Responsive design has become table stakes for digital presentment. It makes your customer communications and web pages look good on any device, automatically resizing and adjusting for screen size and resolution.
But the look alone isn’t enough. You must pair it with adaptive content, which applies a similar customer-centric, device-agnostic, personalized approach to what you are saying. So an email notification could have several hundred words while a text could have a dozen with a link.
This isn’t just about cutting. You still need to provide that critical content; you just need to design and execute the communication based on the customer’s preferred communication channel/device.
As a first major step, moving to adaptive content probably means you’ll need to smarten and shorten that old copy to accommodate all formats and channels. It also means PDF files may not be optimal– not all smartphones have a default PDF viewer and they’re a hassle to download and manage on a phone.
Beyond adjusting to any device, adaptive content aims ultimately to personalize digital communications to the person accessing it. Companies might segment messaging and other copy based on age, gender, geographic location, time of day or stage in the buying cycle.
Tips for improving customer communication success rates
For the here and now, the focus is on creating content once and publishing everywhere, known as COPE, the now-famous modus operandi for NPR’s content strategy and execution. As part of the adaptive content development process:
- Know your audience and how they will use the content.
- Keep wording simple and concise.
- Determine if the content is necessary: What purpose does it really serve?
- Consider the frames and viewports of different devices and how content will render.
Relying on customer communications management technology, responsive design and adaptive flows from an omni-channel communications approach that ensures the customer experience and messaging are consistent across all channels. Customers should be able to switch between channels with seamless delivery of dynamic content.
Think of the journey your customer takes in doing business with you. Giving them the information they need, when and how they need it, is bound to build loyalty as well as sales and profits.
About the Author
Bryan joined Nordis Technologies in 2016 to manage and grow the company’s already-large vacation ownership client base. He also is responsible for business development and market expansion in the healthcare and financial services markets. Before joining Nordis, Bryan spent more than 21 years with Interval International, a leading global provider of vacation ownership services. Bryan graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor of science in political science.
