This month’s topic was Marketing to the Full Customer Experience and featured 4 great speakers.
Most companies want to be customer centric. Where the rubber meets the road is what you do as a company to make that happen. For Hubspot this starts with personalize comunication with their customers. Meghan presented 3 different examples of what they are doing at Hubspot.
Personalize the Customer Experience
Figure out where their frustrations are
The first step to adapting to your customers is to figure out where their frustrations are. People usually come to your website for a specific reason. One most sites there is something that gets in the way or causes friction along the way. The first step is to removing some of these frustrations is to figure out where those points are on your site.
When Hubspot looked at their site they found friction points all over the place. Meghan showed a landing page on their site. It has a long form with 18 questions for the customer to fill out before you can get the information they came there for. This information is important to Hubspot for leads. No one really wants to fill out a long form, especially if they are already a customer. Hubspot changed their site to be able to recognize when a current customer comes to the site (using cookies) and they no longer see the form – they can get the information easily. This may not just be happening on the site but could be happening when they just call in. This can be resolved by just asking if they are a current customer.
Adapt to Past Behavior
You can do more than just recognizing them as a customer, it’s also important to recognize how your relationship grows over time. If you know their past behavior you can make predictions about what they might be interested in. Using a CRM is a great way to store information about your customers past behavior. Meghan showed an example of delivering calls to action on their site. Based on what information the customer is looking at they deliver a pop up call to action. Depending on whether they are a first timer on the site, repeat visitor or a current customer they vary what that call to action is. For example if someone has already downloaded a specific ebook the call to action isn’t to download it again. It should be something that is the next logical step.
Spot Churn Risks and Upgrade Opportunities
Identifying customers that are having problems can lead to opportunities. At Hubspot they pay attention to actions that indicate there is a problem. There are two things that really set off fires there. If a customer looks a information on the site that indicates they may leave or cancel a notice is sent off so someone can find out what’s going on with them. Also if a customer hasn’t visited the site for a long period of time a notice is sent off so someone can figure out why.
The Golden Rule
Be Useful, Not Clever. When using data to help personalize the customer experience you need to be useful, not clever. Think about what helps the customer. Removing road blocks and frustrations is a great way to start.
Personalize the Customer Experience
