A New and Improved Engagement Plan for Launch Sitecore

While Chris Castle, Brandon Royal and others were busy getting the new Launch Sitecore site out the door, the N. American Sales Engineering team at Sitecore got together to review our first implementation of the digital marketing features of our site.  Our goals have always been clear with Launch Sitecore--provide the best software evaluation vehicle in the business.  Allow folks to download the full site, support them as they dive into it and get to the next level of understanding and questions.  Provide a clean and simple framework to strategize much more complex real-world situations.

I always feel that the Engagement Plan discussion in Sitecore can become the centerpiece for the larger digital strategy discussions for the platform.  There's something about specifically discussing customer journey paths in the tool that expands ideas while focusing purpose.  Engagement Plans become the hub for modeling visitation flows, for defining integration points and messaging, for clearly identifying compelling personalization possibilities and more.

In our first iteration of our Launch Sitecore Engagement Plan, our flow was ultra-simple.

1. Entice registration
2. Convince visitor of the benefits of downloading the Launch Sitecore site package
3. Provide a feedback loop

As a summary, "create incredibly valuable evaluation experiences for our prospects".  We had other side goals, but in essence our site existed to provide access to this great evaluation package, and everything we focused on was a funnel around that endpoint.

For this release, our goals are significantly loftier.  We started discussing our Sales Engineering Team goals in a broader context, at the company level.  Our team is here to ensure that our prospects have the very best evaluation experience in the industry, that they make the most efficient use of the incredibly small window of time generally dedicated to evaluating a software purchase.  In this window it is our job to show people why we are so proud to represent this platform, showing the balance of the ease-of-use and simplicity of entry points while starting to highlight the incredible platform power that lies deeper in the application.

Our main goal of making our Launch Sitecore download available hasn't changed.  With this release, however, we are setting the stage for the download journey to be the beginning of the path towards our loftier goals.  In essence, we are starting to analyze not only the flow our visitors follow as they navigate the Launch Sitecore content and download the package, but we are looking forward to the incredible insight this will lead to as we evaluate the place Launch Sitecore has in an overall Sitecore selection process.

I'll discuss the new plan in its two major sections.  The first section below is similar to our entire flow in our first version, where everything led to a download of the Launch Sitecore package:

The first "stage" of the new Launch Sitecore Engagement Plan

As you'll note, we don't evaluate every visitor to Launch Sitecore for this plan.  Our first goal, and the event that actually enters a visitor into this plan, is the fact that the visitor registered with our site.  While certain plans lend themselves to create flows for authenticated and anonymous users, our making the download of Launch Sitecore available requires that our visitors provide registration information.

Once again, our main decision point is whether or not our registrant has downloaded the Launch Sitecore package.  This is very easy to evaluate--we keep these downloads available in our Sitecore Media Library, and a request to this item in the Media Library will inform the Engagement Plan that "Yes" path should be followed for the "Downloaded?" question.

Instead of just sitting on the yes/no question about whether our visitor has downloaded, we take the opportunity to further assess his/her level of engagement with the content available in the site.  You'll see terms like "Qualified" and "Engaged" which simply represent our own checkpoints about whether our content is providing valuable results.  For instance, the "Qualified" check represents an overall Engagement Value Points check.  (Has this visitor spent some time, read a bit about our Sales Engineering Team, etc.?).

The Rules Engine Check for a threshold of Engagement Value points

Engagement Value Points may be achieved as our visitors are finding value within the site.  While the value of 7 is our own arbitrary threshold, we decided that it represented a reasonable blend of potential goals and activities our visitor would experience for our definition of "Qualification" or "Engaged".  The nice thing here is that we can use these state transitions as personalization triggers.  A "Qualified" visitor, for instance, will simply get some slightly catered messaging on the bottom of the home page, appreciating the fact that they've spent some time with us and encouraging them to do more.

Personalized messaging on the home page based on Engagement Plan State

So far, so good.  We are now able to consider messaging that will gently nudge our visitor towards the goal of downloading Launch Sitecore.  On to stage 2, where this year we will be striving for much more significant insights around how our evaluation teams decide to select the Sitecore platform.

The future stage of our Engagement Plan represents some great opportunities for this insight.  We know that the success of this part of the Engagement Plan is going to be our connection to our own CRM data (Dynamics).  Take a look at the stages our visitors will transition to, and then I'll discuss the ideas around that very important integration point.

The post-download phase of the Engagement Plan

This set of States represents the success (or failure) of the overall Sitecore evaluation experience.  Sitecore is, and has always been, a fantastic data integration platform.  In contrast to many systems out there, Sitecore never enforces that data be native to Sitecore in order to fully leverage in Sitecore-initiated decision point events.  This Engagement Plan is a perfect example of that.  Sitecore provides an incredible basis for this integration with Dynamics, where contacts that are managed and native to Dynamics become seamlessly integrated with this process modeled in Sitecore.

Since there is so much rich data in our Dynamics environment (opportunities that become prospects, partners, etc.), these contacts should always represent the system of record for these individuals and companies.  Our Engagement Plan will be able to leverage this information to assess State transitions--as our Launch Sitecore evaluators become customers of Sitecore, they will transition based on updates to CRM records and land in the appropriate Engagement Plan state.  We'll get insightful analytics around how our downloads could lead to purchases or how our evaluation flow should improve.

Beyond the incredibly rich Analytics that we'll get in Engagement Intelligence reports, our Engagement Plan itself will highlight these State transitions:

Engagement Plan Monitor Mode for State transitions

Along the way, we can use this Engagement Plan to discuss micro-segmenting opportunities.  A small example below (we don't have a ton of visitors yet) is an example of how I could create a list of all registered visitors who have downloaded Launch Sitecore and live in New Hampshire (note that I found 3 that fit those criteria):

Micro-segmenting with the Dynamic Segment Builder

Much more to come in future posts around this Dynamics integration and the insight we drive from this Engagement Plan analysis.

The Sitecore Fitbit Project

On the second floor of the beautifully renovated mill buildings in downtown Newmarket, NH, a secret project has just concluded with the promise to change the world of digital marketing forever.  A small but growing software company set up shop just near Popper's Restaurant and just above Bloom'n Cow Ice Cream (meaning that many a brainstorming session was accompanied by beer, appetizers and gelato, depending on the time of day).  The four founding members of this startup decided that they were destined to rid the world of analytics confusion forever.

Over an amazing set of Oreo Coffee 3-scoop cones, the group tossed around the terms and concepts that had caused such inaction at the companies they left to launch this thing.  Big Data be damned. CLOUDy digital marketing strategies.  Consultant scare tactics.  Not at this new place.  There was going to be agreement--now--about the key metrics that would define success.  After all, there were only four of them.  How hard could it be for them to come to agreement about what success would look like for their company's built-from-the-ground-up marketing strategies?

Page Views, Time Spent on Page, Conversions, Bounce Rate, Average Visit Duration, Loyalty, Page Depth.  Already frustrated, the team decided to grab another beer and start again.  None of this felt right.  All these metrics represented a confusing mixture of commonly accepted values and certainly could provide great insight into their digital strategy.  But it felt dated too, very Web Page-centric.  After all, this company was launching their site, but they were talking much more about consistency of message, broadcasting messages through channels, speaking to their customers in short insightful sentences exactly when they were listening instead of dropping their book in Times Square and hoping the guy that tripped over it decides it's worth reading.

One of the founders slammed down his mug.  Looking at his wrist, he smiled and told the group confidently that he had it.  His Fitbit had just buzzed (an unfortunate miscalculation convinced his Fitbit that swinging a beer mug was good for his health).  He mumbled something about a single view of the truth, paid the check and told the team they had some work to do back at the office.

And so the Sitecore Fitbit project started.  The team had already decided that the Sitecore experience platform was what was needed at the core of their entire content and digital marketing strategy.  This team did their homework.  While the analyst reports initially led them to Sitecore, they put the company and the product to the test before this software purchase, and they hit it from the various angles these four professionals represented.  From their most technical, data-integration requirements to the ability to model their digital marketing dreams, Sitecore, in their opinion, had it all.

 (As a shameless plug to the N. American Sales Engineering team, they noted the use of Launch Sitecore as key to their evaluation).

The Fitbit idea added some fun to this.  Now, once the team decided on the key metrics defining success, they could allow Fitbit to be the ultra-simple feedback mechanism, the Pavlovian nudge to keep them on track towards their goals.  Gentle hourly pulses as things were moving along smoothly.  Fast shakes when things needed attention (either for crazy success or troubling dips).  Literally the heartbeat of the business on the four founders' wrists.  (Todo: have to find away to reduce the analytics noise from the hoisting of beer mugs).

The founder that had the AHA! moment opened the Fitbit API site on his laptop and projected to the group.  He started expounding on his single view of the truth statement, gathering agreement in the room that one of the main problems they'd all seen in the past was that, as a company grows, the charts and tables and numbers and metrics grow exponentially as well.  Wouldn't it be great if the feedback mechanism were much more simple, and the thresholds were defined so everyone agreed about the boundaries on both sides of the graph that would drive the right cadence of attention, discussion, strategy review, planning.

With the Fitbit app registered, now it was time to leverage Sitecore's analytics, publishing, reporting and data integration capabilities.  One of the great things that a team member remembered from their evaluation was that Sitecore already appreciated this concept of Value.  An Engagement Value scoring concept already exists in Sitecore.  This is the perfect abstraction that the group was looking for, and now it was time to specifically map their digital marketing goals to this concept.  While a single scoring mechanism like an Engagement Value could become the interface to Fitbit, it only needed to abstract--not to ignore or make irrelevant--the significant data points that lead to it.

The only real mantra for this company was an absolute, unrelenting commitment to their customer.  They commonly corrected each other whenever their conversations slipped to their own hopes and dreams.  Instead, the conversation was always (awkwardly sometimes) required to be spoken in the voice of their customer.  While the exercise sometimes became frustrating, the team knew that speaking in this customer voice would always lead them to ensure that it was the customer finding value from the company, and not the other way around.

So now it became a quest to define the thresholds, events and actions that would identify when their customers received value from the company.  The team had seen the capability they will have from Sitecore's analytics engine to gather scores of discreet metrics, dimensions, measures.  Now they saw that they they could abstract those discreet metrics into higher level categories that everyone could understand and communicate.  They could meet regularly and discuss the averages in these categories that for them would define ongoing success.  And their Fitbit on their wrist would congratulate them or warn them when things were happening on either side of these bounds.

An initial look back at the Sitecore Analytics offerings provided the group with the confidence that they really had everything they need.  A quick look at the Measures available in the Enagement Intelligence Analytics OLAP cube showed them all the usual suspects:

View of Measures within Sitecore's DataMart

Looking into the dimensions that could drive these calculations was even more telling--they would be able to look at these statistics for particular campaigns, for particular devices, for specific business accessing their content, in specific regions of the world and the country.  The DataMart was in a standard format, so they immediately started playing with the the MS Excel Pivot tables that would drive the deep analysis of the digital business.

But for now, it was back to the Fitbit app.  All of this great data needed to role up to events that would buzz wrists and lead to congratulatory beer raises or late night strategy tweaking sessions.  As the team started diving deeper, they realized that Sitecore had the key ingredients here as well.  Patterns would allow them to clearly define an audience segment they could cater to specifically.  Goals would allow them to define discreet events when their audience was gaining value within their digital campaigns.  Engagement Plans would allow the company to map the paths, and treat their customers to one-on-one digital experiences depending on the direction they took through that map.

With ideas a buzzin' (but wrists as of yet not), the team settled in on their first metric for Fitbit.  Average Engagement Value Per Day.  Simple.  But really powerful underneath.  Lots of work still to do to create an environment and a modeling of discreet Goals, audience Patterns and Engagement Plans that will drive this key metric for the business and gain consensus between the four founders that the digital strategy is on the right path.  Are customers finding information in the right place at the right time?  Are they talking about the company in a positive way on social channels?  Are they taking advantage of promotions and bringing their friends into the community?  Are they responding to mobile and email campaigns?

When customers are finding the value from the company's digital offering, a simple pulse hourly on the Fitbit will tell them they're on track.  And when that thing nearly shakes off the wrist, time to celebrate!

(So my startup software company is fake.  Yours, however is not ;)

Exciting times at Sitecore in 2014

Links sparked by this beginning of the year outlook....

Content as a service and the Sitecore Item Web API
A Sitecore 7.2 feature worth the wait: Search-driven controls
Using Sitecore Engagement Plans as an Audience Segmentation Tool