Category Archives: Group Chat

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!

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 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.

#Subscribe and stay on top of the news on our blog

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.

#Subscribe and stay on top of the news on our blog

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!

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!

How Customer Data Platform is reinventing customer relations

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Using a Customer Data Platform is helping companies to focus obsessively on their customers and benefit from their engagement.

You need to know your customers—this isn’t any news. It doesn’t matter if you want to make them more engaged, optimize your budget for campaigns, or improve your ROI.

Customer accurate information is at the heart of every company and should be treated correctly to generate powerful outcomes from your marketing efforts.

If you don’t have a consistent understanding of your consumers, then all your strategies will likely go down the drain.

But how exactly do you get to act like you know your customers? The answer is simple: by managing their data.

To treat data thoroughly and reach your customer relationship goals, you might come across the need to use the right technologies. This is when the Customer Data Platform (CDP) walks in.

A customer data platform monitors and tracks multiple data sources to bring relevant information to a single hub that is easy to access and understand.

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Once implemented, CDPs collect, integrate, manage, and analyze customer data continuously. These automated processes help many teams to focus on solving complex problems that require a human brain. At the same time, a Customer Data Platform brings current, real-time data to be leveraged and turned into marketing master plans.

Why do companies use Customer Data Platforms?

Is there a reason why companies implement a Customer Data Platform in their business models? Yes, many.

According to Gartner, plenty of marketers look to customer data-driven strategies to deliver growth. For example, marketers invested two-thirds of their budget in supporting relationships with their customers in 2017 and 2018. 

Still, they have found the technology they were using to be frustrating—until CDP’s unique upshots came out as a solution to their problems.

A Customer Data Platform reaches out for several channels and concentrates real-time data in a single place your team can access whenever it is convenient.

This stimulates a collaborative work environment and speeds the pace of operational routines. Customer Data Platforms are also known for making marketers’ lives less complicated since automating workflows would take too many working hours to be accomplished.

The other reason companies use Customer Data Platforms is that they are much more than a simple database. According to the CDP Institute, the ideal Customer Data Platform should contain five essential capabilities:

  • Absorb data from any source
  • Give full details of ingested data
  • Store data without end and frequently
  • Create unified profiles (such as personas)
  • Share data with any system that needs it

All of the five skills above drive brands into having a vigorous understanding of their customer base by collecting and analyzing reliable data across their marketing channels.

What types of data does a Customer Data Platform assess?

The types of customer data assessed by a CDP can be quantitative and qualitative. 

In other words, by using a CDP, you will be able to figure out:

  • How to identify your customers, using personal data
  • How to interact with your customers, using interactional data
  • How customers expect to be impacted by experiences, using behavioral data
  • How your customers perceive your brand, using attitudinal data

The datasets above are being generated at all times in any digital environment and should be combined to create an unbeatable and absolute customer understanding.

But how do CDPs gather such different information?

They reach out to analytics reports, engagement measures, support occurrences, eCommerce metrics, and customer feedback (to quote a few), to maximize your knowledge and equip you with fast, accurate moves.

This is the main reason why CDPs are revolutionizing the way brands communicate with customers and vice-versa. They are an unlimited and underlying base for companies to create remarkable customer experiences and increase customer engagement in a way we have never seen before.

The effects of CDP in customer experience

A Customer Data Platform grants companies an invincible competitive advantage: passionate customers who keep being fed with reasons to remain brand loyal.

Historically, we can see customers have adopted technologies faster than the brands they interact with. This made companies try to embrace digital transformation technologies focused on customer experience to reach out to consumers where they are and how they want.

Expanding your brand’s online presence to talk to customers in multiple channels isn’t enough, in any case. Any company can create an Instagram account and interact with its audience then and there, right?

However, the ones that truly stand out are focused on delivering personalized, relevant, well-designed interactions that take place as soon as customers want.

Tailored customer interactions should happen anywhere, at any time. This is the main reason why organizations around the world are digitizing their business models. According to the Boston Consulting Group Research, personalization will drive an $800 billion revenue shift to the top 15% of companies that work best on it, in only three industries.

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I know what you’re thinking: that’s much profit for a small number of companies—and yes, it is. Even so, it sounds like a warning: companies that aren’t ready to turn personalization ordinary in their marketing campaigns, will be left stranded.

As you know, doing a great job on personalization is all about knowing everything there is to know about your customers and quickly activating your knowledge when needed.

Can you notice any coincidences between this goal and the usage of a CDP?

How CDPs are reinventing customer relations

Suppose you’re leading digital initiatives to deepen the relationship between your customers and your brand. In that case, you should pay attention to the changes CDPs are leading in customer management and how it differs from other popular marketing tools.

A Customer Data Platform is way more complete than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

CRM will tell you how to personalize and improve existing customer relationships. Meanwhile, a CDP will do that and indicate how you can promote products and services and what you should do to attract new customers.

With the new untapped potential CDPs unleash, companies are increasingly confident in meeting market changes and customers’ preferences. Hesitating in our competitive world is no longer an option, and data-driven marketing plays a vital role in feeding companies with unequivocal customer interactions.

Ahead, we have numbered a few ways Customer Data Platforms reinvent customer relations to inspire you and your team.

1. CDP enables segmentation opportunities

While it simultaneously optimizes strategies, a CDP provides companies with a 360-degree view of customers to act on an essential customer experience requirement: segmentation.

Segmenting customers by specific traits, behaviors, attitudes, and others is a fantastic opportunity to create tailored marketing touchpoints throughout their journey and attract them with meaningful content.

When based on data, segmentation is an unmatched growth engine that encourages customer loyalty and enhances profitability.

2. A CDP gives your interactions a personal touch

Similarly, you can not spell personalization without customer data.

Owning a Customer Data Platform will help you quickly access reliable information to customize customer interactions, making your consumers feel special, and long-term relationships feasible.

Many companies are using CDP for Customer Data Management. See below how their tactics connect with top-level personalization:

3. A CDP enriches customer relationships

There isn’t enough emphasis on how knowing your customers is essential for customer relations.

People expect to be treated accordingly to their visions as much as they wish to connect emotionally with brands. A single miscommunication can harm brand-customer relationships irreparably.

As soon as you have a panoramic view of your customers’ habits, preferences, needs, and issues, you should feel more confident in building specific touchpoints that elevate the customer journey and make customers want to hang around you for longer.

Owning a Customer Data Platform will also measure your customer loyalty programs’ effectiveness and help you find what groups of customers deserve attention according to their life cycle.

4. A CDP is agile

Agile methodologies are the perfect response to a world that is changing every day, every hour. CDPs consider our ever-changing environment and let your team access specific data whenever it needs, contributing to an agility mindset.

Agility layers can be used to shape CDP frameworks that adjust to your company’s infrastructure, turning data sharing into a reality. CDPs also absorb data from other internal systems, like CRMs and Data Management Platforms (DMPs), you might already have.

Apart from that, CDPs update in real-time. This allows you to assess micro-moments data and instantly operationalize it.

5. A CDP ingests data from any source

Your customers are everywhere these days, right? You can find them on social media, navigate your website, read your emails, download your app, and take a look at your physical store. The interaction possibilities between your customer and your brand are countless.

If truth be told, it truly doesn’t matter where your customers are and what they’re doing. Whether they’re reading your blog or using your chatbot, data is being generated at all times, collected from simple interactions to complex operations.

A Customer Data Platform reaches out to any source of information, from Live Chats to SEO, from blogging to Twitter, from customer loyalty to affiliate marketing programs to provide your company with everything you know about your potential and current consumers.

6. A CDP elevates digital transformation

Simply, a digital transformation process should rely on—and a lot!—on a Customer Data Platform.

By watching digital-native organizations, it becomes clear that many technologies can be embedded to digitize businesses.

However, it is worthless to implement technologies that don’t accurately connect with customers’ needs. Digital transformation starts and ends with the customer, transcending traditional marketing, sales, and customer service roles.

That being said, without a reliable Customer Data Platform, companies who are digitizing their operations will mostly fail to unleash the real potential of a digital transformation.

Digital-native companies have already built their business model based on data collection and responding to customers’ needs with high-level experiences.

These companies combine traditional marketing strategies, such as loyalty programs, with groundbreaking digital initiatives that connect with customers in real-time and engross their engagement.

Remember: It is crucial to direct your digital transformation efforts into interactions that engage your audience, and a Customer Data Platform is intimately related to that.

It taps into your databases to unify relevant information and operationalize customer knowledge, delivering targeted experiences that will delight and retain your customers.

It should also be stated that CDPs assist companies in taking a step back and revisiting their processes to leverage technology cleverly.

For example, Netflix was quick to turn its service into a scalable streaming platform that replies to customers’ demands. The now-sector-leading company could only reinvent itself because it took a very attentive look at customer data and responded accordingly.

Align your digital initiatives with the power of a Customer Data Platform

While IT staff has been skeptical for a while, digital leaders worldwide have been engrossing CDP in their workflows and getting amazing results from data management automation.

Not only has perfect treating data been helping these leaders come up with customer-centric solutions, but it has optimized their budget and turned manual work more effective.

Forbes Insights highlighted that 44% of surveyed organizations stated a Customer Data Platform is helping drive customer loyalty and increase ROI.

Arena serves customers from 120 different countries and sees firsthand how the fast-paced digital environment influences global market changes day after day.

That is why we work to build awareness for digital leaders and marketers to embrace Customer Data Platforms in their full potential and boost customer engagement.

In case you need to further your research towards the CDP role for the upcoming years, download our Customer Data Platform 2020: the future of marketing and sales ebook and take a deeper dive.

Boost Your eCommerce Conversion with Live Chat

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Companies are now more interested in Live Chat solutions. Research shows it is helping increase conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Find out more!

Live Chat is not precisely a new solution in the market, but it has evolved into a must-have feature. It’s more than a way to have real-time customer support. It’s also a marketing and a sales strategy jackpot.

There’s no denying it: customers hate waiting to be attended, and they want quick answers. Everyone is so busy nowadays that they want and need means of dealing with their issues while multitasking. That’s why Live Chat is preferred over phone calls and emails.

In emails, a person might wait for hours or even days to get an answer. On the telephone, the customer usually has to go through automatic voice messages that will filter and redirect them to sales, support, or another sector — and it does involve some waiting around with jazz music playing in their ears.

Boost Your eCommerce Conversion Rates with Live Chat

Customers who can connect directly to the brand and have a personalized interaction gives value to the company. Something chatbots can’t do. That’s why they like it when a brand offers Live Chat on the website. Moreover, it’s all about the advantages of the company as well.

More than customer satisfaction, Live Chat provides a channel for marketing and sales strategies. Thus, increasing conversions and revenue. Let’s talk a bit more about what Live Chat is and how it impacts the way eCommerce works.

What is Live Chat?

Live Chat is a solution for companies that want to have a better connection with their audience. It allows real-time conversations between customers and companies. Usually, Live Chat is used for customer support, but it can do a lot more. For example, it can be a tool for customers to talk to each other when you’re live streaming.

There’s no doubt keeping reasonable customer satisfaction rates is of high priority, and this solution can assist for that purpose. However, Live Chat has also become a strategy for the marketing and sales departments to increase their results.

Have you heard about conversational marketing? Since customer behavior is constantly evolving, marketing needs to tag along and find better means to communicate with customers. Because of that, this new branch of marketing is about having a tailor-made experience for each customer.

In general, there are three steps for conversation marketing: engage, understand, and recommend. It’s mainly about moving customers through the sales pipeline in real-time, either increasing conversions or sales.

Most companies use chatbots together with Live Chat so they can create this connection between customers and brands. This way, the bot can filter the person’s problem and redirect them to the right sector for better service — while sending messages like “someone will be with you in about 2 minutes”.

How does Live Chat influence eCommerce?

In recent years, companies have found that Live Chat can affect visitors and customers. They discovered that by having access to Live Chat, people are more likely to complete a purchase. That’s because a customer can easily have their questions answered within a few minutes.

Sometimes, if a visitor can’t have a quick answer to what the store’s return policy is, for example, they will probably give up purchasing. On the other hand, if they do have a response and it’s one that pleases them, the sale is made! 63% of customers who used a Live Chat said they would return to that site for future business.

Additionally, depending on the Live Chat platform you acquire, attendants will be able to respond to up to 6 customers at once. This means a shorter waiting time for websites with high traffic and chat initiative. And you know what quick responses do? They make a customer happy — that’s pretty much halfway to make a client close the deal.

There’s still one more thing a Live Chat will influence on eCommerce: the upselling and cross-selling strategies. 

Yes, they can be performed via Live Chat as well. Surely you remember the experience of buying something online when suggestions start showing up after you click a product. Usually, there’s a session on the bottom of the page saying, “here are some similar products you might be interested in…”

Seeing that real-time data collection is possible through a Live Chat solution too, and the marketing and sales teams can use that to their benefit. When they see someone adding an item to the cart, they can appear in the corner of the screen with a message showing something similar or complementary to the product in the cart.

The same can be done if the customer completes the purchase and comes back on another day. They can send a ‘welcome back’ message, followed by suggestions and product recommendations.

Even if the consumer doesn’t use the Live Chat right away – or at all – when they see it is available, they are already more inclined to buy from that brand. That’s one more reason it can have an impact on eCommerce. If you work with Live Chat, it means they have easy access to ask questions, make complaints, and just keep in touch for whatever reason they need after acquiring a product.

Does Live Chat increase conversions?

The most straightforward answer is: yes, it does.

This research has found that one simple message can make a visitor 50% more inclined to become a customer, while a 6 message-chat makes them 250% more likely to become a customer. 

For conversions to happen, it’s required to pay attention to the opportunities that come up. If a customer contacts you through Live Chat asking about payment plans, it means they are interested in your product or service. You can take this opening to ask for their email, for example. More than that, keep an eye for people who ask about:

  • personalized solutions;
  • detailed information about products;
  • return and exchange policies.

Not only that, but Live Chat also impacts on a company’s revenue and retention rate. Since it makes customer satisfaction rates higher, that means they are happy with your brand. Therefore, they don’t have many reasons not to buy from you in the future.

Of course, for the conversion to happen, you need to follow some good practices. Otherwise, things might fall apart for you.

How to boost eCommerce sales with a Live Chat solution

So, we’ve been talking about how Live Chat can increase conversions and sales. But how does it happen?

To use this tool in marketing and sales, it should be set in a way that, when people enter your website, instantly reads an ad message. For instance, “Hi there, need a deal?” or “Hello, nice to see you again. How about getting a discount on that product you’ve been looking at?”.

It doesn’t need to be a pop-up window that will take up the entire page and cause a distraction, a simple picture on the right corner of the page will do the trick.

Besides, messages should always be personalized according to whether it’s the first visit or a returning customer. And here’s a note to remind how important data collection is, only from there will it be possible to create these messages.

As people interact with the chat, more data will be collected, and all interactions must be analyzed. They see what works and what doesn’t is essential for strategy improvement. Also, analyzing from which pages chats were initiated, what conversations converted more, and what topics are always coming up should be on the marketing team’s to-do list.

Besides, keeping Live Chats available 24/7 can be a good idea. As long as you either have human assistants also available during that time or if you have a chatbot that can answer general questions and forward the person to a human agent as needed — saying how long it will take for them to be attended.

What do customers think about Live Chat?

The bottom line is that customers adore Live Chat. Whether it is the immediate response factor or the fact that customers can multitask while being attended, people are generally happier with this tool. Indeed, more than half of all customers prefer Live Chat over other communication solutions — the satisfaction level for Live Chat is 73%.

A real-time online conversation is way more efficient in problem-solving than, let’s say, a tech support call. While a call is a real-time conversation, it does involve quite a lot of waiting time being transferred from one attendant to another. In the meantime, a Live Chat shouldn’t take longer than 2 minutes to connect with an assistant.

Social media and emails are also online communication tools, but the average wait time to get answers from these platforms can be as high as 10 to 17 hours. Hence, the high satisfaction rate with Live Chat solutions.

Even though chatbots can be quite useful in real-time answering questions, having a human attendant for eCommerce is the best solution. Even more so, when the store’s catalog has a high number of products, a human is more informed and can give better, personalized answers to increasing conversions and sales.

How to offer better customer service through live chat?

Despite having so many benefits, live chat can still cause a decrease in conversions if not used properly. These are some tips and practices you should follow to have the best results when acquiring your live chat solution.

Train support team

Since live chat is mostly used for customer support, it’s consequential to have a trained support team. Some of the things they need to know are:

  • not to rush into answers;
  • adding personality to the answers;
  • checking grammatical errors;
  • matching the customer’s tone.

Yes, the idea is to answer as quickly as possible; however, never rush into answers. Don’t reply to something because make sure all solutions have a foundation and give the correct information. If there’s the need to look up some information, ask the client to hold on a minute to provide them with the right info.

Also, it’s essential that you don’t sound like a robot. The support team should have a protocol and a script to follow, but they shouldn’t copy and paste their answers. Each attendant can personalize and adjust the text as needed. They should even be encouraged to add their personalities to the responses.

Moreover, matching the customer’s tone is the skill they need to have. Each customer will either be more formal or more casual. It’s crucial that you speak accordingly to keep them comfortable. Lastly, grammar is essential. Even in a casual conversation, it’s good to keep sentence structure and language rules intact.

Keep average response time to a minimum

This is something you can’t get away with using live chat. The answers need to be quick. An excellent average time can be around 46 seconds. That being said, responses can be as fast as 7 seconds.

However, there is the possibility of sending an automatic reply saying that “we usually reply within 2 minutes, stay with us”. If that is the case, customers will be happy to wait to talk to someone — as long as responses come quickly after that, they probably don’t want to wait 2 minutes for each question they send.

Keep chat visible, but not distracting

As much as we’re talking about live chat and its benefits, people sometimes enter your website to see something that is not remotely related to using the chat. Because of that, it must be strategically placed on your page. It needs to be easy to find and access, but not in a distracting way.

The most common way to use it is with a small chat window on the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Sometimes it’s just a chat icon that you can click to start a conversation. Other times it’s a proactive chat. That is a chat that talks to you before you speak to them. We’ve mentioned it before, the chat that already sends a message when you enter the page asking how they can help.

Additionally, all of your pages, the home page, landing page, and sales page should have an active chat head. That way, you can investigate to find the pages people are most likely to open a chat on.

Provide transcripts

One other way to increase customer satisfaction is by providing them with transcripts of the conversation after they’re done with the service. Also, a way to capture their email is to ask them to contact information to send over the document.

It’s an advantage for both sides. For the customer, because they’ll always have access to that conversation and won’t need to come back and ask the same thing again. While for the company, it’s because the next time that customer comes back, the assistant will know exactly what happened in the last conversation and have enough information to talk to them more efficiently.

Perform surveys

At the end of each conversation, you can set a survey to ask the customer how the service as if it was helpful, how helpful was it, what would they like to change, and how would they rate the service?

How to obtain a live chat solution?

Overall, all you need to do is find a platform that fits your needs as a business. Once you’ve found that, all it takes is to configure the tool and implement it to your website. While it may take a bit of work to deploy and configure a live chat solution, the results make it worthwhile. See it yourself how Shoply leverages Arena’s API to offer great Customer Experience to their customers.

One tip we can give you is to use a platform that integrates with an analytics tool or has it built-in in the system itself. Understanding the results and ROI of the live chat is how you’ll be able to adapt your strategies for the better.

This is an opportunity to bring innovation to your brand’s communication and gain a competitive advantage. If you can’t supply a customer’s needs and keep them satisfied, they will have no problems moving on to another company. In 2021, it’s expected that most companies will have a live chat available.

If you don’t want to be left behind, you should start using live chat right away. Here at Arena, we’ve already helped thousands of brands worldwide with our Live Group Chat solution, and guess what? You can try it yourself too – for free.

9 reasons why you should start doing it

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Being all ears to your customers has amazing benefits. It increases customer acquisition and makes them brand loyal. It also improves branding strategies and gives you powerful insights about your industry, connecting you to new market opportunities.

If you don’t want to miss out on these benefits, you better start embracing social listening. 

Reputation is critical to any company that is willing to increase customer loyalty and build confidence in the market. With the many digital channels that allow conversations between customers and brands, organizations from the B2C and B2B sectors work hard to be positively recognized by potential and current clients. One efficient way of generating awareness is to have a strong social media presence and reach out to customers with helpful and engaging interactions.

Still, these interactions can only be valuable if brands are ready to actively listen instead of guessing what people want. 

When customers talk to you, whether they’re feeling good or bad about your brand, they expect you to talk back accurately. The last thing you want is to make them feel like you don’t care about what they have to say – or that you’re not making any effort to understand what they mean.

And that is why you should start using social listening.

What is social listening?

Social listening is the act of monitoring your brand’s social media accounts and channels to search for customer feedback and give appropriate responses. 

In order to social listen, you firstly need to track your brand’s mentions and discussions, which can be done by social media monitoring tools. Only then, you’ll manage to do its core task: analyze conversations’ context to make better and more proactive communication decisions.

Think about an ordinary conversation. When someone talks to you, you listen before replying, right? You do that because you know dialogues and interactions won’t make sense unless you assimilate what’s being stated. When it comes to brands and consumers communicating with each other, the line of thought is the same.

By being an active social listener, you’ll be able to reply to some very important questions: Why are people talking about you? Where and how are they doing it? What do they truly want? How can you connect with them?

These questions can lead to a powerful understanding of how to improve content for your customers, create better relationships with your followers, and increase consumer satisfaction.

We separate social listening into four important actions: find, listen, understand, and take action.

  • By finding, you monitor and track the right places and discussions that gravitate around your brand.
  • By listening, you pay attention to what is being said.
  • By understanding, you address issues that are being presented and collect important feedback.
  • By taking action, you work on solutions that will remedy the situation and make your customers happier.

Practice makes perfect, so make sure you find, listen, understand, and take action continuously.

Why is social listening important?

When customers talk, they’re doing an amazing job for you. Their feedback lets you know what you should keep and what you should change in your business. If you listen clearly to consumers and give them what they need in return, they will remember you for solving their problems. Now, try ignoring customers to see how bad it can get. An unresponsive customer service approach will cost you a high number of consumers that will never do business with your brand again.

A bad brand reputation can be a way to downfall, and we are not exaggerating. Remember what happened to Kodak? It once led the photographic film market but failed to understand people were growing more and more fond of digital photography and went bankrupt. 

We have to emphasize that customer-centric cultures have never been so popular. By putting customers at the center of everything they do, these cultures put efforts into anticipating consumers’ needs and creating proactive strategies to give them what they want: new products, services, loyalty programs, and much more.

Information is everywhere and anywhere and it’s vital to track your brand’s social media to try and be wary of what people are saying about and to you. And that is the very least.

9 reasons why you should use social listening

Ahead, we give you detailed reasons why you should embrace social listening to proactively respond to your followers and consumers.

1. Customers expect you to speak out accordingly

Responsiveness is very important, as your audience expects you to speak out when relevant discussions and events take place. In 2018, a survey made by Clutch discovered that 76% of people expect brands to reply on social media. When we talk about millennials, 80% of takers expect brands to reply and 90% want to get an answer on the same day.

However, recall that an inappropriate response will only frustrate your customers, no matter how fast you’re able to reply.

If you want to make your clients brand loyal and boost customer retention, you better start replying accordingly to what they say — and, by accordingly, we mean you have to thoughtfully understand your customers’ issues to shape valuable responses. Keep this in mind: replying is good, but replying accordingly is what social listening is all about.

2. Have a better understanding of your audience

One of the many reasons organizations keep clear interactions with consumers is to generate and gather high-perspective data that maps their concerns and issues. Social listening will guide you to big pictures that exemplify your consumers’ concerns and how you can act on them.

Combined with the need to have a better audience understanding, social listening offers fresh data to get audience insights related to the public perception of your brand, from competitive analysis — whether in brand or product level — to how marketing campaigns resonate.

By social listening, you can identify demographics, preferences, and customer behaviors as much as the general sentiment about your brand. Once you have tangible reports, you can analyze qualitative data and leverage it to grow your brand strategy and take action.

We will sound obvious, but it’s true: your social listening data will only be valuable if you know what to do with it. For this reason, it is essential to set up a frequency to investigate the information you’re getting and think about how you’ll keep track of the results from time to time.

3. Monitor new industry opportunities

Is there anything that’s trending in your industry that you should know? Any social issue related to your brand that needs to be addressed? Any gap in your sector that people are talking about? Any questions from customers that you can answer better than your competitors? Social listening can help you find the answers to these questions. 

By tracking industry buzzwords and trends, social listening will bring you precious insights about your area of expertise and shed light on discussions that can be amazing opportunities for your brand. That is an efficient way to keep a hear out for market trends, discover what’s lacking in your industry and what you can do to innovate and attract more customers. 

4. Keep track of your brand’s health

Social listening is an effective way of developing better elements that shape your brand in customers’ minds. As soon as you continuously keep track of what people say on the internet, you’re able to make sense of what and how users would like your brand to communicate. Attentively listening to consumers’ feedback is essential to come up with interesting brand strategies.

Social listening is also an excellent way of providing constant investigation towards bad reviews and comments that can affect your brand negatively. Never forget that anything can go viral on social media. Unhappy customers and displeased staff members know they can freely express themselves on online networks and be heard. Social channels empower their voices and reach people who might be going through the same issues. With that in mind, it is completely possible that a single complaint could be reinforced by others and create unwanted attention. 

Being ready to address brand disasters and manage a crisis isn’t overreacting in this fast-paced environment we call the internet — and, trust us, you’ll be glad to have the right tools and tactics to deal with harmful posts and remedy the damage. 

It’s true that you won’t be able to control everything people say about your brand, but you can control how you react to it and mitigate the negative impact. Learn with your previous experiences and prepare not to just reply to undesirable controversy, but to avoid it before it happens. For example, if your launch sales were affected because your website was down, you better start looking for infrastructure tests that will strengthen your website and avoid outages. 

5. Increase customer acquisition 

Another reason you should embrace social listening is that data provided by it will lead you to create content people care about. When you start shaping your content to followers’ preferences, chances are you’ll attract more users that connect with you and have a genuine interest in what you have to say. 

You already know it — expressing your brand message in social media through responses, hashtags, live streaming, and more, calls the attention of content viewers and make it easier for you to convert them into leads. This works better than driving traffic through ads to people who have never heard of you before.

Pay attention to what audiences are looking for and what type of content they enjoy viewing and sharing. Photos, videos, mentions, polls… All of these are instruments you can use to increase customer acquisition smartly and more humanly.

Quick example: Netflix is one of the top-references for brands that want to stand out on social media and attract public attention. With unique humor, Netflix memes its own shows, retweets Netflix-related posts made by followers, and replies with a tone its audience can positively connect with. 

6. Keep old customers engaged

It is quite simple to understand how social listening can help you maintain old customers engaged and retained. If you ignore what consumers say when they reach out to you, it shows you don’t care about their experiences. By neglecting them, you’re paving the way for your customers to switch for competitors that are ready to offer valuable interactions.

Recall that many consumers’ stories are being told on social media, especially those where customers need your support. It isn’t unusual for clients to reach out to brands on Twitter or Instagram to get an issue addressed. Actually, they message and mention your brand on those channels because they expect you to reply and solve their problems quickly. No one has the time and patience it takes to hang on the line anymore. The good news is that social listening can absolutely help you to excel at fast, assertive support, and keep old customers engaged.

Engaged customers are more likely to be brand loyal, especially when you can keep meaningful interactions going on and offer them what quench their thirst for information, interactivity, and good customer experience.

7. Address common issues

If the same questions are made by your customers over and over, how can you make it easier for them to find the answer? If a considerable number of buyers are complaining about the same products, how can you give them a detailed, honest assessment of the problem? These are more questions you can wisely reply to by social listening.

If the big picture tells you your customers have the same common issues, maybe it is time to find out how to solve those issues and respond effectively to them.

Monitoring social media accounts to find these types of problems can make you arrive earlier in the game to prevent more consumers from being affected and provide the right solution to solve the issues of those who have already reached out for support.

8. Get quick feedback

From knowing how you can improve your products to where your audience is willing to communicate with you, feedback can give you constructive criticism about mostly anything. 

Launched a new product? Want to know how your brand positioning is doing? Have doubts if the last live event you promoted is matching your followers’ expectations? What people post on social media will certainly help you get a clear idea about those, and more.

Plus, if customers are talking about something that’s not working, you should be the first to know. Make sure to take their considerations into account and acknowledge their feedback, then start working on what will fix the problem. A new feature? A new product? A new campaign? Getting feedback — and, most importantly, fast feedback — will help you find your consumers’ pain points and understand how to solve them.

Quick example: Starbucks recently released an open letter based on a user’s negative feedback regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. After social listening to the critique, Starbucks used a respectful tone and gave an immediate solution to what the customer was talking about, showing how its employees can now support the movements while working. 

Don’t forget that positive feedback is important too. If customers love a campaign or the tone you’re using to reply to them, make sure you get it to generate more content that will match their preferences.

9. Identify influencers and user-generated content

You won’t be surprised by the fact social networks are full of potential influencers that can help you promote your brand — or threat it. Remember that even people who only had good experiences with your brand can be influenced if someone important they follow feels bad about you (and good about your competitors).

Another social listening advantage is that it allows you to track user-generated content to keep your followers updated. Being continuously connected to monitor what digital influencers say and do will lead you to understand who you can partner with. Search for hashtags, keywords, accounts, and more to keep your brand aware of what’s going on in real-time. You can also start mapping people who your audience connects with and listen to what they say so you don’t miss out on collaboration opportunities.

The role of social listening on live streaming

It’s no secret to you that people love when you go live and cover news and events as they happen. Live streaming has become extremely popular in the last years and it is a gold mine for brands that want to keep relevant by connecting with customers in real-time. The spectator customer profile is being replaced by the active customer, who wants to join brands in emotional and thrilling experiences.

But how do live events and streaming connect with social listening? Well, social listening is a powerful tool when it comes to combining the right strategies to go live.

From sports games to elections, live streams are effective event coverage mechanisms that allow customers to participate in what’s going on even if they’re far away. Meanwhile, social listening uses social streams to monitor and interpret the viewers’ behavior and comments to get insights.

When done right, social listening can be unbeatable in content creation. The reason why is that live streaming gives you engaging methods, such as live discussions and Q&As, that will transform into data — and, as you know, social listening will turn data into action. 

At Arena, we recognize the power of social listening in social streams and event monitoring.

Our social monitoring stream tool publishes content from different sources automatically or manually and provides results coming in real-time. You can adapt filters and search parameters to improve results and post the freshest content to engage your audience. Besides, our social stream feature easily integrates your search stream with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and more personalized RSS feeds.

[Real case example]

Grow your brand by social listening

We’re a bit biased, it’s true, but Arena is ready to empower companies to grow their audience in their websites by creating meaningful live experiences.

So, if you’re considering having a social monitoring stream and finding interactive ways to get in touch with your followers, we recommend you keep an eye on ongoing discussions related to your brand and make your own website the go-to place for relevant, instantaneous content.

It’s easier to be an authority in your field when you’re able to mix different sources and formats automatically into your website, all while providing your customer with an exclusive space for debating and chatting. Fortunately, we have the perfect tool that will do that for you.

A live blog will give your brand the chance to use a smart variety of tools to cover a particular event and engage users that are watching remotely.

By using it, you can publish news to your website as they happen, all while adding users’ reactions from social media and witnessing in-progress-discussions on live chats. Our tool is highly customizable and handles in-feed comments, connects with your video platform, creates polls, and posts social content that engages and keeps your followers updated.

Join us and be able to:

  • Increase time spent on your website
  • Let users engage with your posts
  • Automate content distribution
  • Cover field events that matter to your customers

From bloggers to large enterprises, from Oscars to Super Bowl, Arena is ideal to manage any type of live experience and to help you grow your brand by social listening.

Want to capture audience attention and feed your followers with fresh content at all times? Learn more about the subject in our Live Blog article!

Listen to your audience – and take back its ownership

When talking to your spectators and customers, you assume they’ll talk back to you. This dialog and communication are what, for the most part, define audience engagement.

In general, the question “what is audience engagement” has many different answers, but all of them will lead to the same essence. Keep reading to learn our Ultimate Guide to Audience Engagement.

Complete guide to Customer Experience

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Customer experience is one of the new frontiers of marketing. Customers, in the market powered by industry 4.0, are more interested in the experience than in the product itself. In fact, according to a research held by Momentum Worldwide in 2019, 76% of the participants declared to prefer experiences over things. 

This is closer to our own lives than you might think. Have you ever felt so well treated by a company that you eventually became their client for life? Or that a salesperson seemed to know your needs so well that you made an impulse purchase right on the spot? 

On the other hand, have you ever found it so hard to navigate a website that you couldn’t find or buy what you wanted? Or had to wait so long for technical support on a product or service you bought that you never used that company again, nor recommended it to anyone?

All of those situations have to do with the same business aspect: Customer Experience. Miles away from that simple and old idea of mere customer service, it is one of the biggest marketing trends today. And it involves reconfiguring your whole business around the idea of providing a customer with what he wants and needs, before he or she even knows they might need it.

Want to know more of how that works? Don’t worry, we got a simple and complete guide to help you improve your “CX” in no time.

What is Customer Experience and why is it important?

Customer Experience, also known as CX, is the summary of every physical or virtual interaction a customer has with your business. It is the sum of what defines his or her perception of your brand, starting from the very first contact up to their level of satisfaction at the end of their experience.

Simply put, CX is one of the most fundamental parts of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) because it is what will decide if any individual that comes in contact with your business will become a repeat and loyal customer. 

From your website usability to how your employee treated them, and how satisfied they were with your product, every piece of the puzzle will define how happy your brand made them – and, most importantly, if they are willing to come back.  

In addition, a happy customer is not only a loyal one. Oracle conducted a global study in which 74% of senior executives stated a good experience will make customers become advocates for your business. 

Not only will they come back, but they will talk about you with their friends, family, coworkers. They will recommend you, defend you, and bring you new business. They will become your marketing tool.

The importance of CX can be summed up in a simple idea: without customers, you don’t have a business. And an American Express research found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. This is why your main focus should be on investing in that experience, so you retain the ones you have, while also attracting new ones. 

Why should your business focus on CX?

In an ever more scattered and competitive market, Customer Experience is set to be the defining factor that makes someone opt for your brand, and not another. A third of customers will quit buying from a business after their first bad experience. On the other hand, half of them are likely to splurge on an impulse purchase if they receive a personalized treatment from an employee, or even an online interface.

And if a customer rates your company 10/10 on a satisfaction level, he or she will probably spend more than twice as much on your brand. Their  loyalty may last for over five years. When you are happy with a product or a service, you don’t quit them.

Talking in money figures, according to a study by the Temkin Group, businesses that make US$1 billion a year can increase that number by US$ 700 million in three years, simply by investing in CX. The reason is, by doing that, they attain higher customer satisfaction rates, reduced customer churn and, consequently, increased revenues.

If you want to make that kind of money, that means you cannot ignore your customer needs, their emails, feedback, queries, and expectations. You have to listen, understand, and act based on what they tell you.

That is why a Bloomberg Businessweek survey revealed that great customer experience is a top strategic objective right now for any kind of company. It is the most effective way to beat your competitors, and get your customer to not only come back and spend more, but to become your marketing tool, through word-of-mouth, positive online reviews, and recommendations to their friends and acquaintances. 

Is customer experience the same thing as customer service?

Absolutely not! Customer service is when a potential client interacts with one of your employees, in a store, online, or on the phone, for example. And that is just one part of the customer experience.

If you go to a restaurant, and your order is served quickly, and tastes delicious, that is good customer service. But if you become a regular at that particular restaurant, the chef knows that you are allergic to onions, and does not use them in your food without you even having to ask, that is great customer service.

Because that is the heart, the central element, of CX: seeing and treating your customer as a human, an individual, and not a simple source of money. Customer experience is all about providing a human and authentic connection, one that does not feel run-of-the-mill, nor a script from a production line. It feels unique and personal.

Technology today, such as a CRM software, has made it possible for that individual experience to be executed in many different ways. Predicting future purchases and needs based on the customer’s history, or delivering targeted email marketing campaigns are good examples. However, it is still about seeing each one of them as an individual, listening to them, and anticipating their expectations and needs.

That does not mean customer service is not important. On the contrary. Providing assistance, answering every email, complaint, or question – and quickly – is more imperative than ever. But that is only one part of your customer experience, that has to start positively from the homepage of your website and last long after a purchase is made. 

What makes for a good customer experience?

Exactly because good CX must feel personal and unique, there are no automatic formulas or guaranteed recipes. The one key element that is at the beginning of every good customer experience is: listen.

Know how to listen

Listening to what your customers are saying to your business, and about your business, must be your top priority. Every feedback, email, technical support call, or online review must not only be dealt with quickly, but also used as raw material to create a strategy in reducing friction and providing better and more personalized service for your customers.

Have a good system

In order to do that, a system that puts all that feedback and information together, and analyzes it, is essential. The logic is simple: create channels that make it possible for your customer to tell you what he/she wants, likes, or does not like, acknowledge and understand their demands; then act on them.

If you are not doing that, the alternative result is quite clear. Your complaint and purchase lines are clogged, and your customer is frustrated with long waiting times – which is the number one cause of bad customer experience. 

The dialogue does not flow organically because your employee does not understand what your customer needs – which may make your employee’s frustration come off as rude or angry. Consequently, your client support is left with many unresolved issues and complaints. And your customer is dissatisfied with automated responses, and the lack of a personal, human, component. Those are all the roots of bad, or terrible, CX.

Mock up your typical consumer

Know, though, that it’s not easy. Most companies still don’t provide good or excellent customer service. In order to change that, your CX policy must come from the top of the chain, expressed in clear and public guidelines, available and known by everyone in your business.

For example, create personas, so your employees know whom they will be dealing with. Provide training for those same workers. And listen to their feedback, too. They are the ones on the frontline, so they are in an ideal position to see and feel what your company might be doing right or wrong – and how to improve it.

Always ask questions

Finally, never hesitate to ask questions. Use your chat platforms to better know your customers and their current experience with your brand. Follow those conversations up with emails. If necessary, outbound calls are not off the table. 

And remember: it’s all about empathy. Emotions play a huge part in customer experience. It is precisely the emotions that will determine if your customer wants to remain in business with you or not. 

But how do I measure if all of this is working?

Measuring and analyzing is one of the most challenging parts of customer experience. That is why a number of different metrics and tools were created to assess the quality level of CX in a particular company.

With them, it is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of specific strategies, as well as how they improve or not the customer’s perception of, and relationship with, your brand. The four CX measuring tools that are most used in the market today are listed in the following topics.  

Customer Effort Score (CES)

It measures how easy, or difficult, a consumer’s experience with one of your products or services was. Here’s how it works: a customer made a purchase on your website, for example, and you wish to know how easy it was for him or her to navigate the e-commerce platform. 

So you send a CES survey after they are finished, asking questions like “How easy was it to complete your online purchase”, or “to navigate our website”, with a rating scale from ‘1: very difficult’ to ‘7: very easy’. Pretty straightforward.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

We all have answered a Net Promoter Score survey before. It measures a customer’s loyalty score, by asking a variation of the “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?” question.

In addition to being very simple and straightforward, that numerical score is a quite good assessment of customer experience. That is why the metric, created by Rob Markey and Fred Reichheld at Bain and Company, is favored by many boards and executive committees, being one of the most used by businesses in the world today.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

While Net Promoter Score evaluates the satisfaction with the whole brand, CSAT surveys the customer’s experience with a specific product or service. The metric system, though, is pretty much the same, usually providing a scale from 1 to 5 or 7 – where 1 is very unsatisfied, and 5/7 is very satisfied. A yes or no answer may also be used, however.

Due to its specificity, and for how it makes possible to analyze each different point in the customer experience chain separately, most CX leaders in the world choose CSAT as their top metric.

Time to resolution (TTR)

One of the main sources of customer frustration, and bad experience, is waiting a long time to get a response. For that reason, TTR is a very important metric. It measures, in average, how long it takes for a customer’s issue or ticket to be solved by a company’s brand after it’s been open. 

The result may be provided in days or business hours, being the product of the whole sum of time spent in resolution divided by how many tickets and issues were solved. The logic here is pretty obvious: shorten your TTR as much as possible, if you want to increase the likability of having return business from a customer. 

CX trends

Good Customer Experience results all over the world have come from companies who have been following a certain set of practices. The first one is that they are customer-centric, instead of profit-centric. 

That means their top priority is providing an outstanding experience, focusing more on retaining and satisfying their current customers than on attracting new ones at any cost. Second is that good CX usually comes from old school methods. Yes, again: human interaction. 

Companies that privilege one-on-one personal conversations over chatbots, market research (such as customer calls) over predictive analytics and social media, as well as investing in talent on board, often present the best customer experience results. It is not about being state of the art, or overtly technological, but about the willingness to provide good, satisfying service.

Number 3 is something we have already said, but can never overstate: these companies are listening. The base for their CX strategies is the feedback from their customers. Not only they collect it, but they have put systems in place to properly analyze it, and turn the conclusions into action.

Next, they acknowledged the importance of their employees in implementing good customer experience. Not only did they provide specific and individual training, based on different departments’ and workers’ needs, but they also got all their workforce involved in their CX strategy effort.

Finally, no matter how well they are doing, Customer Experience leaders in the globe keep increasing their investment on CX initiatives.

So, how do I Improve my CX strategy?

A good CX strategy consists of guidelines and actions that start from the very top and involve the whole company. It must be assimilated by every employee because to a greater or lesser extent, they will all eventually play a role in the customer’s experience of your brand.

These guidelines and actions must come from a very simple customer-centric principle: make your employees understand they should treat a customer the same way they would like to be treated by any business. 

In order to do that, make your customer feedback – that same one you already collected and properly analyzed – available for everyone in your team. Let them see and know how they can improve those experiences you have surveyed.

And that is ever more effective the sooner it starts. Your workers should be informed of your customer policy as soon as they are hired. And through training and support, they must be updated and refreshed on those practices as often as possible.

There are two powerful tools that you can incorporate to your strategy and will make your brand step up its game regarding customer experience. We are talking about live blogs and live chats. 

Live chats

Most companies use live chats as a customer service channel. But did you know it is also possible to use this tool to generate an experience for our consumer? 

Some platforms, such as Arena, allow you to create live group chats. This means your audience will be able to comment on your event, exchange impressions and also very valuable information. 

Depending on the profile of your audience, you can promote this space as a powerful networking opportunity for them to connect with people who have similar interests and valuable contributions for them both personally and professionally. 

On the other hand, you, as a brand, will receive immediate feedback from your customers. This will allow you to know exactly what they like and dislike, which gives you the opportunity to redefine your course of action immediately. As a consequence, you will offer an even better experience to your audience, making them loyal to your brand and the content you produce.

This is customer experience to its core, generating true value for your public and allowing your brand to be a vector for meaningful relationships. 

Live blogging

Live blogging is a new approach to content marketing. As the name suggests, these are platforms that allow you to create content as a particular event or set of events unfold. It gives your audience (or public, as you might want to call) a chance to have access to things they otherwise wouldn’t. 

There are basically two ways in which you can use live blogging. The first one is to provide a full coverage of an event. This means that people who haven’t been able to attend feel like they are actually participating. Big tech events make full use of this technology for this kind of use. 

The second way in which you can benefit from live blogging is to broaden your user’s experience. Let’s say, for example, your company is promoting a big event with celebrities and big names of the area. 

In this situation, you can use a live blogging strategy to grant access to the backstage or to have specialists commenting on the theme of the event. You can also directly interact with your audience by publishing trivias and reposting what they have been saying about the event online. 

Live blogging is a fine way to deliver a greater customer experience to your public. By adopting this technology, you are giving them the opportunity to have access to exclusive content, personalised interaction and relevant content. 

Lastly, because it all comes down to this, and you have to remind yourself of that every day, all the time: in order to provide a great customer experience, listen to your customer and their feedback. 

Create channels so they can speak to you. Listen to what they want, need, like, and don’t like. Use that in your favor. Engage in the conversation, ask questions, try to understand them better.

In short: see them as human, as an individual, as your business partner. Speak their language, with them, not to them. And be quick. Don’t make them wait. Nobody likes to wait.

If you want to start testing some of the tools that will allow your brand to offer an even better customer experience, here’s what you can do: create an account at Arena and implement our freemium version of the live blog and live chat!   

20 Ways to Boost Results with CDP

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From personalized advertising campaigns to attribution modeling, CDPs can help you extract the best out of your organization’s data

“Data is the new oil”, says the business cliché. No matter the sector your company operates, it certainly collects data from a number of sources – from unstructured qualitative data (from social media and call centers) to quantitative insights on paid campaign efforts and sales channels.

Marketing executives have increasingly more customer interactions to be aware of and are required to get a broad, deep picture of the audience’s needs and pain points.

A few years ago, it would have been enough just to have a DMP and CRM tool to manage customer data. They are still important today but hold limitations in capturing users’ journeys and profiles as standalone platforms.

A 2018 survey made by Forbes with 400 marketing leaders showed that most of them saw a gap in data management in their organizations, which is still true today. Only 19% reported having a robust set of analytics and technology tools to support customer-data-driven decisions. Besides, sometimes it can be challenging to make data accessible (and actionable) for marketing teams.

That is where customer data platforms come to play, with the purpose of connecting the dots between different data sources. Last year, the Gartner Institute pointed customer data platform as one of the four main emerging trends for marketers in 2020, along with blockchain, AI, and real-time marketing.

But what exactly is a CDP (Customer Data Platform)?

A Customer Data Platform is a software capable of unifying customer data from various sources, gathering quantitative and qualitative customer information across multiple touchpoints. It aggregates first, second and third-party data, as well as information collected from multiple channels, systems, and devices. 

If you lead marketing at a large company, you know how difficult it can be to connect user’s data, once the customer’s journey has become more complex with so many devices and channels available. 

With that in mind, we have prepared a list of 20 ways customer data platforms (CDPs) can improve your marketing strategy and results. 

1) Generating accurate customer profiles

CDPs can basically spot who your customers are – almost literally. They are able to filter all collected data through algorithms to determine unified customer profiles. In a single platform, It compiles identity, descriptive and behavioral data that can give you context on current customers and prospects, making it easier for marketers to build accurate personas. 

The type of data your team chooses to collect will vary according to your business and industry. If you work at a media company, for example, you’re probably more interested in customers’ preferred media channels than details about customer’s cars, information that would be crucial for car dealerships, on the other hand.

2) Accessing updates in real-time

Marketers know that customers’ preferences evolve over time, but most data management tools can’t always spot those changes. In CDPs, the processing of data happens in real-time, which makes it possible to spot changes in customer behavior in both the short and long-term. 

If a prospect stops using YouTube and migrates to Twitch, for instance, your team can quickly detect it and redirect campaigns.  

The long-term approach is also possible because CDPs can hold data for long periods of time, unlike data management platforms (DMPs), which usually hold data up to only 90 days (a cookie lifetime).

3) Avoiding data silos

Much of the data from an organization is generated and stored in different systems and departments, which makes it rarely accessible to other parts of the company. The result? A less collaborative corporate environment, less productivity, and less accurate customer profiles.

With CDPs, a great deal of a company’s data can be stored in a single, user-friendly interface. 

4) Giving marketers control over data management

For marketers, relying on other departments for reports and insights can be time-consuming and unproductive, since not everyone is on the same page about marketing needs. In that sense, CDPs also optimize the work of marketing professionals, because they can be managed by marketing teams instead of adjacent teams (like sales) or third-parties. 

Yes, CDPs should be useful to a variety of departments within a company, but every team can adapt their use according to specific goals while having access to all kinds of company data. That way, teams can also quickly scale marketing efforts and get new processes started in days, not months.

5) Understanding customers’ motivations

These days, brands don’t want to know just how a customer relates to their brand and category, but also what are his or her life aspirations and beliefs. Beyond customer profiles, CDPs can provide personality and behavioral data about customers, helping you understand their inner motivations as people, not just as customers. 

Almost like a social listening tool, you can find out the subjects they are discussing, topics they search for, preferences on content, politics, or products.

6) Connecting online and offline touchpoints

In a recent report, PWC found that the number of companies investing in omnichannel experiences has grown from 20% to more than 80% in recent years. While some marketers still struggle to be truly “omnichannel”, CDPs are able to track both online and offline customer data. 

A good CDP can combine information from various online and offline tracking applications, to get a full picture of where customers go, what products they search for, what they watch, read, or buy. A regular CRM tool, as a counterpoint, cannot pick up on offline data unless it’s manually setup.

7) Tracking interactions across different devices

Connecting interactions across multiple devices is also crucial for marketers who wish to provide seamless experiences to the audience. The CDP can connect interactions from a single person across different interfaces. 

The platform captures information such as time spent on the page, email and cookies used. If a customer accessed your page through different browsers at a desktop, and then accessed again through phone, a few days later,  you’ll know it. 

8) Optimizing targeted advertising campaigns

A CDP can automate the usually manual process of creating advertising audience clusters. From there, your team can use data to drive campaigns and promotions across multiple touchpoints, creating highly targeted, personalized advertising campaigns (CDPs can be integrated to Facebook pixels and Google Ads, for example).

Without a CDP, building these campaigns for complex audiences would take a lot more time and effort. The CDP lets you access clusters of customers and acknowledge what products they show interest in,  as well as their purchase intent and how likely they are to churn. 

9) Attracting Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

A CDP is where Marketing, Sales Customer Experience and Customer Success meet. By centralizing information from these areas in a single platform, companies can optimize their marketing resources and efforts. If marketers can find out exactly where are the friction points in customers’ journeys, it’s more likely they will come up with the right messages and campaigns for every stage in the conversion funnel.

Ultimately, CDPs can support marketers in attracting more qualified leads. A study by Forbes shows that 53% of marketing executives are using CDPs to engage with existing customers’ needs, increasing the likelihood that they will become recurring clients.

10) Reducing operational costs and improving ROI

As customer data platforms can be considerably automated, they bolster efficiency and reduce operational costs. After all, if you know exactly who your customers are and can streamline the targeting process, it’s likely you’ll impact the right customers at the right moment with the right formats.

As a result, you can optimize Costs per Click (CPC), Costs per Impression (CPM), and Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC).

11) Tracking customer engagement (or disengagement)

In the myriad of data collected by CDPs, there are also quantitative and transactional data that reveal how your customer relates to your company. From buying history to abandoned carts, email click rates and responses, website visits, product views and social media engagement, your team can get a better sense of how’s the relationship between your audience and your company – and then manage it effectively.

12) Improving overall customer experience

A Walker study discovered that, by the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the main brand differentiator among customers. When we talk about big companies and huge data sets, the lack of a CDP can actually result in poor customer experience.

Not integrating data results in friction along the customer journey, no wonder customers often complain about emails suggesting a product they just bought, or say they were impacted by wrongful ads and recommendations. Nowadays, people simply expect your company to know about their journey across different channels, and CDPs can help you a lot with that.

13) Boosting predictive marketing

Predicting customer behavior and preferences is what built companies like Amazon and Netflix. Predictive marketing is now becoming increasingly used by all sorts of businesses. This marketing technique, which determines the probability of success of different marketing strategies, is essentially fueled by data. 

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

14) Improving attribution models

With so many touchpoints with the audience, It is often difficult for companies to build a proper attribution model. According to Google, almost 80% of all transaction value involves at least two marketing channel interactions.

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.

15) Helping set realistic KPIs

By having a more holistic approach towards data, marketing teams can use CDP to measure and adjust expectations about key performance indicators (KPIs). You could even find out that your team is not tracking the right indicators, and choose new ones according to your strategy. 

However, when it comes to KPIs, CDPs must be used thoughtfully: more metrics possibilities don’t necessarily mean you’ll understand your customer better, so beware of the data that actually informs your strategy.

16) Complementing and optimizing existing marketing software

At the end of the day, marketers want more control over events in their channels, and so CDPs allow companies to deploy customers’ profiles to other marketing tools. Customer data platforms can be integrated to “delivery platforms” or “engagement platforms” to enable the planning of campaigns and messages.

CDPs can integrate your company’s email marketing or marketing automation software, website or social media platforms, and also live chat, CRM, analytics, and SMS tools. The amount of tools companies connect to their CDPs has to do, again, with the specifics of their business. Large businesses are likely to connect more tools than small companies.

17) Complying with data privacy regulations

One of the challenges marketers face is to balance personalization with data privacy, considering emerging privacy regulations worldwide. At first sight, it might look like a CDP could worsen privacy problems, since it tracks all sorts of data. From a practical standpoint though, a customer data platform can actually help companies comply with data privacy laws. 

To start, it collects mostly first-party data, which is key to data privacy. Second, it offers privacy configurations that can enforce your privacy policies. And third, a CDP acts as a single access point for data, which is safer than having multiple access points.

18) Experimenting with lower risks

CDPs are also a key engine for experimenting with emerging technologies and services. Imagine your marketing team wants to test an integrated campaign with a voice assistant for smart devices. While voice-activated marketing is still limited and won’t bring you scale, for now, it is seen as a prominent marketing channel for the future. 

By knowing your customers’ profiles, you can spot promising channels and formats and test them out with a small cohort of consumers. While combining insights to A/B tests, you might also come up with new business solutions and even ideas for revenue streams.

19) Feeding content strategy

In the age of Netflix and Spotify, customers expect personalized content that matches their particular moment in the customer journey. In that scenario, marketers have the challenge of being relevant and timely in their advertising efforts.

CDPs can help brands discover the formats of content and notifications that are more appealing to each customer, as well as when they tend to be more receptive to brands’ communication. 

20) Getting insights for products and services

If you once needed full customer research in order to understand customers’ unique needs, CDPs can give you hints about their preferences and needs. Because CDP gathers loads of qualitative information, it can also guide your product strategy.

By checking users’ feedback regularly, you can prioritize your product and service offerings to more closely match with customers’ needs. Or, you can identify trends and come up with completely new products.

Interested in a CDP for your company?

That is a lot of information about customer data platforms, right? It’s a lot to take in, so take a deep breath. Now, 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.

You might want to check out the specifics of Arena’s CDP, one of the most robust tools in the market. Register to this link to talk to one of our consultants and find out how our CDP can help your business.