Sam Jacobs, partner engagement manager, from our customer OpenX spoke about the self-service community that we helped them to roll out last October. They programmatically connect sellers of ad space and buyers of ad space in real-time. They are selective about who they let into their marketplace, they are ranked #1 in traffic quality, outranking even Google. They have 1200 publishers and 34,000 advertisers, and these numbers are quickly growing. With fast growth,
The idea of launching a community originated with Tish Whitcraft, the CCO at OpenX, who had previously launched communities at other companies and saw the value of communities in delighting customers. Previously, they had a simple customer portal and they wanted to offer their customers with something more. More and more customers are turning to social media to seek help and voice complains. They want something social and collaborative, not just transactional. They sought to blend both social and collaborative, and transactional. It wasn’t about cost savings. It was about delighting their customers. They thought about what makes for a superior customer experience. Providing a space for end users to interact with OpenX and each other. Convenience was also key; it needed to be mobile-responsive and intuitive. Transparency was also important; they didn’t want to hide the site behind a login like they had with their customer portal.
They recently launched Chatter groups to increase engagement. They are seeing growing page views and an increasing member base month over month. They have delivered one community-sourced idea in the last 12 months and have two more in progress. They attribute the success to ideas; this tactic was so successful because it gave them a stake in their business in their product and they feel like they have influence over something that affects their day to day. This fosters the intrinsic motivation for customers to keep coming back.
It’s about reinforcing your existence and ensuring there is a clear value proposition with your user base. Struggling communities tend to have an awareness issue, either they don’t know you exist or they haven’t visited you because they don’t understand what you have to offer them. Ensure you let them know what behavior your community replaces.
OpenX Lessons Learned:
Content Counts – if you only have transactional or support-heavy conversations, people will only come there and engage in those kinds of conversations. You need to start the conversations that you want your members to have.
Align Business Goals with Member Needs – understand where your business goals align with what your customers need, and deliver that.
Adoption Starts from Within – make sure your employees understand the value of your community. If your employees don’t use it, your customers won’t either.
Laura Walmsley is the Chief Business Development Officer at Preventure. They support 1.2 million people in living a healthier live. Using smart content and serving it up in a personalized way will help drive healthier habits and by linking personalization with community, can really drive behavior changes.
Their community serves over 1m people from corporate America today. They have steel workings and people leading the digital revolution, and a wide range of ages and health issues, from people looking to run their first marathon to those who are struggling with diabetes. Their goal is that 90% of their members improve their health every year. A person is 37% more likely to become obese if their spouse is obese. You are 57% more likely to become obese if a friend is. The inverse is also true.
Meet Maxwell is their wellness app (short for Maximum Wellbeing). Once you’re in the experience, you can serve up a personalized experience within the app. Users can upload a photo to inspire them, track their mindfulness minutes, track their glucose levels and the amount of sleep they are getting. The connect layer of their community is a tailored version of Chatter; they allow people to build teams in their workplace and to build and join groups meaningful to them. They can earn rewards and rewards spark change. They linked Meet Maxwell to marketing cloud to let customers know how their employees are doing.
