Campaign Goal: (1) To gain deeper knowledge and understanding of each core segment of the company’s customer base; (2) To create a benchmark to measure the level of customer satisfaction over time. 

Executive Summary

The Challenge

Often times, as marketers, we focus on the front-end of the funnel – everything from attracting and capturing a prospect to converting that prospect into what we call a marketing qualified lead (MQL). And there are so many other meaningful and impactful ways to take advantage of the power behind Act-On. In this use case, the customer had put it off for a long time. And by “it” we mean putting in to a place the mechanism to track their customer satisfaction levels. It happens. A lot. But here’s some news:

1. It’s OK; and 
2. It is incredibly easy to set-up and execute. 

While the company is in the B2B space, this particular campaign really does extend
itself across the board regardless if you sell direct, through a channel, to consumers directly or have the most complicated enterprise sale cycle ever. There are legions of businesses that haven’t automated their customer experience program nor have a good handle on the type of relationship they have with customers, which means a significant competitive advantage for those who do—and this customer in the insurance space jumped at the opportunity to do it by creating a benchmark that they can track over time.

Putting into place a customer satisfaction survey was a sure way to better gauge what kind of relationship existed or not. 

The Solution

First off, the team determined that a Net Promoter Score (NPS) would best meet their needs in terms of measuring how they were doing with their customers. Since this was their first big step in this realm, they felt garnering a more experience-based rather than a transactional measurement of overall satisfaction would give a better customer POV – for now. Without bombarding its customers with lengthy questions, the powerful and proven method of asking “how likely are you to recommend the company to a friend or colleague,” was put into place. Very quickly they were able to see the relationship between promoters vs. detractors vs. passives. In addition, the customer went a step further and added two more qualitative questions: (1) Why did you give that score; (2) What’s the one thing we can do to make you happier? 

A key decision in terms of automating their campaign was to determine when in the customer journey to deploy the survey and how often. 

They knew not to batch and blast their NPS because not all customers were experiencing the same product at the same time. Instead, they approached it like a behavioral drip email approach that triggered based on user lifecycle stage, and account state. The company could now capture info at each comparable point in their customers’ experiences rather than an external, random timetable. Ultimately, they broke the campaign into one main automated programs (APs) with two major parts:

• Renewals: 90 days prior to their renewal date.
• Health Check: 90 days from the renewal date.

Because the customer had really clean data in their CRM (Dynamics), there was a high level of certainty that the syncing with Act-On would be accurate and stable to conduct this type of campaign. This means they would have two data points to reference and determine that status of a customer.

How it works:

Let's break down the key components of the campaign. There were two key parts that the customer built within Act-On:

1. Renewal Customer 
1. Every customer that was 90-days from renewing their contract, was sent the NPS survey email.
2. If the customer did not submit w/in 5 days, a 2nd chance message was sent.  
3. Once the customer submitted the survey, two actions happened:
   1. They received a thank-you pop-up window with a thought leadership ebook.
   2.  A trigger message was sent to the assigned sales associate to follow-up 5-10 days after taking the survey.  
2. Health Check 
1. 90-days post the renewal date, the customer was sent a mid-year health check to better assess where the customer was at in the relationship. 
2. If the customer did not submit w/in 5 days, a 2nd chance message was sent.  
3. Once the customer submitted the survey, two actions happened:
   1. They received a thank-you pop-up window with a thought leadership ebook.
   2. A trigger message was sent to the assigned sales associate to follow-up 5-10 days after taking the survey. 
      
3. Yearly NPS Program
   
   
   1. It’s important to note that because of the logic behind both 2nd chance emails - pre and post renewal surveys - the customer needed to create a new NPS automated program in order for the program to know which contact submitted a survey (form) or not.
   2. The net is that within Act-On Automated folders there is a 2019 NPS and next year there would be a 2020 NPS that would be created.

The Impact

By basing the timing on an active as opposed to a static date, it provided a consistent baseline and gave deeper insights beyond whether someone was a promoter, passive, or detractors on a certain date. The customer could now see data on how the opinions of specific segment like newer users versus longtime promoters change over time. The marketing team had insights and efficiencies that could let them focus on the best next service to really make positive economic impact.

How to Build This Campaign

You can build this same multi-touch engagement campaign in just a few steps. Everything you need is below.

Included Assets

Segments

The campaign used two segments:

• 90 days before renewal date
• Is not a current customer

Below are screenshots of the segment settings.

The first segment will populate with contacts who are 90 days away from their contract renewal date. This segment will be used to feed contacts into the automation. The segment quires the master list for contacts who have a true value for the current customer field, and the renewal date field value is 90 days ahead from today date.

The second segment will populate with contacts who are not current customers. It will be used to early exit contacts from the program so if they cancel midway through the program they will not be sent any NPS surveys. 

Survey Form

The campaign uses two almost identical survey forms. One will be used for the 90 days before renewal, and the other will be used for 90 days after renewal.  

Form Names

• 90 Days Before Renewal Survey
• 90 Days After Renewal Survey

In the properties tab you will create a unique list for the form to submit to. This is because the automation will check if a contact has entered this list before it sends a follow up email. Both forms will submit to separate lists.

90 Days Before Renewal Survey

90 Days After Renewal Survey

When submitted the form will trigger a thank you confirmation email to the customer containing a pdf ebook. An email alert will be sent to the sales team notifying the customer submitted the form. 

The form contains three questions. The first question is radio buttons so only one checkbox can be selected. The second and third questions are paragraphs fields for text responses.

The questions the customer asked:

• How likely are you to recommend us to a colleague or friend? 
• What can we do to improve your score?
• Why did you give us that score?

Screenshot of the live form.

The form contains 4 hidden fields to capture the contacts personal information to know who submitted the survey. 

The hidden fields on the form included: 

• Email
• First Name
• Last Name
• Company

 screenshot of the hidden fields in the form composer

Landing Page

The Survey Form will be embedded on an Act-on landing page. The landing page will be linked in the emails sent from the campaigns automated program.

Messages

There are six messages in total used in the campaign.

Two messages are used as confirmation emails when the survey forms are submitted, one email per form.

Four messages will be used in the automated program and link to NPS survey form. When composing the message you will use the Insert Link to Act-on Landing Page button as shown in the image below and the form video above. This will append the recipients information to the URL so we can capture the contacts information in the hidden fields.

Automated Programs

The automated program will be used to send the emails linking to the survey forms. 

The Automated program will be used to send the NPS survey every 6 months.

Screenshot of the General Settings tab. The 90 days before renewal date segment is used as the source list and the program will enter contacts once a day.

Program Messages Tab

The program will contain four messages that link to the survey form.

List & Segments Tab

Both of the form submission lists, and the is not a current customer segment will be imported.

Program Flow 

Below is a screenshot of all the steps in the program. 

Early Exit Condition

The segment named Is not a current customer will be used to early exit contacts who are in the automation, but did not renew.