Keeping your content train on the tracks

In addition to technology and customer data collection, running a successful Customer Experience web platform depends heavily on content. But we notice that when clients build a Customer Experience platform, content is usually the last thing they think about, and they do not see it as a priority. This leads to content integration ‘as-is’ when the new platform goes live. There are three pain points that cause this. We will discuss all three here, and of course give a glimpse into the right solutions.

Pain Point 1: the missing plan

The first pain point we’d like to discuss is the lack of a content strategy. One of the things we hear is that there is a belief that there is enough content already available. But during our content workshop sessions, we expose the gap between the different content levels. There are three levels of content you need if you want to offer your customer a relevant experience during their customer journey:

• Hero content: this is content that, in a short period of time, attracts leads that you can convert to sales or a service.

• Hub content: this is all about storytelling. Mainly this content helps build a relationship with your customer. It shows them you understand what they are going through, and you’re the brand to help them.

• Hygiene content: this is content that just needs to be there. Customers expect this content when they visit your platform or search for your brand.

And preferably, Hero and Hub content is available to speak to different audience segments and is usable on different channels.

Pain Point 2: the missing process

The second pain point is that there is no process in place to create, manage and process content throughout the organisation and across all its different stakeholders. An ideal process includes steps to:

• Create, by working with an agile approach. With our clients, we see that different stakeholders are responsible for content within the customer journey. And these different stakeholders also use different copywriting agencies to (co)-write the content for the platform or campaign. This leads to inconsistency in wording and way of writing.

• Manage, by selecting a person to be responsible for overseeing the bigger picture on a daily basis. For example, someone who checks and determines when campaign pages can be changed and turned into landing pages. Or recognises that is there already a strong landing page about a proposition that can be personalised and used during the campaign period. In this way, no pages are created that offer no value afterwards. Multiple pages with similar content do not build value, because all the traffic is cannibalised by the new, short-term campaign page.

• Process, which involves deciding who needs to be involved when creating content. But even more importantly, who has the mandate to change or push the content when there is a crisis. Using the agile approach and decentralising responsibilities among different professionals, there always should be someone who can overrule the daily process.

Pain Point 3: the missing insight

The third pain point we see is that search (sub)keywords are not taken in account when creating content. What we often see happen is that content is created around the keywords for selling products or services, or for the campaign being run. This a great approach for your Hygiene and Hero levels of content. The objective of these levels of content is to share the product/service USPs, and the great offers you have on them.

But the objective of Hub content is different. Here, the objective should be to build a relationship with your customers and solve their needs or problems. The difference lies in the fact that these customers are mostly still in the awareness phase. They hear, read or see something, or just have a need or problem they want to solve. We see that in this phase, customers search with broader keywords and terms related to their quest for answers and offerings. Here, (sub)keywords need to more developed, more extensive, and more focussed on issues rather than offers.

Relief for your pain (points)

At OnModus, we have a painkiller to solve your content challenges. We call it ‘building the content train’, and it consists of four steps:

• Content gap analysis

• Keyword research

• Content map building

• Content roadmap setup (backlog)

And the great thing is, you can start this process in parallel with the technology process, so your content team is ready to integrate content when the technological building blocks are ready.

Hop on the train

Simply building a Customer Experience platform is not enough to offer a great customer experience and attract leads. Content is your platform’s key driver. But without the right amount and context, you are not going to achieve your objectives. Your Customer Experience software will just become a high-end web content management system.

To achieve your objectives of offering relevant communication to your customers and leads, and to build relevant customer datasets that offer even better next best actions, you need to hop on to the content train.

Sitecore “Most Valuable Professional” Award 2019

OnModus is proud to share that two of our digital strategy coaches are rewarded as Sitecore MVP (Most Valuable Professional) 2019 of the 37 worldwide in the category of Digital Strategist for 2019.

Sitecore MVPs’ are awarded for the quality, quantity, and level of impact of the contributions they make by sharing their product expertise and mastery of the Sitecore platform with Sitecore customers and partners.

Max Goijarts says coaching teams and share with them how to make use of online and omni-channel advantages but also how to overcome the common pitfalls and hurdles" is what gets us energized. Software has emerged as the critical differentiator in every industry, from financial services to fashion, as “technology first” start-ups disrupt global markets. To stay alive, some of the biggest global enterprises we know are making a radical change in how they build and deliver software.

Renate van der Vaart adds "A well-known and common pain point we see is the struggle to make full use of the all the experience capabilities. That's why we provide a practical implementation strategy, and lead by example.

“The Sitecore community is renown as a place where members can easily collaborate and benefit from the vision and technical knowledge of one another,” said Pieter Brinkman, Senior Director of Technical Marketing at Sitecore. “Within this community, MVPs set the standard of excellence for product expertise, enthusiasm, and willingness to donate time and energy to help customers and partners realize the full power of the Sitecore platform. Their passion is instrumental to the ongoing success of the Sitecore ecosystem.”

Now it its 13th year, Sitecore’s MVP program recognizes exceptional professionals from the Sitecore community who actively share their expertise of Sitecore products to advance the future of customer experience and drive organizational change. A distinguished group of 315 Sitecore experts from the more than 12,000 certified developers and more than 20,000 active community participants.

The Sitecore Experience Platform™ combines web content management, omnichannel digital delivery, insights into customer activity and engagement, and strategic digital marketing tools into a single, unified platform. Sitecore Experience Commerce™ natively integrates content and commerce so brands can fully personalize and individualize the end-to-end shopping experience before, during, and after the transaction. Both platforms capture in real time every minute interaction—and intention—that customers and prospects have with a brand across digital and offline channels. The result is that Sitecore customers are able to use the platform to engage with prospects and customers in a highly personalized manner, earning long-term customer loyalty.

More information can be found about the MVP Program on the Sitecore MVP site: http://mvp.sitecore.com.

We want to thank our customers and partners for the opportunities to build great cases together and look forward to new successes!

Learning the rules of the Web Content Experience game

So, you want to run a successful Web Experience Platform. You’ll of course need the right technology. But perhaps more importantly, you need excellent content. Including the most attractive storytelling. Storytelling that is compatible with the lifestyle, ambitions, thoughts and feelings of your users. But, as a marketer, how can you manage your content flow across all your different stakeholders and channels?

The core painpoint?
Many marketers face the same, common challenge. In the past few years, the rules of the marketing game have changed. We’ve transitioned from a ‘brand’ and ‘campaign’ content game to a customer experience content game. Customer-centric content plays the leading role.

The biggest difference is that today’s content needs to be more relevant. It needs to offer an experience, so you can start engaging with your customers. To do so, you need an ongoing flow of content creation. You need to – regularly and frequently – provide new content to remain top of mind with your customer and entice them to come back. It’s like you are Anna Wintour and running your monthly edition of Vogue. But instead of a high-fashion publication, you’re putting out a new edition of your brand.

Where it goes wrong

To address this new playing field, our clients – and many other companies – often start creating massive amounts of content, mostly from a traditional (product) marketing and brand perspective. They put it out there on their own channels and start to measure it. In most cases, this leads to disappointing results. And those results don’t exactly encourage upper management to increase the content creation budget.

At OnModus, we believe that this pain point can be resolved. You really can build a successful content business case. But first, you need to change your content mind-set. Start practicing data-driven content creation from an outside in perspective. Remember that it’s not about the amount of content you create, but the context in which you create it.

Follow the map

‘At OnModus, UX Design is taken into account from the very start, so changing clients’ mind-set and aiming for data-driven content is part of the programme,’ says Lars Wisselink, User Experience (UX) Lead at OnModus. ‘We work with clients to create an experience map based on the customer journey, and then use the map to set up the content creation process.’

There are five steps to effective content creation:
• Collect
• Create
• Approve
• Publish
• Distribute

It’s hard to say how long it takes to complete each process step. A lot depends on the organisation, the level of product sensitivity, the type of communication, and more. The most important factor is buy-in. My advice is to set up this process with all relevant stakeholder(s) at the same time. Ensure clarity on the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder. Develop an agile way of working and align processes to ensure smooth collaboration.

Easier said than done, perhaps. Traditional organisational silos may prevail. You may experience difficulties in your multidisciplinary team, such as negotiating the gap between content teams and digital teams.

But think about this: why do we have separate content specialist teams and a digital specialist teams in the first place? Why aren’t we creating one, single team of Customer Experience Experts?  When each team member brings his or her individual skills to a table of equals with a common goal, everyone’s input is more valued, and more valuable.

Learn and adjust

Want to keep the good work flowing? Set up a KPI dashboard to measure your content’s performance. You’ll see where your content is performing best, and in which channel. This fuels and adapts the next ‘Collect’ and ‘Create’ phases for content. It is the best way to ensure you don't create stuff that is not seen or used. Most importantly, it allows you to offer your customers an experience. And that improves your ROI on content creation.

Effective measurement is also a crucial step towards building a business case, and proving your efforts are driving brand and business objectives. And that’s the best way to secure and approve new budget!

Modern consumers control the game. So, a Context Mindset matters. It’s the key to achieving your business objectives. The customer is King, but your content is the Empire. The rules of content creation have changed. But if you can change with them and put the right agile process in place, you can win the content creation game.

Curious to discover if you have what it takes to create an agile content creation flow? Want know more about Context Marketing? Don't hesitate to contact us.

Think differently about Content

Yes, another blog about content, Sorry, but it is a topic near and dear to my heart. I strongly believe that with the right content strategy, you can build a life-long, loyal relationship with your customer. In my previous blog, Recommendations in Context Marketing, one of the recommendations is to “Think differently about content”. I have received a couple of questions about this. Readers ask if I could explain a bit more what I mean. That’s the reason for this blog post. Today, I’ll cover the questions about content formats and the use of content.

Content formats

Let's start with a little bit of context. I was working with a brand on a new brand proposition. We wanted to directly use this opportunity to optimise their customer journey.  The best option was to create experience content that solved the customers’pain point and offered the product as the problem-solver. This way, we would anticipate customers’ needs, and the needs of the business.

We created three experience roadmaps. Each one was based on the proposition that would lead the customer through his/her experience journey to a path to purchase. We decided to start small, so we briefed the content agency on one roadmap. We asked if we could have a kitchen review within a couple of weeks, because we wanted to see if they understood the briefing and if we would receive the content in the way we were expecting it. At the kitchen review, the agency showed the first ideas and we were really enthusiastic about them. But they indeed did what we expected: they presented the content in a straight format. Just like a TV game show that has the same format every week, only with different questions and players. Or like a print campaign that has the same set-up every month, only with different copy. So we explained that we liked the ideas, but we didn't like the output. It felt like they had just transplanted traditional marketing tools into a digital jacket. ‘Let’s do video, because that is digital’. This is not what an experience content journey should look like. 

A true experience content journey is based on a touch point on the experience content roadmap. A diverse collection of content should be created around that touch point: a leading article on your website and summary of it in your newsletter, a short teaser video on your own Facebook channel, the header image of the article on your Instagram or Pinterest account, an extended version of the video on your video channel, a banner of the header image on a partner website, etc. By serving the same content in different ways, the collected data will show you how your content is performing. It will tell you which channels your audiences are tuned into, and which are working best. Every touch point should have its own set of varied content and, over time, data analytics will tell you who consumes what, and when. It will tell you your customer’s story. This brings me conveniently to the next point: content usage.

Use of content

Formats and usage are very closely intertwined. For me, content shouldn't be produced in a vaccuum, but rather in cohesion with all other content. It should be all interlinked. I always use here the example of running a magazine. Take, for example, Elle or Vogue: you’ll find the big, leading content articles in the printed magazine itself.  But on all the other channels, you find excerpts of that main article. These excerpts work as traffic drivers to buy the magazine. A picture on Instagram or a Facebook post about the new summer colours will trigger readers to buy the magazine and read about the whole summer collection.

The same is applicable for other brands. The touch points on your customer journey are the ‘storyboards’ of your brand – the roadmap for your communication. Your web platform is your ‘magazine’, and contains all the information your customers need to know. Excerpts from these touch point ‘stories’ need to be deployed to your owned, paid, and earned channels.  Yes, I said it. Your earned channels, too. See if you can build an eco-partnership with similar information platforms or retail platforms. You can do some inspirational storytelling about your brand and develop an expert role with the audiences, where your product or service is the problem-solver. This way, earned channels get the traffic and the sell, and you the loyalty benefits that come with your role as an expert.

In my day-to-day job, I see a lot brands struggling with their content strategy. That’s because they need to think differently about creating content than they did before. The days when they could just send a message out there are over. And their investments in content creation don't meet their expectations. Because they’re still working with out-dated content models. Recognise yourself in these points? Or, do you have a totally different view on this topic? I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Recommendations in Context Marketing

The first half of 2018 has come to an end. But we still have 6 new exciting digital marketing months ahead of us! I look forward to creating and executing new and exciting ideas with you. Developing the next level of Context Marketing will provide your customers with even more context for your brand. 

Recently, I was asked for my thoughts about content marketing in 2018. My expectations are that a lot of brands have new propositions and ideas on how to engage with their customers, so they are going to expand their customer journey with more and new content based on their 2018 message. But just creating more content is not the answer. What should be the answer is to create content that gives your customer context around your storytelling. Simply, you need to show ‘what’s in it for them’. Why should they spend time on your branded content? What does it bring to their lives? My recommendations are:

Start making full use of your platform

Without a solid home for your content with easy access to all available articles, tools and services, it is not easy to distribute the right content, to the right person, at the right time, at the right place and right channel. To achieve this, start testing which content is relevant to your customers and why. In addition, if your customers come to your platform from another channel, make their visit personal. Max joins the conversation and says, ‘as an international business partner, I hear this pain point a lot. Clients tell us that they don't make full use of their platform.’ So, together with all the stakeholders, we:

Take the guesswork out of Context Marketing

Create a data plan and start testing the data you have. Listen and learn from this data, because this is the true story of your customers. And if your digital team or IT department doesn't have the skills, invest in or hire a Business Intelligence specialist. Alex agrees. He saw companies spending costly marketing resources on building Excel sheets to get the data right. ‘But this way, they don't have the time to really focus on what they are good at. Namely, storytelling.’ Read also his blog, Solving pain points through analytics.

Think differently about your content

Think differently in the broadest sense of the term, from creation, use, channels and formats. Every piece of content needs to feel unique to your customers. It must trigger them to read or use more and repeatedly convince them that your brand is one they need in their lives because you understand them. Lars adds that it is important that you really think in advance about how you could solve a pain point. ‘The "design thinking" method is great to achieve this,’ he says. This approach, with every stakeholder around the table, gives you insights into both business needs and customer needs. And that can bring new ways to optimise content journeys. Also, an optimised UX design will create an easy path from context to purchase.

Here at OnModus, we call these three recommendations enablement, and this is what we believe in. We support and coach brands in their digital marketing efforts. We give them the right tools and teach them the right skills, which we learned ‘by doing’ our roles with different brands in different branches. We focus on a fully optimised customer journey and platform from start to finish. Want to learn more about us or talk to us? Don't hesitate to contact us at flow@onmodus.com.

Looking forward to hearing from you and learn your thoughts on these points.

Getting personal with Sitecore

So, here you are. You’re ready to start experimenting with personalisation. Your organisation has invested in top-of-the-line marketing automation technology and is focusing all its efforts on becoming customer-centric and data-driven. Part of this (business) transformation involves delivering personalised, relevant experiences – whether on your website, in an email, or with (social) media campaigns.

Personalisation is a marketing tactic that delivers relevant and in-context experiences that increase engagement, build loyalty, and drive business goals on each of your customer-facing channels. Personalisation’s positive impact and Return on Investment (ROI) has been proven in many cases. Businesses that personalise web experiences see an average 19% increase in sales(1), and overall marketing spend is reduced by 30% using personalisation and testing(2).

Looking at these figures, it is surprising to see how many businesses are still not using personalisation and A/B testing. In fact, some studies show that 62% of marketers are not incorporating personalisation into their e-commerce sales cycle(3). This continues to surprise us, as does the fact that the biggest hurdle to kicking off personalisation is often due to doubts about ROI. 

OnModus can offer hands-on, easy-to-implement personalisation strategies, derived from our various (proven) Accelerate programs(4). These programs are focussed on quick wins that help marketers build motivation and momentum for change. We then iterate on small successes and implement using the various in-house agile test teams we have trained and coached throughout the years.

Defining a hypothesis, such as ‘treating second-time visitors on our homepage differently will increase engagement value’, is a good way to create quick wins. It is important to set the goal and conversion metrics before each test, to be able to identify changes in the test data. After each test cycle, we present findings to upper management in sprint cycles. 

Quick Win 1: Personalise your landing pages to match your Adwords Ads

If you are running Adwords campaigns, this quick win could be very beneficial. The idea is to add parts of the search query to your landing pages, and by doing so make the page more relevant. The search query your customers use reveals a lot of information about their intent and can be added to the landing page, for example in the title head. With Sitecore and personalisation, when a visitor comes from a specific SEA campaign, you have the ability to target the visitor with this specific context.

For example, let’s say Strava sets up an Adwords campaign that targets two sets of keywords: ‘Cycling Training App’ and ‘Cycling Practice App’. Using the Sitecore Campaign Manager, we are able to adjust the title on the landing page to “Challenge yourself and download our Cycling Training App”. This resonates well with visitors from the ‘Cycling Training’ ads, but less with the visitors from the ‘Cycling Practice’ ads. From our hands-on experience, this can reduce the bounce rate for ad campaigns by more than 30%, and have a significant impact on your ad spend.

Quick Win 2: Treat first-time visitors differently than second-time visitors

New visitors are a great opportunity for your brand, and by treating them with extra care, you can get ahead of your competition. The same principles apply online as those you would use to introduce yourself to someone for the first time offline. By using personalisation to give first-time visitors a warm welcome, you show your appreciation. And also the level of detail you operate on as a brand. 

Welcoming messages can vary from calls-to-action to chat functionality that invites new customers to contact you. The content could present the depth and breadth of different services / products you offer. Within Sitecore, personalisation rules can be used to set up different messaging for different visitor levels on a component level.

Be aware that not all first-time visitors are new to your brand and domain. It’s possible that the visitor is using his or her desktop after first having browsed via his or her mobile. Or browsing from home instead of from work. Therefore, make the welcome message subtle, and not too obvious.

Quick Win 3: Base personalisation efforts on incoming traffic source

The referral source your visitor is coming from could be a potential foundation for personalisation opportunities. The difference between someone who visits from your company page on LinkedIn and someone who comes in via an organic search query from Google tells a lot about their intention and interest. 

Maybe you are dealing with different client relationships, such as customers and suppliers. A supplier almost always uses certain referrals, for example LinkedIn traffic. When personalising specific content based on the referral source, the context of the visit is improved, and engagement is likely to increase.

By setting up personalisation test around incoming traffic, you are able to test different hypotheses and will get a better understanding of what type of content your visitors are interested in.

What to do next

According to Customer Experience Expert Paul Fennemore, applying personalisation over your different channels, consistently, is what to strive next for. “An omnichannel consistent experience, which include your platform, mobile app, email and social channels will be the next step for context marketers to dig into”

Paul continues “For this to operate well and effective, one integrated view of your customer is necessary, with data insights from existing systems such as CRM, ERP and logistics systems. Sitecore 9 and xConnect are great examples to start this conversation off”.

Accelerate

These examples are part of our Sitecore Accelerate program – a service specifically designed to make full use of the SXP capabilities. Our MVPs will train your marketers to become personalisation experts, fully capable of running an in-house agile test team.

Interested in accelerating your Sitecore platform?  Don’t hesitate to contact us. 

1. https://econsultancy.com/reports/the-realities-of-online-personalisation-report
2. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/marketings-holy-grail-digital-personalization-at-scale
3. https://www.episerver.com/globalassets/assets-website-structure/New-Folder9/research--reports/episerver---7-digital-commerce-trends-in-retail-2017.pdf
4. onmodus.com/accelerate

Introducing Our First Intern

OnModus is pleased to announce the addition of some fresh creative input to our team: Yannick Hoogervorst! In his final year as an Interaction Design student, Yannick will join us to do a very specific task. But before we get into that, please allow Yannick to introduce himself:

‘So, my name is Yannick Hoogervorst and I am 22 years old. I’ve been studying the ins and outs of UX design at the HAN University of Applied Sciences for four years now. I also picked up an interest in graphic design, and I travelled to the United States to do my graphic design minor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. During my studies in Mankato, I also worked as a designer at an on-campus organisation called B507. This is where I gained a lot of design experience working on promotional materials and internal projects. Working abroad really broadened my view of the digital industry and got me excited for the possibilities in my future.’

For OnModus, it’s a big plus if you have international experience. It’s one of the reasons we chose Yannick.  But why did Yannick choose OnModus from among all the internship opportunities?

‘OnModus felt like the kind of company that could balance me and keep me motivated. During my first interview, I had the chance to meet the entire team. That quickly gave me a good overview of how the company connected and communicated with each other. I thought to myself: What a creative and motivated bunch of individuals! It’s the kind of company in which my thoughts and opinions would matter most in terms of improving professionally and constantly growing.’

As a last-year student, Yannick will have to perform a final graduation assignment with OnModus. This assignment will act as a validation of Yannick’s skills in the professional world. So we asked him how he could most effectively use those skills at a company like OnModus. Here’s what he said:

‘First of all, I would like to support OnModus in any way I can. That includes offering my UX knowledge to further deepen the customer experience the company offers and help OnModus with any design work that is needed. The primary focus of my internship will be a combination of these two, as I will be focusing on OnModus’ digital platforms and exploring how I could improve these to create more value for our clients. This involves setting up the customer journey of the current OnModus website, sketching and designing alternative options, eventually prototyping and testing these to get to the perfect solution. All in all, a lot of possibilities and excitement in my future.’ 

Please join us in welcoming Yannick to the team. And be sure to stop by and say hello the next time you’re in the OnModus office!            

Hit the ground running - Introducing Sitecore Service Packages

OnModus mediates, navigates and accelerates the interaction between customers, partners and vendors, and takes the guesswork out of developing great (Brand) Customer Experience and companywide Digital Transformation.

Implementing a technical solution is one important aspect. However, we often experience that the focus is not on the business side. Making sure your team is skilled in the creation of relevant content is often forgotten or started too late in the process. The same goes for a thorough and integral comprehension of the customer journey. How do you use Sitecore xDB in the definition of segments and profiles? Are you using the right analytics data to turn it into meaningful action so your customers benefit from interacting with your brand? What are really the conversion makers and when are we being relevant to which customer? The question is: are you making full use of the Sitecore Experience Platform?

As part of our new Sitecore consulting services, OnModus now offers three service packages which enable your teams to use Sitecore functionalities to the fullest.

And we are proud to mention that we have two MVP’s in 2018 again, Max Goijarts in Germany & Renate van der Vaart as Digital Strategist in the Netherlands. We want to thank our customers and partners for the opportunities to build great cases together and look forward to new successes! Sitecore’s MVP program recognizes individual technology, strategy, and commerce advocates who share their Sitecore passion and expertise to offer positive customer experiences that drive business results. The Sitecore MVP Award recognizes the most active Sitecore experts from around the world who participate in online and offline communities to share their knowledge with other Sitecore partners and customers. 

This way we have all the knowledge in-house to teach you just how to become smarter in enabling marketing and technology to create a valuable context for your customers with Sitecore. In just six weeks we will show you how to accelerate your digital initiatives. Let's engage and start the conversation! Contact us at flow@onmodus.com.

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Solving painpoints through analytics

The interaction between business departments and IT has often been a source of tension within company ranks. Lack of transparency, a different view of the customer and a general cultural conflict are just a few symptoms of the clash between these organisational silos. That is why, here at OnModus, addressing this tension has become our priority as we guide our customers along the path of digital transformation.

In a recent project with one of our clients in the clothing & fashion industry, discovering the pain points between the business department and IT was critical to aligning the organisation and making it a digital enterprise. Alexandru Sabau, Digital Project Manager at OnModus, joins us in the conversation.

‘In the fashion industry, product information and product data are still very inconsistent among clothing suppliers. Formats and level of detail can vary greatly. Suppliers send product data files not only in different formats, such as EDI or Excel, but also with a lot of missing information like group codes, season codes and colour codes. The business department spends valuable resources to streamline this various data from hundreds of suppliers and prepare it for their internal or external product information systems. To ensure brand consistency and relevant product data communication for customers and end users, it's important to have the right product data coming in. Thus, the focus on this process already makes resources scarce’.

And when the majority of resources are being spent on aligning supplier data, the product data enrichment process is slowed even more when marketing and IT are highly interdependent, since communication between the two departments is often slow and difficult. ‘Whenever a supplier updates their product data taxonomy, the business department communicates the changes to IT, which in turn has to optimise the product information systems for a perfect import. This ultimately leads to a longer time to market, lower product availability and frustration on both sides’, Alexandru adds.

Since data analytics and business intelligence are two of our core competencies, OnModus offered to enable our customer's business department through technology. The goal was to prototype a solution that empowers marketers to gain full control of their processes. 'We aimed to create a solution that eliminates time lost communicating product data changes between departments. Through Alteryx, a workflow-based, self-service analytics tool, we showcased a prototype for the business department that automatically processed product data into the right format for import into the product information system, eliminating the need to coordinate changes with IT', explains Alexandru. The prototype solution can result in reduced time to market for products, increased product availability, increased brand consistency and, ultimately, improved customer experience.

Transferring such a capability in-house can have a crucial empowering effect within individual departments. ‘We realised that we are offering an opportunity for our clients to focus on activities that add value for the end customer, and to learn new and relevant skills. Both business and IT departments have the chance to reduce countless hours of manual data input and inefficient communication due to out-dated processes'. Furthermore, enabling our clients through a software solution might have additional hidden benefits. ‘The solution turned out to be a breath of fresh air for employees. They can now minimise their relationship with spreadsheets and start focusing on team efforts that drive positive customer experience. Software can play a part in forming a customer-centric culture', Alexandru concludes.

As an Alteryx partner, OnModus offers the opportunity for clients to become self-empowered in their analytical and data processes. Want to find out more how OnModus can help your organisation's departments to become data independent?Contact us at flow@onmodus.com.

Context marketing boosts leading FMCG brand conversions by 25%

Previously released in Internet Retailing on October 16, 2017 by Paul Skeldon.

Understanding the intent of your customer leads to more relevancy, an increase in engagement – with brands such as Danone and Dr. Oetker seeing an uplift of 25% in e-commerce conversion and brand engagement. 

So finds OnModus, a customer experience strategy firm operating in the UK, Germany and Benelux, which works with Top100 FMCG brands to not only help with engagement but to understand the context of what shoppers are doing.

A shifting model

“Our clients are top 100 FMCG’s, popular brands which traditionally put a lot of effort in creating big marketing moments in which their brands can shine,” explains Lars Wisselink, Design Strategist at OnModus. “Clearly, this model is shifting. Due to the change of behaviour of customers, we move to a more customer centric approach in marketing activities”

Wisselink continues: “What is important to be effective in your communication as a brand is to tap into the intent of your customers, being in the moment. The use of implicit and explicit customer data is crucial to understand this context, we help discover these insights for marketers to become more effective. Software such as Sitecore helps delivering this experience”.

Test and learn

Brands such as Danone and Dr. Oetker increasingly want to establish a data-first strategy to enable context marketing. By helping them iterating on small successes, they get results in early and can test and learn.

“We work in multidisciplinary teams to come up with creative hypotheses which we test in an agile fashion,” says Wisselink. “Our context marketing teams work in sprints of two weeks, in which they create and test hypotheses. At the end of each sprint, learnings and ROI improvements are presented to business stakeholders.”

According to Wisselink, a typical example is retargeting people who, for example, have just been looking at a new pair of shoes. “For us, this does not mean you should retarget that customer over and over with the same pair of shoes,” he says.

Instead, understand the moment, the intent of the customer. What blog posts have they been reading, which referral url they came from, how does their purchase history look like. By using this context, you will get a clear picture of where this customer is in their journey. This data can be used to adjust the (retargeting) message and change strategy.

How do you start?

But how to start? “Probably your current data structure contains already many clues about typical behavioural patterns, for different persona segments within your customer base,” explains Wisselink. “These segments can tell you something about the intent, the job your customer is trying to get done. Use these insights to target a specific segment. Iterate and learn from small successes. At OnModus we provide a practical implementation strategy towards context marketing, and lead by example. We know the advantages and also how to overcome the common pitfalls and hurdles. We don’t provide you with documentation and implementation plans, instead we are in it for the results.”

Sitecore Symposium 2017 Las Vegas, Day 3

Today was already the last day of the Sitecore symposium, and we are sorry to see it end. But we did have some truly inspirational moments and shared thoughts with peers in the past three days.

Like every morning, today opened with a keynote. It was Jay Baer on stage today, a Customer & Marketing Speaker who has worked with many brands and companies to set up their experience marketing strategy and become a loved brand that customers talk about.

“I found his keynote to be very spot on what building experiences mean,” Max and Jeroen say. 

Renate had already done a bit of homework. “I received a tip about Jay a couple of months ago, so I already follow him on Twitter, and sometimes listen to his podcasts about ‘Youtility’. I also read his book about this topic,” she says. “Youtility is about the fact that you should not do digital marketing from a hype perspective, because everybody is doing it, but rather because it will help you to achieve your strategic objectives. This is 100% in line with what we do at Onmodus: taking the guesswork out by creating customer experiences based on their needs. Jay’s story triggers me to think and challenge myself about customer experience, and helps me think in different ways about creating an experience for loved brands and insights about loyalty.”

Then it was time for the last rounds of breakout sessions. For Renate, this meant a master class on generating business value using Context Marketing. This master class was split into two parts: the first part was all about accelerating Context Marketing initiatives. The second part was all about how Sitecore customers have brought this into practice. “It's always cool to see how context marketing works and see possibilities to set-up Context Marketing, because this gives me new insights and ideas and also let me think about how I can bring this into practice with our clients and their customers,” Renate explains. “After this session, I joined the closing keynote from Ryan Donovan, SVP of Product Management at Sitecore. He gave a peek into Sitecore’s future roadmap regarding digital marketing, and how the technology supports this.” Although it's still work in progress, I become very enthusiastic about plans they have to upgrade even further the possibilities of doing Context Marketing and listening to your customer all within one system.

Looking back on the 2.5-day symposium and all the inspirational keynotes, breakout sessions, talks with peers and Sitecore’s roadmap, we found a lot of great information to take back to the Netherlands.

Jeroen starts us off with his impressions: “For me, it was great to join and get to learn the Sitecore community and learn all about Sitecore commerce. I am looking forward to learn and get to know the even more peers from the Sitecore community”.

As for Renate, the key takeaways she wants to note are “we really need to think differently about content creation, start investing in analysing your data in your team or invest in a business analyst and provide a digital training program on all company levels which lead to understanding and career growth paths".

Hope you enjoyed our input during the symposium days. If you want to learn more about us, please stay tuned. New blogs will follow soon. And if you want to get to know us better, please get in touch. We are looking forward to driving your digital destiny and bringing technology, marketing & sales together to build relevant and personal experiences for your customers.

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