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Martín
Optimized system and design - Rednodo
Web Development

Case Study / Success Story: Optimized system and design

A new challenge:
At Rednodo, we understand that optimizing operations is extremely important. This is especially true regarding achieving the correct workflow at small companies. In cases where there is a lack of data control and organization of active documents, staff often find themselves doing repetitive tasks, which translates directly to an additional expenditure of money and resources.

We started devising an accounting loading system adapted to a medium-sized transportation company. Our team was able to develop this system within 4 to 5 months. In that time, it managed to achieve a high-performing level regarding the protection and backup of data. Its performance even aided in optimizing employee performance by 85%.

Developed with Lavarel, and integrated with Quickbook into the company’s bookkeeping system, our specialized Web & Support team managed to offer our client an efficient alternative to the ones available in the market. Unlike traditional options, which tend to collapse or even fail to perform due to their size, this system was explicitly designed to serve our client’s needs and respond to them.

Our teams aim to offer personalized and highly efficient strategies. Hence why they were able to develop a zero-error system. This system was designed to avoid mistakes when handling sensitive information, unlike manual work that cannot be automated or standardized.


Step by Step:
After reviewing our client’s needs, we decided the first step in the right direction was to install an efficient bookkeeping system and a helpful management system for bookings and solving clients’ queries regarding services and transactions.

Concerning the website, we wanted a functional and friendly one. To achieve the best possible outcome, we divided the process in two. In the first instance, our team tackled everything regarding design. While the design team worked on over ten screens using wireframes to develop a clear structure, the Web team worked on the booking and queries system plan. Developing over ten screens provides the client with a functioning and intelligent website that responds and adapts to different devices and is user-friendly.

To develop this efficient system, Lavarel was used to expedite the process. Besides helping accelerate development, this platform gives the website a higher level of security and performance. Another key benefit of this platform is that it offers multiple user benefits, like two-step authentication, thanks to its feed-forward control, as an additional security measure. Moreover, the website now has the power to block users with suspicious activity, administrate different profiles within the same account, and status check orders and reservations, among others.

Results optimization:
With a well-structured and easy usability, this system focuses on aiding employees avoid repetitive tasks and errors when handling their client’s confidential information. Developed with efficient and secure platforms such as Lavarel, this medium size transportation business has a system that can adapt to all devices and automate delicate functions such as billing, reservations, cancellations, and required documentation necessary for the development of their service. With this new enterprise resource planning system, this team of professionals is ready to help their customers with all the arrangements and logistics needed for domestic and international shipments.

Marketo Engage - Rednodo
Digital Marketing

Manage big data-bases with Marketo Engage

You’ve probably already heard about Adobe Marketo Engage, recognized as “best in class.” This solution, designed for those who work in marketing or advertising, was acquired by Adobe in 2018 for the sum of 4.75 billion USD, marking a before and after in its Marketing Cloud trajectory. Adobe saw in Marketo a window to reinsert itself in B2B Marketing, and in this article, we tell you why it was a great decision.  

B2B relationships rely heavily on lead generation and management across various marketing channels. To find the right leads and connect them with the corresponding teams, companies are looking to rely on marketing automation platforms. Adobe, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and learning mechanisms, provides an additional level of efficiency by increasing the number of relevant prospects and eliminating those who do not meet quality conditions. This platform offers various solutions according to needs and objectives: From business objectives, such as improving the customer experience; to marketing objectives, such as improving efficiency and ROI. This is why Adobe is the most chosen for end-to-end marketing.  

Thanks to its advanced software, this Marketing Automation tool is chosen because it allows companies to avoid repetition of processes, therefore, saving time and costs. With Adobe, companies can double the productivity of marketing teams and accelerate x4 the speed of campaign executions. They can build trusting relationships with business teams and individuals, by facilitating engagement analysis1. This allows you to manage and develop a commitment to the customer in different channels. This advantage aligns with the goal that drives the platform: to drive business sales, from 1.4x growth in revenue to a 1.7x increase in customer retention2. Likewise, Marketo Engage allows the user to analyze traffic to be able to measure and make reports of operational and strategic KPIs to monitor their campaigns.  

Now, how does the platform work? Its automation process is divided into phases. First, there is engagement with the client through the publication and promotion of created content. Second, it will “call capture” the software responsible for tracking all customer interactions to capture their information. Then, it goes to the phase of “nurturing” all active campaigns on the website and social networks, to finally enter the phase of establishing contact with promising users. This software also offers content personalization, powered by AI, which increases the efficiency of a campaign by up to 523%3; and user experience automation, since AI identifies the variables that influence customer behaviors, being able to increase by up to 255% 4 the average sales value. Usable in both B2B and B2C campaigns, this platform allows you to project the performance of your actions, being able to designate resources efficiently. It has been chosen by Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ as the leading platform in B2B automation compared to thirteen other platforms such as Oracle, Salesforce, Hubspot, and Microsoft. This is largely possible due to the large number of integrations offered by Adobe (over 500 across over twenty channels). From WordPress to ON24 or GoogleAdWords, this platform offers great scalability that allows the management of leads, AMB (Account-Based Marketing), and global sales. Another attribute recognized by Gartner is its global impact by having a user interface available in six languages with extensive support for documentation and training materials, and spreadsheets for creating landing pages, emails, and creating forms thanks to extensions such as Marketo Launchpoint and Adobe Exchange Marketplace.  

To sum up, one of its main benefits is the potential to assist companies to achieve an increase in their productivity and income. In figures, it has achieved conversion rates as high as 50%. Added to the increase in productivity by employees and therefore a higher ROI, Marketo is the most complete software in marketing automation, which explains how there are already more than 5000 entities worldwide that use it, especially5 Enterprise companies to increase their growth and income.  

Do you have any questions about its functionality? Our experts can help. 

Strategies Ecommerce - Rednodo
e-Commerce

Is the conversion rate of your eCommerce low? Abandoned cart strategies

In recent years and especially during the new normal, eCommerce have experienced a peak in visits. However, the conversion rate remains relatively low. Digital commerce does not only imply getting leads to your website but getting those leads to become consumers. Is your eCommerce optimized to generate conversions? 

There can be various reasons why a potential consumer might not complete their purchase. Still, in the following article, we will focus on those actions that optimize your eCommerce to face abandoned carts.  

When abandoned carts are not included in your marketing funnel strategy, they become black holes where we lose leads. This could be due to a variety of factors, including changes in the final price for previously unincluded expenses, long shipping times, the vast competitiveness of the online world, poor user experience, and lack of customer support, among others. 

 Whatever the reason, there are some actions that we can include in our marketing strategy to win back the customer:  

Email marketing: marketing automation  
Contact the consumer, inform them that their cart is waiting for them and that an employee of your company will be available to answer any questions or inconveniences that arose during the purchase process. 

This email should be personalized and automated. How so? To maximize efficiency, use marketing automation tools that allow you to segment your target audience. The message has to be precise; it can include an image of the service or product the consumer was about to get and a CTA redirecting the consumer to their shopping cart. Be careful! We do not want to overwhelm the customer; so, sending an email when the cart is abandoned and another email a few days later is sufficient.  

Clarity of information  
Consumers value clarity and transparency in the information they receive and tend to feel misled by brands adding data at the last minute. Ideally, the customer should not use your assistance system. Instead, prepare product sheets; you can add a FAQ section, provide information on the cost of shipping, and assistance throughout the purchase process.  

Simplify! 
Help your client save time. Reduce the number of steps in the purchase process: 3 or 4 steps should be more than enough to complete a purchase. Extensive processes can lead to the customer abandoning their purchase midway. Highlight your CTAs and provide the option to perform a Guest Check Out. Adapt your eCommerce to the mobile experience; nobody wants to have to zoom in on their phone to complete the required fields to finalize the purchase.  

Do you need help to optimize your eCommerce? Contact us! Our 66eCommerce team will help you improve your purchasing process, while our marketing team will develop the strategy that best suits your business. 

Digital Marketing

Google Analytics 4: A step into tomorrow’s tools.

The tech industry changes by leaps and bounds, but that is no news. In November 2020, Google launched its newest generation of analytical platforms: Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and Team Rednodo has already started using it. Based on our experience, here are some of the differences it provides compared to Google Universal Analytics (UA), its former generation.   

It is essential to know that GA4 is not an upgrade but a new version of Google UA, and is still in its Beta version. It implies a shift in classical measuring Analytics: while UA analyzes data based on “page views” and “sessions”; GA4 establishes its measurement unit on “Events” and user interactions with content that can be measured independently from a web page or screen load. Furthermore, its new utilities allow you to import offline events and analyze them as if they were collected via regular SDKs, using a CSV file.  

This is a response to new trends, where traffic doesn’t just take place on web pages but also on mobile apps, progressive web apps, and single-page applications. Therefore, GA4 helps you understand how people use your web, iOS, or Android app, achieving cross-device and cross-platform measurement. You could know now, for example, the same volume of use, if your website or app converts better. 

 If engagement is a priority in your digital strategy, you can’t miss these updates. Former engagement metrics now have new names: engaging sessions, engagement time, sessions per user, and engagement rate.  

 Also, measuring goal conversion is more manageable now since GA4 contains up to 30 goal conversions and 10 more goals than its previous UA version. Moreover, GA4 enhances machine learning, giving a higher position to advanced analysis reports for funnel analysis and path analysis.  

 Powered by machine learning, it can identify insights, metric anomalies, and predictions in an improved and more embedded way within the new solution. This is crucial nowadays: fundamental changes are hitting analytics and attribution of marketing campaigns due to privacy policies and the war against third-party cookies. Therefore, machine learning becomes more critical in closing the gap of missing data.  

 In conclusion, GA4 is the future. With already advanced offer, new developments within Google Analytics will continue to improve its functionalities. The bad news is that UA will eventually be phased out. If you are still using UA, our advice is to begin a migration to GA4. Although it does not yet contain all the functionalities of UA, this migration should be done progressively.  

 If you need help registering your new GA4 property, migrating your data, or if you have custom configuration or measurement problems, contact us! We will accompany you in the transition. 

Innovations

The perfect product

I once heard a phrase, “the perfect product is a non-competitive product”. It made me reflect since it is a counterintuitive expression. Let’s break this idea down.

A perfect product is developed in a wide time frame, it avoids mistakes and is made out of perfect information. Even though it sounds optimal, this outcome could hardly be so. A product developed under these rarely achievable circumstances will barely cross boundaries and innovate; therefore, it would cut short in competitiveness, especially in a world that changes by leaps and bounds, as it happens today.

Innovation and mistake are two faces of the same coin. Sometimes, mistakes signal that something complex and competitive is developing. Only wise ones know that it is a stage that allows taking advantage of the generated knowledge to use it as a springboard. Products made in an environment that embraces mistakes create the set to unfold innovation, allowing differentiation from the competition.

The key? Finding the right balance between launching a perfect product and launching the first approach to an optimal outcome. In the second scenario, the knowledge it generates will be the pivotal element that will allow continuous improvement and innovation. TeamRednodo likes to think of these outcomes as the initial stage to reaching excellence. Does your company’s culture embrace mistakes?

Web Development

A new website and a story of success

Today we want to share a story of success. This year, Ser Argentino, a digital media dedicated to communicating about Argentina and its culture, decided to update its website to expand its functionalities and improve its user experience. 

The amount of work required was enormous. It demanded a team of seven experts among designers, layout designers, and programmers. It took us six months to take the final product online, and we will continue working on improvements and extensions of functionalities. 

At this point, you must be asking, “Well… Where’s the success on that?” Fair question, listen up! 

Our designers developed a new image for the site, they created 25 wireframes, desktop and mobile, and re-designed its iconographies, they also designed and generated user manuals. Regarding CMS, we laid out around 25 custom-made pages. Regarding its technology, we replaced WordPress for Laravel. 

And here comes the best part: We developed five types of widgets according to different content types. Each of them has custom functions according to its characteristics. We also extended its language options from English, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese! All translations were done using Amazon AWS machine learning. 

There is more! Its homepage is now 100% manageable. We developed five types of layouts that the client could choose from. They can duplicate, move, and customize its look and content! And talking about content, also massive actions to modify and organize are allowed. 

We also developed functions that allow flowing communication between readers and authors. Each author has a profile where they can receive private messages from users (readers and other authors), and it works like a private chat room. Also, commenting on articles is easy now, and our clients can answer and administer them. The author gets a notification when receiving a new comment on his writing. This function facilitates the exchange of ideas. 

Last but not least, we enhanced its functions to measure the site’s results. By upgrading its tag system, we can now track the tags that are most used, how many clicks they get, and export that data for advertising campaigns. Also, articles can now be graded, giving every writer a total score that serves as an efficiency measure.  

We are still working on more updates and extensions. But for now, the speed of the site images, loading page, and organization of content have remarkably improved.  

If you find this interesting, stay tuned to know what actions we carry out regarding SEO and its marketplace. And if you want to know further about this work, contact us! 

Digital Marketing

Marketing automation: Converting the funnel into a cycle

Today we want to give a twist to the generic understanding of the marketing funnel. What would you say if we told you the funnel could become a cycle? That’s right, nowadays, different software allows us to reduce leaks in the marketing-to-sale process by maximizing the nurture of our leads. Thus, helping us to scale our marketing efforts. How so? By the automation of our marketing actions.

What is marketing automation?

It is a tactic that incorporates the usage of software and technology to optimize, automate, and measure marketing tasks. Which tasks? The repetitive ones, the complex ones, and the tailor-made actions for clients. For example, if I need to make a categorization of 100,000 users, according to their behavior, to determine whether they could be potential clients. I would use an automated qualified lead strategy. Let’s take another case. For nurture campaigns, where the content shown to users changes according to their type of interaction and their place at the marketing funnel, only an automated strategy could make this happen.

Automating allows marketers to maximize their time, become more efficient, and spend more time on essential assignments. At the same time, it enables companies to sharply estimate the ROI of a marketing campaign by improving their targeting strategy. In a summary, it allows companies that generate several leads to nurture them across multiple channels.

How does it work?

The nurturing process uses highly personalized, valuable, and timely saving content that allows converting prospects into leads. Then, it helps prioritize the right leads for us, marketers, to make them surf through the funnel to become clients. More precisely, it is about giving the prospect the information they need in the specific moment they want it, personalizing their journey as a customer. In a world where customers seek to interact with humanized companies, this is a helpful tool.

Specifically, marketing automation has two edges: The outbound and the inbound. In the first case, the company uses its intelligence to target communications based on the prospect’s known characteristics related to their responses or actions online. In the second case, after showing valuable content to candidates, the software can gather data related to the prospect’s activities and engagement. Both strategies allow marketers to present individuals with the right personalized content at an accurate time.

Last but not least, this strategy could and should be applied to different channels and uses: Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Metrics and Analytics, Lead Nurturing, Lead Generation, and Management Activities. So, how do these actions transform the funnel into a cycle? When prospects are not ready to buy at a specific time, they can still be returned to more nurturing marketing.

At this point, you must be asking yourself when is the right time to invest in it, if you have not already. Here is a clue: Suppose you are generating valuable content that brings on a constant flow of new and organic leads, and want to take them to the next level -nurturing them into clients-. In that case, you should think of developing an automated strategy. Do you have any questions? Do not hesitate to contact us!

Innovations

Customer networks: The new paradigm

During the past years, a new business model has been developing. How so? Darwincould explain it: by the need for adaptation to thrive.


With the increasing usage of digital technologies, social media, rising competition, and market globalization, people are more communicative with each other and companies. As a result, the approach of doing business had to change to match customers network behaviors, reshaping the understanding of successfully doing business.


Companies that adapted have stopped seeing their customers as isolated, passive, and a mass with similar interests.They now understand them as dynamic, interactive users that seek personalized solutions to fit their needs. Today’s customers continuously interact, respond, connect, and share content, thoughts, and reviews. This has given much more power and influence to individuals than ever before. By seeing this, companies find the key to persisting and gaining a strategic advantage over competitors.


To survive and thrive, from big corporations to small startups and entrepreneurship, they all need to understand customer networks’ behaviors and act accordingly. How do they behave in networks? What motivates them? What do they value? How can you add value to their lives,  and help them get what they need? All these questions should be shaping your business and marketing strategy. But how so? By making customers part of your strategy.


Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM), was defined by Greenberg, in his book Social CRM comes of age (2009) as: “A philosophy and a  business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment”. But still, we are talking about taking this to the next level: Working with customers just as working for them.


How did different firms take this into practice? The clearest example is crowdsourcing sites that allow customer networks to rate and invest in new products’ ideas. In the case of Netflix, they use the strategy of letting customers rate movies. As for Coca-Cola, permitting fans to bring their Facebook page to fame. Nike opted for launching a line of sneakers that can be designed by consumers. And this is how significantly different business lines have something in common: their approach to customers.


It is crucial to understand how your business could take advantage of this scenario, and for that, to understand the network’s behaviors. Here we systematize five customer network behaviors, according to the ones developed by David Rogers in his book The network is your customer: 5 strategies do thrive in a digital age (2011):
1. Seek to access digital data, content, and interactions as quick and easy as
possible;
2. Customers seek to engage with digital content that is relevant to their needs;
3. They seek to customize their experiences in networks by choosing and
modifying information, products, and services;
4. They want to connect by sharing their ideas and opinions;
5. Customers strive to collaborate on collective projects and goals through open platforms.


Because a network could adopt different combinations of these behaviors, a company’s strategy to approach them should be flexible in order to permit adaptation to changes. This will give rise to various business strategies rooted by the same variable: Individuals.


Our behavior in the online world shapes our actions in the offline world.
Understanding it is key to building strong relationships, creating value, and designing outcomes tailor-made for our clients. So, what is the lesson? The shift in the paradigm from mass media to customer networks impacts the way companies do business, just as Rogers explained it in 2011. If one wants to prosper in this new context, adaptation to a dynamic world’s  contingencies is the only way. Do you focus on understanding how your specific niche and potential clients behave to adapt and shape your business and marketing model?


Sources:
Rogers, D. (2011). The network is your customer: 5 strategies do thrive in a
digital age. Yale University Press, UK.
Rogers, D. L. (2016). The digital transformation playbook: Rethink your
business for the digital age. Columbia University Press.
Greenberg, P. (2009). Social CRM comes of age. Sponsored by Oracle