Objective
Two champion Triathletes with a predictive training plan developed with over 10 years of data-driven insights wanted to find their ideal customers for their startup TriDot.
With their target “avatar” in mind, they to know who was a “beginner” Triathlete, preferably someone signing up for their first Ironman or Half-Ironman and who was an established competitor and coach. By understanding their social conversations – and who was influencing their opinions and preferences for training methods – Verifeed could shape for TriDot a targeted and personalized social messaging and marketing strategy to boost their conversions.
Challenge
Most people sign up for Triathlon events many months before the season starts so it was a challenge to discern beginners most likely to need TriDot’s training plan. It was also important to locate coaches who were training beginners and would be open to the TriDot method.
Moreover,
Verifeed’s influence scoring
had to identify and understand only those influencers who were influencing TriDot targeted customers: beginner triathletes!
Approach
Verifeed looked back historically on social conversations – as well as in real time and over time – to find and score the most likely current prospects for TriDot. By analyzing social streams as well as profiles and followers, our algorithms scored probabilities that individuals were bona fide triathletes and then segmented them by beginner, experienced and coach.
With more than 10 separate Boolean searches across multiple date periods, we identified probable customers by looking for keyword, hashtag, phrase and sentiment combinations that indicated the newcomer triathletes were looking for help or solutions. We also looked for followers of all hundreds of official events who were talking about being excited to participate.
Because people gather on social media to connect and converse about topics of shared interest, we also segmented all likely TriDot customers and influencers by occupation, interest, attitudes, and challenges, as well as demographic and location data.
Result
- Verifeed found 17,107 very likely “beginner triathlete” customers and another 13,689 experienced triathletes looking to improve their training methods – in just four weeks of listening to and analyzing social conversations.
- We scored the target customers for influence – how much they would amplify and how many friends they could bring with them if they engaged positively with TriDot in social interactions and ultimately as customers.
- We found that TriDot’s target customers are also very influential, with many of these athletes also high performing executives and entrepreneurs, “mommy bloggers”, and health and fitness thought leaders. For instance, the top 10 triathlete influencers in just one Verifeed dataset from January 2016 actively engaged more than 50 million others in four weeks of Twitter conversations!
- Not all of the 50 million are likely triathletes, so in scoring relevant influence, Verifeed could predict that engaging each of these 10 with contextual personal messages and authentic interaction could, over three months, bring as many as 10,000 new customers.
- The art (and profit) in engaging authentically with the most valuable and influential probable customers is communicating with authenticity in a non-“salesy” way. So by segmenting probable customers by shared interest, Verifeed was able to shape high-converting personalized social messaging and call-to-action strategies most likely to establish a bond or meaningful connection between the brand and consumer.
For instance, we found a high correlation between triathletes and executives and entrepreneurs, and within that, a shared passion for the use of data in measuring and predicting outcomes. With this knowledge, TriDot can now personalize its messaging around established agreement that if data works in business, why not in triathlete training.
But here’s the thing: Before any company turns on the full power of this viral conversion multiplier, it’s vital to have a website with excellent user experience that converts.