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11 A/B Testing Examples From Real Businesses

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11 A/B Testing Examples From Real Businesses

Whether you’re looking to increase revenue, sign-ups, social shares, or engagement, A/B testing and optimization can help you get there.

But for many marketers out there, the tough part about A/B testing is often finding the right test to drive the biggest impact — especially when you’re just getting started. So, what’s the recipe for high-impact success?

Free Download: A/B Testing Guide and Kit

Truthfully, there is no one-size-fits-all recipe. What works for one business won’t work for another — and finding the right metrics and timing to test can be a tough problem to solve. That’s why you need inspiration from A/B testing examples.

In this post, let’s review how a hypothesis will get you started with your testing, and check out excellent examples from real businesses using A/B testing. While the same tests may not get you the same results, they can help you run creative tests of your own.

A/B Testing Hypothesis Examples

A hypothesis can make or break your experiment, especially when it comes to A/B testing. When creating your hypothesis, you want to make sure that it’s:

  1. Focused on one specific problem you want to solve or understand
  2. Able to be proven or disproven
  3. Focused on making an impact (bringing higher conversion rates, lower bounce rate, etc.)

When creating a hypothesis, following the “If, then” structure can be helpful, where if you changed a specific variable, then a particular result would happen.

Here are some examples of what that would look like in an A/B testing hypothesis:

  • Shortening contact submission forms to only contain required fields would increase the number of sign-ups.
  • Changing the call-to-action text from “Download now” to “Download this free guide” would increase the number of downloads.
  • Reducing the frequency of mobile app notifications from five times per day to two times per day will increase mobile app retention rates.
  • Using featured images that are more contextually related to our blog posts will contribute to a lower bounce rate.
  • Greeting customers by name in emails will increase the total number of clicks.

Let’s go over some real-life examples of A/B testing to prepare you for your own.

A/B Testing Examples

Website A/B Testing Examples

1. HubSpot Academy’s Homepage Hero Image

Most websites have a homepage hero image that inspires users to engage and spend more time on the site. This A/B testing example shows how hero image changes can impact user behavior and conversions.

Problem

Based on previous data, HubSpot Academy found that out of more than 55,000 page views, only .9% of those users were watching the video on the homepage. Of those viewers, almost 50% watched the full video.

Chat transcripts also highlighted the need for clearer messaging for this useful and free resource.

That’s why the HubSpot team decided to test how clear value propositions could improve user engagement and delight.

A/B Test Method

HubSpot used three variants for this test, using HubSpot Academy conversion rate (CVR) as the primary metric. Secondary metrics included CTA clicks and engagement.

Variant A was the control.

A/B testing examples: HubSpot Academy's Homepage Hero

For variant B, the team added more vibrant images and colorful text and shapes. It also included an animated “typing” headline.

A/B testing examples: HubSpot Academy's Homepage Hero

Variant C also added color and movement, as well as animated images on the right-hand side of the page.

A/B testing examples: HubSpot Academy's Homepage Hero

Results

As a result, HubSpot found that variant B outperformed the control by 6%. In contrast, variant C underperformed the control by 1%. From those numbers, HubSpot was able to project that using variant B would lead to about 375 more sign ups each month.

2. FSAstore.com’s Site Navigation

Every marketer will have to focus on conversion at some point. But building a website that converts is tough.

Problem

FSAstore.com is an ecommerce company supplying home goods for Americans with a flexible spending account.

This useful site could help the 35 million+ customers that have an FSA. But the website funnel was overwhelming. It had too many options, especially on category pages. The team felt that customers weren’t making purchases because of that issue.

A/B Test Method

To figure out how to appeal to its customers, this company tested a simplified version of its website. The current site included an information-packed subheader in the site navigation.

To test the hypothesis, this A/B testing example compared the current site to an update without the subheader.

A/B testing examples: FSAstore.com

Results

This update showed a clear boost in conversions and FSAstore.com saw a 53.8% increase in revenue per visitor.

3. Expoze’s Web Page Background

The visuals on your web page are important because they help users decide whether they want to spend more time on your site.

In this A/B testing example, Expoze.io decided to test the background on its homepage.

Problem

The website home page was difficult for some users to read because of low contrast. The team also needed to figure out how to improve page navigation while still representing the brand.

A/B Test Method

First, the team did some research and created several different designs. The goals of the redesign were to improve the visuals and increase attention to specific sections of the home page, like the video thumbnail.

A/B testing examples: Expoze.io

They used AI-generated eye tracking as they designed to find the best designs before A/B testing. Then they ran an A/B heatmap test to see whether the new or current design got the most attention from visitors.

A/B testing examples: Expoze.io heatmaps

Results

The new design showed a big increase in attention, with version B bringing over 40% more attention to the desired sections of the home page.

This design change also brought a 25% increase in CTA clicks. The team believes this is due to the added contrast on the page bringing more attention to the CTA button, which was not changed.

4. Thrive Themes’ Sales Page Optimization

Many landing pages showcase testimonials. That’s valuable content and it can boost conversion.

That’s why Thrive Themes decided to test a new feature on its landing pages — customer testimonials.

Problem

In the control, Thrive Themes had been using a banner that highlighted product features, but not how customers felt about the product.

The team decided to test whether adding testimonials to a sales landing page could improve conversion rates.

A/B Test Method

In this A/B test example, the team ran a 6-week test with the control against an updated landing page with testimonials.

A/B testing examples: Thrive Themes

Results

This change netted a 13% increase in sales. The control page had a 2.2% conversion rate, but the new variant showed a 2.75% conversion rate.

Email A/B Testing Examples

5. HubSpot’s Email Subscriber Experience

Getting users to engage with email isn’t an easy task. That’s why HubSpot decided to A/B test how alignment impacts CTA clicks.

Problem

HubSpot decided to change text alignment in the weekly emails for subscribers to improve the user experience. Ideally, this improved experience would result in a higher click rate.

A/B Test Method

For the control, HubSpot sent centered email text to users.

A/B test examples: HubSpot, centered text alignment

For variant B, HubSpot sent emails with left-justified text.

A/B test examples: HubSpot, left-justified text alignment

Results

HubSpot found that emails with left-aligned text got fewer clicks than the control. And of the total left-justified emails sent, less than 25% got more clicks than the control.

6. Neurogan’s Deal Promotion

Making the most of email promotion is important for any company, especially those in competitive industries.

This example uses the power of current customers for increasing email engagement.

Problem

Neurogan wasn’t always offering the right content to its audience and it was having a hard time competing with a flood of other new brands.

A/B Test Method

An email agency audited this brand’s email marketing, then focused efforts on segmentation. This A/B testing example starts with creating product-specific offers. Then, this team used testing to figure out which deals were best for each audience.

Results

These changes brought higher revenue for promotions and higher click rates. It also led to a new workflow with a 37% average open rate and a click rate of 3.85%.

For more on how to run A/B testing for your campaigns, check out this free A/B testing kit.

Social Media A/B Testing Examples

7. Vestiaire’s TikTok Awareness Campaign

A/B testing examples like the one below can help you think creatively about what to test and when. This is extra helpful if your business is working with influencers and doesn’t want to impact their process while working toward business goals.

Problem

Fashion brand Vestaire wanted help growing the brand on TikTok. It was also hoping to increase awareness with Gen Z audiences for its new direct shopping feature.

A/B Test Method

Vestaire’s influencer marketing agency asked eight influencers to create content with specific CTAs to meet the brand’s goals. Each influencer had extensive creative freedom and created a range of different social media posts.

Then, the agency used A/B testing to choose the best-performing content and promoted this content with paid advertising.

A/B testing examples: Vestaire

Results

This testing example generated over 4,000 installs. It also decreased the cost per install by 50% compared to the brand’s existing presence on Instagram and YouTube.

8. Underoutfit’s Promotion of User-Generated Content on Facebook

Paid advertising is getting more expensive, and clickthrough rates decreased through the end of 2022.

To make the most of social ad spend, marketers are using A/B testing to improve ad performance. This approach helps them test creative content before launching paid ad campaigns, like in the examples below.

Problem

Underoutfit wanted to increase brand awareness on Facebook.

A/B Test Method

To meet this goal, it decided to try adding branded user-generated content. This brand worked with an agency and several creators to create branded content to drive conversion.

Then, Underoutfit ran split testing between product ads and the same ads combined with the new branded content ads. Both groups in the split test contained key marketing messages and clear CTA copy.

The brand and agency also worked with Meta Creative Shop to make sure the videos met best practice standards.

A/B testing examples: Underoutfit

Results

The test showed impressive results for the branded content variant, including a 47% higher clickthrough rate and 28% higher return on ad spend.

9. Databricks’ Ad Performance on LinkedIn

Pivoting to a new strategy quickly can be difficult for organizations. This A/B testing example shows how you can use split testing to figure out the best new approach to a problem.

Problem

Databricks, a cloud software tool, needed to raise awareness for an event that was shifting from in-person to online.

A/B Test Method

To connect with a large group of new people in a personalized way, the team decided to create a LinkedIn Message Ads campaign. To make sure the messages were effective, it used A/B testing to tweak the subject line and message copy.

Results

A/B testing examples: Databricks

The third variant of the copy featured a hyperlink in the first sentence of the invitation. Compared to the other two variants, this version got nearly twice as many clicks and conversions.

Mobile A/B Testing Example

7. HubSpot’s Mobile Calls-to-Action

On this blog, you’ll notice anchor text in the introduction, a graphic CTA at the bottom, and a slide-in CTA when you scroll through the post. Once you click on one of these offers, you’ll land on a content offer page.

While many users access these offers from a desktop or laptop computer, many others plan to download these offers to mobile devices.

Problem

But on mobile, users weren’t finding the CTA buttons as quickly as they could on a computer. That’s why HubSpot tested mobile design changes to improve the user experience.

Previous A/B tests revealed that HubSpot’s mobile audience was 27% less likely to click through to download an offer. Also, less than 75% of mobile users were scrolling down far enough to see the CTA button.

A/B Test Method

So, HubSpot decided to test different versions of the offer page CTA, using conversion rate (CVR) as the primary metric. For secondary metrics, the team measured CTA clicks for each CTA, as well as engagement.

HubSpot used four variants for this test.

For variant A, the control, the traditional placement of CTAs remained unchanged.

For variant B, the team redesigned the hero image and added a sticky CTA bar.

A/B testing examples: HubSpot mobile, A & B

For variant C, the redesigned hero was the only change.

For variant D, the team redesigned the hero image and repositioned the slider.

A/B testing examples: HubSpot mobile, C & D

Results

All variants outperformed the control for the primary metric, CVR. Variant C saw a 10% increase, variant B saw a 9% increase, and variant D saw an 8% increase.

From those numbers, HubSpot was able to project that using variant C on mobile would lead to about 1,400 more content leads and almost 5,700 more form submissions each month.

11. Hospitality.net’s Mobile Booking

Businesses need to keep up with quick shifts in mobile devices to create a consistently strong customer experience.

A/B testing examples like the one below can help your business streamline this process.

Problem

Hospitality.net offered both simplified and dynamic mobile booking experiences. The simplified experience showed a limited number of available dates and the design is for smaller screens. The dynamic experience is for the larger mobile device screens. It shows a wider range of dates and prices.

But the brand wasn’t sure which mobile optimization strategy would be better for conversion.

A/B Test Method

This brand believed that customers would prefer the dynamic experience and that it would get more conversions. But it chose to test these ideas with a simple A/B test. Over 34 days, it sent half of the mobile visitors to the simplified mobile experience, and half to the dynamic experience, with over 100,000 visitors total.

A/B testing examples: Hospitality.net

Results

This A/B testing example showed a 33% improvement in conversion. It also helped confirm the brand’s educated guesses about mobile booking preferences.

A/B Testing Takeaways for Marketers

A lot of different factors can go into A/B testing, depending on your business needs. But there are a few key things to keep in mind:

  • Every A/B test should start with a hypothesis focused on one specific problem that you can test.
  • Make sure you’re testing a control variable (your original version) and a treatment variable (a new version that you think will perform better).
  • You can test various things, like landing pages, CTAs, emails, or mobile app designs.
  • The best way to understand if your results mean something is to figure out the statistical significance of your test.
  • There are a variety of goals to focus on for A/B testing (increased site traffic, lower bounce rates, etc.), but you should be able to test, support, prove, and disprove your hypothesis.
  • When testing, make sure you’re splitting your sample groups equally and randomly, so your data is viable and not due to chance.
  • Take action based on the results you observe.

Start Your Next A/B Test Today

You can see amazing results from the A/B testing examples above. These businesses were able to take action on goals because they started testing. If you want to get great results, you’ve got to get started, too.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Ultimate A/B Testing Kit

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The marketing lifecycle: An overview

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The marketing lifecycle: An overview

Remember when digital marketing was simple? Create content, throw it over the wall, hope for the best.

Note that we said “simple,” not effective.

To be effective is more complicated, and this keeps accelerating. There are so many options, so many channels, and so many audiences, that effective digital marketing requires a term to which people often react strongly—

Process.

Very few people inherently like the idea of “process.” It brings forth visions of rigidity and inertia.

But there simply has to be a framework in which to produce and publish effective marketing assets. Without this, you have nothing but chaos from which productive work gets done accidentally, at best.

How did it get this way for the enterprise? How did things become so interconnected?

  • Marketing isn’t a point in time, it’s an activity stream. It’s a line of dominoes you need to knock over, roughly in order. Lots of organizations do well at some, but fail on others, and thus break the chain of what could be an effective process.
  • Marketing activities overlap. It’d be great if we could do one thing at a time, but the marketing pipeline is never empty. Campaigns target different audiences at the same time, and new campaigns are being prepared as existing campaigns are closing.
  • Marketing involves a lot of actors at vastly different levels. There’s your content team, of course, reviewers, external agencies and contractors, designers, developers, and—of course—stakeholders and executives. Each group has different needs for collaboration, input, and reporting.

Some of the best business advice boils down to this: “Always understand the big picture.” You might be asked to do one specific thing in a process, but make sure you understand the context of that specific thing—where does it fit in the larger framework? Where does it get input from? How are its outputs used?

In this article, we’re going to zoom out for an overhead view of how Optimizely One helps you juggle the complete marketing lifecycle, from start to finish, without letting anything drop.

1. Intake 

Ideas are born everywhere—maybe with you, maybe with your staff, maybe with someone who has no connection with marketing at all, and maybe from an external source, like an ad agency or PR firm. Leading organizations have found a way to widen the top end of their pipeline—the start of their content marketing funnel—and take in more ideas from more sources.

Good ideas combine. Someone has one half of an idea, and someone else has the other half. The goal of effective collaboration is to get those two pieces together. One plus one can sometimes equal three, and more ideas mean better ideas overall. Creativity is about getting more puzzle pieces on the table so you can figure out which ones fit your strategy.

How do you manage the flow of ideas? How do you make sure good ideas don’t get dropped, but rather become great content? The only way to publish great content is to get ideas into the top end of the pipe. 

 

Optimizely One can streamline and accelerate your content intake using templated intake forms mapped to intelligent routing rules and shared queues. Everyone in your organization can know where content is developed and how to contribute to ideas, content, and campaigns currently in-process. Your content team can easily manage and collaborate on requests, meaning content development can become focused, rather than spread out across the organization. 

2. Plan

Campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum. They share the stage with other campaigns—both in terms of audience attention and employee workload. Leading organizations ensure that their campaigns are coordinated, for maximum audience effect and efficiency of workload.

Pick a time scale and plan it from overhead. What campaigns will you execute during this period? In what order? How do they overlap? Then, break each campaign down—what tasks are required to complete and launch? Who owns them? In what stage of completion are they in? What resources are required to complete them? 

Good marketing campaigns aren’t run in isolation. They’re a closely aligned part of an evolving body of work, carefully planned and executed.

 

Optimizely One provides comprehensive editorial calendaring and scheduling. Every marketing activity can have an easily accessible strategic brief and dedicated workspaces in which to collaborate. Your content team and your stakeholders can know, at a glance, what marketing activities are in-process, when they’re scheduled to launch, who is assigned to what, and what’s remaining on the calendar.  

3. Create 

Good content takes fingers on keyboards, but that’s not all. 

Content creators need frameworks in which to generate effective content. They need the tools to share, collaborate, structure, stage, and approve their work. Good content comes in part from tooling designed to empower content creators. 

Your content team needs a home base—the digital equivalent of an artist’s studio. They need a platform which is authoritative for all their marketing assets; a place that everyone on the team knows is going to have the latest schedules, the latest drafts, the official assets, and every task on the road to publication. 

Content creation isn’t magic—it doesn’t just appear out of the ether. It comes from intentional teams working in structured frameworks. 

 

Optimizely One gives your editors the tools they need for the content creation process, AI-enabled editing environments for fingers-on-keyboards, all the way through intelligent workflows for collaboration and approvals. Authors can write, designers can upload and organize, project managers can combine and coordinate, stakeholders can review, and external teams can collaborate. All within a framework centered around moving your campaigns forward. 

4. Store 

Leading organizations look at content beyond its immediate utility. Everything your content teams do becomes an incremental part of an evolving body of work. Content doesn’t appear and disappear; rather, it continually enlarges and refines a body of work that represents your organization over time. 

Good creative teams remix and transform old ideas into new ones. They can locate content assets quickly and easily to evolve them into new campaigns quickly. They don’t reinvent the wheel every time, because they lean on a deep reservoir of prior art and existing creative components. 

Digital asset and content management should store content in a structured, atomic format, allowing your organization to store, retrieve, organize, and re-use marketing assets quickly and easily. 

 

Optimizely One gives your content team a place to store their content assets, from text and rich media. Content can be archived and organized, either manually, or by using AI to automatically extract tags. Content can be stored as pure data, free from presentation, which makes it easy to re-use. Your content team will always know where to find work in progress, media to support emerging campaigns, or assets from past campaigns. Brand portals make it easy to share assets with external organizations.

5. Globalize 

Business happens all over the world in every language. To effectively compete around the world, your content needs to be globalized. 

Globalization of content is a holistic practice that affects every part of the content lifecycle. Words need to be translated, of course, but you also need to consider cultural globalization—images and symbols that might change—as well as globalization for numbers, currency, and time zones. Going even deeper, you might have to make design changes to accommodate things like differing word lengths and the flow of text. 

Beyond simply changing content, your work process is affected. When does translation happen? Who is authorized to order it? Who can perform it? How do you bring external translation companies into your internal processes, and how does this affect the flow of content through your organization?  

 

Optimizely One helps you manage the entire globalization process, whether it’s done in-house or automatically via one of our translation partners. Your customers can be served content in their language and culture, and you can carefully control the alternate, “fallback” experience for languages not yet available, or when you’re not translating all of your content.  

6. Layout 

Some experiences need to be visually composed from a palette of content and design components. Designers and marketers want to see exactly what their content looks like before they publish. 

In some cases, this is easy—everyone should be able to see what a web page looks like before it goes live. But what about your mobile app? What about display advertising? A social media update? 

And what happens when you’re modifying content based on behavior and demographics? If you want to see how your web page will look for someone from California who has visited your site before and already downloaded your whitepaper on their iPhone…can you? 

Content no longer leaves your organization on a single channel. Composition and preview is always contextual—there is no single, default experience. Leading organizations want full control over their visual presentation and they know that they need to see their content through the eyes of their customers.  

 

Optimizely One provides the tools to visually compose experiences across multiple channels and can preview that experience when viewed through the personalization lens of whatever demographic and behavioral data you can dream up. And this works regardless of channel: web, email, display advertising—everything can be previewed in real-time. 

7. Deliver 

Content can’t do any good unless it can reach your customers. You need to publish your content to them, wherever they are, which means having the flexibility to push content into multiple channels, in multiple formats. 

A consumable piece of media is an “artifact.” Your content is the idea and message that make up that artifact. Leading organizations develop their content separate from any concept of an artifact, then transform it into different formats to fit the channel that will spread their message most effectively. 

Sure, make a web page—but also push that content to your mobile app, and into your social networks. Broadcast a text message, and an email. While you’re at it, push the information into the display panel in the elevators. Let’s be bold and broadcast it on the TV screens that play while your customers fill up with gas. 

The key is delivery flexibility. The world of content delivery has changed remarkably in just the last few years. It will no-doubt change more in the future. No platform can anticipate what’s coming, so you just need the flexibility to be ready to adapt to what happens. 

 

Optimizely One provides complete delivery flexibility. Our systems store your content separate from presentation, and allow multiple ways to access it, from traditional websites to headless APIs to connect your content to mobile apps or other decoupled experiences. Your content can be combined with internally-stored content or third-party content to provide a seamless “content reservoir” to draw on from all of your channels. 

8. Personalize 

Throughout this lifecycle, we’ve moved from content, to artifacts, and now on to “experiences.” 

One person consuming an artifact—reading a web page, listening to a podcast, watching a video—is an experience. Just like one piece of content can generate more than one artifact, one artifact should enable thousands of experiences. 

Technology has advanced to the point where all of those experiences can be managed. Instead of every customer getting the same experience, it can be personalized to that specific customer in that specific moment. 

You can do this using simple demographic or technographic data—perhaps you cut down the information and make your content more task-oriented when you detect someone is on a mobile device. However, the real power comes when you begin tracking behavior, consolidating information about your customers, and giving them specific content based on what you’ve observed. 

Leading organizations have a single location to track customer behavior and data. For every experience, they know exactly what this customer has done, how they’ve interacted with the organization, and they can predict what they’ll do next. Content and artifacts will morph themselves to fit each individual experience. 

 

Optimizely One connects both customer behavior and demographics along with the tools to activate that data to affect your customers’ experiences. Our platform allows you to track customer behavior and match that with customer demographics—this includes behavior tracking for customers you can’t even identify yet. Based on that behavior and stored data, editors can modify experiences in real-time, changing content and design to match to what each individual customer is most likely to respond. Or let the machine do the work, with personalized content and product recommendations. 

9. Experiment 

No matter how much you know, customers will always surprise you. The right answer to persuading your customer to take an action might be something you’re not even thinking of. Or, you might have an idea, but you’re not confident enough to bank on it. And let’s face it—sometimes, you just love two different ideas. 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could publish more than one thing? 

You absolutely can. And you absolutely should.

Leading organizations let go of the idea that an experience is bound to one version of an artifact. Don’t just write one title for that blog post—write three. Publish them all and show them randomly. Let your customers tell you—by their next action—which one was the right one to use. 

Experimentation allows you to try new things without the inertia of re-considering and re-drafting all your content. Ideas can go from your mind to pixels on the screen quickly and easily, and you can see what works and what doesn’t. Try a new title, or next text on a button. Does it give you better results? If so, great, keep it. If not, throw it away and try something else.

Refine, refine, refine. The idea that you publish content in one form and just hope it’s the right one is a set of handcuffs that can be tough to shake. But the results can be impressive.

 

Optimizely One allows you to quickly create and publish multiple variations of content and content elements to any channel. You can separate your content into elements and try different combinations to see which one drives your customers to move forward in their journey, then automatically route more traffic through winning combinations. You can manage feature rollouts and soft-launches, enabling specific functionality for specific audiences in any channel. 

10. Analyze 

The key to a learning and evolving content team is a transparent and unflinching look into what happens to your content after it’s published.

Analytics need to be considered in the context of the entire content domain. What content performs well but has low traffic? What content is consumed often but never moves customers down their buying journey? Customer behavior needs to be tracked carefully, then used to segment customers into audiences, based on both your content team’s observations and insights provided by AI. 

 

Optimizely One offers complete behavior tracking and content analysis, showing you what content works, what content doesn’t, and what your customers are doing during every step of their relationship with your entire digital estate. 

Juggle the entire lifecycle 

“Publishing myopia” prevents most organizations from truly benefiting from the power of their content and marketing technology. Too many ideas are undercut by an obsession with the publish button. We rush content out the door and just throw it over the wall and hope it lands. 

Within that mode of thinking, great ideas get trapped under the surface. Great content is delivered to only one channel in one language. Great experiences never see the light of day because content exists in only one form. And every customer sees the same thing, no matter how their own experience might benefit from something else. 

Remember: the marketing lifecycle is a series of stages

Each stage builds on the last and allows content to grow from a random idea your team takes in from the field and turns it into a spectacular multi-channel experience which rearranges and modifies itself to fit each customer. 

Juggling all of the steps in the marketing lifecycle can be done, but it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees and get too myopic about individual steps in this process. Leading organizations step back, consider the entire cycle from start to finish, and make sure their ideas, their products, and their messages are enhanced and strengthened in every step. 

 

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Comparing Credibility of Custom Chatbots & Live Chat

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Building Customer Trust: Comparing Credibility of Custom Chatbots & Live Chat

Addressing customer issues quickly is not merely a strategy to distinguish your brand; it’s an imperative for survival in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace.

Customer frustration can lead to customer churn. That’s precisely why organizations employ various support methods to ensure clients receive timely and adequate assistance whenever they require it.

Nevertheless, selecting the most suitable support channel isn’t always straightforward. Support teams often grapple with the choice between live chat and chatbots.

The automation landscape has transformed how businesses engage with customers, elevating chatbots as a widely embraced support solution. As more companies embrace technology to enhance their customer service, the debate over the credibility of chatbots versus live chat support has gained prominence.

However, customizable chatbot continue to offer a broader scope for personalization and creating their own chatbots.

In this article, we will delve into the world of customer support, exploring the advantages and disadvantages of both chatbots and live chat and how they can influence customer trust. By the end, you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of which option may be the best fit for your business.

The Rise of Chatbots

Chatbots have become increasingly prevalent in customer support due to their ability to provide instant responses and cost-effective solutions. These automated systems use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to engage with customers in real-time, making them a valuable resource for businesses looking to streamline their customer service operations.

Advantages of Chatbots

24/7 Availability

One of the most significant advantages of custom chatbots is their round-the-clock availability. They can respond to customer inquiries at any time, ensuring that customers receive support even outside regular business hours.

Consistency

Custom Chatbots provide consistent responses to frequently asked questions, eliminating the risk of human error or inconsistency in service quality.

Cost-Efficiency

Implementing chatbots can reduce operational costs by automating routine inquiries and allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues.

Scalability

Chatbots can handle multiple customer interactions simultaneously, making them highly scalable as your business grows.

Disadvantages of Chatbots

Limited Understanding

Chatbots may struggle to understand complex or nuanced inquiries, leading to frustration for customers seeking detailed information or support.

Lack of Empathy

Chatbots lack the emotional intelligence and empathy that human agents can provide, making them less suitable for handling sensitive or emotionally charged issues.

Initial Setup Costs

Developing and implementing chatbot technology can be costly, especially for small businesses.

The Role of Live Chat Support

Live chat support, on the other hand, involves real human agents who engage with customers in real-time through text-based conversations. While it may not offer the same level of automation as custom chatbots, live chat support excels in areas where human interaction and empathy are crucial.

Advantages of Live Chat

Human Touch

Live chat support provides a personal touch that chatbots cannot replicate. Human agents can empathize with customers, building a stronger emotional connection.

Complex Issues

For inquiries that require a nuanced understanding or involve complex problem-solving, human agents are better equipped to provide in-depth assistance.

Trust Building

Customers often trust human agents more readily, especially when dealing with sensitive matters or making important decisions.

Adaptability

Human agents can adapt to various customer personalities and communication styles, ensuring a positive experience for diverse customers.

Disadvantages of Live Chat

Limited Availability

Live chat support operates within specified business hours, which may not align with all customer needs, potentially leading to frustration.

Response Time

The speed of response in live chat support can vary depending on agent availability and workload, leading to potential delays in customer assistance.

Costly

Maintaining a live chat support team with trained agents can be expensive, especially for smaller businesses strategically.

Building Customer Trust: The Credibility Factor

When it comes to building customer trust, credibility is paramount. Customers want to feel that they are dealing with a reliable and knowledgeable source. Both customziable chatbots and live chat support can contribute to credibility, but their effectiveness varies in different contexts.

Building Trust with Chatbots

Chatbots can build trust in various ways:

Consistency

Chatbots provide consistent responses, ensuring that customers receive accurate information every time they interact with them.

Quick Responses

Chatbots offer instant responses, which can convey a sense of efficiency and attentiveness.

Data Security

Chatbots can assure customers of their data security through automated privacy policies and compliance statements.

However, custom chatbots may face credibility challenges when dealing with complex issues or highly emotional situations. In such cases, the lack of human empathy and understanding can hinder trust-building efforts.

Building Trust with Live Chat Support

Live chat support, with its human touch, excels at building trust in several ways:

Empathy

Human agents can show empathy by actively listening to customers’ concerns and providing emotional support.

Tailored Solutions

Live chat agents can tailor solutions to individual customer needs, demonstrating a commitment to solving their problems.

Flexibility

Human agents can adapt to changing customer requirements, ensuring a personalized and satisfying experience.

However, live chat support’s limitations, such as availability and potential response times, can sometimes hinder trust-building efforts, especially when customers require immediate assistance.

Finding the Right Balance

The choice between custom chatbots and live chat support is not always binary. Many businesses find success by integrating both options strategically:

Initial Interaction

Use chatbots for initial inquiries, providing quick responses, and gathering essential information. This frees up human agents to handle more complex cases.

Escalation to Live Chat

Implement a seamless escalation process from custom chatbots to live chat support when customer inquiries require a higher level of expertise or personal interaction.

Continuous Improvement

Regularly analyze customer interactions and feedback to refine your custom chatbot’s responses and improve the overall support experience.

Conclusion

In the quest to build customer trust, both chatbots and live chat support have their roles to play. Customizable Chatbots offer efficiency, consistency, and round-the-clock availability, while live chat support provides the human touch, empathy, and adaptability. The key is to strike the right balance, leveraging the strengths of each to create a credible and trustworthy customer support experience. By understanding the unique advantages and disadvantages of both options, businesses can make informed decisions to enhance customer trust and satisfaction in the digital era.

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MARKETING

The Rise in Retail Media Networks

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A shopping cart holding the Amazon logo to represent the rise in retail media network advertising.

As LL Cool J might say, “Don’t call it a comeback. It’s been here for years.”

Paid advertising is alive and growing faster in different forms than any other marketing method.

Magna, a media research firm, and GroupM, a media agency, wrapped the year with their ad industry predictions – expect big growth for digital advertising in 2024, especially with the pending US presidential political season.

But the bigger, more unexpected news comes from the rise in retail media networks – a relative newcomer in the industry.

Watch CMI’s chief strategy advisor Robert Rose explain how these trends could affect marketers or keep reading for his thoughts:

GroupM expects digital advertising revenue in 2023 to conclude with a 5.8% or $889 billion increase – excluding political advertising. Magna believes ad revenue will tick up 5.5% this year and jump 7.2% in 2024. GroupM and Zenith say 2024 will see a more modest 4.8% growth.

Robert says that the feeling of an ad slump and other predictions of advertising’s demise in the modern economy don’t seem to be coming to pass, as paid advertising not only survived 2023 but will thrive in 2024.

What’s a retail media network?

On to the bigger news – the rise of retail media networks. Retail media networks, the smallest segment in these agencies’ and research firms’ evaluation, will be one of the fastest-growing and truly important digital advertising formats in 2024.

GroupM suggests the $119 billion expected to be spent in the networks this year and should grow by a whopping 8.3% in the coming year.  Magna estimates $124 billion in ad revenue from retail media networks this year.

“Think about this for a moment. Retail media is now almost a quarter of the total spent on search advertising outside of China,” Robert points out.

You’re not alone if you aren’t familiar with retail media networks. A familiar vernacular in the B2C world, especially the consumer-packaged goods industry, retail media networks are an advertising segment you should now pay attention to.

Retail media networks are advertising platforms within the retailer’s network. It’s search advertising on retailers’ online stores. So, for example, if you spend money to advertise against product keywords on Amazon, Walmart, or Instacart, you use a retail media network.

But these ad-buying networks also exist on other digital media properties, from mini-sites to videos to content marketing hubs. They also exist on location through interactive kiosks and in-store screens. New formats are rising every day.

Retail media networks make sense. Retailers take advantage of their knowledge of customers, where and why they shop, and present offers and content relevant to their interests. The retailer uses their content as a media company would, knowing their customers trust them to provide valuable information.

Think about these 2 things in 2024

That brings Robert to two things he wants you to consider for 2024 and beyond. The first is a question: Why should you consider retail media networks for your products or services?   

Advertising works because it connects to the idea of a brand. Retail media networks work deep into the buyer’s journey. They use the consumer’s presence in a store (online or brick-and-mortar) to cross-sell merchandise or become the chosen provider.

For example, Robert might advertise his Content Marketing Strategy book on Amazon’s retail network because he knows his customers seek business books. When they search for “content marketing,” his book would appear first.

However, retail media networks also work well because they create a brand halo effect. Robert might buy an ad for his book in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal because he knows their readers view those media outlets as reputable sources of information. He gains some trust by connecting his book to their media properties.

Smart marketing teams will recognize the power of the halo effect and create brand-level experiences on retail media networks. They will do so not because they seek an immediate customer but because they can connect their brand content experience to a trusted media network like Amazon, Nordstrom, eBay, etc.

The second thing Robert wants you to think about relates to the B2B opportunity. More retail media network opportunities for B2B brands are coming.

You can already buy into content syndication networks such as Netline, Business2Community, and others. But given the astronomical growth, for example, of Amazon’s B2B marketplace ($35 billion in 2023), Robert expects a similar trend of retail media networks to emerge on these types of platforms.   

“If I were Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, HubSpot, or any brand with big content platforms, I’d look to monetize them by selling paid sponsorship of content (as advertising or sponsored content) on them,” Robert says.

As you think about creative ways to use your paid advertising spend, consider the retail media networks in 2024.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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