Learn how Windstream leverages data to relay the most relevant information, products, and offers to prospects and customers, powering this telecommunications firm toward its online acquisition and retention goals. Run your business with unprecedented agility with help from the Monetate Success Team. View more website optimization resources at http://www.monetate.com/resources

1. customer story:
Building the Website Around
the Customer Experience
a publication from

2. Building the Website Around the Customer Experience
About Windstream
Communications
Windstream Communications, a leading telecommunications firm,
keeps rural residential consumers in the U.S. connected via phone,
broadband, and digital television services. The S&P 500 company also
provides cloud computing and managed services to businesses and
government agencies.
Since 2006, the Little Rock, Arkansas company’s residential unit has
grown on the strength of its High-Speed Internet offering and bundled
services.
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3. Building the Website Around the Customer Experience
The Monetate Success Team sat down with Ryan Dahlstrom, Staff Manager, Interactive Marketing
at Windstream Communications, to talk about how the company uses Monetate.
How did Windstream initially use Monetate What role did Monetate play in
to improve the online customer experience? your replatforming initiative?
We started out using Monetate for A/B and multivariate testing, We worked closely with our Client Success Director at Monetate, who
mainly around our quarterly offers and promotions. The only logic we attended some of our strategy sessions on-site and helped guide us in
had on our website before our recent replatforming was geographic terms of what content Monetate could deliver to better optimize the
targeting via an IP sniff that drove our promotions and pricing. We website experience. That information gave us the direction needed to
used Monetate on top of that to identify new and existing customers, develop the new website in a way that maximizes our ability to be more
serving promotions to prospects while hiding these same offers from strategic in our messaging.
customers.
We now have parts of the website that we consider “Monetate sections,”
Monetate basically was the default messaging medium on our website which are 100% dynamic and driven entirely by the optimization logic
before we rebuilt it. We previously had no flexibility or intelligence on built into the Monetate platform. I’m excited about that, as it’s far and
the backend to serve content in different ways. above anything that we could have imagined doing before.
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4. Building the Website Around the Customer Experience
How are you leveraging Monetate on the new website?
We view Monetate as a customer experience management tool. To that
end, we plan to use Monetate to enhance the overall experience of any
given user on our site based upon the information that we know about
them by serving up relevant products and/or promotions, or directing
them to browse content that is directly relevant to them.
In order to get to relevancy, we layer geolocation with type of customer,
and (if applicable) what products a customer has purchased. Together,
these pieces of information inform which product messaging or
promotions, if any, a website visitor is eligible for. We’re continuing to
use Monetate to test what combination of products and messaging
works best for conversion and ROI.
We’ll also be using Monetate to test different aspects of the site layout.
From button placement and color to headline verbiage and placement,
we have a lot of areas to test. Given that it’s a brand new website, we
essentially have a clean slate on which to test. I’m excited about that.
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5. Building the Website Around the Customer Experience
Now, where it gets really cool is with current customers on the site. We
now know, based on the backend logic, more about each customer
I love how Monetate gives us the ability to make
who visits the website. We are able to use Monetate in order to serve
down-and-dirty quick changes to the website.
relevant promotional messaging based upon this information.
- Ryan Dahlstrom, Staff Manager, Interactive Marketing, Windstream
For example, if a current customer is already maxed out in terms of their
product set, we serve one set of messaging. If they’re not maxed out
and have the eligibility to upgrade, we dynamically change the content
to take advantage of this opportunity.
We’re now able to find out what is most important to our customer base
online. Is it upsells that generate new revenue streams? Or is it support
and providing them with the right information at the right time and
in the right place? Finding out the answers to these questions around
new customer acquisition and retention will be huge for our business.
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6. Building the Website Around the Customer Experience
Any favorite campaigns?
Rather than a favorite, I can point to the campaign where we hid
information in the cart as an example of when the results really
surprised us. We used Monetate to find out how our cart page would
perform when customers could no longer see the cart subtotal or the
functionality that allowed them to change their specified geographic
location. It turned out that hiding the change location function worked
well, but hiding them both worked even better. That generated a 7.1%
lift in conversion for us.
More importantly, we learned from this campaign that it’s not necessarily
what you show on your website that can be powerful, but what you
don’t show. This insight helped shape how we built the new website.
Actually, my favorite campaigns are those still to come. I’m stoked
about what the new website is able to do, and how we are planning to
use Monetate going to forward to power the intelligence and drive the
messaging. There’s really cool stuff to come! Hiding the cart subtotal and change location functionality on the
cart page streamlined the checkout experience for customers.
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7. Building the Website Around the Customer Experience
What do you like most about Monetate?
Just having our Client Success team, especially our Client Success to help us maximize our opportunities, whether around targeting the
Director, involved in those early strategy discussions about the new right visitor at the right time or gaining insight into what works best at
website was priceless. any point in time, is a major part of that plan.
On top of that, from an organizational standpoint, the online space is From a practical aspect, I love how Monetate gives us the ability to
becoming much more important to Windstream as we progress in our make down-and-dirty quick changes to the website—like throwing up
corporate lifecycle. Being able to get the website as robust and smart some new terms and conditions that legal passes our way until we can
as possible is key to our continued success. Having Monetate in place get that content changed concretely. That’s pretty powerful.
I’m stoked about what the new website
is able to do, and how we are planning to
use Monetate going to forward to power
the intelligence and drive the messaging.
There’s really cool stuff to come!
- Ryan Dahlstrom, Staff Manager, Interactive Marketing, Windstream
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