Create unique user experiences with Insights

Digitization provides market researchers and companies with a wealth of valuable information. Data makes interactions measurable and behavioral patterns quantifiable - and in real time: through every click, every keyword search and every order, users leave digital footprints that companies can use specifically for their own benefit. In past years, superficial insights like demographic data alone were worth their weight in gold for marketers.

Developing customer-centric solutions

However, the longer and more detailed one looks at the developments in data collection, the clearer it becomes that simply collecting and analyzing data is not enough. If you want to be successful in the long term, you have to draw on your rich treasure trove of data to find the relevant information so that these can form a basis for recommendations for action. The customer and his needs must be at the center of every type of digital solution. Only when digital behavior and backgrounds for behavior are analyzed and understood can sustainable solutions be created. An individual, target group-oriented approach enables access to the customer on an emotional level. If this is followed by a positive (purchase) experience with the brand, the probability of return and brand loyalty increases. This observation can be made in several digital projects. A particularly vivid example is the website relaunch of the Swiss cinema chain Pathé.

Success example for Insights Driven Marketing

Pathé was looking for ways to stand out from the crowd with its new web presence. The company wanted to optimize customer loyalty and establish the online platform as the main sales channel for movie tickets. In order to achieve this goal, the company took a new approach: In this case, it did not start the project directly with full creative, content and technical power, but instead devoted itself fully to the needs of the end customers in a preliminary phase. The thesis: Targeted surveys can be used to find precisely tailored solutions that give Pathé moviegoers a particularly pleasant cinema experience.

The first step in this insights-to-action approach should therefore be to take stock of the situation in order to get to know and understand the needs and behavior of users. Although the company's goals also play a role here, what is far more interesting is what the users want. What makes a good cinema experience for visitors?

In focus: taking user wishes into account...

For the data collection, almost 10,000 people in French- and German-speaking Switzerland were surveyed via the Pathé website, newsletters and social media. Additional interviews in Pathé cinemas rounded off the survey. The responses revealed exciting insights: For those surveyed, a visit to the cinema is a social, shared experience that begins long before they reach the theater. Modern moviegoers use Whatsapp to select their films and prefer to coordinate movie visits with friends using survey tools such as Doodle. Clear recommendations for profitable measures can be derived from these findings.

Before that, however, it is important to scale the insights. The data obtained for Pathé made it clear in the detailed analysis that the respondents had different requirements for a visit to the cinema. It was therefore necessary to divide the target group into four segments, or four personas, in order to create individual solutions for a successful customer journey, depending on their needs. One example of this is the group of "Social Movie Passionates," whom Pathé should motivate to visit the movie theater in larger groups.

... to be sustainably successful

In order to be able to implement the recommendations for action in a targeted manner, the customer journey is consistently tracked in the third step of the insights-to-action approach and examined for breaks. What could prevent the user from booking a ticket online? The aim here is to counteract this using the insights gathered and thus provide the user with a positive user experience. The analysis for Pathé showed, for example, that the "Social Movie Passionates" prefer to coordinate their appointments to visit the cinema via WhatsApp or e-mail. A targeted measure was therefore to embed a share function in the mobile version of the website. Via the new Pathé cinema planner, movie lovers can easily organize their movie nights with friends.

The practical example clearly shows the potential of data - if it is used correctly. In the case of Pathé, the measures taken so far have contributed to a significant optimization of the user journey. However, it is essential not to rest on one's laurels, but to continuously analyze the results, observe changes, listen to customers, and thus constantly optimize the user experience with new insights.

About the author:

Dr. Martina Reitmeier is Senior Consultant and Head of the Research and Insights team at Namics. Namics is one of the leading full-service digital agencies for e-commerce, websites & portals, digital communication, mobile business apps and managed services in German-speaking countries. www.namics.com