In conversation with Carlo Caunter and Ben van der Laan on`We predict what you need to Publ.sh next`.
It sounds promising when you hear it, and I can tell you that this reality is closer than you might think. During the DoorDrop Media Congress you will learn more about how data is going to influence (online) publications. A journey every company should make if they want to become more relevant to their customers. And that is what your customer expects from you…
This interview will give you a glimpse of what you can expect during the DoorDrop Media Congress. In conversation with Carlo Caunter, CEO of Publ.sh and Ben van der Laan, Country Manager the Netherlands of Optivo.
You’re going to tell us about ‘predictive publishing’ during the DoorDrop Media Congress. What is it and is it difficult for companies to start with predictive publishing?
Carlo; Data is becoming more and more important for companies. Data gives the opportunity to find out how customers behave and why they behave like that. Companies possess multiple data sources like e-mailmarketing, online publications, eCRM, salesdata, etcetera. The only problem is they’re still using those data sources seperately. Data collection is your starting point to improve the customers’ experience.
So why not combine all that data? Find out both how and why people act in a certain way within your publications. Once you’ve collected and analyzed your data, your next step is to combine internal and external relevant real-time data such as eCRM, e-mailmarketing, Google Search, location, weather and so on.
The information that you’ve gathered, mixed with amazing predictive algorithms allows you to predict what your customers would want to read next. So you can start identifying useful predictive insights such as sales opportunities, customer lifetime value, churn and life cycle segmentation.
But how do you think all that data is going to change online publications?
Carlo; It is known that the weather changes have grave impact on how people feel and act. Changing weather means changing expectations and needs. Adjusting your publication to the weather of the day for a specific location and segment provides sales opportunities. But there are many more factors that can influence the way people read your publication.
Identify changing factors that will impact your publication as well. Make sure that your content matches your customers’ expectations so you are becoming more relevant to your customers. And being relevant is on everyone’s agenda.
In what way will e-mail marketing strengthen those publications?
Ben; In email marketing we are already collecting behavioural data in the mail like opens and link clicks and from the website behaviour to tailor each email to the individual recipient. But the next step, combining this data with both clicking behaviour in online publications and even drag in external sources like the weather opens up a whole new ballgame.
So combining the digital publication with email marketing means the clicking behaviour in the publication tells you how to finetune your email and then the behaviour in the email helps you to optimize the publication again. Deliver the right content at the right moment to the right person.
If the coffee machines in your online publication are extensively clicked by person A, but your webshop is telling you he didn’t buy, it might make sense to sent this specific customer a tuned coffee-maker offer he can’t refuse. But everyone else that didn’t look at the coffee machines will not be bothered with it.
So you will be using an e-mail tool for enriching profiles. How will that impact online publications?
Ben; Let’s start with a simple example. You’ve just sent all your customers an e-mail with your latest online publication. One of your customers opened the publication and is now shopping within that publication. She just added some products to her shopping cart and left, without buying any products. You can either do nothing, or you could send her a follow-up e-mail with the products and 10% discount. Creating more sales opportunities based on the reading and clicking behaviour within a publication.
We can look at an example of Steinberg, part of the Yamaha group and selling to musicians and music producers (1,5 million customers). They followed up abandoned carts after 3 days bringing together post-click tracking, web analysis and permission based recipient info and scored 8% conversion to sales. So 1 out of 12 abandoned carts lead to a sale after all.
By enriching profiles you get to know more of your customers each time you interact with them. Sending follow-up e-mails after someone abandoned the shopping cart is just one of the many options. Thanks to the extra information you’ve gathered you can start sending the right e-mail with the right content and call-to-action at the right time to the right person.
One last question. How is the online publication going to make the offline publication more powerful in your opinion?
Carlo; One of Publ.shs’ clients is taking a different route in creating relevant publications. They started with only a digital publication, making that publication really relevant to learn more about their customers. And is using that customer data to create powerful offline publications.
Another client just created an extra publication moment. Every two weeks customers of this company receive a publication in their mailbox, creating a content gap in the week in between. Data has proven that customers are looking for discount offers during this “in-between week”, resulting in an extra moment to generate more sales. As a reaction on this data we launched an extra online publication and sales increased with 20%.
Listen to your data, it gives you the opportunity to create personalized and segmented publications to increase relevancy in both offline as online worlds.
Want to know more? Get a climpse of the nearby future at the DoorDrop Media Congress
Carlo Caunter (CEO of Publ.sh) and Ben van der Laan (Country Manager Optivo, DHL company) will definitely tell you more about relevant online publications combined with powerful e-mailmarketing and predictive publishing opportunities. They will be on stage at 16.10 pm.
