Connect with us

MARKETING

How CDPs transform donor experience for a nonprofit organization

Published

on

How Belk elevated its customer experience with personalization

When Christian humanitarian organization World Vision wanted to improve their donor experience, they knew getting a CDP was key.

“To do this work well, we need to identify prospective donors and engage them in a way that feels personalized and relevant,” said Tamalyn Ramsey, World Vision’s digital technology program director, at The MarTech Conference. “The tasks of modern marketing — such as creating insights from data and targeting what we say and who we say it, to personalizing those experiences of a supporter — are no different for a nonprofit than they are for a for-profit organization.”

Ramsay identified four digital marketing trends that World Vision wanted to take advantage of with their transformation, which included acquiring and implementing a CDP.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). There are many more applications for AI and ML than just a few short years ago, Ramsay found. It’s now affordable and accessible to nonprofits.

“The ease of using them can help us leverage the capabilities to understand our donors much better,” Ramsey said.

Deprecation of third-party cookies. As with the larger marketing community, nonprofits are facing serious disruption in the way they identify prospects on digital channels as third-party cookies are phased out by Google and others.

Search and discovery behaviors. Google is becoming more of an end-to-end destination to find answers to queries instead of pushing search users to other destinations.

“We’ve been comfortable in a world for a very long time in which Google and others have acted as search platform providers, giving people a path to find content on other organizations and other companies websites,” said Ramsey. “But they are transitioning into being the content provider now, allowing people to accomplish all that they’re looking to do without ever leaving the Google page. This reduces traffic to our website and increases our dependency on other publishers.”

Rising demand for digital experiences. Current donors and prospects are expecting more robust digital experiences where they can engage with the nonprofit and see the good that comes from their donations.

Read next: What is a CDP?

How CDPs improve donor experiences

Donor data at World Vision was very fragmented before they began their transformation. They discovered four main areas where a CDP could significantly improve not only the organization’s data, but the digital experience for donors.

Data ingestion. Before the transformation, data was left stranded in emails, in a CRM and even across various touchpoints in the digital experience, such as web pages and other digital assets.

“[With the CDP], we want to be able to bring in all different data sources either through batch-based processing or streaming processes into a central repository,” said Carly French, director, technology strategy for customer experience management company Merkle, who consulted World Vision during their CDP search.

Profile unification. Different layers of identity resolution are then used to stitch together data from different identifiers like email addresses and device IDs, so that World Vision can gain a holistic view of donors who contact them on multiple touchpoints.

Audience management. Then, as unified profiles are built out, World Vision can begin to segment their donors and prospects into targeted audiences.

Activation. Once audiences are grouped into distinct segments, the World Vision team can develop the appropriate messaging and activations that make up the digital experience for their donors.


Get the daily newsletter digital marketers rely on.


4 key areas of customer experience helped by CDPs

As World Vision conducted their CDP search, they identified four key themes that they wrote into requests for proposals (RFPs).

Digital data integration. Prior to their transformation, World Vision’s marketing strengths were in live events and traditional print catalogs. The pandemic, as well as the transformation it inspired, changed that. 

“The World Vision team was really lacking the ability to identify anonymous visitors, especially across the website and being able to connect those experiences back to their offline customer profiles,” said French. 

Journey pathing and analysis. When people become donors on digital channels, they obviously have different paths than if they decided to give to a nonprofit while at a live event. These distinct paths that need to be understood and mapped out.

“How do we move customers from an initial donor, or maybe a one-time donor, into a recurring donor?” asked French. “We have to nurture them through several different touch points and put them into different segmentations across our email and our media channels.”

Enabling personalization. A lot of CDPs aren’t content management systems (CMSs), but there are other CDPs that focus on digital experience (DX). This was the direction that Merkle and World Vision took in their search.

“We really wanted the CDP to be a foundation for building out segments that should be personalized…and trigger out campaigns while being able to leverage first-party data and intent signals to inform new journeys,” said French.

Behavior-based segmentation. “We wanted the CDP to help us move into a more real-time response,” said French. 

The CDP allows a nonprofit to deliver different experiences and messages to its donors based on their behavior, including previous touchpoints on their journey. The overall effect is a more personalized and relevant journey.

This is why World Vision put a new CDP at the center of their transformation. By leveraging data and being more responsive at every touchpoint, the nonprofit could be more relevant and helpful to donors, who in turn might become bigger or more frequent donors.

How World Vision and Merkle approach CDP evaluations from Third Door Media on Vimeo.


About The Author

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country’s first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on “innovation theater” at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

The Importance of Social Media Customer Service

Published

on

The Importance of Social Media Customer Service

In today’s digital age, social media has become a crucial part of every business’s marketing and communication strategy.

With the majority of consumers using social media platforms to engage with brands, it is imperative that businesses provide effective customer service on social media.  Social media customer service not only helps businesses to engage with their customers in real-time but also allows them to build trust, improve brand reputation, and increase customer loyalty.

If you still consider having social media customer service as an additional liability and have no idea about its importance – then you are at the right place. In this article, you’ll get to know about the benefits of social customer service just for your socials that will not only contribute to your brand’s reputation but will also boost its lead generation efforts. So, keep scrolling!

Benefits Of Social Media Customer Service

1. Address Customer Queries Faster

With traditional customer service methods like phone or email, addressing customer queries takes at least 24 hours to 48 hours during working days. But, on social media, you can resolve your customer’s issues comparatively faster – within just a couple of minutes.

By using social media to handle customer inquiries, businesses can provide a quicker turnaround time for responses, ensuring that customers receive the support they need in a timely manner.

Social media provides a platform for businesses to engage with customers in real time. Through live chat and direct messaging, businesses can provide personalized and interactive support to their customers that can help to resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

Imagine, if it had been an email – how much time it would have taken to resolve the issue considering the continuous to and fro processes for each and every response. Besides, it’s quite unlikely for your customers to be active on their emails 24×7.

2. Increase Brand Awareness By Reaching More Customers Across The Globe

Brand awareness isn’t a one-time strategy for your brand – it’s an ongoing process, and providing customer service on social media gives you an edge to boost your branding strategy.

When you address your customer’s queries faster on a public forum like social media, you gain more eyeballs from your potential leads. When they see your response to customer requests, they will understand that you take your customers’ complaints seriously. Such an approach demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction, which can help to increase brand awareness.

3. Get Your Leads Organically Through Positive Word Of Mouth

1680176548 882 The Importance of Social Media Customer Service

Social media provides a platform for businesses to engage with potential leads and nurture relationships actively. By responding to comments and messages in a timely and helpful manner, businesses can show potential customers that they are attentive and committed to providing excellent service. This can help build trust and establish a positive brand reputation, ultimately leading to increased conversions and sales.

4. Give A Boost To Customer Loyalty By Increasing The Rate Of Customer Retention

Social media customer service can give a boost to customer loyalty and retention in two major ways:

By providing timely and effective support on social media, you can address any issues or concerns that your customers may have and resolve them quickly. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and a greater likelihood of customers returning to do business with your brand in the future.

Social customer service provides an opportunity to gather feedback and insights from customers using social media analytics tools. These customer insights can be helpful in improving your products and services and tailoring them to meet your customer needs better. By taking into account customer feedback, you can show that you are committed to improving the customer experience, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and retention.

5. Encourage Social Selling By Addressing Customer Objections Instantly

1680176548 185 The Importance of Social Media Customer Service

Social media offers a real-time platform for businesses to engage with customers, respond to their questions and concerns, and address any objections they may have to a product or service.

When you offer helpful and on-time responses to your customers, it shows how much you, as a brand, care about your customers’ problems. Such an impression encourages brand loyalty among customers and instills a credible brand image that helps increase sales.

Moreover, by addressing objections instantly, you can overcome any reservations that potential customers may have about a product or service. This will generate positive word of mouth because your customers will surely go ahead and share their positive experiences with your brand in their network, which will ultimately boost your social selling scopes.

6. Handle Your Brand’s Crisis Situations Better By Addressing Issues Promptly On Socials

Be it a bad customer experience or a false rumor on social media – such crises are quite major for online brands these days and end up impacting the brand’s image. However, in such a crisis, your brand can use social media to address customer concerns and update your followers promptly. This can help prevent the spread of misinformation, mitigate reputational damage, and maintain customer trust and support during crises.

By addressing your customers’ negative and positive concerns on social media, your brand can remain transparent and show that you’re taking serious steps to resolve the issue. This can help to alleviate customer problems and prevent the situation from escalating.

7. Enjoy Scopes Of Better Social Listening For Your Brand

By monitoring social channels and listening to what your customers say on social media, you can quickly identify customer issues, track sentiment around your brand, and gather valuable feedback on your products and services.

This information can be used to improve your customer experience and make data-driven decisions that drive business growth. With social listening, you can also stay ahead of potential crises, address negative feedback promptly, and maintain a positive brand image on social media.

There are also ample tools like Hootsuite, which can help you perform better social listening without spending hours on social media channels searching for your brand mentions or analyzing your customer conversations. However, if the price is a major concern for you, there are many Hootuiste alternatives that help you enjoy the same features without making a dent in your pocket.

Conclusion

Social media platforms are undoubtedly the best place to advertise a business and with the increasing reliance of consumers on these channels to communicate with brands, businesses cannot afford to ignore the importance of providing effective customer service on social media. By embracing social media as a critical customer support channel, businesses can gain a competitive edge, boost customer satisfaction, and drive growth and revenue in the long run.

Are you leveraging the power of social media to provide exceptional customer support and drive business growth?

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Google Bard vs. the New Bing

Published

on

Google Bard vs. the New Bing

The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

This week I’ve been fortunate enough to get access to both Google Bard and the New Bing, so a day later, I’m here to share my first impressions.

What is the new Bing?

“The new Bing” is the product of Microsoft’s unholy alliance with OpenAI, makers of the now infamous ChatGPT. This development promises to have seismic effects on the search ecosystem, with Microsoft’s CEO saying they’re happy to accept “demonetization” of search in their pursuit of market share, and Google extremely concerned about the threat ChatGPT technology poses as an alternative to their core search business.

Of course, by now we’ve all also seen various viral posts and tweets showing just how dangerous it can be to use chat AI as a search engine, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, the point is that Bing is making moves.

1680151292 874 Google Bard vs the New Bing

When I perform a search on “old bing” now, I can see this box inviting me to try the new one. You’ll notice a key detail here: it’s only available in Microsoft Edge. Yikes. Big Microsoft Energy. Fortunately for you, the reader, I have dusted off everyone’s fourth-favorite browser so you don’t have to.

Performing the same search in the new Bing, I can see identical organic results, but rather different features:

1680151293 620 Google Bard vs the New Bing

The “mustelid masters” box above the organic results is new, and contains AI-generated text with a voice-to-speech capability. It’s a six-part story, with sometimes surprising accompanying imagery:

1680151294 277 Google Bard vs the New Bing

You can see here that a picture of wrestling has been sourced to accompany the text about badgers wrestling. These AI-generated boxes don’t appear for most queries — only clear and uncontroversial informational intents.

The phrase “Mustelid masters” itself seems to be original to this box.

1680151294 554 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Lastly, one of the tabs in the story cites the Wisconsin Badgers, and a page which is entirely unrelated to the content at hand, so perhaps Bing is also citing its sources for disambiguation here?

1680151294 786 Google Bard vs the New Bing

You’ll notice the addition of an “Open Website” button next to the top result on the SERP — perhaps a way of compensating a little for loss of organic click through rate?

The “chat” tab is also present on old Bing, but just shows you a message telling you to go to Microsoft Edge.

unlock conversational search with microsoft edge

The phrase “conversational search” here is interesting, given this was a phrase Google introduced in 2013.

If we do use Microsoft Edge, we see a chatbot interface in this tab, but with some nice additions. Switching over to this from a regular search result pre-loads my previous query from organic search:

bing chat badgers

There’s a bunch of different modes available at the top, and also citations in the search results — both welcome improvements over the likes of ChatGPT.

Now, how about Bard?

What is Google Bard?

1680151296 894 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Well, not very self-confident, for one. But that’s probably a good thing.

1680151296 926 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Bard is also, right now, not anywhere near as integrated with search. In their announcement on February 6th, Google teased Bard in a way that made it look very much like a SERP feature, similar to Bing:

1680151296 754 Google Bard vs the New Bing

However, the version we have to play with now is more of a dedicated chatbot interface.

It was probably already the case that Google was pushed to move far sooner than they hoped with this technology, and of course they have much more to lose from messing with organic search than Bing does. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the slower and more cautious approach.

1680151297 881 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Now, it probably should be noted that chatbots are not really designed for me to just enter a one word keyword like “badgers”, like I might do in organic search. But, like Bing’s chat tab, I get something resembling an informational result. So, let’s compare side by side.

Bard vs. new Bing, side-by-side

1680151298 531 Google Bard vs the New Bing
1680151298 249 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

The most obvious difference, at least to an SEO’s eye, is the presence of citations in the Bing result. Not knowing where source information comes from is one of the biggest challenges for users when dealing with this kind of technology, so that’s a huge differentiator.

when would bard use citations

Bard does claim to include citations. My colleague Mike was able to trigger them, and captured it in this clip. It’s definitely far, far less ubiquitous than on Bing.

That said, I like that the framing of Google’s solution — with multiple draft answers presented and “enter a prompt here” — which makes it clearer I’m dealing with something that is not a source of unassailable truth.

I was also intrigued by the localization of Bing’s result. It mentions the UK in its response, which is where I’m searching from, and shows UK websites in the citations. So I asked them both a follow-up question about my location:

bard are badgers popular here
bing are badgers popular here

Bing repeats itself, but Bard just seems to assume I’m in the US. Unfortunate.

Slightly commercial query

Many SEOs will be more interested in how technology like this might fit into their marketing funnel. Let’s try a classic top-of-funnel query:

1680151302 42 Google Bard vs the New Bing
1680151302 616 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

There isn’t really an objective answer here, but both results are broadly sensible. That said, the Bing answer is both a narrower list and far richer.

Interestingly, neither result seems deterministic.

1680151302 808 Google Bard vs the New Bing
1680151303 638 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

Bing can produce different answers to the same question in different windows, and so can Google.

1680151304 928 Google Bard vs the New Bing
1680151304 183 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

This may be a contentious point when SEOs start optimizing for these answers, and want to measure their results. Of course, regular organic rankings can vary massively between locales and even days of the week, but generally speaking, if you search twice from the same computer (in private browsing windows etc) you’ll get the same results. Not so here.

Conspiracy theories

1680151305 185 Google Bard vs the New Bing
1680151306 45 Google Bard vs the New Bing

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison. 

Neither solution fell for some obvious conspiracy theory bait, which is encouraging to see. I actually don’t mind at all Google’s more cautious “I can’t assist with that” here. I wasn’t able to provoke a similar reaction out of Bing for any query, but I also wasn’t able to provoke it to say anything abhorrent – I’m sure others will, though.

What next for SEOs?

For both platforms there are major questions before SEOs can really engage and consider them an important part of their work.

For Bing, will this have adoption? Most SEOs have not made the habit of optimizing for Bing in recent years, but there is already talk of increased Bing market share.

For Bard, how, if at all, will this be integrated in search? The current platform is clearly marked as an experiment, and is more like ChatGPT than it is like the mock ups Google showed us in February. Or will users be encouraged to use it as its own thing?

For both platforms, there are big questions about how SEOs might go about optimizing to get their clients mentioned, and indeed favorably mentioned in results – there are lots of nefarious possibilities here, and Wikipedia is probably the most obvious. Once mentioned, how does one measure this? When I clicked through to my own site from Bing’s chat tab, it just appeared like any other Bing organic traffic. Rank tracking is an interesting problem too, and you can be sure that Moz and STAT will be posting in future about how we’re handling these features — watch this space!

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

What Is AI Analytics?

Published

on

What Is AI Analytics?

Our 2023 Marketing Trends Report found that data-driven marketers will win in 2023. It makes sense, but data analysis can be challenging and time-consuming for many businesses.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

en_USEnglish