Case Study: Connecting ‘Buzz’ to Customer Behavior

Customers are talking about your brand. And your competitors. You may be wondering what that means or how that impacts your marketing goals: site traffic, conversion rate, etc.  We recently worked with a Travel & Entertainment client to see if there was a relationship between consumer discussions about a major product launch and CRM behaviors like visits to the site, purchase behavior and even call center activity. To set some context, this was the biggest launch that this brand has experienced in the last 25 years – with hundreds of thousands of consumer discussions taking place in anticipation of the announcement and beyond.

1. Pre Launch - consumers are talking and visiting, visiting and talking: We had a feeling that there was a lot of consumer discussions that were driving people to the site to see if it had launched, get more information, see if the brand had finally made an update. Likewise, we suspected people were likely checking out the site and then talking about what they found online. Although we weren’t able to pinpoint the cause and effect relationship, what we did find was an incredibly strong relationship between those two behaviors. There was over a .81 correlation between site traffic and consumer discussion! That’s incredible!

CRM Opportunity – integrate insights into site content and media:  This insight revealed a huge opportunity for the brand to begin integrating the customer’s authentic voice and “hot-topics” into display media and site content. Rather than “guessing” what they cared about, integrate content from consumers discussions to drive CRM content.

2. Post Launch – Consumers are talking and buying: Post-launch discussions about the product were also highly correlated to online purchase behavior. We saw a slight decline in the correlation between those two behaviors, but the relationship remains and extremely strong one– especially for a highly considered, expensive purchase.

CRM Opportunity– integrate discussion insights into shopping funnel: Based on these insights, we developed programs for the brand to integrate key themes about post-launch discussion into the shopping funnel – on the site and in emails, including cart abandon subject lines and content.

3. Post Launch – consumers are talking and calling: After the product launch, the sales and support call center saw a huge increase in call volume. And guess what – it was directly correlated to online consumer discussion. This time, however, we were able to identify points in time where online discussion acted as a leading indictator to call center activity, revealing an opportunity to optimize call-center strategy in real-time based on customer voice insights.

CRM Opportunity– integrate discussion insights into shopping funnel:  Although our analysis stopped here, what we recommended to the client is that we model the discussion activity to identify key themes that were actually predictive of call center traffic. If they were able to isolate those call drivers within online consumer discussions, they would be able to react in real-time to optimize call center staffing and sales messaging.

The Bottom Line:  Customer voice is a powerful driver of other marketing behavior. 9 out of 10 consumers leverage peer reviews to make purchasing decisions. Smart marketers should be  constantly listening and integrating insights into CRM content to drive higher engagement.