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Use content metering to improve conversions

BlueConic supports your CDP use cases with rich first-party data capabilities. Content metering strategies can be an effective way to convert visitors or readers to subscribers. Follow the procedures outlined below to implement a content metering solution with BlueConic.

Value-Based Outcomes

All BlueConic use cases are associated with one or more Value-Based Outcomes, which are defined areas of focus that help you measure the value of a CDP to your overall business. This use case can be closely related to the Value-Based Outcomes of Smarter Customer Engagement and Increased Agility and Flexibility.

CDP Use Case: Using content metering to improve conversion rates

Before you begin: Connect to Google Analytics 4

While you can measure the results of your metering use case within BlueConic, you may wish to do additional analysis outside of BlueConic with a tool such as Google Analytics 4. In order to do this, you will need to establish a BlueConic Connection to Google Analytics 4.

Determine business rules for content metering

Key to a metering use case are the business rules you will use to determine who will receive messaging and under what conditions they will receive it. While the answers to the questions below may seem relatively simple, you may have to consult with multiple business groups within your organization.

Audience
- Who should receive subscription-related messaging?
- What are the characteristics of this audience?
Experience
- How many articles will readers be allowed to view?
- How long does someone have to consume their allotted articles? (calendar month or rolling window)
- Should any pages be excluded from “free” views?
- At some point in the future, you may wish to grant readers additional free articles per month if they perform a desired action. What ‘action’ is this (e.g. sign up for a newsletter)?
Messaging
- At which points in the metering experience should readers receive messages? (e.g. article view 3, article view 6, etc.)
- What should the messaging copy and design be?

Define your audiences for the content meter

While vetting your business rules, you determined the desired audience for your content meter. Create (or, if already created, identify) the associated segment or segments you want to target.

Collect data

BlueConic offers the Content Meter Listener to assist you with reflecting your business rules for metering in the product.

Add the BlueConic Content Meter Listener

The Content Meter Listener is not available by default. Send an email to support@blueconic.com to request that the Content Meter Listener be added to your tenant.

Once BlueConic Support has fulfilled your request, log in to BlueConic and do the following:

Choose Listeners in the navigation bar.
Select the Add Listener button.
Using the search box provided, search for “content meter.”
Select Content Meter Listener.
Next, you will need to configure your Content Meter Listener using your business rules as a foundation.

Configure the Content Meter listener

Create five profile properties

You will need to create a profile property for each of the following metrics, to store the values that are accumulated by the listener:

"Expire At (views)" – Number of views when the meter will expire
"Nr of views" – Current number of views
"Nr of views left" – Number of views left
"Nr of free views" – Number of free views
"Nr of free views left" – Number of free views left

The “Profile Properties” section of the Content Metering Listening article provides instructions on how to assign the profile properties you create.

Activate data

Once turned on, the BlueConic Content Meter Listener will start counting the page views of readers or visitors included in the target segment. Your next step is to create a Dialogue to target your segment at specific page view counts (e.g. “You have 3 articles left”). You will need to create one Dialogue for each message you would like to display during the metering experience.

Previously when vetting your business rules, you determined both the copy and cadence of messaging individuals see as they hit the ‘speed bumps’ of your paywall. The speed bumps are considered “events” in BlueConic and will be available on the When tab as follows:

How do I set up content metering and paywalls with the BlueConic customer data platform (CDP)

In order to show a dialogue at a specific meter view, you will want to select the correct event on the When tab of each dialogue you create.

Track conversions

Use the Why Tab of your metering dialogues to define the conversion moment, which mostly likely will be when the individual becomes a subscriber.

Measure your success

In order to measure the success of your cart abandonment campaign, you will want to consider the following metrics:

Increase in your marketing conversion rates
Increase in your customer recognition ratios
Increase in your average order value

These are metrics you may be already measuring in other systems. Consult with your designated BlueConic CSM to determine how best to share BlueConic data with these systems.

Use the Dialogue Performance report

To show the views, clicks, and click through rate, use a Dialogue Performance report.

Choose More - > Insights from the BlueConic navigation bar.
Select Add dashboard.
Enter the name Dialogue Performance for your Dashboard. Click Save.
Select Add insight from the upper right corner.
Using the Search box, search for the Dialogues Table insight.
When found, select the Dialogues Table insight.
Click Close.
Next, select Configure this insight.
Use the Dialogues filtering options, such as Status and Channel, to limit the number of Dialogues that appear in your report.
Next, select the Table columns option, and select the metrics you’d like to view. Select the options for Views, Clicks, and Clicks/views ratio.
Click OK.

Looking ahead

Now that you have started to implement content metering, consider the following enhancements:

Consider collecting email addresses in exchange for granting additional “free views.”
Target your paywall to people who visit frequently but are not subscribers.