Get Personal: Q&A with Hippo CMO, Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer

We all know that no two customers are alike. Personalizing the experience is crucial to keeping your customers, and having the right data will help you understand them. The key is having inside knowledge about the personal needs of different audiences. This will ultimately help you to deliver an incredible brand experience across all your channels.

Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer, CMO and co-founder of Hippo, says: “Content is the backbone of online business. But producing content that really serves business goals is a tough challenge for most organizations. That’s where Hippo comes in. Hippo provides a content performance platform that makes your content data-driven and omni-channel ready, enabling truly engaging interactions with your audiences.”

We talked with Tjeerd about the role of content in creating world-class brand experiences, and the importance of personalization and behavioral targeting.

Edenspiekermann: What is–or should be–the role of content in creating better business?

Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer: Content is about having the power to start a conversation and keep it relevant across every consumer experience–a meaningful conversation that leads to a better understanding, alignment and appreciation of what clients need and what organizations offer. It’s through interaction that we learn about each other and develop relationships. Without content, there’s not much to talk about.

And you need to go a step further than just managing your content. Today, you need to make it perform. Hippo helps you use content marketing to guide visitors through the customer journey. We also help you identify content gaps and continuously refine your content marketing strategy.

ESPI: So personalization and behavioral targeting help enhance the quality and effectiveness of the conversation?

TB: Indeed. As in any real-life conversation, you can ask better questions and give better answers if you get to know someone. Getting to know someone in the online world is about observing behavior and creating a profile based on actions. Behavioral targeting is essentially about creating a better conversation by delivering tailored content based on what we have learned from someone. The result is that we can build more relevant, lasting customer engagement that increases conversion rates and return visits.

ESPI: After someone has booked an airline ticket, they tend to see offers from airlines for days afterwards–offers which are no longer relevant to them. This happens a lot. Is this really a sign of a well-performing organization? Do you have any good examples?

TB: I agree that creating relevant conversations is a challenge for many companies, and everyone is still learning. However, with Hippo CMS we provide actionable insights to make this really work. For instance, Weleda, a company that produces both beauty products and naturopathic medicines, uses data to ascertain what phase of life a customer is in. For instance, when a woman is expecting a baby, her customer journey starts with an email and then moves to the website, which is then designed to meet her needs.

Another good example is a US-based clothing company. This company is moving away from the old model of ecommerce sites, the ones set up like a bunch of catalogue pages. Instead, the company is introducing a collection of potential buying journeys through true digital experiences. These experiences are tailored to many different customer personas.

But personalization is not only relevant for industries that focus on conversion. Take the Dutch National Police, for example. They use geo-location to deliver more relevant content. When you walk down the street and visit www.politie.nl on your mobile, you’ll immediately see the nearest police station, the police officer responsible for the area, and information about what’s happening in the neighborhood (crimes committed, people to look out for, etc.)

ESPI: And what does Hippo do or provide to make this happen?

TB: Hippo provides real-time insights into what visitors are doing on your website. We use this data to create personas and configure components. Our “experiments” functionality provides insights into which configurations work best for a certain persona. Our “trends” functionality offers you immediate, actionable insights into which new personas you can create and how you can adjust your content marketing strategy to target your defined personas.

ESPI: We’ve been using personas for a long time now to create meaningful brand experiences. Can we stop doing this and start working with real customer profiles?

TB: I hope so. But to be honest, for many organizations the first step in creating personas and personalizing content is quite difficult. Especially in B2B, which often has many different personas to define. So to move from having no personas to having real data-driven personas will be quite a big leap. But I do think that Hippo enables a much more relevant use of personas.

Design agencies such as yours often create and use personas during the initial design and setup of a digital product, such as a website. But after you’ve left the persona phase, they often become nothing more than wall posters and are no longer used to support decision-making. Hippo actually forces you to continuously focus on user profiles and supply them with relevant content. And we provide real-time feedback about how effective you are.

ESPI: So Hippo actually brings personas to life? Could this bridge the gap between the profiles we use to create concepts, and the profiles that online marketers and content specialists work with every day?

TB: Yes, I think that could very well be the situation. In fact, we think everybody involved in creating the customer experience should be working together closely, using the same insights and target audiences. Hippo should be the platform to provide those insights and allow you to remodel the experience accordingly. That’s why we also offer various training tools to help our partners and customers get the most out of Hippo CMS.

ESPI: What new developments do you envision in the area of behavioral targeting and personalization for 2016?

TB: At Hippo, we see many new developments in the area of behavioral targeting and personalization. That has also led to some improvements in our CMS. For instance, because people work across multiple channels these days, it’s now possible to track the same visitor in each channel of their customer journey.

You can no longer separate your product from your content. You need a blend of product and content targeting that works together seamlessly. The customer journey is all about integration. We collaborate with other software vendors like ecommerce, marketing automation, CRM, ERP and ECM. There is valuable customer data in all these systems. New developments in this area include separated data sources and layers, which can enrich customer data and improve personalization.

ESPI: What’s your advice to brands or business leaders?

TB: Customers have evolved. Their expectations and choices have multiplied in recent years. The customer experience has to accommodate them through personalization and relevance. Remember that since all commerce is becoming digital, the only way to differentiate yourself as a brand is the experience you deliver.

So my advice, first of all, would be to look at the full customer journey. And don’t focus only on new business. Use behavioral targeting and personalization to lower your churn and improve customer satisfaction. Iterate, measure and improve until you’ve delivered a convincing customer experience.

About Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer

Under Tjeerd’s leadership, Hippo has surged ahead, riding the wave of content marketing, personalization and omni-channel publishing. The content management innovator has grown from a three-person operation to a leading CMS provider, with offices in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Boston.