When Camilla Schmidt Nygaard started working as Atea’s Digital Marketing Specialist two years ago, the company was undergoing a digital transformation, aiming to “leave the ‘box movers brand’ behind and become a trusted IT advisor.” As part of this process, they implemented new marketing tools and initiatives to boost their online presence. An important step was ensuring the best possible user experience on their site.
Traditionally, this was done through user surveys, requiring preparation, countless interviews, and analyses. Like many in her position, Camilla did not have the time or resources to conduct these surveys, so she started looking for alternative solutions. “I needed a simple yet reliable way to explore what our website visitors actually feel when they are about to finish their session,” she told me. However, the challenge of conducting surveys on-site was doing it without hurting the overall user experience (UX).
Camilla explained that “When you’re working on your website for a long time, you sometimes go blind to obvious things users might be looking for, which can damage the overall UX and hurt your brand.” To assess their visitors’ experience, she introduced a simple form that asked them if they found what they were looking for. If they did not, they could then write down what they were after. What made this campaign special was using the exit-intent trigger, which “does not interrupt the users and lets them go through a natural session,” as Camilla explained it.
This ongoing campaign allows Camilla to tailor the user experience on Atea’s website in a way that makes the most relevant content readily available. Patterns in the feedback show ways they can improve their online customer journey, at times by changing a simple call-to-action, other times by adjusting the information they display at the first glance. Furthermore, they can do all this in close to real time, which allows them to adapt to every small change in the market.
Newsletter subscribers turned out to be great sales leads for Atea, which made acquiring them a priority. They approached lead generation in two main ways: (1) targeting special events and (2) offering relevant resources in return for newsletter permissions. Like many IT companies, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the most relevant events to Atea. To make the most of them, they used a two-step campaign. First, they signed visitors up to their newsletter two days before the event, by offering them access to the best Black Friday offers.
These campaigns ran for two days each and generated as many leads as the company usually gets over a two-week period. On the day of the event, they replaced the signup SleekBox with a Guide Your Visitors campaign, which took new visitors to the Black Friday deals page. Their 2017 Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns’ revenue more than doubled compared to 2016, and according to Camilla “Using Sleeknote was definitely a big factor in this success.”
“I don’t think people outside our marketing team realize that this is an external tool and not actually a part of our CMS. It just blends in perfectly and users experience it as a natural part of the website.”
Another way Atea gained newsletter subscribers was by offering relevant resources in exchange for permissions – also known as gated content. They did this by adding SleekBoxes to pages focused on certain topics, and offering access to relevant resources like IT related reports and analyses exclusively to newsletter subscribers.
Camilla explained that “This converts really well because the visitors on those pages are already interested in those areas.”
Camilla was looking for a tool that would not limit her to one fixed use or purpose, as she needed to be able to experiment with different initiatives. In her case, “The best thing about Sleeknote is its technical and visual flexibility.” When she implemented Sleeknote, her first impression was that “It’s just like everyone says—easy to use, intuitive and flexible. But more than that, we didn’t have to compromise on Atea’s brand, as it blends in as an obvious part of the website.”
While we are not at liberty to disclose Atea’s specific numbers, Camilla told me that “Our results are much better now, and the high conversion rates make Sleeknote very reliable.” However, it is important to note that for their use case, specifically gathering user feedback, results go beyond sales and numbers. With this ongoing campaign, they are able to constantly take the pulse of their visitors and adapt their customer journey to the user’s expectations in close to real-time. This surpasses even the traditional method of periodic surveys in both efficiency and effectiveness, allowing them to stay on top of developing market trends and changes.
Different roles and responsibilities have their own unique challenges, and there is no “one size fits all” solution. The creativity of the user needs to be complemented by the flexibility of their tools in order to overcome these challenges. Atea’s use of Sleeknote is a perfect example a creative solution addressing an issue that has been plaguing many Digital Marketers.
There are two ways to define innovation: creating something completely new or combining existing tools and knowledge in a new way. This form of surveying visitors is the latter, trading the depth of traditional surveys for an effective and efficient solution that anyone could implement.
Watch the video below to learn how you can implement the exit intent trigger for your campaigns.
ATEA’S SLEEKBOXES
