Category Archives: Customer Experience

How to increase lead conversion with Live Chat

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Live Chat is the easiest and fastest way to increase your brand’s conversions. Through real-time conversations, you can generate more leads and convert more clients! Doesn’t it sound great?

At the same time, a Live Chat tool can allow a person to be attended, it also allows him or her to keep navigating the website. Same way, you can even keep working on your daily tasks and talk with the attendant. As a matter of fact, the attendants themselves can perform more than one service simultaneously.

Most companies use the software for customer support services, but it can be so much more than that. It helps a brand to provide customer service and increase conversions. Whether that happens by generating qualified leads or by making a sale.

Overall, Live Chat is a communication tool, so it can cover support, sales, and customer service as a whole. In addition, it can also work for group chats. Besides, the benefits list is quite long.

Let’s talk more about: 

  • the benefits of Live Chat
  • how to increase leads conversions
  • what makes Live Chat so efficient to increase conversions
  • how to use Live Chat to achieve better results

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The benefits of Live Chat

More than increasing conversions, there are many advantages you get by acquiring a Live Chat solution. Here, let’s highlight how you can use all of them to improve your business’s customer experience.

So, what are the Live Chat benefits?

Improve brand value

Much like entering a physical store and wanting to ask many questions to a salesperson, when a client enters your eCommerce, they might need someone to talk to and help them make a decision. And how can you make sure that person doesn’t go away without guaranteeing a purchase?

Use a Live Chat!

If there’s a Live Chat available, the website visitor can simply start a conversation and have all their questions answered right away. Just like it would be in-store. This is quite an effective way to cause a good impression and create a loyal customer basis. Thus, increasing your brand value.

The right place at the right time

Maybe you’ve heard this before if you work with Customer Data and a CDP. Let me explain: this happens because when you use a CDP, you know everything about your consumers, who they are, what they like, how they behave, and so on.

Because of that, you can understand exactly how to approach them and when to do it.

Now, how does that logic work with a Live Chat? By using Customer Data, you can take the first step and start a conversation with clients who abandoned their carts or who are trying to cancel an order. Of course, the chat is also available if the clients themselves want to initiate a conversation.

Either way, problem-solving becomes a lot quicker and easier.

Low costs

When you use a Live Chat, you can save some money with telemarketing, for example. That’s because operators and phone call charges can be high for not-so-good results. More than reducing expenses, you’ll be optimizing your service and team productivity.

After all, 1 Live Chat attendant can perform up to 6 conversations at the same time, while a phone operator can only do one customer at a time.

Improve customer service

Because we’re talking about an online, real-time communication channel that happens between two actual people (not a bot), the brand creates a closer relationship to the customer. Both improving the services and the customer experience.

Even more than that, the personalization a Live Chat brings to each client’s assistance is something that helps guarantee the excellence of an eCommerce service.

Brand humanization

Making a brand more human nowadays is essential. But what does that mean? Basically, it’s about giving your brand more personality. It doesn’t necessarily need to have a face, but it is important to work with a tone of voice and brand values throughout your communication.

For whatever strategy you chose for your business, Live Chat is a way to make the “human-factor” happen. And the explanation is simple: there is a human behind the screen.

The only thing to say about using this software is: make sure your attendants are well-trained and follow the same tone of voice in their chats. Of course, they can add a bit of their own personality to make the chat more dynamic, but they need to stick to the company’s brand persona character.

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Find out customer pain points

There is no better way to learn about your consumers than by talking to them. For that reason, real-time chat is the path to go.

In addition to learning about the customers’ main questions, you can even create opinion polls and set them to happen once a chat is finished (or even before it starts). This is both a way to know them better and to generate some leads, since they will need to leave their email information.

Increase ROI

It seems needless to say that an increase in conversions also increases the return on investment of a company, but, then again, that is not always the case. So, it’s necessary to complete the information here by saying that:

Yes, Live Chat does help increase your business’ ROI.

This tool pays itself easily, which means the investment you make to acquire, install, and use the Live Chat is repaid fast. Hence, increasing the company’s ROI.

Perform cross-selling strategies

Still thinking about the ROI of your brand, Live Chat helps you perform cross-selling strategies. That is, a way to make sales by offering complementary products to the one originally bought by the consumer.

To clarify with an example, let’s say you have a sports store and someone came wanting to buy a tennis racket. When the person adds the racket to their cart, you can initiate a chat with a message such as, “How about getting these tennis balls 30% OFF?” 

You’d be surprised with the effectiveness of this method. Simple like that, you’ll for sure see the results of your sales and revenue increase.

Problem-solving promptness

You know how we said clients and attendants can multitask while using the Live Chat? That means when providing a service to the consumer, attendants can leave the page of the chat to look for information that will answer every question asked.

Sometimes it’s necessary to enter the store system, look for a register, find something in a contract, or something like that. This makes it vital for the attendant to have the freedom to navigate while talking to a client.

Competitive edge

Even though many companies make this chat available on their internet pages, it’s usually directed for customer support. But, as we’ve been talking about here, when you use the tool for other purposes, you give a few steps ahead of your peers.

Even more so when using a Live Group Chat, that allows users to talk among themselves about several subjects.

Cost-benefit

This is not the cheapest software out there, but it’s far from being expensive. Plus, it’s one of the safest purchases you can make for your company since it brings the results you aim for.

While Live Chat increases the productivity of a variety of contributors (customer support, customer service, and sales), customers themselves are more pleased with the service offered. This way, your business will have more loyal customers, the type of consumer that keeps coming back to buy from your brand.

How to increase leads conversions

In order to actually see an increase in leads conversions and how it should happen, you need to do some strategic moves.

We can’t really say a positive outcome will not happen if you simply install the chat and wait for something to happen. However, things will be a lot better-looking if you follow these basic steps:

  • set a welcome message
  • optimize chat for mobile experience
  • perform in-chat polls
  • start conversation with leads that abandoned their carts
  • collect customer data

Besides, you can trigger customers with coupons, discounts, and free items, so the lead wants to know how they can take advantage of those benefits.

What makes Live Chat so efficient to increase conversion?

Now, the main thing we have to say and stands-out about Live Chat is: real-time conversations! The name of the tool itself already gives you the answer to that question, doesn’t it?

Still, what makes the real-time factor so appealing to the audience? Well, times are busy and agitated, so people want to get things out of their way as fast and easily as they possibly can. And that’s what a Live Chat makes possible.

Moreover, the answer in a Live Chat can be as fast as 7 seconds. Because of that, many companies use an automatic message with a warning like, “Our attendant is a bit busy right now, your chat will start in about 2 minutes.” This way, the person gets an instant message and also knows it won’t take long to start the conversation.

If there’s one thing you can be certain of is that Live Chat is far ahead in the customers’ favorite communication channel. Your only job is to make sure answers are fast and problems are indeed resolved.

How to use Live Chat to achieve better results

Since we’ve made it clear that Live Chat does work, what do you need to do next?

First of all, it’s essential to have a service protocol and answer models ready. Through customer data collection, you can find the necessary information and understand what the main pain points are of your customer basis. So, with that in hand, you can formulate a few answers to be used when those questions happen.

Then, your business must have a brand persona. With it, you’ll determine the tone of voice to be used and what kind of language to use. A hint: your persona is defined by your brand’s values.

In order for the communication to be effective, productive, and compatible with the brand persona, your team needs to be trained and qualified. It’s important that everyone knows what to do, how to deal with certain situations, and where to look for the answers they need. 

Nonetheless, they should also be encouraged to use their own personalities. It’s not supposed to be a copy and paste conversation, people need to feel like there’s a real person behind the screen, and not a robot. The whole point of using a Live Chat is to make communication more human, right?

Whether by using emojis, slangs, or even laughter, if the moment is appropriate, the human characteristic must appear.

Last but not least, Live Chat should also be used with proactiveness. You don’t need to wait for the customer to take the first step, you can start the conversation yourself. Whether that is to welcome a visitor or to use the cross-selling strategy we’ve talked about earlier. Just don’t let the chat sit there unused.

Here at Arena we’ve already helped innumerous brands to achieve better results in their eCommerces. How about you join them?
You can start with a FREE TRIAL of our Live Chat solution and all it takes is creating a free account.

GDPR: How using a CDP solves cookies problems

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was created to give internet users more control over their personal information. Is your company working according to the law?

While you’re probably aware of the existence of this regulation, you may still not know all you need to about it. For example, did you know this law has existed since 1995? Yeah, and only in 2012 has it started being reviewed.

That happened because of the huge amount of data being generated nowadays. As a matter of fact, the foresight for the year 2020 was that 35 trillion gigabytes were going to be created. It makes sense that a project for data protection would start.

Approved in 2016, the GDPR is a project made in the European Union. However, it affects each and every country that has a connection with EU countries. That means anyone who buys or sells products or services with a country that is a part of the region needs to follow the data protection rules.

In order to make that job easier, many brands are appealing to the Customer Data Platform. This is a solution that works with Customer Data without breaking the law. To thoroughly understand how the CDP can help here, how the GDPR works, and more, keep reading this post.

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What is the GDPR?

With the growth of data usage came the need for some kind of regulation for brands to use information without becoming invasive to users online. Because of that, GDPR came into force.

As you can probably imagine, the main reason behind it is to protect the user and their privacy. Mainly because, with the amount of technologies nowadays, it’s so easy to gather data and use them to personalize ads and content. 

However, that only works if the user allows you to do it. If you send personalized offers for someone who has never even been to your website, it will feel like a privacy invasion.

With GDPR, the user or client has a guarantee of control over data collected. This means that the company needs to ask for permission to gather and store information about them. But, even more than that, the brand needs to make clear what kind of information is being collected, what it will be used for, how long it will be kept in storage, and who it will be shared with.

What about customers’ rights? To sum up what GDPR says about the subject, the client must have:

  • access to collected data
  • control to correct wrong data
  • possibility of data exclusion
  • access to review and deny automated processes using their data
  • visibility of data transfer to thirds

It does sound like a lot to keep track of, but it comes with a bigger reward: a trustful relationship between brand and customer.

What does that mean? Instead of looking like a privacy-invasor brand, it only communicated with the client according to what they alone decided to share with the company. Therefore, building their success through a highly tailored and excellent customer experience.

How do GDPR and CDP work together?

In order for the company to work according to GDPR rules, it needs strict control over the data they collect. They need to know where the data came from, where it is stored, how it is being used, who it is being shared with, and so on. Every single detail needs to be known.

So, this is where CDP comes into the picture:

The Customer Data Platform, CDP, is a system that does this thorough job with customer data. It collects, processes, and stores data that is relevant, useful, and clean.

Overall, the CDP is built to provide the company flexibility. In other words, even though it’s mainly used for marketing purposes, it can allow other software to have access to its information. 

Thus, the Customer Data platform does exactly what companies need, now that GDPR is out there. Since they need to know everything about the data, CDP is there for it.

What are some specific requirements of GDPR that the CDP is helping brands with? Here’s a few of them:

  • identify where data comes from
  • connect with other data sources
  • gather all customer data into a singular profile
  • correct data
  • document customer authorizations
  • manage and store data usage
  • privacy by design

Moreover, the Customer Data Platform is pivotal for first-party data collection. Something essential seeing that third-party data is becoming less popular by the day — which happens due to the lack of reliability in this type of information, that also breaks (most of the time) GDPR laws of data protection.

The use of first-party data is the goal from now on. With this, you can ask for permission of the user in the direct relationship of the brand website visitor.

In short, to work according to GDPR, companies have the option of not collecting data (kind of unfeasible in this day and age), collect less data than they used to, or use systems that work through those rules, like the CDP.

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What is there to know about the CDP?

As previously mentioned, the Customer Data Platform is the best alternative for brands that want to work with Customer Data while sticking to the GDPR.

It is a system developed to assist marketing teams, but it has grown into much more than that. That is, helping several sectors inside a company, like sales, customer support, and customer attendance.

For that reason, it has also become an essential tool to stand out from the competition while offering the best customer experience.

Through clear and reliable data collection, processing, and storage, a brand can custom content, offers, and ads according to both individual profiles and segmentation groups. Which, by the way, the CDP itself creates.

Additionally, all types of data are read by the software. Though it collects and gives preference for first-party data, it can also work with second and third-party data. What it does is select and separate what data is actually valuable for the company, putting it in storage, and what’s not. 

Here’s a detail to remember: it does this selection considering the regulation (GDPR).

Is there anything else you need to know about the CDP?

Of course there is. The CDP is a huge program that does a lot more than help you with GDPR. Inside its system, there is a client history. Thus, more than an individual profile per customer, it’s also possible to understand how each of them behave online — what kind of purchase they make, which products they’re interested in, etc.

What we really want to say here is that the Customer Data Platform meets your GDPR needs. Plus, it keeps you worry-free in relation to unreliable or illegal data usage.

So, even though we still would have a lot more to talk about with the CDP, let’s just highlight this: with this software, you only use information to personalize content provided by the client, him or herself!

And what does that lead to? A double benefit for the company: improve CX and brand credibility.

How to get a CDP?

You probably have no more questions left regarding the need of a CDP for accomplishing GDPR regulation. But you might still be wondering how to acquire a CDP solution.

The first step is simple: do your research.

Once you know what is in the market, you can easily pick a platform that will meet all your needs. 

You don’t need much more than that. Once you acquire the CDP, set it up and start using it. Simple as that!

Here at Arena, our platform is a guaranteed solution for working with Customer Data. With over a thousand clients, we know how to deliver what you’re looking for. Besides, we also have some other solutions to make your customer experience strategy go up the charts such as Live Chat, Live Blog, and Content Wall.

Now, back to our main topic, let’s see what’s next:

What are the CDP benefits for data usage in the GDPR era?

Along with some benefits already mentioned, like the complete work with Customer Data, there are other advantages that make the CDP complete software that any company should get.

For example, the possibility of all company employees to have access to the data — with due permission. Whether it’s a sales rep, customer support, or product developers.

Especially in the Customer-centric period we’re currently in, allowing every sector to have access to this customer data just makes the job easier and the strategy maintained with efficiency.

Now, there are three other reasons to have a CDP that are directly related to the GDPR project:

Low cost

In spite of not being the cheapest data control tool in the market, it does stand out as the most complete and provides the best price-performance ratio. One of the reasons that makes this possible is that the platform is already built and programmed without the need of an IT support team.

That is to say, you simply acquire the Customer Data Platform, make some basic configurations, and start benefiting from it. No need to hire a platform support team or anything like that.

Another thing: this tool is faster than others that work with data, such as the CRM. In addition, your goals will be reached easier and, likewise, faster with it.

Individual and unified profile

What happened before CDP came to the market was data duplication.

Let’s explain this better:

A system like CRM, for example, doesn’t have the capability of recognizing different actions made by the same client. So, if someone interacts with the brand through the website and then by email, the software thinks it’s two different people.

With the CDP, that problem doesn’t exist. It is built to identify and unify these actions into a singular customer profile. Thus, avoiding data duplication.

No matter how many interactions or where they take place, the platform will be able to understand it is the same person and gather the information in the same place.

Easy external access

Okay, so, we’re talking about how CDP is superior to other data collection systems. This doesn’t mean you need to get this platform and get rid of everything you currently use. Not at all. 

The Customer Data Platform has the ability to connect with other systems, so you can take advantage of all the data you already have by connecting your platforms and centralizing all data into one place.

Even more, if there is incorrect, duplicated, or data going against GDPR, the CDP can correct and/or delete this information.

This way, before you waste your current database, make sure if it’s worth it or not to practice this integration between platforms.

Moreover, other software that is not directly related to data collection could perform better with the help of a CDP database. Don’t hold back doing your research.

So far, you’ve learned some of the main tasks of a Customer Data Platform, but there is still a lot more to know about it. How about reading our ebook on the subject? The download is free and the knowledge is uncanny!

Ecommerce Customer Experience: how to optimize it

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A good eCommerce customer experience offers much more than just speed and ease: it fits customers’ preferences to increase their lifetime value and keep your churn rate low.

It’s no secret that people are shopping online more and more. With social distancing, the average customer profile has evolved and adapted to navigate and make eCommerce purchases.

Ecommerce has been a key channel in retail, marketing, and sales operations, to the point it globally represents three-quarters of the overall retail growth. According to Statista, eCommerce sales are supposed to reach almost $604 billion in 2021.

Whether eCommerce sales are made overseas or regionally, one thing is true: The customer is at its center, and offering an at-least-good customer experience is a basic requirement.

Still, that is not what we usually see these days. Regrettably, it is very common to find bad eCommerce customer experiences, such as buggy checkout processes.

Well, that’s no laughing matter. Losing a customer in the checkout process means you’re saying goodbye to the most concrete revenue you might be able to get.

Why is eCommerce customer experience so important?

Owning an inventory and simply selling it isn’t enough, especially in the competitive market we witness today. Products and services aren’t differentiators anymore—but good eCommerce customer experience is.

An eCommerce experience refers to the quality of the interactions customers have in digital stores.

To achieve acceptable levels of quality, the user interaction should match customers’ expectations and provide them with fantastic eCommerce customer experience—there is where its importance lies.

Customer experience decides if you’re selling or not—literally—when it comes to eCommerce. 

The following statistics, provided by CX Central, make it clear:

  • After going through a poor experience, 89% of customers say they have stopped buying from a brand
  • Customer experience is overtaking price and products as a key brand differentiator
  • Eighty-six percent (86%) of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience
  • In general, 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer an excellent mobile experience
  • Around 25% of online shoppers leave the website without paying if they find the website navigation too complicated

As you can see, offering a bad eCommerce customer experience is the way to chaos. Simultaneously, a good eCommerce customer experience is the way to customer engagement.

But how can you avoid being in the bad eCommerce statistics?

Keep in mind that every and each eCommerce operation should be built considering how the customer feels throughout the buying journey. 

If customers feel bad about your brand while on your eCommerce, they won’t hesitate to open a new tab and search for your competitor quickly. Competition is a few clicks away.

This means you have to offer a seamless, intuitive, eCommerce customer experience.

What makes a good eCommerce customer experience?

A good eCommerce customer experience should allow your customers to move through your online shop with speed and ease while matching their personal preferences.

This might differ from customer to customer – that’s why it is important to know them deeply.

In case you’re in doubt whether you’re offering a great eCommerce customer experience or not, there are a few KPIs that can help you get your answers.

We know a large portion of customers abandon the cart because that’s how they browse eCommerce. 

Still, according to Baymard, the main reasons for cart abandonment during checkouts are too high extra costs (50%), eCommerce demanding customers to create an account (28%), and too long checkout processes (21%). 

Another interesting statistic is that customer retention in eCommerce is 5X cheaper than acquisition. 

This suggests that keeping your customers and increasing their Lifetime Value (LTV) is a great way to keep ROI coming back to you. If your customer LTV is good, you might want to keep it high to benefit from consumers’ engagement.

With this in mind, we’ll move forward to some eCommerce customer experience trends that are extremely promising for the upcoming months.

1 – Personalization

You wants your customers to feel like you care about them, right? 

The best way to ensure them you do is to offer them interactions that match their context.

By basing its campaigns on factual data, eCommerce can deliver highly personalized and relevant offers to customers throughout their lifecycle and buying journey.

This means more accurate product suggestions, tailored loyalty points, smart follow-up emails, and more, to guide your customers more easily in the journey.

Please pay attention to the fact 71% of consumers express some level of frustration when their shopping experience is impersonal. On the other hand, 80% of them are more likely to buy from brands that offer customized experiences.

Tailoring a specific eCommerce customer experience based on customer data is no longer a futuristic idea. It is here, and people are demanding it.

2 – Flexibility

Customers expect to buy from anywhere at any time. This means providing them with:

  • A wide variety of paying methods on the checkout page
  • Search bars so customers can quickly find products they’re looking for
  • A small number of input fields in the checkout process
  • Fair price policies that don’t scare buyers away

Are these all? In fair honesty, they aren’t. Granting your customers with flexibility goes much further, and it starts with understanding what their preferences and hopes are.

The omnichannel market, for example, is growing at an impressive speed due to customers’ need to create deeper connections with brands as fast as they need to.

Whether customers want to shop online or to go in-store and have their package sent to their houses, omnichannel embraces countless opportunities across digital platforms and physical operations to deliver customized customer experiences.

This creates a competitive advantage and levels your eCommerce customer experience up.

3 – Human connection

The average Americans see from 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily. This massive advertising has contributed to making customers feel overwhelmed and make them harder to reach effectively.

When getting involved with brands, customers need to understand root-causes to allow an emotional connection. 

This isn’t something that paid ads can tell them, so eCommerce needs to take a step back and focus on organic storytelling techniques.

By focusing their attention on unique, personal brand experiences, businesses can upgrade their marketing campaigns and shopping journeys to build an outstanding eCommerce customer experience.

How does that affect your eCommerce directly? Well, this is a fantastic opportunity to use videos and live content to tell your story in an appealing way to attract and retain customers.

This is also a sign you should focus on more effective human support. 

For example, as much as people don’t mind being served by chatbots, 73% of customers still love being supported by friendly representatives who provide excellent service.

4 – Convenience

Convenience is the key to a good eCommerce customer experience, so fast and free shipping is about to become a brand differentiator.

Hitches and slowness aren’t allowed anymore and might push the demanding, time-sensitive customer away.

Let’s say your marketing team has invested time and money in delivering a campaign to attract customers to a unique sales promotion.

However, as soon as the customers engaged with your campaign get to your eCommerce, they catch themselves face to face with slow loading times, confusing pages, and unclear product descriptions.

Let’s also imagine that, as soon as customers put the products in the cart, the price previously exposed to your eCommerce suddenly increases.

Bad news: You have just wasted all the money your company invested in an effective acquisition campaign.

Studies say 14% of customers percent will begin shopping at another site when waiting for a page to load. Imagine how negatively this can affect your churn and conversion rates.

By neglecting convenience, there is a high chance your metrics towards digital initiatives might not perform the way you’re expecting them to and indicate opportunities you’re losing in the business.

Ways to improve eCommerce customer experience

There are many ways to improve your eCommerce customer experience once you decide to invest in meaningful customer-centric experiences.

One thing is universal for picking and implementing the right technologies to optimize your eCommerce customer experience: your improvements must be data-based.

This means every page and feature on your eCommerce should rely on vital customer information, such as what type of interaction your consumers prefer depending on the journey stage they’re at.

For example, have you ever considered developing a solution that allows your customers to buy from you while driving? Or delivering your products to consumers’ vehicles and other appliances?

Perhaps one of the above might make huge sense and generate even more value to your customers. But you’ll only know for certain if you rely on trustworthy customer data.

This is such a trend that customers will agree to sell their information to brands they choose. 

Whether it is their in-store movements, their location, or online browsing, customers are aware data access is essential to create personal experiences—and they’re counting on you to use it wisely to reward them with the best eCommerce experience ever.

Many eCommerce leaders and professionals worldwide have been doing that and benefiting from Customer Data Platform outcomes to personalize and elevate their eCommerce customer experience.

Improving your eCommerce customer experience with a real-time engagement platform

In the process of improving your eCommerce customer experience, you should strongly consider a few tools to help you build the best user experience.

Arena’s real-time engagement platform is the choice for you. It is equipped with Live Blog and Live Chat that can easily be embedded into your eCommerce to generate leads, increase engagement, and boost your revenue.

Keep reading to find out how both tools can optimize your eCommerce customer experience. We highly recommend checking out how Shoply leverages Arena for their Live Shopping experience.

Live Blog for eCommerce

A Live Blog is a new way to blog that embraces live content to a real-time audience.

When you live Blog, you combine different post formats and sources to create a refreshing coverage feed with the latest news towards an important event in your field. 

Live Blogs are huge in many sectors, such as sports, elections, protests, and conferences. However, these powerful engagement platforms can do much more, especially when we bring your eCommerce to the scenery.

Could you Live Blog a product launch? Sure! Could you live Blog a new promotional sale? Yes! Could you live Blog a special gathering for your loyal top-level clients? Absolutely.

Live Blogs transcend the way blogs have been building content over the years and should be adopted by eCommerce’s that care about the content they’re providing customers with.

Live Group Chat for eCommerce

Have you ever considered working on your eCommerce to embed tools that promote customer real-time interactions 24/7?

Live Chat Groups are an amazing option to achieve that!

As the name suggests, Live Chat Groups are chats that can easily be implemented on eCommerce to allow real-time conversations between your customers and representatives and your customers alone.

By implementing one on your eCommerce, you allow new types of interaction that add on more credibility to your pages and don’t make your customers wait for a response when customers reach out for you.

Live Chats have been used by support and sales teams for years, but now marketers have opened their eyes to its potential to engage and offer excellent customer experiences.

The advantages of Live Chat Groups are:

  • Availability: Consumers want businesses to be available 24/7, and Live Chat Groups are always there to prevent your customers from waiting for a response
  • Support: Sales representatives use Live Chat Groups to give customers great support, whether they’re in the checkout process or in doubt about a specific product
  • Real-time engagement: Replying quickly to customers should spare you the chance to leave them without an answer and lose them to other eCommerce on your field
  • Lead generation: Want a fast, simple tool that collects customer data and lets you smoothly guide shoppers through the customer journey? Live Chat is the answer!

As you read, consumers are expecting your next eCommerce customer experience move

We know how fast you need to implement changes that will give you quick and remarkable results. 

That is why we have decided to let you download our engagement platform for free and get started as soon as you want!

Start now and add Live Chat and Live Blog to boost your eCommerce customer experience!

Reasons you should work with a CDP (Customer Data Platform)

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Why should you invest in a Customer Data Platform? They are revolutionizing the business market, and there’s a reason for it. This system gathers all customer data into a singular font and creates a supreme tool to gain a competitive edge by providing unique and excellent CX.

The future of marketing is working primarily with customer data. This is already happening and has been occurring for a few years now. Data can talk about identity, contact, and even demographic information. But most importantly, online behavioral data is the factor that really makes a difference in understanding how to converse with the audience.

On top of that, data also generates knowledge about the market. So, more than getting to know the consumer, you understand better how to position the brand to attract the public’s attention. Working around the consumer requires a means to control all the information received. As consequence, the Customer Data Platform software was developed.

The CDP system gathers data from all available sources and organizes it in a database. Then, marketing and sales professionals can easily access that information and work on content creation. Besides, it provides insights for campaigns and new products (or modernization of existing products).

Read on to learn more about the importance of having a Customer Data Platform and how it helps businesses grow.

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Why is the Customer Data Platform so important?

A Customer Data Platform is a software designed to collect online and offline data. It deals with three main objectives: collect, analyze, and execute data. Though it was specially developed for marketing teams, it can still be used for other sectors inside a company.

With the organization of all available data, a marketing team’s work will be a lot simpler. By the way, the information contained inside a CDP comes from various sources: website, in-apps, social media, etc. One of the reasons the Customer Data Platform was created was to have all of the data generated from multiple sources gathered into one singular system.

The aim of putting together all information available about customers is to understand them better. The importance of knowing your consumer is undeniable, and the CDP can create an ideal consumer profile from the data collected. 

This means marketing teams have a goldmine in their hands. From the information found within this software, these professionals will know exactly who to talk to, how to speak, and even the best time.

Also, Customer Data Platforms work with real-time data collection. In other words, it gathers data from the first interaction of a user with the brand — whether that’s a visit on the website or an engagement on social media. And it’s not only about the information they share with the brand, like names and emails. So, even if that user doesn’t share anything at the start, their online behavior is already being stored.

It’s worth mentioning that everything is automated in the CDP, from the collection to analysis and database storage. Therefore, marketing professionals have to access the system and start creating content and campaigns.

Why work with customer data?

The reason to acquire a Customer Data Platform for your company is to work with customer data. In this scenario, you can pretty much ask yourself, “why to work with data collection at all?”. The answer to that question could not be more clear: to provide a better customer experience.

Have you heard about the customer-centric strategy? That’s a method of putting the customer in the center of every decision which most companies use nowadays. The reason for that is simple: customers are more demanding than ever before. 

Because the internet has so much information available, it’s harder to create a product or service that will make a person become a customer. Or, even more, make a customer loyal to the brand.

The only way to get to know the consumer and succeed in giving them the best experience is customer data. That is, all the information a company receives from the interaction with a client. Since these are known facts, working with them avoids speculations that could be way off the real deal.

Additionally, some benefits of managing customer data include better segmentation, personalized communication, broader audience understanding, an increase in revenue, and humanization of the brand. 

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That last item is related to what a customer expects from brands. They want the brand to connect and engage with them — just as much as the company wants their audience to interact and communicate too. Customers value their overall experience. It’s much more than only the purchase of a product.

To have a more appropriate data organization, companies invest in platforms that assist in analysis and make their daily work easier. These can include CDMs, CRMs, and CDPs.

What are the types of data?

Of course, to comprehend the best solution for your purpose, you might need a little more information on the types of data that can be collected. Because of that, here’s an explanation about what cookies are and also first-, second-, and third-party data.

Cookies

Cookies are probably the most famous type of data. It’s actually a package of data the computer receives when you first access an online page. After the cookie is on the PC, it will continuously send information to the company every time you access their pages.

More than tracking activities inside their website, cookies also have the function to store information that makes navigation more practical. For example, login and passwords — also called authentication cookies. 

Session cookies and tracking cookies are also varieties of cookies that gather when visitors are active, and the number of visits made to the same page, respectively. In addition, they have an important role in saving information for eCommerce. To clarify, if there were no cookies, shopping carts would be reset every time someone left the page to look for more items.

Even though they are so useful, their minute in the spotlight is coming to an end. Mainly because of privacy issues, cookies have become a concern for the audience. For that reason, browsers have decided to end the support of using cookies. Since cookies’ future is basically non-existing, companies are already looking for new ways to gather and access customer data.

First-party

This is the data collected straight from the relationship between customer and brand. Every piece of information gathered by the company itself can be classified as first-party data. It can be generated from monitoring the website, marketing campaigns, social media, etc. But also from website analytics platforms, CRM systems, and business analytics tools. 

This is the best type of data to work with. It’s the most trustworthy and reliable data. More than that, it’s also confidential data — since you are collecting it directly from your consumer, no other company will have that same information.

Of course, if there is no customer-brand interaction, no data about that person will be collected. That’s not exactly a downside, but it’s important to mention. That way, if your goal is to expand your audience, first-party data isn’t so recommended.

Second-party

Despite not being so talked about, second-party data is real. It’s essentially first-party data from another company. The idea is that you create a communication with a brand that has the same niche, but different products. Seeing that you’re not competitors, you can share each other’s first-party data and expand the brand’s audience.

This agreement between two companies can be an excellent means to improve your audience targeting as well. Further to this, you might create a bond with a powerful ally in the market.

Third-party

Third-party data can be used for the same purpose as second-party; however, it comes from a different source. That is: the information is bought from an external data provider.

Usually, companies that work with an incredible amount of data can decide to sell this information for other companies. Like most things in life, there are ups and downs. The positive point about buying customer data is that you’ll have a lot to work with, grow your audience, and practice better targeting. Moreover, purchased information is wide-ranging and can be used for several purposes.

On the other hand, this information is not exclusive. There are high chances of your competitor ending up with the same data package as you. This data isn’t so reliable since you don’t know where it came from and from who it is — the information is anonymous. Lastly, there’s also the chance of violating data privacy regulation.

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How to use data-driven marketing with a Customer Data Platform?

The primary intention of using customer data is to manage marketing strategies. This has become so huge these days. We even have a new expression in the business world: data-driven marketing. This is about creating a better experience and communication for the customer through data collected. Sound familiar?

A Customer Data Platform brings some benefits to the company that wants to practice data-driven marketing. For starters, the capacity of originating their own database. This gives the brand more control of sources and customer privacy. Easy access to information and anticipation of customers’ needs also get on the list.

The software will also have processes automated, meaning it’s easier to understand what data is essential and what can be left aside for the moment. As previously mentioned, each type of data is good for a specific strategy. Do you want more audience engagement? Get some first-party data. Do you want to expand your audience? Then work with third-party data.

Nonetheless, if you want to stand out in the market, use a combination of both types of data. That’s the most powerful tool you’ll have in your hands. And you know how it’s called? It’s the Customer Data Platform.

Why should you work with a Customer Data Platform?

There’s a whole list of reasons any company praises growth and customer satisfaction should acquire a Customer Data Platform. Some of those include:

  • knowing the consumer
  • improving relationship and engagement
  • creating tailor-made content
  • avoiding data silos
  • improving ROI
  • boosting predictive marketing

Coming from a wide variety of sources, the compilation of first-, second-, and third-party data into a singular system allows the Customer Data Platform to create the ideal customer profile and also unified customer profiles. Both of which will assist in a brand’s communication strategy.

More than that, the CDP works with real-time updates and connects online and offline data. Can you think of a complete database than this? Acquiring this solution will guarantee you better results in marketing campaigns.

Of course, a Customer Data Platform can be used as more than a marketing tool. It can help sales teams, product development, customer support, and pretty much all company sectors. Arena offers a CDP solution so you can work towards all your goals.

That being said, we want you to thoroughly understand what we do and how to use a CDP to your advantage. Because of that, we’ve created an ebook to explain more about it! 

Download it for free now: Customer Data Platform 2020: the future of marketing and sales.

Which one is best for your business?

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Knowing the difference between Live Chats and chatbots can help you figure out how to benefit from the several utilities of using both tools.

Many professionals work day after day to provide customers with the best digital channels for support and general communication.

Gartner predicts that 85% of customer relations will be managed without human interaction by the end of this year. This is a snappy consequence of customers’ expectations regarding how brands communicate with them in online environments.

Customers expect a response from companies they get in touch with, within an hour. However, it isn’t uncommon to find companies that still struggle to respond to consumers. Most terribly, some companies don’t reply to their customers at all.

In this context, solutions like Live Chats and chatbots have erupted to boost response times and optimize interactions. They grant companies ways to immediately reply to customers and get involved earlier in their buying lifecycle.

Have you ever wondered what the main differences between a Live Chat and a chatbot are? Many people have. That’s why we have written this article.

Here, you’ll understand the dynamics of Live Chat vs. chatbot, and figure out which is the best solution according to your goals.

Let’s get started!

What is Live Chat?

As the name suggests, a Live Chat is a tool that allows live interactions to happen between users alone or between users and brand representatives. Live Chats enable instant messaging and have a fantastic potential to become an exclusive place for customers to get real-time support. 

Rather than using their phones to call—and eventually hang on the line—, customers that use Live Chats have a more convenient way to talk to brands on their digital properties, whether they’re seeking help or simple information.

According to Zendesk, Live Chats have the second-highest customer satisfaction rate (85%), while talking on the phone remains the most top-performing live interaction (91%). See how small is the gap between them?

Live Chats are responding quite nicely to the need to optimize response times and increase customer satisfaction. Still, Live Chats don’t work solely for customer support. They are ideal to complement sales approaches as engines to increase purchases and conversion rates.

In case you’re curious to know more about this software, we have also listed 40 Live Chat benefits you need to know.

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a software application that simulates a conversation as if humans handle it. Also known as digital assistants, chatbots are often seen as a very promising tool for interaction between humans and machines.

These days, companies from distinctive sectors use chatbots for a huge purpose variety. Whether it is to enhance customer support, help users navigate on their websites, or collect leads’ information, these tools are excellent for transforming how companies communicate with their current and future customers.

Different chatbot usage is based on the fact these tools rely on artificial intelligence and can be programmed to reply to spoken or written messages. A sophisticated chatbot also uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to better address human language.

Because they are simple to use and are available 24/7, chatbots revolutionize customer interactions and fasten their pace. Sixty-nine percent of consumers prefer chatbots over other channels because they provide quicker responses to simple questions. By reaching out to a chatbot, customers save time—and, as you know, time matters.

For those reasons, the market can’t see itself in the future without chatbots. According to Grand View Research, the chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025 globally. That’s a lot.

Prime factors of Live Chat vs. chatbot

Based on customers’ expectations, Live Chats and chatbots, three core-tasks must be:

  • Answering a question
  • Giving detailed explanations
  • Resolving a complaint

These are things both tools can do effectively. Still, as much as both Live Chats and chatbots serve the same purpose of optimizing response times and elevating customer interactions, there are a few differences that separate them.

Ahead in this post, you’ll find further details to understand how they differentiate.

1 – Scalability

Perhaps the most evident difference in the Live Chat vs. chatbot debate is that chatbots are much easier to scale.

When you implement a Live Chat, you must have people working behind the screen to reply instantly to customers. 

Depending on the conversation’s complexity level, sales reps might take longer to reply to more users activating a Live Chat. Recall that a Live Chat agent can answer to a limited number of interactions at a time as well.

Meanwhile, chatbots are programmed to handle multiple conversations simultaneously and reply faster, scaling conversations to employees when needed.

2 – Humanization

Statistics tell us 86% of customers believe there should be an escalate agent option when talking to a chatbot. 

That’s reasonable. You probably have gone through a more complex and specific customer issue that demanded human support, and chatbots aren’t able to solve any and everything—yet.

Your team might have to interfere and offer quality responses that are accurate to their needs for specific customers. This is something only Live Chat agents can utterly deliver. 

If you’re worried about Live Chat response times, here is an interesting statistic: 95% of customers agree to wait a little more to get a better quality service that matches their expectations.

Think about this for a minute: are your customers more likely to wait for human service or would they appreciate faster chatbot approaches?

3 – Acceptance

While people in the past seemed to dislike interacting with a robot, users these days appreciate having their issues resolved regardless of who is doing it.

Notice that 40% of customers don’t care whether they’re helped by a human agent on a Live Chat or by a chatbot. 

Plus, technology has advanced so much that some people don’t even know whether they’re talking to a real person or a very sophisticated chatbot.

4 – Availability

While chatbots work uninterruptedly, Live Chat agents are only available to respond during their working hours. 

This is a problem if you intend to make your brand available to users 24/7, especially if you consider the number of conversations that will occur if your customer engagement increases. 

You may have thousands of chats per month to reply to. How much human effort should it demand from you and your team?

On the other hand, Live Chats are most likely to make agents multitask more efficiently. Once they’re ready, Live Chat agents will identify more urgent conversations and route them to the right team, sharpening support time.

5 – Customer support

When customers get stuck in a product or checkout page, chatbots can quickly—and automatically—initiate a proactive interaction to help them out.

This is extremely important, as 73% of customers say what makes them love a brand is their ability to provide friendly and excellent customer service, especially when they need help before, while, or after the buying process.

Keep the information above in mind whatever the decision is you make. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a Live Chat or a chatbot to help consumers out. What truly matters is the support quality you’re providing them with, according to their preferences.

6 – Cost impacts

As much as implementing Live Chats and chatbots can make you take some money out of your pockets, the impact on costs is undeniable. 

You might spend to hire Live Chat agents, and training them should require some time. Just the same, implementing a chatbot isn’t free.

However, as response time-speeding tools, both Live Chats and chatbots retain customers’ attention and interest, going as far as converting website visitors into paying clients. This empowers your marketing and sales strategies and increases ROI. 

Live Chat increases conversion rates by 45%. For example, chatbots will save businesses more than $8 billion per year by 2022. They’re the best of both worlds.

Do you need to pick a side in the Live Chat vs. chatbot argument?

I’ll save you time and reply to this question right away: no, you don’t. 

The best thing about Live Chats and chatbots is that they don’t erase each other’s purpose and utility. Blending them might be a good option for many reasons.

Chatbots can work seamlessly along with Live Chat agents and notify your team when it’s time to step into the conversation with a lead or customer. Remember, chatbots are intelligent, automated mechanisms that scale and a good one should transfer a question it can’t answer to the right human agent.

While specific conversations require human support, many others can be handled by chatbots, and save your team time and effort so they can focus on more complex problems.

Let’s imagine a top-level customer has just entered your website. Your chatbot will tell your Live Chat agents right away, so they can reach out in a more personalized approach to answer their questions as conveniently and accordingly as possible. 

Live Chat vs. chatbot audience ownership

If you’re looking for solutions to keep your community on your page and take back your audience’s ownership, then interactive Live Chats should strongly be considered.

Beyond customer support and sales confines, Live Chats can be programmed to be a unique place where your customers can interact with other people in real-time conversations. Those are called Live Chat Groups.

By allowing instant conversations to take place in your Live Chat Group, you create a new sense of community that users can’t usually find anywhere else. 

This maximizes customer relationships and drives traffic to your website, making your brand less dependent on social media accounts and other external marketing channels.

Live Chat Groups are highly customizable and work on any website, making them an excellent tool to boost your customer engagement.

And there’s more: unlike standard Live Chat tools, Live Chat Groups are scalable and handle chatrooms with thousands of concurrent users simultaneously.

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Key takeaways in the Live Chat vs. chatbot matter

  • Chatbots reply faster as Live Chats depend on agents’ potential to reply
  • Live Chats are a better solution to deal with customers that prefer human interactions
  • Live Chats assure better quality responses to complex queries, while chatbots nail simple conversations
  • Chatbots scale, especially on peak hours; Live Chats don’t
  • Live Chat Groups are fresh, unique interactive tools that increase engagement and create a community sense, which neither chatbots nor typical Live Chats can

Many companies worldwide use both Live Chats and chatbots at the same time to handle different contexts and conversations and have amazing results from combining such powerful tools. Some of those results are better customer experience, and more authority is being perceived from their website pages.

Let users talk about your content

We have no doubt chatbots, and Live Chats are both needed in our context. Instant communication is an essential requirement, and the customers that don’t find the channels they expect to communicate with brands will get frustrated.

We have seen many (rational) hype around the Live Chat vs. chatbot matter, but think there is a problem: people aren’t talking about Live Chat Groups enough.

If you want a forward-thinking and customer-centric tool to increase your engagement and help your website be seen as the to-go place, it is time you have a Live Chat Group.

The cherry on top is that, besides being easy to implement, Live Chat Groups are also becoming crucial to make users spend more time on your website and give your brand more credibility.

To see how a Live Chat Group fits your website best, all you need to do is use Arena’s real-time engagement platform and have full control over your chat rooms.

You’ll start finding new engagement opportunities even before your competitors think about them. Get started for free!

How to Improve eCommerce Customer Experience

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Satisfaction is the word of order. To reach it, the customer experience (CX) for your eCommerce must be on point! Read on and discover how you can improve yours!

All eyes are on the customer now. Whoever dedicates strictly to price is faded to be eaten up by companies serving one moment.

Consumers are more demanding than ever before. Online shopping has become an ever-growing search for the most positive and memorable experience.

On the other side, eCommerce needs to understand its own customers to offer what they really want to get.

So, the faster you assimilate what your brand must do, the bigger will be your returns. Follow up and start right now!

Why is Customer Experience so crucial to eCommerce?

The relationship established between the industry and customers is not supply and demand anymore. It goes far beyond selling. This is a Customer-Centric era! Besides offering an excellent service or product, you must serve a memorable experience, adding value not only to your merchandise but to your whole brand legacy.

Since your company is directly competing with other names offering the same item, with the same level of quality, and the same price, providing an excellent experience to the customer has become the way to stand out, especially in eCommerce.

It is necessary to understand the needs and explore them, making sure satisfaction is present throughout every step of the buyer’s journey.

Dive in your customers’ minds, know their personality, treat them as individuals, be empathic. No one likes to be ignored or mistreated. After all, satisfied customers tend to buy more, put great referrals out there, and positively qualify your company.

How can your eCommerce improve Customer Experience?

The customer experience begins long before the purchase and ends, well… that depends on how deep is their connection with you. Also, aspects including the longevity of the product or service and, most importantly, the degree of emotional involvement to your brand are determinants.

The process of customer experience can start with a personal dream, desire, or status someone seeks for. Whatever is the trigger, customers will join a journey craving for more information to make a dream come true.

With all the accessibility and variety of information provided out here, you must be fully ready to catch their attention at the first click on your eCommerce. They will find out everything about your product or service before addressing any salesman.  

They will build expectations, imagining themselves owning your product/service, feeling the sensation, the joy, the happiness. That is why the entire process has to be flawless. Your customer is preparing their life for that purchase moment.

Although, if they go through any bumps along that ride, anything that negatively influences them, their minds can change in a second, and your eCommerce will lose a sale.

What are the best practices?

Since the idea is to generate a level of satisfaction that your customer will come back to you for any time they need something, here are some best practices you’d better know.

Listen to your customer

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is responsible for gathering, in one place, the entire database of your company. For eCommerce, this functionality is particularly useful, as it helps to increase lifetime value (LTV) and decrease customer acquisition costs (CAC).

Integrating multiple touchpoints is essential to boost consumer loyalty, increasing the relationship between the brand and the customer. A CDP can integrate all customer data sources through a clean and unified registration system.

By that, marketing and sales can create campaigns with even more personality for your client. With a unique approach aiming for customer experience, it is possible to increase conversion chances, maximizing the average ticket without having to acquire new clients.

When crossing complementary information, it gets easier to identify different customer clusters. For example, you can build a segmentation for those who add products to the cart but leave before buying and those who purchase and may be open to new experiences on your eCommerce.

Holding those types of information, strategy becomes more curated, and ad campaigns get more effective. Then, investments can be directed to where it matters instead of giving blind tries and wasting money.

Put empathy first

We can immediately say that being empathic to your customer makes your eCommerce service a personalized, opening space for the exclusive.

We have mentioned a few times here in our blog that the customer knows exactly when someone is pushing them to buy something ––, and you do not want to be that person!

Letting the audience know your products or services are designed by excellence also includes how you connect with them. By serving empathy in your day-to-day, you make the buying process more flexible.

As a result, your customer will understand you are solving their particular needs, and not just making another regular deal.

Create relevant engagement

Customer experience for eCommerce is a 100% induced process. Your strategy team is in charge of building the most extraordinary journey. A golden tool to accomplish that is Live Chat.

A professional Live Chat solution allows you to monitor, in real-time, how many visitors are on your eCommerce and what pages they are browsing and products they are looking for. It is also possible to know if they are evading the buying process to make a proper intervention to reverse the situation.

Those proactive Live Chat invitations break the barriers of reactive positioning –– when your brand waits for the customer to call you. Approaching visitors in real-time completely changes the dynamic and the relationship between sales and customers.

By acting proactively and showing you are there, available at any time, you have better chances to enhance eCommerce’s customer experience.

It turns essential to mention that every step of this type of engagement is strategically designed to be data-based. There is no guessing or trying in the dark. Unexpected behaviors here can instantly ruin the deal.

Prepare your teams

Another great way to provide a better customer experience for eCommerce is by investing in proper training for your support team. Courses, workshops, digital content: there are plenty of ways to educate and create better service.

It is also fundamental to listen to your team’s reality, encouraging them to share their perceptions, give feedback, and improve the process along the way.

Establish a safe and open communication channel between you both. After all, a significant part of your success depends on them.

Simplify the buying process

Having your customer behavior mapped, you can identify –– or even predict through data –– some crucial details, especially when it comes to the buying process itself.

When you anticipate their common desires, you can display items or services to enhance their experience on your eCommerce and offer a smooth process to do business with your company. You improve the chances of higher revenue.

What metrics to measure about CX for eCommerce?

When we talk about customer experience for eCommerce, some important metrics work as a compass to indicate whether you are on the right track to achieve your business goals. They must be closely linked to the macro strategy, so the results operate as a cascade.

It’s worth mentioning that many managers focus excessively on operational activities indicators, such as the number of e-mails or social media posts.

Those are also important since you can measure teams’ productivity. But without the correct data analysis of performance, it is likely you are all wasting time and money.

General conversion rate

This one probably is very familiar to you. Also, a fundamental metric to evaluate how the customer is experiencing your eCommerce. The conversion rate index usually can point out bottlenecks on your website or strategy.

Aspects your team would not figure out quickly, demanding users’ behavior to identify it correctly. Gaps can be extremely dangerous to the entire process, causing exit spots before the purchase happens.

Shopping Cart conversion rate

A must-have indicator for eCommerce, this one measures when some products or service is added to the cart, but the visitor abandons the process before concluding the sale. By analyzing this metric, you can identify which stage they are evading.

That way, your teams can use tools like real-time updates, provided by the Customer Data Platform, to comprehend why it is happening and how to revert it. Also, you can still create a powerful retarget campaign using CDP to bring them back for those lost customers.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

When it comes to measuring customer satisfaction and the possibility of making good referrals, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the best known. A typical example of NPS is the following question: “How likely are you to recommend us on a scale from 0 to 10?”.

This metric can be used as a starting point for products or services standardization entirely based on data and customer experience.

As a business manager, the questions approached by NPS are essential to be solved. After all, you know if the customers aren’t satisfied with what they’ve received, chances are, they’ll get frustrated.

Customer referrals

The buyers’ journey is cyclic. It is not enough to have the right products and serve well anymore. The environment built by you must provide a prime time through every single step of customer experience.

When potential new customers see how your brand has been transforming clients, it kind of creates a shortcut between consideration and decision-making. For example, social proofs reveal the opinion of real individuals about the connection established with you and your service.

It could be a testimonial, a demonstration, photos, or even a five-star evaluation. The more referrals your customers put out there, the more authority your brand gets. And even though it may be not easy getting people to spend their time writing something positive about you, it is ok to offer some motivation in return, like a coupon or a gift.

What are the positive results of CX in the checkout process?

To earn customers trust and make them feel safe to close a deal, the checkout page has a massive role in it. From the beginning until the end, your customer experience for eCommerce must be consistent and cohesive, exuding security throughout the journey.

Withdrawals mostly happen at the checkout stage, whether it’s because the page is complex, or demands too much information, or because there are patterns the customer may not feel comfortable filling.

Picture yourself going through your checkout page:

  1. How simple and objective is it?
  2. Are the main points of the information displayed clearly?
  3. Is your checkout browsing intuitive?
  4. Can customers quickly understand that it won’t be too long?

Questions like those enlighten how your checkout page should be constructed, focussing on customer experience.

Here, a bonus tip is to always pay attention to the type of devices being used to access your pages. If you neglect the sources, you will be shutting down several entry doors. You can get that information using the Customer Data Platform.

How can CX generate more revenue?

Nothing can push customers away more than a bad experience. Therefore, to ensure technological innovations lead you towards better results, more profits, and brand loyalty, eCommerce’s customer experience must count on the right tools. Arena’s customers in the eCommerce segment, like Shoply, are already reaping the profits from offering an enhanced Customer Experience.

Just as your customer wants to keep it simple, yet meaningful, so should you when it comes to how to do it. That is why Arena gives you the most fantastic alternatives.

The first one is the Customer Data Platform. This is, by far, your ultimate top option. Every piece of data you need to create the best customer experience for eCommerce is on CDP. Click here and understand how it can increase your sales! Also, you can have a Live Chat solution for free on your website in three simple steps! Within minutes, get this powerful tool right now and boost customer experience on your e-commerce.

How to use CDP to improve your conversion rates

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Customer Data Platforms can fuel your marketing efforts, help you improve customer experience, and maximize ROI. This post will teach you how to embrace CDPs on daily marketing activities to potentialize results.

Marketing leaders’ job has become more challenging year after year with the rise of new content channels, connected devices, and sales formats. In a competitive scenario, acquiring and retaining requires more than just a good strategy. We live in the age of tailor-made communication, where there is no room for basic and generic marketing anymore.

No wonder companies from all segments have searched for ways to make their marketing approach more personal and cost-effective at the same time, which requires the right tools and best practices for data management. 

A report from the CMO Council shows that marketers worldwide see the execution of a data-driven strategy as their primary challenge to have a unified view of customer experience (CX) across different touchpoints, according to 38% of marketers consulted for the study. 

According to 30% of respondents, another challenge is to abandon customer data silos, which make data inaccessible across the organization. Even though marketers can count on CRM and DMP platforms to understand some of the customers’ engagement and pain points, the problems above can only be truly solved through robust data management platforms. 

In that sense, digitally mature marketers have specifically reached out to Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) in order to understand customers better and offer them a better customer experience.

Ultimately, a CDP can boost brands’ ROI and help them maximize conversion rates. This post will explore the concept of CDP, how it differs from other data platforms, and how marketers can use them to improve their results. 

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What is CDP?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software that centralizes customer data from different data systems and customer-facing platforms. It collects quantitative and qualitative information from diverse touchpoints with customers, offering a friendly interface that allows companies to access customer data from different departments easily. 

Customer Data Platforms combine customers’ demographic data, buying history, hobbies, transactional data, social media preferences, interactions with call centers, navigation data, and more. 

They work mostly with first-party data, crossing information from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Data Management Platforms (DMPs), and customers’ direct interactions with your brand through support channels, payment methods, social media, and different devices. 

The idea is to combine Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and build a unified view of individual customers – also called Unified Customer Profiles. Since the data match is consistent across different platforms, data is even more reliable than other platforms. 

A few examples of data collected by CDPs:

  • Purchases
  • Renewal dates
  • Customer and product value
  • Abandoned baskets
  • Stage in the conversion funnel
  • Products and categories searched and browsed
  • Store and website visits
  • Content and channel preferences
  • Social media interactions
  • Customer support interactions
  • Email opening rates
  • Lifestyle preferences
  • Contact information

These are just a few examples. The possibilities are endless! In reality, your company can choose to plug in any data system to the CDP. All data can then be stitched to the unique customer profile, allowing marketing teams to work on segmentation and personalization.

Typically, CDPs are used with five purposes in mind:

  1. Improving customer identity resolution
  2. Data cleansing and enrichment
  3. Data Centralization and integration
  4. Audience data analytics
  5. Marketing segmentation and optimization

CDP vs. CRM vs. DMP: beware of the difference

The marketing industry has long relied on acronyms to refer to metrics and tools. The data management realm is specifically pervaded by similar acronyms that comprehend entirely different things, such as CDP, DMP, and CRM.

Most marketers will agree that it is essential to manage data through one of these: Data Management Platforms (DMP), Customer Data Platforms (CDP), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). However, not all of them might understand how each of them works.

All three platforms share a list of common assets: they aim to establish a Single Customer View (SCV), use data for audience activation, and offer reporting, analysis, and optimization tools. Such platforms will often work side-by-side, but CDPs, DMPs, and CRM show many differences despite their similarities.

We have already explained how CDPs work, now let’s explore how DMPs and CRM systems compare.

Data Management Platforms

The DMP is mainly used to drive advertising campaigns, relying almost exclusively on anonymous data from cookies, devices, and IP addresses. It captures generic data such as when users visited your website and how long they spent on the page.

Then, such navigation information is used to target ads according to customer behavior to reach customers who match the brand’s target profiles – a process called probabilistic matching. A DMP can monitor campaign strategies, identify conversion points and personalize campaigns according to them. 

Main differences with CDP

  • CDPs work with both anonymous and known individuals, while DMPs work almost exclusively with anonymous entities and unknown customers
  • In CDPs, database updates happen in real-time, while DPMs only allow scheduled database updates
  • CDPs are based on historical integrated customer records, which means you can store customer data for however long. DMPs, however, store data for shorter periods, usually up to 90 days (a cookie’s lifespan) to target ads and build lookalike audiences
  • DMPs are used only for managing digital advertising, while CDPs can be used across an entire organization, including for sales and customer success

Customer Relationship Management

CRM systems are typically used by sales teams, storing personal information from known customers – such as contacts, demographics, transaction data, notes about customers made by sales, CRM, and customer success teams. 

Softwares alike are used to track leads, understand the sales pipeline, and for driving customer engagement. CRMs don’t store anonymous user behavior.

Mains differences with CDPs

  • CRMs aren’t built to ingest large volumes of data from different sources, like CDPs
  • CRMs only analyze personal data from known customers, such as name, age, and contacts, but not navigation behavior – something tracked by CDPs
  • CRMs do not connect customers’ actions through different channels and devices, and so is not able to follow the customer journey like a CDP

Using CDPs to improve marketing ROI

Successful marketing campaigns don’t embrace just a few channels, but a complex constellation of touchpoints with your audience. Acting over this constellation, however, can sometimes be challenging. A survey from the Harvard Business Review shows that only 3% of marketers believe they are able to act on all of the customer data they collect. Another 21% say they can act on very little of it. 

As we discussed earlier, CDPs can play a significant role in connecting customers’ fragmented journey. But beyond that, they can help you make smarter investment decisions, improve ROI, conversion rates, and Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC). 

Also, CDPs can automate and eliminate repetitive, time-consuming tasks from marketing professionals’ routines, making daily marketing activities more agile.

A few ways a CDP can improve business results:

Accurate personalization

In the age of recommendation algorithms, customers expect personalized experiences everywhere. Marketers should avoid at all costs making wrongful recommendations or serve ads that are not relevant within the user’s journey. 

Because CDPs break data silos and integrate marketing efforts across different channels, they help brands to deliver the right messages, at the right time and in the right channels for customers. For instance, you could exclude users that recently bought your products or those who are not likely to engage with your ad campaigns from your targeting strategy, focusing on users who are likely to engage.

Better budget allocation equals better leads

CDPs allow brands to acknowledge what products customers show interest in, their purchase intent, and how likely they are to churn. They can also find out their favorite interaction channels and stage in the customer journey. From there, it gets easier to allocate ad dollars and improve content strategies on every channel.

As a result, CDPs help attract more qualified leads, optimize marketing budgets, reduce customers’ acquisition costs (CAC), and improve conversion rates.

More qualified data

Marketing leaders are shifting their attention from second and third-party data to first-party data. As privacy and compliance regulations become more consolidated, organizations increasingly seek to work with their own, integrated data – something Customer Data Platforms can help them with.

Driving data-driven sales

Customer Data Platforms can help sales teams upsell or cross-sell products based on customers’ recent purchases or search intent. By having access to enriched, accurate data, salespeople can better design retargeting and churn prevention campaigns through email, mobile, and other channels.

More autonomy and agility to marketing professionals

Depending on other departments for reports and insights can be time-consuming and unproductive for marketing teams, since not everyone is on the same page about marketing needs. CDPs are useful to many areas within a company, but every team can shape their use according to specific goals while having access to all kinds of company data. 

According to CMO Council, 67% of marketers believe speed is one of the primary benefits of data-driven marketing, resulting in quickly executing their campaigns. Through CDPs, teams can scale marketing efforts and get new processes started faster. 

Benefits from CDPs don’t stop there. In this post, you can check 20 ways CDPs can be used in marketing.

Integrations and key assets of CDPs

In a fragmented media and advertising landscape, marketers want tools to give them more control over events in their channels. CDPs allow companies to integrate different systems and deploy data with customers’ profiles to many marketing and customer relationship platforms. 

Most Customer Data Platforms typically offer connector marketplaces where marketers can set up integrations in just a few minutes. However, the depth and amount of possible integrations can vary according to the CDP you choose.

Areas of integration offered by CDPs usually include: 

  • Advertising: Integrations to DSPs, Facebook Ads Manager, Google Marketing Platform, and more
  • Analytics and AB Testing platforms: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Optimizely, MixPannel, etc
  • Email and marketing automation tools: MailChimp, Hubspot, Sendgrid, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, SMS tools, and others

When connected to other systems, CDPs can deploy customers’ profiles to marketing tools (also called delivery platforms), enabling the planning and distribution of campaigns and personalized messages.

The amount of tools companies will connect to their CDPs will depend on the specifics of their business. Large businesses are likely to connect more tools than small companies, for instance.

Before adopting a CDP, be prepared

Yes, a Customer Data Platform can do wonders for your marketing strategy, but you need to feed it for it to work properly. CDPs won’t effectively integrate customer touch points if they can’t truly access data about the whole customer’s journey.

If you want a seamless, functioning CDP, it has to be fueled with multiple data records from clients – not just a few sources. A Customer Data Platform should gather historical data and freshly-collected data about their interactions with your brand. 

That’s how it can create a satisfactory customer profile and identity resolution (when the system matches records from different data sources and connects them to single customers). But why do you need identity resolution?

A customer might interact with your brand through several channels and devices, but sometimes CDPs will interpret different data points as if belonging to other customers.

So, not having enough data or having insufficient data prevents you from having the perfect picture of single customers, resulting in wasted investments, bad customer experience (CX), and poor marketing results.

In a nutshell: the more data sources your CDP can gather, the better. If your company only provides a few data points, your unified customer view might not be so complete, resulting in gaps in customer experience and poor conversion and engagement results. 

Want to learn more about CDPs?

As we have seen, Customer Data Platforms are complex, and so is the process of choosing the best one for your company.

If you want to dig deeper into the benefits of CDPs for marketing, we recommend downloading Arena’s “Customer Data Platform 2022” ebook. In this complete ebook, you will find more valuable information about how CDPs work and how they can be incorporated through every step of marketing.

If you want to learn the specifics about Arena’s CDP, feel free to reach out to one of our consultants.

How to use a Live Blog for real-time audience interaction

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A Live Blog is an instant attention-grabbing tool that empowers brands to generate real-time engagement. Here’s how some companies are using it to establish a deeper connection with their audience.

High-quality content is more important now than it has ever been.

Digitized and multi-connected, today’s audiences pay immense attention to content that can answer their questions and help them decide if a product or service is right for them. There is no denying that content is a vital part of the continuously-important customer experience.

Still, with so much competition and information running wild at all times, cutting through the noise might be challenging.

With the present moment changing so drastically in such a short period, you surely want to implement the most effective solutions to increase engagement and make your consumers loyal.

But how can you stand out from the crowd and generate immediate engagement with such an imperative audience?

I’m sure you have asked yourself this question a few times through the years.

Thankfully, this article is all about an extraordinary tool that customers are growing overly fond of and are already expecting your company to have: a Live Blog. 

Here, you will find how companies are using Live Blogs to generate relevant content and connect with a real-time audience—and why you shouldn’t wait to do the same.

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Why a real-time audience matters

Customers are always on. Given the newness of technology and innovation, they have all the tools to remain connected nonstop and wish to consume reliable information that leads them to make better decisions. The faster, the better.

Timing is essential in any marketing tactic these days. A message or campaign will only be compelling when it gets to customers exactly when they need it.

Many professionals work day and night to assess customer data and come up with exciting content alternatives that arrive sharply on-time. Those who are succeeding already know it: Live content is a gold mine and engages audiences as few things can.

Live content meets consumers’ expectations perfectly because it empowers them to be part of a real-time experience. It promotes instant debates people can get involved with, combining timing and appropriate messages to create a matchless customer experience.

In this scenario, marketers are growing aware of Live Blogs and how to use them to attract their audiences and enhance customer engagement.

How are companies using Live Blogs?

Dynamic and extremely interactive, a Live Blog allows brands to bring different post formats and sources together to deliver real-time content for an instant audience. 

Live Blogs support several types of content, such as videos, audios, texts, social media posts, and more, to shape a diverse and more interactional feed.

By liveblogging, you can post regular updates of an important event that’s taking place in your field and keep your readers updated on the latest news. 

More than that, you can live meaningful stream events that interest your followers, providing them with exclusive coverage. This is way more interesting than writing about an event only after it happened and makes users spend more time on your pages instead of digesting information on Twitter or Facebook.

Giving audiences a multimedia content and narrative experience is already paying off to companies that embraced Live Blog and made it a decisive piece of their marketing communication.

We have already written about how Arena customers are using a successful Live Blog engagement strategy and revolutionizing their content. This time though, you will find a few examples to inspire you to use a Live Blog and catch real-time audience’s attention.

Winter came, and everybody watched: Game of Thrones Live Blog

Game of Thrones’ fans has always been head-over-heels for the show. 

Considering that 87% of consumers use a second screen while watching TV, giving these passionate fans the chance to follow a Live Blog that was updated as new episodes took place could only be a fantastic idea.

That was what RadioTimes did back in 2019, mixing Twitter posts, memes, soundtrack videos, and written texts to both updates and entertain its audience.

All posts were made by Huw Fullerton, a pop-culture reference that has been covering the biggest TV shows and movies for a while.

Huw was already known by the Radio Times readers, which made it easier to create connections and a sense of identification with their audience, that could cry and tremble about the episodes with someone they trusted in.

These details made Radio Times’ Game of Thrones Live Blog a success case.

Technology most giant reference: Apple Event Live Blog

With a frequently-refreshing Live Blog, Apple has allowed its customer base to get all the freshest iPhone news on its website for years. 

Not only does this take the brand closer to its niche audience, but it creates a phenomenal hype and turns the Apple Live Blog as the right place to go when customers want brand-new information.

Apple also often live streams special events to announce new products and upgraded features that create market awareness and indulge Apple fans in details they’re curious about.

However, one of the most critical and historic Apple events was the Worldwide Developers Conference 2020, which took place during the Coronavirus outbreak. 

Vehicles like The Verge even made a Live Blog of their own to debate the conference’s content and Tim Cook’s considerations about the company’s future.

Free access to political information: Debate Live Blog

Democratic debates are powerful attention-callers. People are always alert to listen to what politicians have to say, especially when they doubt whom to vote for or want a specialist’s opinion.

FiveThirtyEight is one of those websites that use liveblogging to provide readers with constant updates, so they know what goes down in debates and primaries.

FiveThirtyEight editors feed pages with texts, videos, and Twitter posts to comment on political debates. Meanwhile, the editors let users interact with intuitive graphics, polls, forecasts, and other easy-to-visualize content.

Let’s take the South Carolina Democratic Debate as an example. Notice how editors mix different contents in a timeline to give readers a broader view of the event:

It looks cool, doesn’t it? That’s one of the Live Blog advantages: To mix content and use it intelligently.

The show went on: The Voice Live Blog

NBC’s The Voice kept relevant even during the pandemic. Coaches and contenders changed the already familiar The Voice studio for their homes. GoldDerby commented on Season 18’s finale to engage readers with a broad, real-time Live Blog feeding.

The Voice Live Blog used a more straightforward format approach, posting only short texts to update its visitors. 

Still, live blogging was a smart way to promote GoldDerby’s online prediction program. Winning users got a special place in the Live Blog leaderboard, along with a $100 Amazon Card—see how Live Blog is generating engagement here?

GoldDerby also provided users with a commentary section so they could voice their thoughts on The Voice finale. This was essential to grant readers an exclusive place to comment on their favorite show and create a unique sense of community people don’t usually find on social media

Live Original Blog

Interactive content is very much like the future’s face: it brings people together and gives a human, personal touch that keeps them interested in what you have to say.

Through the years, Live Blogs have evolved and become fantastic channels for folks who watch live sports games, real-time protests, technology conferences, etc.

Despite that, Live Blogs can still do so much more.

For example, in fashion retail companies, Live Blogs can be used to cover special events that matter in the field, such as fashion runaways and even music festivals.

Covering noteworthy events might not only make your brand stand out from the competition, but it will also give you the chance to transform your content to smartly address your audiences’ concerns and point them in the right direction.

If you’re interested in learning more about a Live Blog’s potential, we have numbered 30 Live Blog benefits and why you should pay more attention to your marketing strategy.

Since we know how much difference a Live Blog can make, it would be selfish not to share other Live Blog ideas you can adjust and use in your company.

More ideas for your Live Blog strategy

Arena has been helping companies from several sectors worldwide to build and execute robust Live Blog strategies that skyrocket customer engagement and provide exclusive content.

Want to figure out how? Come along!

1. Launch products — and let people know immediately 

Covering a real-time launch event is always interesting because people are more than ready to be the first to know.

The sooner you give your audience the news, the more educated and confident they will feel.

Let people see what your new products are about and educate them on why they need to buy from you instead of your competitors.

2. Add your own commentary to a conference 

There are certainly a few exciting events in your field that your audience is dying to see. Take the chance to live to blog them and add your own personal touch to the coverage.

3. Live blog during a crisis

Live Blogs become critically important in crisis times when real-time information can influence what readers plan to do next.

This became very clear with the Coronavirus outbreak. Try googling “Coronavirus Live Blog.” You should probably find websites like NBC Bay Area’s, which publishes all the real-time information available in a single place to keep readers updated and safe.

4. Drive traffic to your Live Blog

We know social media is the to-go place when news breaks, but a Live Blog can change that.

Although it is essential to use social media to connect with your audience, having a Live Blog will drive more traffic to your digital properties. Like that, you should depend less on external algorithms and take your audience ownership back to your website.

5. Widen your audience

When you decide to invest in a Live Blog, attracting attention to it is crucial. Start by spreading the news and creating the right buzz towards it.

This will widen your audience and make the most interested people stick around to keep you company.

6. Feel more human to your readers

When aligned with your branding voice, Live Blogs are the perfect place for you to talk about your brand, speak your point of view, and feel more human to your readers.

Remember the Game of Thrones Live Blog? It used a reference to shed light on the show and humanize the Live Blog feed with someone’s actual opinions. And people love that.

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7. Let users interact on your Live Blog

This is essential. People won’t feel like they belong and can be part of the experience if you don’t give them a special place to interact and be active.

Whether you implement a Live Chat Group or a commentary section on your Live Blog, allow readers to express themselves. You’ll see how this stimulates organic engagement and encourages users to come back for more.

Your content strategy is incomplete without a Live Blog

But it doesn’t have to be.

Now that you’ve seen such inspiring examples and ideas, it is time to take the next step and benefit from the many wonders of a Live Blog.

Without the perfect platform to embed on your website, you might miss out on some special features to leverage your website and guarantee your events will be successful.

You want a Live Blog platform that’s intuitive both to your crew and your readers and makes the most out of the investments you’re making.

Arena is ready to optimize and monetize your editorial work with a superb Live Blog tool that is easy to embed and plugged into your WordPress page. It is SEO friendly, scalable, and works on any website.

Ready to get started? Claim your free trial and try Arena’s Live Blog solution!

Customer Data Platform: where audience data and sales strategy meet

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Are you having trouble improving conversion rates and connecting customer insights from different touchpoints? A Customer Data Platform helps you understand your audience in a granular way and enables you to craft better campaigns and product offers.

Understanding customers always required brands to look at their audience through different lenses – whether through other marketing channels, relationship platforms, or customer segments. On the verge of Big Data culture, however, just having a fragmented view of your audience is not enough anymore. 

What drives sales is the ability brands have to deliver a cohesive customer experience (CX) across different channels, which is only possible by fully understanding channel correlations and cause and effect connectors along the audience’s touchpoints. 

These days, people interact with brands more often than ever before, and so making sense of different interactions is a lot more complicated than it once was.

Recent research by Ascend2 and Research Partners consulted more than a thousand marketers and found that 43% see data integration across different platforms as one of their main goals. In contrast, 37% wish to enrich data quality and completeness.

No wonder executives are investing more and more in their technology stacks: one-third of industry professionals believe it’s essential to have the right technologies for data collection and analysis, according to a study by Digital Doughnut. Currently, 44% of marketers say they already have data management platforms.

But amongst all data platforms available, the Customer Data Platform is undoubtedly the best you can have if your goal is to understand your audience better and drive more sales. We’ll show you why!

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What is CDP? And how does it work?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software that unifies customer data from different data systems and customer-facing platforms. It combines customer’s demographic data, buying history, social media and content preferences, call centers, and customer navigation data. 

Once implemented, the CDP acts as a 360º data solution: it collects, filters integrates, and analyzes customers’ data in real-time. 

CDPs can ingest structured and unstructured data from Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM), Data Management Platform (DMPs), customer support channels, eCommerce websites and apps, payment systems, social media, etc. They also track behavior across different devices.

By acting as a hub for many data sources, the Customer Data Platform allows marketers to build a holistic view of single customers and their pain points. 

But how exactly do they organize so much data? Well, CDPs rely mostly on first-party data so they can determine the so-called Unified Customer Profiles, which are profiles based on information from real customers and prospects.

That makes the data match consistent across different platforms, and hence the audience insights end up being much more reliable for marketers.

Check out some practical examples of data collected by customer data platforms:

  • Transactional data: order details, customer and product value, renewal dates, abandoned baskets, stage in the conversion funnel
  • Behavioral data from web and mobile: Products and categories browsed, clicks, store visits, interaction data, number of pages visited, etc
  • Profile data: Contact and opt-in data, psychographic data, details about channel and content preferences, lifestyle, etc
  • Brand Relationship Data: Email interactions with customer support, social listening insights, social media comments, etc

The end-to-end role of a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

In today’s competitive landscape, marketing executives are expected to keep track of all customer interactions and connect marketing efforts to other departments, such as sales and customer success, to provide customers with a satisfactory customer experience (CX).

The rush for data management optimization is seen clearly by the CDP industry’s growth in recent years. According to the Customer Data Platform Institute, the number of CDPs available in the market doubled from 2017 to 2018. Now, there are more than 50 CDPs in the industry worldwide.

The truth is that CDP can be an asset for every department within a company, working as an end-to-end solution to enrich customer experience. We’ll soon explore how brands can use CDPs to drive sales, but first, let’s explore CDPs’ overall benefits for companies. 

Breaking Data Silos

CDPs integrate data from multiple departments, which encourages different teams to collaborate and speeds operational routines. With a CDP, marketing, sales, customer experience, and support teams can be on the same page regarding customers’ needs.

Automating marketing workflow

Because they automate a lot of the data integration and analysis, CDPs make the lives of marketing professionals a lot easier, freeing them from repetitive work and allowing them to spend more time in strategic planning. 

Speeding up decision-making

As data processing happens in real-time in the CDP, it also makes it possible for companies to easily spot changes in customer behavior and act upon them while quickly sharing relevant insights with different teams.

The power of CDPs in driving sales

As we pointed out, CDPs are an excellent liaison point for different departments and can be at the heart of customer experience management. But to what extent can CDPs contribute to final sales? 

There are many ways CDPs can directly or indirectly improve conversion rates, drive customer loyalty, and decrease churn and bounce rates. In fact, a report from Forbes Insights highlighted that 44% of organization leaders believe the Customer Data Platform is helping them drive customer loyalty and increase ROI.

We have made a list of 11 ways CDPs can help you drive sales while also better understanding your customer base. 

1) Know your customers across multiple devices or channels

The mandatory philosophy among marketers is that they should reach their customers on the right channel, at the right moment, and with the right messages and products. To do that, they need to let go of assumptions and understand exactly how users interact with them across different channels and devices.

With all such information concentrated in the CDP, marketers can tailor better experiences and advertising segmentation across devices, increasing campaign success chances

2) Accurately track shopping events

A CDP is a great tool for retailers and eCommerce as it tracks customers’ buying behaviors and relevant transactional data in significant volume. CDPs allow them to keep a consistent record of the products customers added to the cart, the duration of checkout and order completion, abandoned carts, and other information that is crucial for online operations.

3) Improve pricing 

Collecting data from many sources – from your eCommerce website, app, or even physical stores – CDPs help you clarify how much customers are spending and how much they are willing to pay for your products according to their stage in the customer journey, search, and navigation patterns. 

CDPs can also be connected to your supply chain systems to help you adjust costs and manage the relationship with suppliers, which are aspects that often impact pricing. With such information updated in real-time, you can be more assertive in your pricing strategy.

4) Offer personalized discounts and product recommendations

Having a holistic customer profile at hand also allows brands to offer clients personalized discounts and product recommendations that ultimately can turn them into loyal customers.

A study by Salesforce shows that 57% of customers are willing to share their data to exchange personalized offers or discounts. In comparison, 52% will share their data in exchange for product recommendations that meet their needs.

While knowing customers in detail, companies’ teams can offer precisely what users need to advance in the sales funnel – whether it is a discount, a free trial, reviews from peers, or a personal approach from the support team.

5) Connect physical and digital shopping experiences

For retailers that also operate offline, a CDP can connect insights from online and offline systems, which is often a challenge for companies looking forward to addressing omnichannel experiences. A survey from the CMO Council found only 7% of respondents said they are always able to deliver real-time, data-driven experiences across physical and digital touchpoints.

With a CDP, brands can offer better customer experience from the website to the physical store – and vice-versa – increasing sales opportunities.

6) Be quick to react to customers interactions

Being quick to answer customer’s signals is also crucial for both customer acquisition and retention strategies. Still, many marketers struggle with the amount of real-time insights they can access and act upon. 

Research published by MediaPost, commissioned by technology consultancy Vanson Bourne, shows that only a minority of marketers feel they can immediately react to online customer interactions. According to the study, only 43% act quickly over customer behavior in the pre-purchase stage, 38% during purchase, and just 35% in the post-purchase phase.

By providing CRM, sales, and marketing teams with a continuous data stream, CDPs can make customer data more actionable. Isn’t that the point of having so much customer data? 

7) Prevent churn and cart abandonment 

Retail managers and online marketers are often investigating why customers abandon carts or churn after a few purchases. A CDP can give you deep insights into what stands in the way between your customers and the checkout.  

It helps you spot gaps throughout the entire customer journey (and not just in specific channels) that might be leading customers to give up purchases. Are there problems with website usability? Is your customer support too slow? 

By figuring out what is wrong, your team can work on fixing these gaps and segmenting churn prevention campaigns to attract customers back. 

8) Optimize Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and Conversion Rates

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable. 

With the Customer Data Platform’s assertiveness, companies can better streamline marketing segmentation and customer success efforts, thus optimizing results related to Conversion Rates (CR), Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), and Customer Lifetime Value.

9) Qualify your leads

One of the best aspects of CDP for sales is that it allows you to qualify your leads better and nurture the relationship with customers across their entire lifecycle. Not only it supports marketers in optimizing strategies to attract qualified customers; it also gives you the necessary information to engage with customers who are ready to buy. 

A study by Forbes shows, for instance, that 53% of marketing executives are using CDPs to engage with existing customers’ needs, increasing the likelihood that they will become recurring clients and the chances of upselling them. 

10) Enhance predictive marketing

Predicting customer behavior and preferences are what helps giant retailers like Amazon to drive sales. This marketing technique, which determines the probability of success of different marketing strategies, is essentially fueled by high volumes of customer data, which only a CDP could support. 

Armed with a CDP, data scientists and marketing analysts can gather data from several sources and apply predictive models with a great accuracy level.

11) Improve attribution models

With so many touchpoints with the audience, it is often difficult for companies to determine accurate attribution models and discover which channels drive more sales. According to Google, almost 80% of all transaction value involves at least two marketing channel interactions – a number that can be much higher depending on your business’s complexity.

The Customer Data Platform can optimize the attribution framework since marketers can send attribution data to the CDP and have a more accurate view of campaign performance.

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Why CDPs are more complete than other data management platforms

So you have learned the many benefits that CDPs can bring to the table. Many leaders still ask themselves if they should ditch their existing data management tools for a CDP. What has to be clear for marketers and sales managers is that different data platforms don’t need to exclude each other. 

A Customer Data Platform can potentialize the outcomes of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and Data Management Platforms (DMPs).

In a survey by The Relevancy Group conducted in 2018 with US executive marketers, about 6 in 10 respondents said they were integrating CRM data into their CDP. 

From a digital advertising perspective, CDPs can make the work of Data Management Platforms a lot more precise as well – with at least 29% of marketers feeding CDPs with digital advertising response data.

Although CDPs, DMPs, and CRM systems share some similarities, they all have different purposes within a company, with CDP serving as a primary data hub to make your teams more confident in responding to customers’ needs. 

Want to become an expert in CDP?

If you plan to purchase a CDP for your company, the next step is to check out the platforms available in the market and consider which one is the best fit for your business goals.

If you feel like it is time to learn more about CDPs, we invite you to download our eBook Customer Data Platform: the future of marketing and sales.

The eBook will give you details about CDPs’ features, how they work, and how they can be incorporated into your marketing and sales strategies. We hope you enjoy it!

Real-time Audience Live Blog to Connect and Engage

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A Live Blog is an instant attention-grabbing tool that empowers brands to generate real-time engagement. Here’s how some companies are using it to establish a deeper connection with their audience.

High-quality content is more important now than it has ever been.

Digitized and multi-connected, today’s audiences pay significant attention to content that can answer their questions and help them decide if a product or service is right. There is no denying that content is a vital part of the continuously-important customer experience.

With so much competition and information running wild at all times, cutting through the noise might be hard.

With the present moment changing so drastically in such a short period, you surely want to implement the most effective solutions to increase engagement and make your consumers loyal.

But how can you stand out from the crowd and generate immediate engagement with such an imperative audience?

I’m sure you have asked yourself this question a few times through the years.

Thankfully, this article is all about an extraordinary tool that customers are growing extremely fond of and are already expecting your company to have: a Live Blog. 

Here, you will find how companies are using Live Blogs to generate relevant content and connect with a real-time audience—and why you shouldn’t wait to do the same.

Why a real-time audience matters

Customers are always on. Given the newness of technology and innovation, they have all the tools to remain connected nonstop and wish to consume reliable information that leads them to make better decisions. The faster, the better.

Timing is essential in any marketing tactic these days. A message or campaign will only be valid when it gets to customers exactly when they need it.

Many professionals work day and night to assess customer data and develop exciting content alternatives that arrive sharply on-time. Those who are succeeding already know it: Live content is a gold mine and engages audiences as few things can.

Live content meets consumers’ expectations perfectly because it empowers them to be part of a real-time experience. It promotes instant debates people can get involved with, combining timing and appropriate messages to create a matchless customer experience.

In this scenario, marketers are growing aware of Live Blogs and how to attract their audiences and enhance customer engagement.

How are companies using Live Blogs?

Dynamic and extremely interactive, a Live Blog allows brands to bring different post formats and sources to deliver real-time content for an instant audience.

Live Blogs support several types of content, such as videos, audios, texts, social media posts, and more, to shape a different and more interactional feed.

By liveblogging, you can post regular updates of a relevant event that’s taking place in your field and keep your readers updated on the latest news.

More than that, you can live meaningful stream events that interest your followers, providing them with exclusive coverage. This is way more interesting than writing about an event only after it happened.

It makes users spend more time on your pages instead of digesting information on Twitter or Facebook.

Giving audiences a multimedia content and narrative experience already pays off to companies that embraced Live Blog and made it a crucial part of their marketing communication.

We have already written about how Arena customers are using a successful Live Blog engagement strategy and revolutionizing their content. This time, you will find a few examples to inspire you to use a Live Blog and catch real-time audience’s attention.

Winter came, and everybody watched: Game of Thrones Live Blog

Game of Thrones’ fans has always been head-over-heels for the show.

Considering that 87% of consumers use a second screen while watching TV, giving these passionate fans the chance to follow a Live Blog that was updated as new episodes could only be a fantastic idea.

That was what RadioTimes did back in 2019, mixing Twitter posts, memes, soundtrack videos, and written texts to both updates and entertain its audience.

All posts were made by Huw Fullerton, a pop-culture reference covering the biggest TV shows and movies for a while.

Huw was already known by the Radio Times readers, which made it easier to create connections and a sense of identification with their audience, that could cry and tremble about the episodes with someone they trusted in.

These details made Radio Times’ Game of Thrones Live Blog a success case.

Technology biggest reference: Apple Event Live Blog

With a frequently-refreshing Live Blog, Apple has allowed its customer base to get all the freshest iPhone news on its website for years. 

This takes the brand closer to its niche audience, but it creates a phenomenal hype and turns the Apple Live Blog as the right place to go when customers want brand-new information.

Apple also often live streams special events to announce new products and upgraded features that create market awareness and indulge Apple fans in details they’re curious about.

One of the most critical and historic Apple events was the Worldwide Developers Conference 2020, which took place during the Coronavirus outbreak. 

Vehicles like The Verge even made a Live Blog of their own to debate the conference’s content and Tim Cook’s considerations about the company’s future.

Free access to political information: Debate Live Blog

Democratic debates are powerful attention-callers. People are always alert to what politicians have to say, especially when they’re in doubt about whom to vote for or want a specialist’s opinion.

FiveThirtyEight is one of those websites that use liveblogging to provide readers with constant updates, so they know what goes down in debates and primaries.

FiveThirtyEight editors feed pages with texts, videos, and Twitter posts to comment on political debates. Meanwhile, the editors let users interact with intuitive graphics, polls, forecasts, and other easy-to-visualize content.

Let’s take the South Carolina Democratic Debate as an example. Notice how editors mix different contents in a timeline to give readers a broader view of the event:

It looks cool, doesn’t it? That’s one of the Live Blog advantages: To mix content and use it intelligently.

The show went on: The Voice Live Blog

NBC’s The Voice kept relevant even during the pandemic. Coaches and contenders changed the already familiar The Voice studio for their homes, and GoldDerby commented on Season 18’s finale to engage interested readers with a broad, real-time Live Blog feeding.

The Voice Live Blog used a more straightforward format approach, posting only short texts to update the page’s visitors.

Still, live blogging was a smart way to promote GoldDerby’s online prediction program. Winning users got a special place in the Live Blog leaderboard, along with a $100 Amazon Card—see how Live Blog is generating engagement here?

GoldDerby also provided users with a commentary section so they could voice their thoughts on The Voice finale. This was essential to grant readers an exclusive place to comment on their favorite show and create a unique sense of community people don’t usually find on social media.

Live Original Blog

Interactive content is like the face of the future: it brings people together and gives a human, personal touch that keeps them interested in what you have to say.

Through the years, Live Blogs have evolved and become excellent channels for folks that watch live sports games, real-time protests, technology conferences, and so on.

Despite that, Live Blogs can still do so much more.

For example, in fashion retail companies, Live Blogs can be used to cover special events that matter in the field, such as fashion runaways and even music festivals.

Covering noteworthy events might make your brand stand out from the competition, but it will also give you the chance to transform your content to smartly address your audiences’ concerns and point them in the right direction.

If you’re interested in learning more about a Live Blog’s potential, we have numbered 30 Live Blog benefits and why you should pay more attention to it for your marketing strategy.

Since we know how much difference a Live Blog can make, it would be selfish not to share other Live Blog ideas you can adjust and use in your company.

More ideas for your Live Blog strategy

Arena has been helping companies from several sectors worldwide build and execute robust Live Blog strategies that skyrocket customer engagement and provide exclusive content.

Want to figure out how? Come along!

  • Launch products — and let people know immediately 

Covering a real-time launch event is always exciting because people are more than ready to be the first to know.

The sooner you give your audience the news, the more educated and confident they will feel.

Let people see what your new products are about and educate them on why they need to buy from you instead of your competitors.

  • Add your commentary to a conference 

There are certainly a few exciting events in your field that your audience is dying to see. Take the chance to live to blog them and add your personal touch to the coverage.

  • Live blog during a crisis

Live Blogs become critically important in times of crisis when real-time information can influence what readers plan to do next.

This became very clear with the Coronavirus outbreak. Try googling “Coronavirus Live Blog,” and you should probably find websites like NBC Bay Area’s, that publishes all the real-time information available in a single place to keep readers updated and safe.

  • Drive traffic to your Live Blog

We know social media is the to-go place when news break—but a Live Blog can change that.

Although it is essential to use social media to connect with your audience, having a Live Blog will drive more traffic to your digital properties. Like that, you should depend less on external algorithms and take your audience ownership back to your website.

When you decide to invest in a Live Blog, attracting attention to it is crucial. Start by spreading the news and creating the right buzz towards it.

This will widen your audience and make the most interested people stick around to keep you company.

  • Feel more human to your readers

When aligned with your branding voice, Live Blogs are the perfect place for you to talk about your brand, speak your point of view, and feel more human.

Remember the Game of Thrones Live Blog? It used a reference to shed light on the show and humanize the Live Blog feed with someone’s actual opinions. And people love that.

  • Let users interact on your Live Blog

This is essential. People won’t feel like they belong and can be part of the experience if you don’t give them a special place to interact and be active.

Whether you implement a Live Chat Group or a commentary section on your Live Blog, allow readers to express themselves. You’ll see how this stimulates organic engagement and encourages users to come back for more.

Your content strategy is incomplete without a Live Blog

But it doesn’t have to be.

Now that you’ve seen inspiring examples and ideas, it is time to take the next step and benefit from the many wonders of a Live Blog.

Without the perfect platform to embed on your website, you might miss out on some unique features to leverage your website and guarantee your events will be successful.

You want a Live Blog platform that’s intuitive to your crew and your readers and makes the most out of the investments you’re making.

Arena is ready to optimize and monetize your editorial work with a superb Live Blog tool that is easy to embed and can be plugged into your WordPress page. It is SEO friendly, scalable, and works on any website.

Ready to get started? Claim your free trial and try Arena’s Live Blog solution!