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Beyond Acquisition: Crafting Content for Long-Term Customer Retention
38 Plays7 months ago
In this episode, we dive into the often-overlooked side of content marketing—retention. Shana Haynie, Head of Content and Organic Growth for MoEngage's North America region shares insights on the differences between creating content for acquisition versus retention, especially in B2B and B2C contexts.
Ashley Segura and Shana discuss strategies for keeping your customers engaged post-purchase, from educational content to loyalty programs, and explore how AI and data are transforming retention strategies.
Whether you're scaling a content program or trying to balance acquisition and retention, this episode is packed with practical tips on how to create content that keeps your audience coming back for more!
Subscribe now for your bi-weekly dose of content strategy wisdom that's practical, actionable, and twice as likely to make you question everything you thought you knew about SEO and content marketing!
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Transcript
Importance of Educational Content for Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
In terms of engagement and getting people to continue to engage with your brand, you're going to be producing content that is going to be probably focused on continuing to educate around what trends are happening in the industry that they might want to know about, other things that might be happening amongst their peers, and so doing kinds of content that is going to continue the engagement and continue building the relationship with the customer over time.
Introduction to Shaina and Content Marketing
00:00:32
Speaker
Coming back to content in the kitchen, where we gather in the kitchen and chat about content marketing. Today we're talking about a topic that's crucial for any business, looking to not just attract customers, but keep them coming back for more. I'm super thrilled to have Shaina, the head of content and organic growth for Moengage's North American region.
00:00:52
Speaker
Shaina spent over a decade helping businesses engage their customers through strategic storytelling and content. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to use content to drive customer engagement and more importantly, retention.
Shaina's Personal Passion: Cooking
00:01:04
Speaker
So grab your favorite cup, settle in, and let's talk about customer acquisition and retention with Shaina.
00:01:16
Speaker
All right, so when you're not at your desk and you find yourself in the kitchen, what is your go-to dish to cook? So I actually love to cook, and I create a variety of different things. But I think my favorite thing to make is probably mac and cheese. I make it from scratch every year for Thanksgiving, and I regret it for many weeks out there because I make so much of it that I eat it for a very long time. But it's like a once a year thing, and it's a special treat just for that time of year. but Yeah, that's definitely a really special treat and something pretty much everyone loves mac and cheese. So it's a great dish to bring. Totally.
Content for Acquisition vs. Retention
00:01:55
Speaker
yeah So when it comes to content strategy and you're not making smack and cheese, let's talk about retention and ah how to not just attract potential customers and customers with our content, but how do we retain them? So can you first break down what customer retention is and what the difference between creating content for acquisition versus creating content for retention looks like?
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting because I do feel like as a marketer in the space, I feel like a lot of the content that we create is focused primarily just on acquisition. um It seems to be like the short term thing that everybody needs from from a marketing perspective. And then I do feel like content gets kicked around between different departments. But from a marketing perspective, if you are in an organization that prioritizes retention and using content, then the kind of content that you're going to be producing is going to be valuable to your customer, the person who has already purchased from you and who you want to continue building a relationship with.
Content Strategies for B2B vs. B2C Retention
00:02:58
Speaker
And I do think it's different from like a B2B to a B2C perspective. Most of my career, I've been marketing to in a B2B fashion, but where I work right now at MoEngage, our customers are marketing to B2C. And so there's going to be a totally different strategy that you might use from a retention perspective when you're looking at what kind of content produce.
00:03:19
Speaker
wow Let's talk about that because when you think customer retention, regardless of its B2B, B2C, we generally think you're going to use the same strategy when you're trying to figure out what content to produce. But you're right, B2B is very different in your messaging and really essentially how you're talking to that kind of audience versus a B2C. So what kind of differences have you seen in the content strategies that you've put together that are like, all right, this is clearly just for B2B when we're trying to create content?
Effective Product Use and Brand Engagement
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess in B2B a lot of times you're talking software and so there's a product involved and maybe it's very complicated to use and so you might be working with let's say your CS team or your implementations team or even your solutions consultants in order to create content that is targeted towards getting the customer to continue using the software in the best way possible.
00:04:12
Speaker
And so I would consider that a pretty strong focus of retention content. And then in terms of engagement and getting people to continue to engage with your brand, you're going to be producing content that is going to be probably focused on continuing to educate around what trends are happening in the industry that they might want to know about, other things that might be happening amongst their peers and so doing kinds of content that is going to continue the engagement and continue building the relationship with the customer over time. That's going to be more of a B2B focus. And I think in B2C, it really can be a little bit more transactional. The kind of content that you might be producing in order to drive retention could be as simple as asking somebody if they are interested in a special offer or sending an email that has different kinds of like
00:05:02
Speaker
loyalty points that you might get so that you can build up and continue using with your repeat purchases with that kind of company. I think that there's definitely a difference there. And then in B2C, also there's the community aspect of it could be very different from B2B because the problem that you're trying to solve is probably more short term that can be fulfilled by purchasing a product rather than um an entire solution, if that makes sense.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, definitely like needing the whole software and then you have a bunch of content on how do you use that software where B2C, you don't necessarily need to tell people how to wear pants or how to put on a t-shirt. They get it.
Video Content in Retention Strategies
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, but I guess to your point, like in let's say beauty, for instance, like there's a ton of content out there that could be produced by a brand that would be used to build that community and continue generating purchases and teaching people how to use certain makeup in a certain way. Yeah.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, that that definitely gives the opportunity to do that how-to content, even if it's going to be B2C versus B2B. Talking on the B2B side of things, how have you seen content really address how to use a product or a service the best? Because I feel like that's where We all struggle a lot. like We're like, okay, we know our product and service inside out, and we're telling people why don't they get it? And there's usually this disconnect between the content that a brand puts out versus the understanding of a potential customer and how to actually use that product or service.
Video vs. Long-form Content for Education
00:06:38
Speaker
I think that's a great question. And I do think that many companies struggle with this, which is why they don't actually even attempt to do it. But I think that there is merit in working with the people who know how to use the product and then figuring out how to translate that technicality and all of that jargon into something that is simplified and easy for a customer or a potential customer to follow.
00:07:05
Speaker
So I think that I've seen like interactive demos and things like that where it's really more self-serve in a way, but it's more simplified as to how to use a product. And it's not so far as to get somebody into a demo where they feel like there's a to of pressure around somebody maybe trying to pitch them something or yeah I guess technically we're still talking on the acquisition side, but I'm trying to think about when it relates to actual retention and somebody who might want to self serve as a customer. Maybe they don't want to get on a call with a CS person to run through it. Maybe they want to be able to have that autonomy.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, and demos are usually, at least when I think of demos, I think of someone from sales, there they're emailing me, I'm already a customer, they want to show me a new feature or a brand new service suite that they're just released. And so they want to jump on a call and then they give the the whole spiel.
00:08:00
Speaker
And that does work sometimes because it is nice to have someone that i can ask direct questions to before i agree to potentially buy another products from a company but sometimes it could be as simple as doing a loom video of hey this is what it looks like on the other side and then that ways they can.
00:08:17
Speaker
digest the information, come back to you when they have questions. Are you seeing more of like video content being used for that retention aspect or is it still the longer form how-to content or email marketing doing best? What kind of mediums are really working?
00:08:34
Speaker
I do think that the video medium is great for that style of content when you're trying to pull back by up cover on a specific of your software. um I think that more long form content tends to work better for if you just have
Enhancing Retention for Media Brands
00:08:50
Speaker
a step by step process that you're trying to showcase to somebody. I think you could do a long form written content with multiple videos in it. um that That would probably work pretty well for that use case.
00:09:02
Speaker
That's a really good idea it because then you don't have to have one video that's like an hour and a half long, but you could have little segments of, hey, this is what it looks like right here, and then the text. Then you're basically satisfying both users, the users who digest info the best from reading and the ones who digest best from actually watching and seeing the demo.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, and then I guess from my standpoint, I do a lot of SEO stuff, then you have more capability of discoverability too, if you have a long form mixed with video. Yeah, that's a good point. And then you have the option to really organize your headings at that point. um On the B to C side of things, usually the retention aspect isn't always a ah conversion of I want them to buy something again. Sometimes it's just I want them to keep coming back to my website and reading my content or bouncing around like and I need that traffic in the page views as the metric. So when you're thinking about retention from that standpoint, what strategies do you recommend for getting people to keep coming back and staying connected with content?
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I think in this case, we're thinking more like media-driven brands. I used to work at Hearst Bay Area, which is a subset of just the larger Hearst Corp. And the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Gate were both nested under that brand. And so I know that those metrics, that traffic, that time on page, all of that's super important.
Balancing Different Content Types
00:10:27
Speaker
And I think that there is actually a lot of technical components that you have to look at in order to get people to continue looking at those sites. If page speed load time, for instance, is too slow, then people are not going to want to wait around for it. And if it's too clickbaity, for instance, too, then people are going to lose trust in in the content. So I think from that perspective, you have to continuously produce content that is high quality.
00:10:50
Speaker
that also has information in it that people are looking for and probably provides a unique viewpoint on it. But it is one of those processes that you have to continue doing it over and over again. And so it can get a little bit tricky if the news isn't quite there or if you don't have enough to talk about. So it's important to continuously be analyzing the things that are going on in the industry and making sure that you have something to say about it.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, not just trying to make content, but actually adding something valuable to the conversation. Yeah. Yeah, but that's definitely a huge step. And that makes me think of content calendars because when you're trying to plan out the next week, two weeks, months of content that you're publishing, regardless of if you're B2B, B2C, you most likely have some kind of content calendar and and structure. How much do you balance retention focused content versus acquisition content, educational and content, how to or does it all blend together?
Content Prioritization: SEO, Leadership, Sales
00:11:51
Speaker
Like how do you usually organize your content strategy and your planning?
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it's probably, let me just think about that for a sec because I personally don't produce like a ton of retention focused content myself. It's really more acquisition. More on the acquisition? So how do you do it for acquisition then? Because I guess a lot of retention based content, it could be really focused and narrowed in.
00:12:25
Speaker
post-customer journey because you're at this point you're trying to retain them, build brand loyalty, have great feedback, and so it's a lot of sales collateral. But on the acquisition side, it's throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. So what's what's your strategy for acquisition?
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, so let me I'll rephrase. So I think from a perspective of content strategy, the way that it typically works for me, is I kind of bucket content, at least I do a lot of editorial, so a lot of blogging. And so I bucket all of that into three different areas, there's going to be content that is specific for SEO.
00:13:01
Speaker
So content that you're looking to drive traffic from organic search, you're looking to capture those search impressions, and there's a lot of strategy that goes into that specific format. Then there's the content that is thought leadership driven, so not really focused on driving traffic from search, but something that you can distribute from your emails, from your social, and have even your paid advertising, like things that are going to drive awareness for your brand and your expertise and your position.
00:13:30
Speaker
and like all the narratives that you want to support as a business. And then there's going to be your straight up sales enablement content, which I consider to be more your mid funnel. So that's when you're trying to get somebody who's already known about your brand, you're trying to get them towards that actual purchase point. And then there's the post sale enablement content.
00:13:49
Speaker
which is what we were just talking about. So I think that the way you bucket that really depends on what the goals of your organization are. And a lot of the businesses that I've worked in are typically more focused on driving that SEO traffic and producing that thought leadership content. And a lot of the time, the sales enablement type stuff will either fall on our product marketing function or on our customer success.
00:14:12
Speaker
So ah marketing itself does not necessarily have, at least in my experience, a ton of say over what that content is.
Impact of Leadership-created Content
00:14:20
Speaker
But I think that there's definitely room for improvement there.
00:14:24
Speaker
Oh, certainly. So say it was perfect world. It was up to you in terms of who was doing what and how much how many resources were put into the different content baskets. Is there a certain type of content that you would prioritize over others? Would you always choose sales enablement content needs to be the highest priority? Or regardless of B2B, B2C, if this was your perfect content world and you were painting the picture, how would it look? Yeah, so I still personally think that focusing on the SEO traffic and the side of things is really important for companies that are looking to really use that channel effectively. So if you don't focus on that at some point, then you're not going to be capturing
00:15:12
Speaker
you know all of that search intent, all those people who are actually out there looking or potentially looking. So I feel like that's really important to start on. Sales enablement is obviously important too, because it's something that the sales team needs. They need to have that content in order to close those deals. So I think that there's like a pretty strong pull towards both of those. And then I think thought leadership is one of those nice to haves.
00:15:37
Speaker
that are yeah I don't think you need to focus on it as much before you have those other two things figured out. but but i want I think once you have those other buckets filled and you have a good strategy and you have a solid process for producing that, then I think it makes more sense to go into the more thought leadership, more non-evergreen type content. And I've definitely seen it done the other way, and it was detrimental to the organization when they focus too much on these like trends.
00:16:07
Speaker
kinds of content and it's no one's gonna find this after this blows over and your budget is so small. It's really just not the best place to put it when you're trying to scale a content program. Yeah, that's a fantastic point. there's so much talk about that leadership content these days. I feel like this year it's at its peak of everyone needs to be doing that leadership and you also need to be empowering your team to do that leadership and not just sharing the internal orgs content, but also making content on their own. Have you seen any success with team founded content and create content that's just created by individual members of the company and sharing it on their own platform?
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it definitely works in some or like industries. I have definitely seen it work before where a company will have the CEO and they will have their specific viewpoints and they will post on LinkedIn or whatever, mostly LinkedIn, but but's it's effective when you are trying to it definitely trying to build up like a not just an audience for yourself, but an awareness for the brand that you represent. And I see this done by a lot of founders in the startup space who are trying to make a name for themselves and and then through by proxy for their organizations. And I think if you have something specific to say and you're good at writing or you have people on your team who are good at writing these points, yeah
00:17:36
Speaker
and capturing the essence of the narratives that you're trying to push, then I do think it can be effective. And would you see that best being used for acquisition or retention? Both.
00:17:50
Speaker
Because that that really is that's really just like the brand awareness, right? So that's a way to build trust with the audience to show that what you're talking about. And if people see that the leader of the company knows what they're talking about, or even just other employees in the company know what they're talking about, then that kind of distributes this idea that there is this internal kind of expertise.
00:18:12
Speaker
And I do think that permeates through if people are in their acquisition stage and they're trying to understand more about an organization, then that can be like a social proof um in the right direction. And if you're a customer, it probably makes you feel more comfortable that you're working with and spending money with people who know what they're talking about.
00:18:31
Speaker
which
Pitfalls in Content Strategies
00:18:32
Speaker
with so many businesses and things being so saturated, it really can come down to something as simple as that as a potential customer choosing your organization over another because they saw the post from the CEO and and can align with the way that they spoke or something just resonated with them and and really gave them that personal touch.
00:18:53
Speaker
it really has come down to that with content these days and and how customers and even retaining customers. I've seen a lot of instances to where customers jump ship from one company over to a competitor because of content that was produced. So are there any like any warnings or things that you definitely want to avoid when you're working on a content strategy for either acquiring or retaining customers?
00:19:19
Speaker
I think that really depends on how bold your brand wants to be. I think that in content, especially, just in it's really hard to break through the noise these days. So sometimes going bold is going to be the best way. um But I would caution against being tacky. That's a good thing to caution against. Unless it works for your brand, some brands are really tacky and people love it.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, I guess tacky in the way of being, I don't know, like not, I don't know how to describe it, like not being like professional or nicer. I don't know if that yeah, technically, if that's your brand, that's fine. But you it's, it's got to be part of your brand and you have to own it.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yes, exactly. You definitely have to own the content that you produce. It's okay to make mistakes and pivot and fix them, but you do have to own the content that you produce. So if you're looking to acquire new customers, focusing on SEO-driven content, gaining new traffic, gaining new page views is the way to go. If you're looking for retention, that's more of the sales collateral, and that leadership can piggyback somewhere in the middle for both of those. Is that an okay summary?
00:20:32
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I think that that summarizes it well. So then moving into the, again, I have to drop it because I don't think we've been able to have a single episode without talking about it, like moving into everything being with AI and AI in this space. Have you seen any examples of content, whether for acquiring new customers or retaining, that is using AI and it's working really well, whether it's a part of their process or it's in the final standpoint or examples of not so great?
AI in Enhancing Content Marketing
00:21:05
Speaker
but Yeah, I think when we say AI, there's like a lot of different like ways that this can be used as part of marketing or content in general. A lot of people obviously focus on chat GPT and using AI to actually write content, but We have tools now that can be used to predict customer behavior, just like MoEngage. And so these tools help marketers essentially understand what a customer is going to do and help them optimize towards the best path, like what content to serve them, what is going to work the best to get them to a conversion point or to get them to an engagement point that might be the goal.
00:21:44
Speaker
I think the advancements in technology and automation are really strong for marketers right now from both like the B2B and B2C side. and I think that if it can be used successfully with the data that you've collected, then your content is going to perform better and you'll have more information about what content works and what doesn't so that you can iterate. Yeah, I'm starting to preach.
00:22:13
Speaker
quantity versus quality, and I spent like the last eight years, everything needs to be quality, stop mass producing content, but now it's about how fast can we get the data to figure out what worked and what didn't work, what topics are really heading home and and gaining new customers, which ones are retaining the most, which ones are we getting follow-up questions for the CS, the customer success teams, and the faster we can get that data, the more educated we can make decisions on our content strategy pivots when we need to. like it it It really opens up a lot of opportunities. Tell me more about the data that you guys are are doing and and how all of that works. So you mean like for us as a company or for our customers? For your customers.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah, so essentially the platform ingest data from everywhere. So it pulls in data from your customer, like your CDP and your warehouse, your data warehouse, and feeds it in your even your CRM if you have one. And it feeds it into a platform that allows you to look at all of this in one way and use the customer's like interactions to create a journey or a set of journeys and kind of test them against each other.
00:23:23
Speaker
And so there's like a lot of ways that the data informs the strategy. And if you don't have a way to do that. So let's say everything has been these disparate systems, which is the case for a lot of companies who don't have a customer engagement platform. They are not able to actually have a full view of what the customer journey looks like. So that's. And it's super important. And to your point, like with the help of AI now, we can scale content production much more quickly than we were ever able to in the past. And so I think quality obviously is still important. But to your point, like making sure that you have enough stuff out there so that you can see what's performing faster is going to be like the name of the game.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, especially when now everyone's mass producing content that really is not that great. So there's a lot of opportunities to produce really good content and you can do it at scale. Even with limited resources, it's really about being able to have data. And if you guys are able to provide data on potential user points and user journeys, that's huge to be able to dictate what kind of content you're going to create next.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah,
Shaina's Project Management Tools
00:24:31
Speaker
and what kind of content to serve to a certain segment of customers at a certain point in time just to make it so that it's the most personalized experience they can have. Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. As we wrap up, I would love to know what your current secret sauce is. What is a strategy, a tool, maybe even a book that you're just loving right now?
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, so I, and this is, I'm a, this is a stronghold of something that I have developed in my career. I love project management. I think it's the, definitely the, I would say it's my marketing seat like superpower. And so I have this, and it has nothing really to do with content. It's really about more about operations and organization, but it helps me scale content programs that I've run in the past and make it easy for other people to understand where the content is, how it's categorized, how to use it. For that, I use Airtable. It's probably my favorite go-to for content databasing. And then I use Asana for task management. And I do think that those things have helped me streamline my entire career.
00:25:36
Speaker
Wow, that's amazing. Okay, so I'm really trying to dive into Airtable this year and set up as many automations as I can. ah How exactly are you using Airtable? You mentioned operations, so where in the content strategy or planning or where do you use it?
00:25:52
Speaker
So it is the database. It is the hub. And it's internal. It's the internal hub for our organization, at least for the team that I run on North America. And so basically, it it's the place where you can put all of the content that you're going to publish, all the content that you have published, all the links. You can tag it different ways. You can say what campaign it's part of, what the audience is, and I use it for sales enablement, too. So I'll have columns in there. Let's say here is a social snippet you can use if you want to just copy, paste, and share it. So just trying to streamline the process a bit and consolidate everything, because I think that spreadsheets themselves are fairly outdated, and we should not be using them yes but yeah for that type of thing anymore. Yeah, definitely. It's OK to still live in Google Drive every now and again, but there are easier ways now, thankfully.
Conclusion and Appreciation
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Also, thank you so much for being on the show today. Really appreciate everything that you shared. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me.