Dear reader,   At the time this article has been written, the world was facing one of the greatest challenges of the century for the humankind: the COVID-10 pandemic. I truly wish that this situation is finished and you be safe, when reading this article.   Many people stayed quarantined in their homes trying to keep healthy, safe and still stay productive the way it was possible. At the same time, we had the front-line workers in hospitals, supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants and gas stations to guarantee the essential services were minimally provided.   This fact has compelled part of the companies to accelerate their digital transformation, considering that great part of the sales demand has moved from the physical stores to the online ones. Instead of buying the groceries in the supermarket and take the risk of contamination, consumers preferred to make an order in the online store instead.   Although this situation was not exactly what software companies had planned for their customers in terms of digital transformation, this was a great opportunity for the customers to (re)think about their digital journeys and provide the online services with the excellence their customers expect from them.                     Figure 1 - Meme that I have received in the Social Media and that has inspired me to write this article.   This way, the intention of this article is to complement this previous related article and bring insights by presenting additional use cases that has implemented by CI360® customers around the globe.   The idea here is to cover the use cases that have a great impact on the Sales Conversion and how the customer interacts with the brand.   Use Cases Implemented by Customer Intelligence 360® customer worldwide   If you are interested in knowing details of anyone of these use cases, please, leave a message in this post and a Customer Success Manager will be in touch with you to provide additional information and define the next steps of this implementation in case you need to count on SAS in this endeavor.   I hope this article has instigated your curiosity or maybe inspired you to innovate your business processes with the experience of SAS in Customer Experience.   Ednei Gomes Global Customer Success Team ... View more

        Dear reader,   The consumption model has been evolved worldwide during the last decade and with the advent of the cloud, the Software as a Service has been emerged as a new business model enabler.   In this new business model, the customer is really in the center of any strategy, bringing additional value and repelling great part of the risk from the customer perspective.   More than ever, the customers wants to pay for the value they receive and to avoid concerns with implementation projects that never ends or solutions that doesn't fit to their business objectives.   If we think as consumer, this is our way of living today.                                       Diagram 1 - Services available in the market that are paid by its usage, normally, in the form of subscription or transaction.   The Customer Intelligence 360® is delivered to SAS customers as a SaaS and counts on Customer Success Managers, to regularly understand the customers' business needs, foster additional use cases to contribute to a business process and increase the ROV (Return on Value).   In the interactions with my customers, I note their need to receive insights on how to implement new use cases and bring extra impact to their businesses, so, the purpose of this article is to bring these insights by presenting use cases that has implemented by CI360 customers around the globe.   Today I am going to cover the use cases that have a great impact on the Customer Relationship Management and how the customer interacts with the brand.   Use Cases Implemented by Customer Intelligence 360® customer worldwide     If you are interested in knowing details of anyone of these use cases, please, leave a message in this post and a Customer Success Manager will be in touch with you to provide additional information and define the next steps of this implementation in case you need to count on SAS in this endeavor.   I hope this article has instigated your curiosity or maybe inspired you to innovate your business processes with the experience of SAS in Customer Experience.   Ednei Gomes Global Customer Success Team   ... View more

        Dear reader,   It is already known that worldwide, digital marketeers have been challenged by their business not only to increase the brand awareness but also to generate demand in scalable ways, with the usage of the internet.   This way, the purpose of this article is to support the performance improvement of your Sales Funnel, especially in the top stages, attracting more site visitors or prospects to your page and converting them to MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads).   By MQLs, I mean, customers that are enough educated and aware about the brand as well as the product/service offered by your company plus are willing to buy it.                               As stated by Lord Kelvin in mid-19th century: "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." so, as a next step, I am going to show you how Business Processes are setup in SAS® Customer Intelligence 360 to measure digital journeys in your web site and extract valuable information to continuously support the performance improvement of your MQLs.   In SAS® Customer Intelligence 360, the Business Processes are available under the Advanced Collection Rules, in the left section of the screen . Let's take a look in the Business Process called 'Loan Application' for us to understand how it is configured and how it works.                                     Hit double click in the 'Loan Application' Business Process to see the three steps already configured: 1) Loans Page, 2) Apply Now and 3) Loan Application Submit.   As described in the screen below, Business Processes require at least two mandatory steps: the first and the last ones, however, the example below illustrates three required steps.   The good thing about having intermediate optional steps is to better understand the most common path since the customer arrives in the home page up to the closure of the purchase.                                         Let's now see how the step 'Loans Page' is setup. This is the page that appear when we double click the step 'Loans Page'.                                   Now we see the configuration available in the tab 'Step Details'. It is here that we define if this step is Required or Optional.   Leave the 'Step Error' tab with the default configuration.                                   According to the previous configuration, everyone that visit the following page will complete this required step.                                       Let's now see how the step 'Apply Now' is setup. This is the page that appear when we double click the step 'Apply Now'.                                   Now we see the configuration available in the tab 'Step Details'. It is here that we define if this step is Required or Optional.   Leave the 'Step Error' tab with the default configuration.                                   According to the previous configuration, everyone that visit the following page will complete this required step.                                           Last but not least, let's now see how the step 'Loan Application Submit' is setup. This is the page that appear when we double click the step 'Loan Application Submit'.                                   Now we see the configuration available in the tab 'Step Details'. It is here that we define if this step is Required or Optional.   Leave the 'Step Error' tab with the default configuration.                                   According to the previous configuration, everyone that successfully submit the following form will complete this required step.                                           Now it is the time to look for insights. Please click Insights, in the left section of the screen and then click Business Processes.                                   Look that a set of information is available under the 'Quick Facts' tab and that is possible to adjust timeline by days, weeks or months.   I'd like to call your attention to the table 'Steps' available at the bottom of the report 'Monthly'. With that, it is possible to follow up the number of people that are entering the process and the percentage of them that is moving along to the followings steps of this Business Process.                                   In SAS we value The Power to Know®, and having these number on hands allows you to take actions in a more assertive way.   For example:   If considerable part of your visitors are not flowing to the Step 1, then the home page content can be personalized to make a link to the 'Loans Page' more prominent. If considerable part of your visitors are not flowing to the Step 2, then a hero content can be delivered in the page 'Apply Now' as an attraction artifact. An e-book or an infographic should work. If considerable part of your visitors are not flowing to the Step 3, then you can evaluate the possibility of simplifying the form.   My intention here is not to provide capsuled solutions for every situation that you face related to the MQLs performance, instead, to empower you with the right insights and allow you to make more assertive decisions, supporting the continuous improvement of your whole business.   I hope this article has instigated your curiosity or maybe inspired you to innovate your business with the power of Analytics.   Ednei Gomes Global Customer Success Team ... View more

        Dear reader,   The 1:1 marketing, also known as 'segment of one' aims to customize marketing components for individuals as a tactic to improve loyalty and raise the return of investment. It has been a dream for marketeers worldwide few decades ago and now it is a reality thanks to the cloud computing and its value proposition (high scalability, elasticity and availability).   With the advent of the cloud computing it was possible to deliver Software as a Service and build a solution to improve the Customer Experience, omni-channel, for all type of companies, regardless of their sizes. This is the case of SAS® Customer Intelligence 360, which improves the Customer Experience by delivering personalized digital experiences to customers and prospects.   Within this context, the purpose of this article is to present how to create and send personalized and individualized e-mails in a scalable way with the usage of SAS® Customer Intelligence 360.   Step 1) The starting point here is to obtain a list of E-mail addresses, Creatives URLs and Messages. This list is usually provided by CRM team or another team responsible for defining the NBA (Next Best Action) or NBO (Next Best Offer) for the customers and prospects. Note that the list below will be used in this example and its creatives and messages are unique for each one of the individuals.                       Step 2) Now is the time to upload this data into the platform and for that you can follow these instructions (access key: C!ntel#36@).   Step 3) After the data is being successfully uploaded into the platform, it is needed to create the Bulk Email Task and you can do it following the instructions below:   3.1. Select Tasks         3.2. Click in New Task             3.3. Then click Email               3.4. Choose the option Bulk               3.5. And then Design your own layout               This is the screen you will find as a result:                                 3.6. Select desired Content type (HTML in this example) and hit the button Edit Content.   This is the environment where it is possible to develop the e-mail content layout and for that you can make usage of Layout Gallery objects. You do not need to develop any programming code here but just drag and drop objects from the Layout Gallery to the Layout Manager and change their settings in the General Layout Settings (right side).   3.7. To support this step you can watch this tutorial or simply use the example below as a baseline.   The result of this step would be something like this.                                   Remember that we want to send a personalized and individualized e-mail content for a certain number of individuals so in this step we will personalize the message and the creative according to the data that has been uploaded.   3.8. In the Layout Manager, select "<FirstName>" and in the General Layout Settings, click in the icon Insert Merge Tag.     3.9. As soon the Select Merge Tag screen appears, search for the term "First" in the query field and observe that a field called FirstName appears as a result. Select it, fulfill the Default value with the term "customer" and click OK.                                           Observe that a piece of code has been included, replacing the selected term <FirstName>. If FirstName is not available in the platform for some reason, the term "customer" will be included instead as setup in the previous screen.                                   3.10. Repeat the step above to personalize the term "<Variable Text>" with the field "Message".   3.11. Now click in the image in the left of the e-mail main text and in the Image Setting panel, click in the pen icon to indicate the source of this image.               3.12. When Select Image screen appears, click in the icon Select Merge Tag.                           3.13. As soon the Select Merge Tag screen appears, search for the term "Criativo" in the query field and observe that a field called Criativo appears as a result. Select it and click OK.                                             3.14. Now hit Done button in the Select Image screen.                         3.15. And then click Close button in the warning message.                         3.16. Your page should be something similar to this. Click OK.                                   3.17. Click in the Header tab and fulfill the form with the Subject, To, From and Reply-to information. Make usage of the Merge Tag to personalize the Subject and to include a variable in the To field.                                       3.18. Click in the Targeting tab to include in the Specify criteria field, the list of individuals you have uploaded in the platform. They will be the target for this Bulk Email Task.                                       3.19. Under the tab Orchestration, option Delivery, make sure the Send Agent (regardless the name) is configured to use SparkPost services and then select the command Mark Ready and Publish. This is will make you save this task with a friendly name and start the e-mail submission.                                       3.20. Click in the icon highlighted in yellow to follow up the status of this recently created job to guarantee the submission was performed successfully.                                                                                 For dozens, thousands or millions of individuals, now you know to send personalized and individualized e-mails for your customers and prospects to raise the engagement and improve the relationship as well as the return of marketing investment in a scalable way.   I hope this article has instigated your curiosity or maybe inspired you to innovate your business processes with the experience of SAS in Customer Experience.   Ednei Gomes Global Customer Success Team ... View more

          Dear reader,   I have recently read the book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, that is awesome by the way, and one of the concepts it presents, is the value of the filter in an increasingly abundant world, in other words, it is important to select what matters the most.   It made me think on the importance to present the best content - that is very abundant nowadays - to the customers not only fostering more engagement by value delivering but also to improve their relationship with the brand.   As former Digital Marketing professional, I have had some evidences of higher conversion rates in campaigns where the content was tailored-made for the targeted segment, however, it has been a challenge to deliver valued content to the customers in a scalable way.   Do you have the same challenge in your organization? Well, the good news here is that Analytics and Artificial Intelligence can automate and support this process.   Given this context, I would like to present in this article one of the features from SAS® Customer Intelligence 360 which is the Multivariate Test or simply MVT.               The value proposition of the Multivariate Test is to compare the performance of a combination of creatives or Variants to identify the best one in terms of conversion rate and percentage lift.   In the following example, we have the SAS Store demo page with its 'Weekly Specials' page and three spots, highlighted in blue, where the content will be personalized by the orchestration of MVT. Aside, you see the messages and their creatives that will compose the Variants of this test.   SAS Store demo page   Messages utilized in the MVT     Considering the number of creatives and spots, it has been generated 65 Variants and a required sample size of 834,015 unique participants for this test to be statistically accurate.   With the usage of Optimize feature, these numbers decreased considerably generating the need of only 48 Variants and 154,080 unique participants as a required sample size.   This optimization allows digital marketeers to run this test in shorter periods of time, raising the knowledge around contents that have the best performance.                                   Additional MVT features include the possibility to define one of the Variants as a champion, to be used as a benchmark when analyzing test results and designate a control sample. This is a good way to demonstrate how much the winner Variant improves business results in comparison to the current state.                                           In the Insights tab, it is possible to follow up the test performance and check the final result once it is finished.   In our example, we can see the performance table which declares the Variant 64 as the winner of the test, with a conversion rate of 20.24%, while the champion had the conversion rate of 3.79% and control group performed a conversion rate of 1,47%. At the same time this test was built to provide results with statistical accuracy, it deals with subjective aspects of the communication like images, texts, colors, tone of the voice and other elements that are responsible to convey considerable amount of the message, this way, the presence of these qualitative and quantitative characteristics, summed the optimization performed by the test is the root cause for the results seen in this example test.                                            In the 'Multivatiate Test Details' page, you can click in the "i" button, located in the front of the Variant 64 name, to check the combination of creatives that won this test.                                                                 📈 😃 Well, now you are ready to adjust your campaign with the winner content and go to the next level in terms of business impact.   This example aimed to illustrate how applied Analytics and Artificial Intelligence can optimize digital campaigns to achieve more customer engagement and higher conversion rates by delivering value with the best content to the targeted audience.   I hope this article has instigated your curiosity or maybe inspired you to innovate your business processes with the power of Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.   Ednei Gomes Global Customer Success Team   ... View more

          Dear reader,   In this short article, I present you one of the greatest features from SAS® Customer Intelligence 360 which is the A/B Web Test and the Discovered Segment.     Digital marketeers are usually familiarized with the concept of A/B test, when two or more communication pieces (a.k.a. offers) are presented to a certain number of unique users and the one that generates the greater number of conversions (e.g. Clicks, Form Fill, Leads, Transactions) is considered the winner.   For this test to be statistically significant, the solution estimates the required sample size in accordance to the distribution percentage of the offers. In the following example, we have three offers distributed almost equally (34%, 33% and 33% respectively), generating the need of 24,721 unique users to view these offers as a requirement to complete the test.     When the test is over, it is possible to access the Insights tab and see the following views in the Summary session:     In this test, the $50 cashback offer is the winner, providing a Conversion Rate of 7.1%.   As conversion rate, please, consider the percentage of unique users that clicked in this offer.       In the same test, the solution also discovered a new segment of users below 44.46 years-old and Revenue in the last 12 months higher and equal to $ 5618.69.   Curiously the winning offer for this relevant niche segment (12,636 people) is the 25% Off 1st Year, providing a Conversion Rate of 16.19%, 128% higher than the first result.     Customers usually love to see this feature in action during demo sessions and I believe the reason of that is because this is an evidence of applied Artificial Intelligence bringing business innovation thought knowledge and additional performance opportunities.   I hope this article has instigated your curiosity or maybe inspired you to innovate your business processes with the power of Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.   Ednei Gomes Global Customer Success Team ... View more