"Cementing" the Customer With Content

Software Magazine, Feb, 2001 by Julie Lavallee

How can companies retain, upsell, and acquire new customers via the Web? The opportunity resides in the content, maintains Digital Cement. Based in Westborough, Mass., the online marketing infrastructure vendor aims to strengthen the bond between Fortune 1000 marketers and small business customers by linking useful information and products to relevant customers. A report by Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass., indicates that 75% of customers return to their favorite sites because of high-quality content. Only 14% indicated purchasing ability as a reason for returning.

While corporate sites focus on product pricing and specifications, Digital Cement can help them incorporate important content. In 60 days, Digital Cement provides personal folders for frequent visitors, product demonstrations, surveys, and notifications of new products to prospective and current customers. Beginning with a strategic planning session, Digital Cement captures the business needs. The next step is customization of the site using one of the 40 content and marketing modules.

The FedEx Small Business Center used Digital Cement services to provide more targeted marketing to its customers. FedEx.com had been searching more than a year for a concrete solution to improve the customer experience. In December, Digital Cement provided additional content to the site, including a Regional Resource section that allows a customer to hotlink to various state and governmental agencies that govern the business rules in that particular state.

"It's an invaluable one-stop resource," says Lori O'Brien, program manger for Alliance Marketing at FedEx, Memphis, Tenn. "Digital Cement provides backend reporting on where our customers visit on our, site, giving us the ability to better market to those customers. For instance, if we know where the customer visits then we can provide them information on shipping internationally, shipping online, or building a Web site."

Digital Cement also enables FedEx to brand the site "Our customers don't know they have left the FedEx.com site," says O'Brien.