Convert More Web Traffic By Acting Like Netflix: Featuring Nimble Storage

I have a confession to make: Last week, I binge-watched the crime drama thriller and finished the entire season in two days. All because Netflix ever so kindly suggested it. Had it not been for that super personalized recommendation, I probably would have gone for a run or renewed my license plate sticker. But instead, I chose to spend that time with Netflix’s content. You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?

The point is, personalized recommendations work for Netflix and they can work for your B2B company too. You have created lots of content for the purpose of educating prospects and adding value to their professional lives, you just have to make it easy for them to find. And once you have their attention, it only makes sense to keep it by offering a seamless and personalized experience–one that recommends relevant content to them, just like Netflix.

Nimble Storage, a predictive storage infrastructure vendor based in California, recently adopted a recommend-based approach to content delivery and saw some jaw-dropping results. In this webinar, award-winning marketer Rich Copenhagen described the challenges he and his colleagues faced with their previous content delivery strategy, and how this fresh approach yielded some impressive results.

The challenge: Lack of infrastructure made content attribution next to impossible

Like many B2B companies, Nimble’s email campaigns and web links led to a lot of dead-ends. Although they excelled at getting that initial click, it became increasingly difficult to generate a second or third and, ultimately, pass a prospect to sales as an engaged, qualified lead.

There was high growth potential to generate leads directly from the website, but Nimble lacked the architecture to execute. “We produce a lot of infographics, data sheets, reports and interactive assets that aren’t heavyweight enough to warrant gating,” says Copenhagen. “And the proliferation of URLs of where the content was hosted made it almost impossible to track back ROI to these ungated assets.”

The proliferation of URLs of where the content was hosted made it almost impossible to track back ROI to these ungated assets.

A lack of cross-channel and content-level reporting made it hard to track value back to Salesforce and Marketo. Ungated asset performance only went as far as Google Analytics. The Nimble marketing team needed a way to scale their content program and manage it all in one place–and they needed it fast.

The solution: Implement a recommend-based approach to content delivery

To address these issues, Nimble implemented a recommend-based approach to content delivery. Using LookBookHQ’s Intelligent Content Platform, they placed promoters across the website to encourage prospects to enter into a content experience.

Within these content experiences, prospects are met with a mix of both gated and ungated assets. An ungated asset may eventually lead to a gated one, but since the prospect already engaged with content, they are more educated and more likely to fill out that form and become a lead. Once inside the content experience, the next best asset is seamlessly served up one after the other.

For example, a prospect may come into a data sheet, then click through to an infographic, and then want to access a whitepaper – at which time they would be presented with a form. According to Rich, “This type of content journey, which ultimately ends up at a gate, has helped us improve our lead flow from the website.”

“[A recommend-based] content journey, which ultimately ends up at a gate, has helped us improve our lead flow from the website.”

The results: The numbers speak for themselves…

As a result of their new approach, the Nimble Storage marketing team saw an overall improvement in content performance, demand generation, and return on investment. The numbers really speak for themselves:

Content performance:

• 21% incremental increase in asset views on website
• More than 2,000 visitors accessed content through promoters
• 20% of visitors filled out a form when presented with one (8% more than before)

Demand gen:

• 30% increase in MQL to opportunity conversion rate

ROI:

• Over 30 ungated assets now tracking ROI

Having a window into the content that resonates with specific visitors, Nimble can deliver more relevant information before the lead is sent to sales. They can also deliver more targeted information about the prospect to their sales team so sales can capture the leads’ interest quickly and have a more productive meeting.

All in all, Nimble increased their web content consumption by 20% and boost form fill rate by almost 8%. By encouraging more unknown visitors to self-identify, they now offer a more personalized content journey to more visitors and convert more web traffic faster than ever before.