The use case

ClassTag is an all-in-one parent-teacher communication solution used in over 20,000 classrooms in the US. It transforms the way teachers connect with parents, saving time and reducing organizational overhead. While teachers are the ones who drive the adaptation of the app, getting parents and school leaders on board is equally important. However, creating a website that appeals to the different target audiences is hard and ClassTag’s marketing team felt a one-site-fits-all approach was hurting conversions. With the wish to generate more signups in mind, the team reached out to Unless.

To achieve their goal, Unless helped ClassTag segment their visitors into three audiences - teachers, parents, and school leaders. Next, they personalized the website experience across the entire conversion funnel. From first touchpoint to sign up, the generic content was dynamically replaced with audience-specific messaging. As a result, ClassTag managed to increase engagement for each audience, lower bounce rate, and lift conversion.

Its paid campaigns alone generated 33% more signups for teachers with each teacher inviting their classroom’s parents onto the platform. These results could even be topped by the next experiment which involved all traffic channels and generated a 150% uplift in conversion.

“We were happy with the 33% conversion increase from our first personalization. Who would have thought that the next one would bring a 150% uplift!? Amazing!” - Niccolo, Growth Consultant at ClassTag

The challenges

ClassTag strongly focuses its marketing efforts on teachers - the ones who initiate the adaption of the app. However, parents are also using the website making it a challenge to pitch the app in a way that is appealing to both audiences. To complicate matters, ClassTag also caters to a third audience, school leaders. This audience makes up a significantly smaller portion of the traffic but is of high value. One school principal can get multiple classrooms on board and promote the app to other schools in the district. .

ClassTag knew that quickly identifying a visitor as a member of one of its three core audiences was key to maximizing its conversions but more importantly, it needed to find a way to tailor its messaging to each visitor. In Unless it found the perfect partner.

Without involving any developers, the marketing team at ClassTag managed to set up its personalization project in Unless in a few hours. Using the audience builder they could assign visitors to audiences and the personalization engine allowed them to quickly tailor the website experience to each group. The first results could be measured within a day and the first experiment reached significance within two weeks.

The execution

1. Full funnel personalization = higher ROI

For ClassTag, paid channels, such as Facebook ads, are an important traffic driver. Thanks to the granular targeting options of these channels they have great control over who will see their ads and land on their website. Through targeted landing pages they are able to highlight relevant features and pitch the app in a way that is attractive to the ads’ target audience. However, once the visitor would leave the landing page, the communication would become more generic, resulting in high drop-off rates on follow-up pages, such as the sign up.

ClassTag put a lot of effort into creating targeted ad campaigns but struggled to keep visitors engaged throughout the conversion funnel. This was the perfect anchor point for a personalization experiment. The goal was to create a consistent experience across touchpoints - from ad, to landing page, to sign up.

This approach was especially successful for campaigns targeted at teachers. Here the landing pages were already fully optimized, however, many would churn before finishing the signup process. By reassuring visitors that they’ve made the right choice and by personalizing the entire funnel, conversion rate could be increased by 33,3%. On top of that, each teacher was incentivized to attract parents and school leaders onto the platform, resulting in a further growth of the app’s market share. Overall, this led to a better ROI for paid campaigns and more efficient spending.

For each audience, ClassTag changed its messaging.

2. Self-segmentation = putting the visitor in charge

While ClassTag’s marketing team has great control over the traffic they drive through paid campaigns, other channels are a different story. Especially organic search and direct traffic would attract a wild mix of visitors for whom it was hard to establish audience membership despite analyzing their behavior. The lack of personalization would cause many visitors to bounce and never come back. So, to improve conversion across channels, ClassTag decided to leverage the power of self-segmentation.

For this, they designed a small widget that floats on top of the website and asks the visitor to self-identify as a teacher, parent, or school leader.

ClassTag homepage with a floating Unless widget on top.

It was a subtle and elegant way to find out how to best serve each visitor and once the person would make a choice, the website dynamically matched it with personalized messaging. On the signup page, that resulted in subtle adjustments to the wording while the homepage would show a tailored product pitch with different content, images, and Call-To-Actions.

Unpersonalized (left) vs. personalized (right).

An A/B test showed that the widget was an overwhelming success. While the control group converted at 9,9%, the widget reached a conversion rate of 24,66% -an uplift of more than 150%. A further drill down revealed how each audience responded to the personalizations allowing to create the best experience for each segment.

3. Personalized Retargeting = closing the loop

After the personalizations triggered by self-segmentation proved to be a success, the team sat down again to brainstorm how else they could use the collected data. After all, not every visitor who could be identified as a parent, teacher, or school leader would sign up immediately. So, they decided to run a remarketing campaign. However, a generic, one-size-fits-all approach would have been wasteful and inefficient, so ClassTag was happy to learn that Unless can power personalizations across multiple channels, like ads or email, not just the website.

In case of ClassTag, the data was used to create personalized remarketing campaigns on Facebook. Especially for the target audience school leaders, this was a breakthrough. Previously, it wasn’t even possible to target this niche separately from teachers, now they could be engaged through hyper-personalized campaigns.

Results

With personalization, ClassTag managed to bring its conversion optimization efforts to the next level. Instead of just creating relevant landing pages it is now able to personalize the entire user journey which especially benefits paid traffic. By asking visitors to self-identify it managed to improve the website experience of anonymous visitors resulting in fewer bounces, more conversions, and a hyper-personalized retargeting campaign.

• 33% increase in conversion for paid campaigns
• 150% uplift in signups for visitors who interacted with the widget
• personalized remarketing campaigns

Inspired by this initial success, ClassTag continues to use Unless to learn about its visitors, improve the outcomes of marketing initiatives, and get more value out of its marketing team’s hard work.

Key Takeaways

• When in doubt, don’t shy away from asking your visitors what they need or who they are and use this information for personalization. After all, it’s a win-win; when you know your visitor and can speak their language, they’re more likely to find relevant information quickly and you’re more likely to capture their attention resulting in a greater chance at converting them into a customer.

• Continuously test and optimize your campaigns. Many marketers fixate on optimizing their landing pages and forget to pay attention to the rest of the funnel. With funnel personalization, you can optimize every step of the conversion process, all the way to your final goal. As acquisition costs continue to rise, looking beyond the landing page is essential for driving ROI for paid channels.

• Personalize across channels. The audiences you build inside Unless can power personalizations across multiple channels, including website, email, remarketing, and ad campaigns.

About Unless

Unless helps companies increase revenue by personalizing each visitor interaction. The visual editor doesn't require any coding knowledge and allows you to set up personalizations in minutes. The audience builder uses machine learning to create actionable audience segments and in-depth visitor profiles. This enables marketers to identify visitors in real-time and to show on-site personalizations, tailored messages, and targeted campaigns to each of them.

Do you work at an agency?

This case study was created in collaboration with yhello.agency. If your agency would like to participate in our partner program, please reach out via sales@unless.com. Official partners receive special training, learning material, and a recurring referral bonus for every managed account.