Boost your customer acquisition by effectively reaching the right audience and converting them into subscribers with compelling messages.
Focus Area | Ideal For | Difficulty | Key Success Metrics |
Customer Acquisition |
| Intermediate |
|
Skills Required
Prior to beginning, ensure you can:
Create and modify:
Profile properties
Listeners
Segments
Connections
Dialogues
The Simulator
Identify and involve your internal marketing teams/decision makers
Track KPIs and metrics using Insights and external systems
Before you begin: complete the 8-box
Answer all of the questions in the 8-box to provide clarity and direction for your use case. This ensures that all stakeholders/decision makers are aligned and enables seamless creation of each CDP object. To complete the 8-box:
Define your objectives: Determine which newsletter subscriber list(s) you want to grow first. Tip: Start with 1-2 lists and expand as you gain experience.
Identify your target audience: Define what interests will determine the audience.
For example: Customers who do not have an email address in their profile, AND are interested in technology content.
Review existing customer data:
Gather ESP data, including email addresses and newsletter subscription information.
Plan how to capture visitor interests (e.g., keywords, NLP metadata).
Determine methods for recognizing readers (e.g., logins, registrations, form input, query string parameters).
Identify customer data gaps and how BlueConic Listeners can fill them (e.g., BlueConic Interest Ranker 2.0).
Define your segment definitions (e.g., 'Unknown' profiles + interests include 'Technology').
Identify stakeholders and key hands-on resources and outline your marketing program scope: Identify which teams are needed to integrate with your ESP, set up Listeners and Segments, create creative content, configure Dialogues, and create Dashboards.
Consider activation options for presenting newsletters to visitors, such as Lightbox (high conversion rates) or Notification Bar (top/bottom/inline). Plan for A/B testing to optimize conversion rates.
Establish your measurement approach: Define baseline KPIs (e.g., current # of subscribers, monthly growth rate, % converting to paid subscribers) and determine the ROI (e.g., dollar value of an email address).
The example in this article details the configuration process using Taylor Times, a publisher aiming to increase subscribers to its technology newsletter by targeting interested, unidentified visitors.
Create Profile Properties
You need three mandatory profile properties for this use case. You may already have a profile property that suits your needs (for example, an existing email address property). You can use existing properties so long as the settings are configured as needed/outlined below. Otherwise, create the following profile properties to store data.
Email Address
Name: Enter a name that follows your company's naming conventions. For example: Email Address_ESP campaign
ID: Enter a custom ID if needed, or use the generated ID
Type: Email
Segmentation: Available for segmentation
Merge strategy: Keep both
Unique Identifier: Check for "is"
Interests
Name: Enter a name that follows your company's naming conventions. For example: Interests_ESP Campaign
ID: Enter a custom ID if needed, or use the generated ID
Type: Text
Segmentation: Available for segmentation
Merge strategy: Keep both
Unique Identifier: Do not check for "is"
Is Subscriber
Name: Enter a name that follows your company's naming conventions. For example: ESP_Technology Subscriber
ID: Enter a custom ID if needed, or use the generated ID
Type: Text
Segmentation: Available for segmentation
Merge strategy: Value of current profile
Unique Identifier: Do not check for "is"
Create Profile Merging Rule
Create a profile merge rule to avoid duplicate profiles.
Select Settings > Profile merging.
Click Add rule > Email address to add a rule to merge two profiles if their email address contains the same value.
Set the IP check to Regular IP check.
Gather Data with BlueConic Listeners
BlueConic collects data based on visitors’ site actions and interests. For this use case, you'll use Listeners to collect key audience information:
Configure an Interest Ranker 2.0 Listener
Follow the below steps to configure the listener. For extra guidance, refer to the Interest Ranker 2.0 documentation.
Select Listeners > Add Listener > Interest Ranker 2.0.
Enter a name (e.g., [Technology] – INTEREST RANKER.)
Specify channels (e.g., taylor-times.com).
Use the ‘Front-end detector’ with an article URL to identify how interests are collected (e.g., Meta tags method from Keywords meta tag).
Set points assigned per page load for detected interests (e.g., 2 points).
Store the top 20 interests in your created profile property (e.g., Interests_ESP Campaign) with a decay rate (e.g., 60 days).
Add listener to any required Objectives.
Save settings and turn the listener On.
Confirm that it works by entering your site in "See collected interests" mode to confirm data collection.
Configure a Visual Form Listener
Follow the below steps to configure the listener. For extra guidance, refer to the Visual Form Listener documentation.
Select Listeners > Create Listener > Visual Form Listener.
Name the listener (e.g., LEAD GEN – FORM LISTENER.)
Specify where the listener runs (site and page, e.g., www.taylor-times.com/account-login/#).
Click + Add form and use the Visual Picker to select the form (e.g., Account Login).
Map the form field to the profile property 'Email address' that you created/confirmed earlier.
Add listener to any required Objectives.
Save settings and turn the listener On.
Create Audience Segments
After configuring listeners, create segments to precisely target your audience.
Create a segment for unknown visitors interested in technology content:
Select Segments > Create a new segment.
Name it: e.g., [Technology] – LEAD GEN – Technology.
Select the Interests_ESP Campaign profile property and choose ‘technology’ and /or other technology-related interests from collected interests.
Add an AND parameter for the profile property ‘email address’ and set to: Profile property ‘is empty’
Create a segment for technology newsletter subscribers.
Select Segments > Create a new segment.
Name it: e.g., [Technology] – Technology Newsletter subscribers
Select the Profile Property ESP_Technology Subscriber
Add the Segments to any required Objectives.
Determine the ‘Carrot’
In the example in this article, we’ve been using a content-specific (technology) newsletter as the incentive to provide an email address. That is one way to incentivize subscription, but others are also effective:
New product information- if you have new products that drop regularly, new product emails can engage shoppers.
Exclusive content
Ebooks, whitepapers, exclusive blog post,
Downloadable checklists, guides, how-to PDFs
Access to Events:
Webinars
Product demonstrations
Early access to sales
Discount codes
Something like “free shipping when you subscribe”
Or 15% off your next purchase
Create the Dialogue
Add a Lightbox Dialogue to your site to prompt visitors to subscribe and capture their information. (Instructions are for using an example dialogue. If using your HTML, in step 8, edit the dialogue to add your HTML.
Select Dialogues > Add dialogue > Lightbox dialogue.
Name the dialogue: e.g., [Technology] - LEAD GEN - Technology Subscribe Now.
Who tab: select the segment [Technology] – LEAD GEN – Technology
When tab: leave default settings or adjust views per visitor as needed.
Where tab: add your sample site (e.g., Taylor Times) and specify pages to show the dialogue.
What tab: on the right side menu, click Load examples and select the ‘Collect email address’ example dialogue.
Edit the text to clearly state the offer (e.g., ‘Subscribe to our Technology newsletter’).
Double-click the email address field to edit the BlueConic form and ensure the email address is written to your 'Email address' profile property.
Double-click the Submit (Send) Button.
On the Field Settings tab, change the text of the submit button to a call to action (e.g. "Get the Newsletter!" )
On the Submit Tab, add an additional action on the Submit Button to track newsletter sign ups. Click + Add Action> Set/ Add value into profile property. Define value to "Yes" and select the Technology Newsletter Subscriber Profile Property.
Optimization settings: For this use case, set the control group to 0% if you want to target all visitors within the segment.
Add Dialogue to any required Objectives.
Turn the dialogue On and Save your settings.
Configure a Connection to Your Email Service Provider
Once users sign up, push these new subscribers to your ESP.
Select Connections > Add connection and choose your ESP (e.g., Sailthru Connection).
Name your connection: e.g., [Technology] - LEAD GEN.
Set up and run: authenticate your connection by entering API keys and secrets as required by your ESP.
Export goal:
Select the segment of profiles that have converted on your dialogue (e.g., [Technology] – Technology Newsletter subscribers).
Define a linking identifier to match email addresses between BlueConic and your ESP (e.g., map BlueConic's 'Email address' identifier to your ESP's email field).
Map additional fields if needed (e.g., interests collected).
Activate the checkbox in Step 4 to create new profiles in the ESP.
Check the box next to the export goal. Save.
Click Run now to initiate the connection and verify successful record creation in your ESP.
Testing and Validation
Thoroughly test all configurations to ensure accuracy and expected behavior.
Test your segments and dialogue in the Simulator:
Select Simulator.
Click Show all segments and pin the segments you created (e.g. [Technology] – LEAD GEN – Technology and [Technology] – Technology Newsletter subscribers).
To test the dialogue, delete your profile using the "Clean up" button in the Simulator.
Browse articles in the technology category to simulate user behavior and confirm that the dialogue appears.
Submit your email address in the dialogue and verify it's stored in your simulator profile.
Test your subscribed segment (e.g., [Technology] – Technology Newsletter subscribers) based on profiles that have converted on your new dialogue (using 'Variants converted directly' profile property) to track successful sign-ups.
Measure Your Success
Success for this experience hinges on generating leads and acquiring new subscribers. You can start by leveraging built-in metrics and expand your measurement approach.
Create an Insights Dashboard to Measure Success
Report on use case success with Dashboard Insights of your campaign by tracking key performance indicators.
Select Insights> Add dashboard
Name the dashboard: e.g., [Technology] LEAD GEN Campaign.
Click Add insight and choose the Dialogues Table Insight.
Use the Text filter (e.g., "technology") to display relevant dialogues.
The Insight table will show views, clicks, and conversions for your dialogue.
Level-up: Track engagement and ROI with external tools and other Insights:
Number of new email subscribers added per month (use Segment Size Over Time Insight).
Engagement of newsletter subscribers: Measure if they have higher email open and CTR, higher site visits, page views, and time on site.
Lowered CPA for defined target audiences.
Use insights and dashboards to monitor your customer recognition ratio (known vs. unknown customers) and work to gather more identifiers.