So you have created a new campaign and are ready for the launch. You run a Sitecore Experience Platform that plays an important role in managing the customer journey and optimizing your conversion rate. But how do you know which Sitecore features you should use when?
This is a common challenge for most digital marketers that are about to embark a new Sitecore journey. There are quit a few options you have such as:
- Goals with engagement value
- Campaigns
- Profiles
- Segmentation
- Personalization
- A/B testing
- Email marketing
- Marketing automation
So where to start?
The See-Think-Do-Care model to the rescue
I love using Google’s See-Think-Do-Care model. It is a simple model but gives you enough structure and guidance to layout a campaign journey. Now I’m not going to explain the model. Google is your friend for that. But I have used the model in various ways with customers to let them think of which channels, means and KPI’s are necessary in which stage of this funnel. And extending the model with an additional layer for Sitecore features that are convienient in which stage of the funnel, makes things a lot more clear.
So I came up with the following schema that you can use in your next campaign to design your campaign and target the right Sitecore features in the right stages. The contents of the first two layers per stage of the funnel are purely for inspiration.
Let me explain the layers briefly.
Channels
In here you can fill in which channels you need in which stage. Typically this involves the earned, owned, and paid channels. You can also add means like landingpages, emails, etc.
KPI’s
For each stage you should have at least one KPI, but based on the channels and means you probably have more. Of course these should be KPI’s that can tell you something about your campaign performance, or budget performance. At least something that tells you if you are on track or not.
Sitecore features
In this layer the Sitecore fun begins. Let me explain why I have chosen the Sitecore features per stage as shown above.
- See
The See phase will often take place outside of your owned channels. This means you cannot measure things with Sitecore. But what you can do for the means that generate traffic to your landingpages is creating campaigns to measure the traffic coming from different external channels. And if possible add a couple of Goals with engagement value as well so you can see the engagement per channel. - Think
Visitors that are coming back and browse a little more on your site are more interested and usually create a more richer profile with all kinds of interactions and events (like goal triggers, page views, downloads, etc.). Based on this richer profile you can start with simple profiling or segmentation. This helps in analyzing visitors, target audiences and their behavior and to understand what to do next to push the conversion.
Don’t forget to start using the Path Analyzer from this stage on. It helps you analyze click paths on your site, even based on channel referral and let you understand which channels and paths work well and which need to be optimized. - Do
With a more detailed profile and understanding of visitor needs you can start using personalization to create a more tailored experience. This will boost your conversion rate for sure. After all, a personal and relevant experience sells better according to many research done by Forrester and Gartner.
If you find out that certain pages or Call To Actions don’t perform that well, it is also time to start experimenting. Setup a multi-variate or A/B test, choose the conversion goal and figure out which version should be used. - Care
Once a conversion is done you can stay in touch with customers by using emailmarketing, marketing automation and CRM synchronization. Of course emailmarketing and marketing automation can also be used somewhere between the Think and Do stages, but this highly depends on how your campaign is setup and which channels are involved. The more you do on the earned and paid channels the less you can use these features. If you generate traffic to your site and let them leave personal information (for example for registering for webinars, download whitepapers and other ways) you can use that immediately for marketing automation.
I hope this will inspire you to start using the powerful Sitecore features in a structured approach.