A look at the web page for the
success stories of Adobe’s analytical software suite Omniture is a veritable “who’s who” of organizations from the
financial services, retail, media, entertainment, and life sciences
industries. Amongst this grouping of companies
is Prénatal, a Milano, Italy-based online hub of information for mothers-to-be
that prominently features a social exchange, localized support forums, and an
ecommerce offering which specializes in the sales of products relevant to the
expectant mother. Likewise, Prénatal
manages 437 brick and mortar retail locations throughout Western Europe, North
Africa, and the Middle East (14 countries, total) that are based upon an “open
store” philosophy featuring spacious aisles and a friendly atmosphere in which
a potential customer can approach any staff member for assistance.
As with most companies, Prénatal
recognized that in the “Web 2.0” world, an ecommerce solution’s success is
often times predicated upon the community a company builds around their offering. But the company’s efforts were managed
entirely by an external interactive agency that provided no way for Prénatal
representatives to manage content or oversee social collaboration. Going forward with a multi-channel approach, Prénatal
implemented Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite for Web Experience Management, an
incredibly comprehensive ecommerce engine that allows marketing personnel to be
agile in their efforts.
The agility afforded to Prénatal
comes in the form of easing the burden of web authoring and publishing by
including easy to use templates that can be filled with many different content
types including text and images, as well as SWF (Flash) files and promotional
displays. Likewise, the suite provided
the company’s dedicated eBusiness department to manage entire sites and stores,
as well as create their own web page types and structures to be populated with
whatever content they chose. This new
“ownership” of company content freed the marketing division of the company from
having to collaborate with an outside source, including their Information
Technology department, and they are now free to implement workflows and monitor
their publishing for multiple country-localized sites once.
Prénatal’s efforts are based upon
their use of Adobe CQ, a content
management systems (CMS) that allows for the delivery of digital content across
many channels at once. According to
Adobe’s website, “Adobe CQ is the foundation of the Adobe Experience Manager
solution. It provides digital marketers with easy-to-use, web-based
applications for creating, managing, and delivering personalized online experiences”
(Adobe CQ). In particular, Prénatal
will rely on Adobe’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) to serve as a repository
for access to digital assets like videos and images used in the creation of
company marketing materials.
Likewise, Prénatal engages in
content targeting, a methodology whereby mothers-to-be are presented with very
personalized content based upon demographic information gleaned from their user
profile. Prénatal provides a rich
experience by allowing shoppers to customize their experience based upon three
categories – Themes, Needs, and Time Period.
As mothers progress in their pregnancy, the website’s content will shift
dynamically to reflect information pertinent to their experience including help
and support articles, social content, and products recommendations.
Included within their efforts to
move away from the classic one-sided “Web 1.0” ethos and provide a more
communal feel to the website as a whole, Prénatal also launched a company
blog, a user discussion forum, and a rating system that lets customers rate
product effectiveness by leaving post-purchase comments. The community surrounding these new-age
offerings allows the company to both passively observe customer commentary and
to communicate directly with potential consumers. Doing so provides the intimate setting the
company so badly desired and provides Prénatal with an infinite source of
feedback regarding an expectant mother’s needs and questions.
Overall, Prénatal has benefited
greatly in a number of different ways.
First is that their web development work is now able to be handled
completely in-house with very little input from technically adept staff. While a content management system like
Adobe’s CQ undoubtedly costs money,
its implementation has the potential to save Prénatal a great amount over an
extended period of time by releasing their efforts from the grasp of the
interactive agency they once worked with.
Likewise, with the myriad data collection tools built into the website
(forums, product commentary, etc…), the company is able to gather extremely
specific information on their target demographic just by these women’s
participation.
Yet for all of the company’s internal
web efforts, Prénatal does not appear to effectively harness social media as
it is today. Granted the company
maintains both Twitter and Facebook accounts, it does not maintain localized
versions of those accounts in the same way that it does for their websites. An example of this is that while the company
has a following on Facebook 60,000 users strong, all of their postings are in
Dutch. Likewise, each tweet on Twitter
is in Dutch – a strange notion considering the company’s headquarters is
located in Italy. The company could
benefit greatly by creating these localized accounts for their different retail
territories and building individualized social media experiences around the
cultural norms their potential consumers embody. While their forums exist as a medium with
which mothers-to-be can share information with one another, differences in belief
systems and values from one forum poster to another could understandably create
a cacophony of noise that could leave visitors with a bad experience. This, in turn, could affect their decision to
shop with Prénatal.
Similarly, as Prénatal is also
using Google Analytics for their web metrics collection (UA-2449851-1), the
company could benefit greatly from analyzing which of their overall traffic is
derived from their social media efforts.
Identifying external networks where consumers are engaging with their
content and comparing that to traffic volumes generated by direct visits can
lend a great amount of insight into where their marketing efforts should be focused
long-term. As well, the company could
get a better understanding of the communities that crop up around their
products and services that they do not necessarily control. Customer engagement beyond the confines of
the company website is incredibly important.
According to Patricia Redsicker of socialmediaexaminer.com, “Invariably
people who have engaged with you online become customers at higher rates, and
they in turn tell their friends about you, revving up your marketing engine
over and over again” (2012).
References
Adobe CQ (n.d.)
Retrieved December 9, 2012 from http://www.adobe.com/products/cq.html
Redsicker, P.
(2012, November 29) 3 Easy Steps to Engaging Your Customers. Retrieved December
9, 2012 from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/engagement-marketing-book-review/
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