How Interactive Content Increases Customer Lifetime Value

More than half of marketers are already using interactive content, have you gotten on board yet?

Every marketer ultimately wants to engage their audience in a meaningful, insightful way that is personalized to them. Unfortunately, run-of-the-mill content marketing makes this extremely difficult and time-consuming. Imagine creating 100 different versions of an email to send to each of your silos: it’s a waste of time and money (not to mention there’s no guarantee anyone will open it)! Now, instead of sending out 100 different emails, imagine you could send out 1 email with a link to a branded dynamic quiz, personalized survey, or entertaining game that would not only capture attention, but increase initial dwell time and click-through rate. And then imagine that the delight of that interactive experience keeps that customer coming back to you, and possibly they refer a few friends along the way….after all, 88% of marketers say interactive content is effective at differentiating their brand.  All of a sudden, your customers are beginning the process of becoming brand evangelists, and all because of a simple touchpoint. This is the power of interactive content.

CLV (or customer lifetime value) is the measure of how much a customer is worth over their lifecycle with a company. This is an important metric for marketers to be measuring because it shifts focus from short-term gains to long-term revenue generation. Playing the long game is really what content marketing is all about, after all. To begin with, interactive content increases conversions 70% of the time, compared to only 36% of the time with static content. This means that 7 of every 10 leads exposed to interactive content from your brand can convert to customers! Over the lifetime of a customer, continued exposure to interactive content strengthens the bond between you and your customer, educating and informing them while simultaneously intriguing and entertaining them. Customer education increases CLV, and the more touch-points your customer has with your brand, the more they learn and retain the information you want them to have about you.

Easily the best part about interactive content, however, is that your customers actually want it! 84 % of B2B buyers prefer more interactive and visual content accessible on demand. No one likes to be bored, and with the fatiguing amount of static content created every day, we are inundated with lackluster blog posts, underwhelming white papers, and truly yawn-inducing ebooks. Interactive content cuts through the noise and creates excitement, utilizing the principles of psychology to capture attention.

How do we know it works? Well, for transparency’s sake we decided to put it to the test in a recent retargeting ad campaign. We tested static images against looping GIFs that simulated our interactive experiences, and not only did the interactive ads perform much better than the static ads, but it actually bumped up our email campaign open rates for the retargeted group by over 4%! Our results with interactive retargeting ads have convinced us that it’s worth the extra brainstorming effort.

Have you used interactive content in your campaigns yet? Let us know in the comments!