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  • Podcast: Steen Andersson – Head of Product at Atlassian

    Podcast: Steen Andersson – Head of Product at Atlassian

    Steen is Head of Product Management at Atlassian.

    He was Google Drive’s Group Product Manager, VP Product at Nitro after they acquired his startup Sensedoc.

    Before that he was co-founder of 5th Finger which actually got acquired (not once but) twice! by both Microsoft and Merkle.

    In this podcast we are talking how Atlassian grows Product Management talent and other goodies from Steen’s startups and roles. 

    Don’t miss where he shares Atlassian’s Four Pillars of Great Product Managers.

    Some of the topics covered:

    • What are the qualities of a great product manager at Atlassian?
    • Can you grow these skills or are they already growing on trees?
    • Do PMs spend X% of their time with customers or triaging requests?
    • What ratio of PMs to devs in a group?  (Is there also a scrum master?)
    • If we contrast with Nitro (being a smaller company) – is the role/skill different?
    • How Atlassian use JTBD or “Top Tasks”
    • Whats the hardest part of deciding what come next?
    • Do you have a story about Feature/Roadmap Bias

    A particularly AWESOME element is that he shares their “four key pillars of being a great Product Manager”.
    Check it out on Soundcloud.
    The Contextual Product Manager · Steen Andersson – Head of Product at Atlassian

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    Part 1 Transcript

    David Jones: [00:00:01] Hello, Hello!

    [00:00:01] Steen Anderson is with me today and he’s the head of product management Atlassian. He was also at Google Drive as group product manager and he was V.P. of product at Nitro which was a smaller company but an interesting company. And that was after his startup called since Doc was acquired so we’re going to cover that a little bit too. Before that he was also a co-founder at fifth finger which actually got acquired not once but twice. Believe it or not by both Microsoft and Merkel and today what we’re going to do is talk about all things product management. How are you Steen?

    Steen Andersson: [00:00:34] Good. Great to be here.

    David: [00:00:35] Yeah. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it. So this is a warmup for another fireside. We’re going to do so that’s gonna be fun.

    Steen: [00:00:41] Yep.

    David: [00:00:42] I don’t know whether we want to have a fireside in Australia during summer. It’s a little bit warmer for that.

    Steen: [00:00:48] Like a beach a little beach barbecue maybe.

    David: [00:00:50] Yeah I was wondering whether we should wear the sort of like the San Francisco Christmas bed jumper or whether we should wear a white shirts. I’m not sure what’s the right thing.

    Steen: [00:00:59] Yeah. We’ll make it fun.

    David: [00:01:02] OK, so let’s kick off, just where you’re at at the moment. So what are the qualities of a great product manager at Atlassian?

    Steen: [00:01:08] I mean that question is a great one it’s a it’s one of those age old mysteries that everyone ask. You meet a new Product Manager in a back alley way and you ask him that question. Look, we’ve done a bunch of work just recently actually last year. Is it a review the way we think about PM hiring and also appear PM promotions, ah, ladder and how we think about identifying talent and success and and recognizing that and what we did. And we actually spoke to a number patterns across the company, we’ve got 120 now. A good number there. And across the senior leaders we got together and so shared with some senior folks from Microsoft folks like myself that have a variety experience of start ups as well as Google. And then my boss job Joff, is from LinkedIn and there’s a bunch of different good good sets of experience. And we actually looked at what is the sort of the common overlap of answers to that question. And we came up with these four key pillars of PM excellence or how you going to call it. They broke it into these 4 categories. So ONE is: “leads and inspires”. So a great PM needs to be able to lead a team inspire a team that’s the first thing and a lot of depth behind that we can talk about if you like. Second thing is being a “master of the PM craft”. So thinking about like all the tools in your kit bag to help you understand how to think about roadmaps and prioritization to like you know think of creative ways to drive a team through particular challenging process to come out the other side; How to ship with velocity; all these techniques to just you know operate and be a great PM. The 3rd one is “delivering outcomes” and delivering outcomes comes back a lot to things like metrics, understanding what are the key levers we have to play with and how to appropriately use those to drive business outcomes like driving MAU or driving revenue or innovating in a way that’s really differentiating that sort of thing. And the last one is “being a great communicator” and the meaning of Great Communicator is really key. I think you make great PMs you’ll tend to find a common pattern that they really grab you with the way they talk about the problems they’re working on and just how they think about their space and all things in the world and so being an awesome communicator but written, verbal and presenting are critical. So thats how we think about what makes a great PM and it’s exciting to have some of that clarity and alignment in the organization now to sort of allow everyone to work on those things and help grow their teams and hire a great to have common lens right.

    David: [00:03:48] So number (1) and number (4) are really skills that can belong to a range of different jobs not just product managers; the metrics in (3) such as driving MAUs and things like that well that really is an outcome. So that sounds like number (2) is the one that’s kind of like industry specific is this the sort of thing that you have to find people that are already, you know in the industry or already doing product management or you know can you grow these skills or do you have to pick them off a tree?

    Steen: [00:04:17] You look at it you can totally grow all these skills. I think like anything in life there is certainly people who naturally have the predisposition to either find it easy to learn these skills more than other people or maybe they’re really passionate about them slaves at one time and energy into it. So all “grow-able” . I think the PM craft side, the master of the PM craft is, certainly yes, it’s more domain specific. I think the challenge for us is, as you go up the PM ladder to different higher levels of seniority it does become more difficult to find people who have depth of experience in that area. But I think as you go “up”, the “sliders” is on each of these four pillars change as you go more say some ways like leadership and inspiring. More important, more seasoned, more senior you go. But they’re all all important at each level. In terms of how we think about I can talk a bit about how we think about finding and hiring and so what we look at getting teams from. If that’s helpful.

    David: [00:05:15] Yeah go for it because I guess what I’m hearing is that if you’ve got somebody that’s coming in as a line PM then they could be theoretically a developer who wants to actually move into another thing as long as you feel as though they’ve got the potential to have leadership and communication skills.

    Steen: [00:05:31] That’s exactly right. I think again this these pillars help us qualify that person or sort of quantify that person and they have that that sort of product “gene” potentially and the passion and they can communicate their ideas and that sort of thing and they are a clear thinker. The biggest challenge for us is hiring PMs, for sure it’s challenging. I think in our business unit last year because we have fairly technical products we do have this natural tendency to want to hire people who also have an unstated 5th leg which is some sort of technical knowledge.

    David: [00:06:03] Yeah. Yeah. It’s really different to some sort of consumer product where there’s where there’s a lot of touchy feely stuff or things that many people can kind of just relate to as a user “in a sense”.

    Steen: [00:06:17] Yeah exactly. I think if you go outside of high tech and the word Product Management can relate to things like you know the marketing programs for a cereal packet like there’s a very different broad spectrum of the title. But in the bounds of high tech and suddenly it’s certainly challenging. And so we have a few programs we do things we do. We look at for the sort of more entry level PMs. We run an APM program – associate product manager program. It’s somewhat based off the sort of great leadership done by Google and then Facebook and LinkedIn and now a number of other sort of leading tech companies in the US globally. That’s basically a acceleration program for first time coming out of university. It’s a two year program; they do two one year rotations through different teams of the company. And that’s designed to give them a breadth of experience exposure to domains, different teams, different folks to learn from and accelerate their growth strategy, so after 2 years they can become PM and being highly productive. The long term goal there is to bring those people in at the entry level and grow them to be long term leaders of Atlassian. We might find they go and leave the company for a while and then come back at some point the future, we don’t want people to expect to come here and be here for like 20 years. That’d be great but that’s not realistic nowadays. Yeah. This idea of like helping see the industry, have people coming and going, but creating these long term PM leaders that have affinity with our business and our values is certainly part of the focus. So to that is the entry point. We have intakes in Bay Area and in Sydney and also New York we’re starting up next year. So that’s sort of that’s the APM channel. We then have to straight hiring we do pay PM level up to sort of all that through. Now hiring entry level PMs is not too hard in most places. We look at if they have got foundations of those four pillars to have a basic level and that means studied engineering computer science necessarily but they need to know enough of ground you know what is a programming language like they’ve dabbled with code and with computers enough they can understand the basics and found that the fundamentals. That’s often enough, but, if someone’s got like no technical companies competency whatsoever or interest in it. We find that it’s like we’d rather hire someone who has that versus not. It’s just doesn’t it just you know not it’s much harder to be successful. So that’s one thing for us at least.

    [00:08:36] And then as we look to the senior levels, the senior levels are hard for us because we’re looking at folks who’ve got experience. And some markets like Australia or even parts of the US like in regional parts of the US you may have or Europe you might not have the development path. It’s a bit like trying to hire a top grade cricketer in the US or a top level gridiron player in Australia, your just not gonna find it because there isn’t that sort of nurturing from young level right the way through to develop that talent so well that’s way too easy. You know you grow it ourselves or bring it in from another country or region.

  • Driving Product-Led Growth with Contextual Marketing and User Onboarding Walkthroughs

    Driving Product-Led Growth with Contextual Marketing and User Onboarding Walkthroughs

    In today’s competitive business landscape, achieving fast-paced growth is a top priority for all businesses and apps. However, sustainable and measurable growth requires more than just expansion. It demands a strategic approach that focuses on user satisfaction, seamless product adoption, and the integration of contextual marketing. This article explores the principles of Product-Led Growth (PLG) and highlights the benefits of incorporating contextual user onboarding, mobile tooltips, and a digital adoption platform into your marketing strategy.

    Product-Led Growth, Explained:

    Product-Led Growth is a strategy that emphasizes delivering value through the product itself to drive user acquisition and retention. Companies like Slack, Calendly, and Dropbox have successfully implemented PLG strategies, transforming their products into the heart of their marketing efforts. This approach not only reduces costs associated with traditional advertising but also fosters a self-serve user experience that encourages organic growth and user referrals.

    The Power of Contextual Marketing and User Onboarding:

    Contextual marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of product-led companies. By prioritizing user satisfaction and providing in-app guidance and support, companies can lower the adoption barrier and enhance product adoption. Leveraging tools like contextual user onboarding walkthroughs and mobile tooltips, businesses can empower users to discover the product’s value on their own, leading to a faster realization of the “aha moment.”

    Why Integrate Context Marketing in Your Strategy?

    While content marketing has gained popularity, it’s clear that a single marketing approach isn’t sufficient to deliver the best user experience. This is where the Context Marketing mindset comes into play. Contextual marketing meets users at the right time, filtering information and providing tailored content to enhance engagement, retention, and revenue.

    Benefits of Contextual Marketing:

    1. Increased Engagement: Enhanced user experience leads to increased engagement. By focusing on user satisfaction, product-led companies prioritize customer feedback and develop features driven by user needs. This customer-centric approach boosts engagement, happiness, and the likelihood of user recommendations.
    2. Less Intrusive, More Organic: Contextual marketing tailors content to users’ preferences, delivering a personalized experience without compromising user satisfaction. Understanding user behavior allows companies to better target relevant material, increasing user conviction and driving action.
    3. Better Conversion Rates: Targeted marketing meets users’ specific needs, increasing conversion rates and reducing churn. Personalized marketing keeps users engaged, minimizing app abandonment and increasing the probability of recommendations.
    4. Enhanced Analytics: Contextual marketing provides valuable insights into user engagement, retention, and comprehension. Tracking key metrics such as revenue, user growth, and daily and monthly active users (DAU and MAU) helps quantify the impact of guidance initiatives and optimize marketing strategies.

    How to Implement Context Marketing:

    To harness the power of context marketing, consider integrating tools like Contextu.al into your strategy. In-app announcements, videos, guides, surveys, and tips can transform the user experience, providing contextual guidance and driving user retention. By prioritizing the user journey, you can leverage context marketing to its fullest potential.

    Conclusion:

    By embracing Product-Led Growth and integrating contextual marketing techniques, businesses can unlock sustainable and measurable growth. Leveraging user onboarding walkthroughs, contextual mobile tooltips, and a digital adoption platform, companies can enhance user experiences, increase engagement, improve conversion rates, and drive organic growth. Prioritize your users, optimize your marketing strategy, and take advantage of tools like Contextu.al to propel your app’s success. Book a demo with Contextual today and start driving product-led growth with a focus on user satisfaction and seamless product adoption.

  • Standups, OKRs, Rituals & Cadence

    Standups, OKRs, Rituals & Cadence

    In this video, I discover that our team is the only one in the room NOT doing daily standups!

    Seriously, Richard explains the disciplines they use in a remote WFH world (Melbourne was locked down hard, hard, hard at the time of recording). So we discuss some of the challenges they have in executing on the OKRs.

     

    You can get this on Soundcloud or see all our podcast links here.

    The summary is:

    • Airwallex form “squads” that are spear-headed with Product Manager, Designer and Lead Engineer
    • There is an over-arching SME strategy.
    • Quarterly and Annual OKRs trickle down through the organisation.
    • opportunity decision trees (Teresa Torres, see Opportunity Solution Trees for Product Teams to ideate potential solutions to OKRs”
    • Triaging of solutions (see Don’t build shiny objects)
    • Monday planning meetings – where broader goals for the week within sprints are agreed
    • Daily standups (!)

    Transcript

    David: but what’s what’s your approach today: how does onesquad really work? What’s thewhat’s the way you attack things? Is it okrs? Is it JTBD? (“jobs to be done”). How do you get things into sprints etc Richard: OK, so in terms of how we make decisions and work.So quarterly OKRs are used to govern essentially the outcomes that the team is shooting towards. Those OKRs ladder to our to our SME strategy so we’ve got our SME strategy.We start with. We then develop OKRs on a quarterly basis and an annual basis thatstrategy and then what the team does is identifies the opportunities they think are best placed to move those OKRs and essentially that then eventually translates to a bunch features they (the squad) want to deliverwe then run a a fortnightly uma fortnite cadence which is essentiallyaboutwhich includes a bunch of rituals aplanning meetinga showcase it’s got uh some weeklyplanningto segment that up and and dailystand-upsokay so just ritual is that a productproduct word or is that an air will xword or is that a secretjust a ritualit’s a rich word is it maybe it’s a richword but we have these yeah we have aset of meetings that essentiallyderive that fortnightly cadence and thatfortnightly cadenceessentially when you put a bunch ofthose together um they’re constantlytrying to make progress towardsthose outcomes those akr’s that we’dagreed at the start of the quarterright right okay all right and is thereis there one of those particular ritualsthat actually really matters a lot morethan the others like which is thewhich is the one that you must keep ormust not miss orum in terms of the ones that arecritical look ii’m a really big fan ofstand up i think stand-up’s reallycritical to have that daily check-inand as part of that trying to ensurethat the team is consistentlyfocusing on the outcomes that we’retrying to deliver it’s very very easy tomy my view is that if you if you’re notdisciplined around stand upit’s very very easy to kind of graduallyveer off the path over the course of afortnight andyou have a goal at the start of thatfortnightlyum tayden so you’re like at the start ofthe fortnight you outline a goal this iswhere we want to get to in two weekstimeif you’re not reinforcing that on aday-by-day basisbasis it’s very easy to get to the endof the fortnight i’ll look back and gobooks uh i’m not where i wanted to gohow do i end up hereso i think when i you knowso much of what is done in productdevelopment is it’s about collaborationand communication and so much of itabout is just reinforcing the samemessage all the time and we can get intothis in terms ofsome of the lessons that i’ve learnedover my career but it’s very very easyforteams to veer off the path away fromoutcomes towards outputit’s very easy to veer off the path ofexperimentation uncertainty and tryingto nail down something that is certainwhich isin many cases look at this shiny thingthat i’ve builtand so trying to embed that into yourday-to-dayum check-in with the team i thinkand so we’re doing we’re doing tuesdaysand thursdays for stand-up for stand-upsyou know our team our team’s about nineandand so tuesdays and thursday afternoonswe make sure we time it so that theoffshores cancan can be involved as well too we usedto and this is areally interesting transition from acovert perspective was thatwe used to get together in a physicalspace and talk about things andjust by default we would exclude peoplethat weren’t in the time zoneand it was really bad it was reallyculturally bad to do thatso we fixed that just by us being allremoteand you know it’s improved communitycommunication a lot but tuesdays andthursdays are you saying that you’redoing every daywe do every day far out okay yeah and onon mondayon monday we plan and that includes atthe end of the planning it’s like righthang on where are all the tickets whereare we atbut then uh tuesdays to fridays there’sa stand up every dayand this would you know that that’si’ve i think i don’t think i’ve everworked in a teamthat hasn’t had a stand up every dayright so we’re lazy we should be ashameddeeplyi don’t know whether i mean we mighthave it wrong right like this who’sdoing daily stand-ups hereeverybody but me okaythat’s it team’s in troublebut uh you know so that’s that’s anessential discipline for you in thatsituation do you find people now thatyou know remote that people are kind ofdrifting off and maybe they’re justworking on something else while they’relistening to the other people talk howdo you how do you actually make surethat’s a great that’s a that’s that is aum that’s a major risk and and what youknow what people can do is they can putthe screen that they want to work on infront of the camera and be looking atthe camerawhile apparently looking at a camera anddoing work right and doing other stuffthat that’s a that’s a key issue youknow how do you get around that the onlyway to get around it is teams reallybought into the outcome they’re tryingto deliverum and where the team’s going aheadbecause when they are bored in they aregoing to be paying attention becausethey know thatum paying attention in that moment isreally important togetting you know helping the teamachieve what they want solike i think in some respectspeople’s engagement in meetings in avirtual in a virtual worldis a really good gauge of the level ofengagement your team has withwith you generally um i mean i don’tknowit’d be great if there was some way imean it’s a little bit creepy andyou know it’s invading privacy but insome respects you could actually seewhat people were doing on their screensduring meetings in a virtual environmentyou’ve got a nice measure of facebookyeah yeah it’s interesting thatsomebody’s going to solve this sort ofremoteyou know body language thing as a way ofunderstanding itit’ll probably be a snapchat a snapchatfilter or something like thatthat’ll do it

  • User Onboarding Flow: 5 Best App Practices

    User Onboarding Flow: 5 Best App Practices

    As product makers, we understand that users usually get overwhelmed when trying out a new app. You have a multitude of features – but the user doesn’t care, they want whatever your marketing has told them.
     
    I saw some user onboarding research: more than 90%** of customers believe that Apps can do better, whereas 86% are more likely to stay loyal if the user onboarding process educates and welcomes them.
     
    Here’s when the user onboarding strategy comes in, user onboarding in your App improves user experience and increases user retention, resulting in apps gaining popularity.

    What Is App User Onboarding?

    It is all about the first impression. All the combined steps a user takes as soon as he opens the app, from the welcome page to the info screen represent onboarding sequences.

    It is the foremost condition that determines user retention, proven to be effective in over 50% of the cases if done correctly.

    You want to focus on progressive onboarding. What does it mean exactly? The MAGIC of your user engagement strategy is getting people to learn and connect with:

    • Your key use-case in the onboarding process
    • Secondary functions and uses downplayed to reach your primary objective
    • Nudging users to go further at the perfect moment
    • Contextual support when they need it

    Trialler abandonment is scary for any App’s Product Manager. But we’ve seen Apps that have increased user engagement over the time – so what is the hidden secret? It’s time to walk you through some of the best UX practices!

    The User Onboarding Checklist

    All businesses approach the app onboarding process differently, depending on the product’s features or the target audience. Let’s take a look at the key elements that transform the onboarding experience into a successful tool for user retention.

    • Focus On Your Value Proposition

    Instead of prioritizing your app’s functionality, begin by discussing what the user would gain from using it. It will not only encourage people to use your app in the future, but it will also reassure them that it is functional and serves the purpose for which it was designed.

    • Ask for Concise Information

    Your ultimate goal is to get new users to sign up for your product. Keep the procedure as short as possible and offer them the chance to use other existing accounts to fill in the signup form, as a way of saving time. Make sure that the information required is clear and short, as it reduces the amount of friction generated by the sign-up obligation in the user onboarding process.

    • Offer A Personalized Experience

    By far, we know that the key step of your user engagement strategy is to personalize everything they see based on their preferences. It does not only show that you are customer-centric, but it also enhances their experience, as the content they see is tailored to their needs and choices.

    • Invest in Good UX

    A good design can be a game-changer for any app. When UX influences user experience, conversion lift can increase by up to 83%. Following the best UX practices, we notice that users are more likely to stick around and be engaged with your app, as visuals have a great impact on user retention.

    Examples of Apps With the Best User Onboarding Flow

    App onboarding directly impacts your user engagement strategy and pays off in a variety of ways.

    Low churn, greater retention, and higher customer happiness are all benefits of a strong onboarding experience that helps the user grasp the product and its relevance.

    Let’s take a look at the best examples out there!

    Are you looking to get more users to love your mobile and web apps?  Click on the buttons below to get your 14 day free trial or contact us for a demo! 


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    1. Slack: No distractions

    user onboarding example

    We’ve written about Slack tips and guides before. Created as a messaging app between teams to help businesses communicate more effectively, Slack offers a great example of user onboarding, as it keeps it simple and without distractions. When opening the app, new users are prompted with its features and a four-step tour that portrays the app’s value-oriented onboarding strategy.

    Users are encouraged to walk through the software as they try it out and actually use it. The tooltips are concise and helpful, and the tour may be stopped at any time. Slack also introduced a modal window to allow desktop alerts, as part of their onboarding flow.

    Popups are used to showcase all of the most significant aspects and the onboarding procedure is simple due to the lack of hard steps. Users are not distracted by unnecessary notifications, email confirmation, or creating a password.

    2. Duolingo: Increased User Engagement

    user onboarding - example duolingo

    Unlike many other apps out there, Duolingo does not focus on the user onboarding process from the beginning.

    New users are not prompted to sign up right after opening the app, instead, they are asked to set a goal. This is a great example of JTBD and “getting out of the way”.

    After deciding on a language goal, Duolingo gives new users the choice of starting from the beginning or taking a placement exam. Only at the third interface level does the experience become individualized, as the app presents several tools that users can choose from based on their preferences.

    The onboarding strategy has proven to be very effective, as it focuses on the product first and only after that, users can choose to create an account. Unregistered users are restricted from accessing some features, but they can still enjoy learning a new language. The sign-up process is simple as well, it only asks for a name, email, and password.

    3. Strava’s Onboarding Flow

    user onboarding - example strava

    Created as a platform site for cyclists and athletes who track their runs and rides through GPS, Strava offers one of the best and most simple mobile app onboarding (mobile user onboarding) experiences out there. The app is accessible through Facebook, Google, or e-mail. During the signup process, Strava directs you to a screen where you can connect your Facebook friends – this is key to user activation – Strava has probably figured out via analytics, surveys, user interviews that Strava is inherently social.

    Strava requests permission to notify users through email about their statistics, updates, or community stories when they create a basic profile.

    Then, it asks users about the sports they are practicing and asks for some data records. Strava has one of the best UX practices due to its clear and simple user interface.

    4. Calm: Simple and Effective Design

    We’ve compared Calm and a few other meditation apps before – since then Calm has become a “unicorn” (a startup valued at more than $1B). As an application that aims to help users reduce stress and anxiety, Calm clearly knows how to make a good first impression, by greeting them with “take a deep breath”.

    Then, it familiarizes the user with the app’s features: sleep tales, breathing programs, and guided meditation.

    The users are then asked to set their goals and allow push notifications, as well as create an account or link the app to an existing one. Even though an account is not mandatory, users are presented with the benefits of having one and the premium features it has to offer. The minimalistic and simple design allows users to discover the product by themselves, still providing them with simple and effective in-app tutorials.

    5. Voly – fast grocery delivery service


    Voly is new (in Australia) but it’s one of the new, new breed of 15minute grocery delivery startups – another is Milkrun. Readers know I’m not a huge fan of carousels because they are often just repeating what the marketing says.

    However, we do think carousels can explain and emphasize business value or purpose – in this case Voly speaks to their “replace or refund guarantee” and that is important to tell users.

    You can create user onboarding guides just like the big guys!  Click on the buttons below to get your 14 day free trial or contact us for a demo! 


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  • Context Marketing – The Key Elements

    Context Marketing – The Key Elements

    I was on a zoom session yesterday with John Cutler from Amplitude. The session title was “Why Product & Marketing Need to Collaborate…**“  – it was timely given our “Context Marketing” series is suggesting Product Teams think like Marketers.

    By now, Product Teams mostly accept customer centricity (via segmentation, audiences, cohorts and personas) is the new way of increasing adoption. In previous posts we’ve discussed  context marketing: the elements are the small nuances that can personalize any user journey.

    As users, we all want a personalized experience, don’t we? 

    As Product Teams, this is when (or where) context marketing should be applied. Previously, we introduced context marketing as delivering the right information to the right people at the right time. It encourages:

    • more relevant help, guidance and nudges for the user’s stage of journey 
    • better conversion rates that fuel product-led growth

    Let’s check the key elements that make context marketing critical to your App’s user Activation and Retention approach!

    Element 1: Building a Contextual App

    “How can I manage my customer experiences?” you may ask. 

     

    A contextual platform has some defining attributes that eventually delivers product-led growth through its engagement tools. This shifts your focus from just “writing code” to “crafting experiences” (or more specifically – “crafting user journeys”).

     

    Here are some recommendations you should focus on to make a business case for employing an Engagement and Guidance Platform:

    • Stop wasting your precious development team’s time!
    • Reduce the time it takes for you to learn new things!
    • Identify and measure users based on their consumer behavior throughout their journey instead of spamming them with pop-ups and announcements!

    Of course you need to hardcode your App with required web and mobile releases for each change that you want to make to the FEATURES in your product.

    But each Feature is discovered and mastered throughout the user’s unique JOURNEY. You can think of a Feature as a city and the journey as the road. Along a road the signposts are the contextual help.

    To add these contextual signposts and contextual help to your App, there is no need to stop developing Features. The signposts can be crafted, released, changed instantly (or scheduled) from our dashboard – without writing code.

    Each user journey will be unique, but you can optimise for common roads by targeting audiences in your App. 

    Your hardcoded platform does not have audience targeting embedded from the beginning and no default analytics to help you deliver relevant content.

     

    Contextual one offers you point-and-click and real-time audience targeting with no-code tools and built-in guide interaction analytics. 

    Credit: superiorwallpapers.com
    Credit: superiorwallpapers.com

    Element 2: User-centric Focus

    Ditch Campaigns – Focus on Customer Journey

    Marketing is initially impersonal and the more personal it gets, the better. Context is crucial for building confidence and contextualising the message increases your prospective customer’s perception of you.

    Context marketing means distributing the content the right way, not just spamming it.

    Moreover, some form of targeted marketing is now employed by 49% of marketers – but it’s outside the App.

    So targeting is sophisticated when Acquiring users (type of ad placement, demographic targeting, geolocation, or behavioural targeting) – but once the user gets into the App there is little sophistication for personalized Customer Journey’s – this is where Contextual Marketing will grow over this decade.

    Remembering Pirate Metrics in our previous post – targeted marketing occurs at the acquisition phase.

    Context Marketing starts with the Activation stage and continues throughout the funnel (Retention, Referral and Revenue). It’s clear that great execution of Context Marketing is super valuable.

    Element 3: Methodology

    Ask yourself: What is the best way to create an awesome experience that is accessible for every client?

    Let’s break down the key elements of context marketing:

     

    Access the User’s Full Journey

    Although the user onboarding process is important, getting some insights into people’s preferences – focusing on the overall user journey allows you to personalize their experience and activate certain engagement tools for the right audience. 

    It makes use of real-time data to enhance users’ profiles and analyze engagement or feature adoption behavior, allowing for more intelligent engagement between businesses and customers.

     

    Customize for Contextual Engagement

    Content and Help based on segmentation or App Usage

    As the main purpose of context marketing is to deepen product adoption (and feature adoption), create and spread content along the journey for the purpose of engaging and retaining an audience.

     

    Target an audience, segment, or cohort

    It takes a suite of tools for a full user journey: emails, newsletters, inApp content, push notifications and customer support. All of these should converge to contextual by leveraging the  specific timeframe and circumstances for the user in your product journey.

     

    It’s near impossible for most Product Teams to customize to the exact user (like Amazon does with Product Recommendations) but the macro easier (achievable) solution is audiences/segments.

     

    Let’s say you want to focus on a new segment of your target audience. Customer retention, product-led growth, and campaign depth are all aided by relevant help/guidance content provided to individuals: right time, in the right screen, and on whichever device they want.

     

    Cut Through the Noise and Spam

    Newsletters, promotional emails, pop-up notifications usually end up in the spam folder or being ignored by users. Yes, you still need to use them – it’s a numbers game – to hopefully get the user back in the App. 

     

    But…its easier to get the user to their “AHA” moment while they are using the App rather than trying to pull them back.

     

    Fast No-code Tools to Engage and Educate the User

    Remember that you should stop wasting developer time? Coding can become one of the toughest tasks when it comes to your business, so instead of focusing mainly on a hardcoded platform, a contextual one already has no-code tools that allow you to use marketing to your advantage and craft users’ experiences. 

     

    Analytics to Evaluate Product Features and Engagement Rate

    You can’t improve what you aren’t measuring – the only way to increase conversion rates and your revenue is by measuring the impact of feature adoption and product retention based on the Contextual Marketing you serve. Setting a Goal: did a guide, a video, a tooltip increase users completing that Goal? 

    Then you can iterate or double-down.

    Element 4: Use Contextu.al Tools ????

    Our platform was designed specifically to focus on context. Besides that, we offer you some no-code tools that are easy to use and ready for you to integrate with your strategy:

    • Contextual tip: Web Tooltips and Mobile Tooltips designed for feature adoption and onboarding and it helps you emphasize features or functions to your users.
    • Onboarding carousel: gives your users an overview and lets them swipe through pages of pictures and text
    • Announcement: gathers all the relevant announcements and pop-ups in one place and can be used for welcoming messages or feature updates
    • InApp Video: creates a more interactive experience by showing users a video from YouTube or any other source
    • Survey: enhances your feedback strategy and lets you get valuable insights from your users.

    Contextu.al understands your consumers’ needs and helps you display only relevant material based on their user journey. By making product adoption simpler and faster, we help your business grow without writing code.

    You can book a demo with us today!

    * Banner image credit: freepix.com
    ** Full Name: “Why Product & Marketing Need to Collaborate to Create Digital Experiences”