Level up with Custom Cases

Are our Success Cases not quite the right fit for your business? Or have you already explored them and are you now ready for the next step? That’s where Custom Cases come into play. Spotler Activate’s flexible software offers endless possibilities to create your own use cases and improve your personalisation strategy. Explore more about custom cases and learn how to deploy them here!

Custom Cases: what are they, and who are they for?

Custom Cases are unique cases tailored to your company and situation. Unlike our Success Cases, which are applicable in many situations, Custom Cases have a specific starting point. For example, when your business model has a unique foundation and selling physical products is not your main goal. Or when regulations prevent you from using email addresses for data collection. In such cases, personalisation takes on an alternative form.

While Success Cases are readily applicable, developing and implementing a Custom Case requires a well-thought-out plan. To assist you, we’ve created two tools: a case round and a framework. Additionally, we offer Advanced Training that extensively covers these two tools. In the following paragraphs, you’ll learn more about the development of a Custom Case and the tools.

How to Develop a Custom Case

Developing a Custom Case involves two steps: first, you outline your idea, and then you determine the necessary technology. The case round tool focuses on the first step, while the framework tool addresses the second.

The Case Round: Define the Five W’s

With the case round tool, you map out the objectives of your Custom Case and your customers’ journey. This is done by answering the following questions:

• Why: Why do you want to develop this case? What is your goal?
• What: What do you want to communicate?
• Where: Where (through which channel(s)will you communicate it?
• Who: Who do you want to reach? Who is your target audience?
• When: At what moment(s) do you want to communicate?

The framework: Gain control over technology

With the framework, you outline the technical aspects of your Custom Case. It revolves around the following questions:

• Collecting: How do you gather data (events)?
• Enriching: What audiences and/or product sets do you create based on the collected data?
• Monetizing: How does this translate into personalisations and/or journeys?

Putting the Custom Case into practice

The answers to the questions from the case round and the framework together form the building blocks for the implementation of the Custom Case The specific requirements and duration of development may vary depending on the situation. However, two things are certain: the tools allow you to work with precision and quickly achieve results. In the following paragraphs, you’ll discover how straightforward the development of successful Custom Cases can be.

Client example: Accelerating the customer journey with a custom case

One of our clients, a travel platform that connects vacation homeowners and renters, wanted to streamline the onboarding process for homeowners. Since this specific objective couldn’t be achieved with the standard Success Cases, we developed a Custom Case. Here’s how the process unfolded:

Step 1: The case round

• Why?
  The process of getting a first house listed is unclear for new homeowners, leading to many questions and delays. The goal is to improve this process and reduce the time between registration and listing the first property.
• What and where?
  Communicate the registration process via email.
• Who?
  The target audience exists of homeowners.
• When?
  As soon as a new homeowner registers until their first property is listed.

Step 2: The framework

• How to collect data?
  Collect events by tracking new homeowner registrations and the moment a property goes live and add the ‘homeowner’ label. Newsletter consent must also be added. The events are sent to Spotler Activate via the frontend and synchronized with the ESP.
• Which audiences and product sets need to be created?
  An audience of all homeowners.
• How to monetize data?
  Automatically start an email flow when a new registration comes in and stop it automatically once the property is live.

This Custom Case reduced ambiguity surrounding the onboarding process and accelerated the listing of new homeowners’ properties. Thanks to the new custom field, the travel platform could also deliver targeted personalisations to the homeowner audience.

Client example: Personalisation with encrypted personal data

What if you want to apply personalisation but are not allowed to add customers’ personal data to the Spotler Activate database? This was a challenge that one of our clients in the financial sector faced. To explore possibilities of a custom case, we used the two tools again.

Step 1: The case round

• Why?
  To boost sales of product ‘Z’.
• What and where?
  Highlight the USPs of our product through a pop-up on a product page.
• Who?
  Existing business customers from sector ‘F’ who use product ‘Y’ but not product ‘Z’.
• When?
  Once a week.

Step 2: The framework

• How to collect data?
  By collecting events with a user id as a unique identifier.
• Which audiences and product sets need to be created?
  An audience existing of corporate clients from branch ‘F’ who use product ‘Y’, but not product ‘Z’.
• How to monetize data?
  By showing personalised pop-ups to the target audience on the product page of product ‘Y’.

Through the base tracker on the website, events are sent to Spotler Activate. In this process, it applies user IDs as unique identifiers instead of email addresses. This exceptional situation demonstrates the flexibility of the software once again.

Subsequently, Spotler Activate shared these events with the organisation’s database via webhooks. Within this database, the events were updated with CRM data, allowing customers who had already purchased product Y by that moment to be excluded from the audience. The collected events were then synchronised back to Spotler Activate and used to deliver personalisation on the website.

Thanks to this Custom Case, the company is still able to display personalisations to specific target groups and conduct large-scale A/B tests without sharing personal data.

Client example: extended reading time through recommendations

A media company faced the challenge of limiting the declining number of subscribers. From experience, they knew that the number of articles a subscriber reads is strongly related to the level of engagement. In other words, the more someone reads, the higher the level of engagement, and the smaller the chance that they will cancel their subscription. A great challenge for a Custom Case.

Step 1: The case round

• Why?
  The case aims to increase the average number of articles read by subscribers. Ultimately, this will result in fewer cancellations.
• What and where?
  Recommendations with related articles showed beneath an article.
• Who?
  All subscribers.
• When?
  Whenever a subscriber opens an article, the recommendations should be added down below.

Step 2: The framework

• How to collect data?
  Firstly, by creating an event at the login, which forwards the email address and the membership to Spotler Activate. Additionally, we must consider content articles as products. This is done by assigning each article a product ID and importing it as a bundle into Spotler Activate. This allows the recommenders to use the logic of product interactions for recommendations.
• Which audiences and product sets need to be created?
  Data is enriched by creating an audience of profiles that are subscribers and by creating a product set based on the ‘items you may like recommender’ in Spotler Activate.
• How to monetize data?
  By displaying recommendations from the product set under the page, tailored to the preferences of the subscriber.

By taking a fresh, creative approach to the situation and developing a unique Custom Case, the organisation was able to significantly increase the number of viewed articles per subscriber. A successful experiment, leveraging the platform’s flexibility to the fullest.