HMV.com

UNDERSTANDING THE CUSTOMER TRUTH

BESPOKE CUSTOMER JOURNEYS FOR EACH PERSONA

EXAMPLE EMAILS FROM THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

DISCOVERING THE COMMERCE CATALYST

Creating the customer communication strategy and creative execution for hmv.com

The Challenges

I was tasked with leading the creative strategy and develop the creative look and feel having got a clear understanding of the customers and what drives their needs & goals. Ensuring the customers received communications that were relevant, timely and improved the perception of the brand were critical to success.

I identified three influences that I felt would ultimately drive sales for the client. These were called 'Truths' and each one was born from key parts of the business. The 'Customer Truth' stood for the customers' needs, characteristics and point
of view. The 'Brand Truth' represented the brand positioning and brand promise. And the 'Commerce Truth' represented
the influences within the broader commerce space.

Having agreed the Brand and Commerce Truths I set about understanding more about the customers and target audience. I conducted surveys and workshops with a range of people, from casual music listeners to avid and passionate music fans. The results from this work helped me shape the Customer Truth.

Once I had conducted our research and synthesised the results I created two personas. The first was 'The Superfan' who knows what music she likes and embraces everything about that musical scene, including gigs, exclusive tickets and merchandise. The second persona was 'The Discoverer' who has a more relaxed approach to their music collection and enjoys discovering new music across various genres. These personas allowed me to create customer truths for each one.

Once the needs for each customer were established we could set about creating the optimum customer journey for
each of them. This meant responding to their online behaviour with personalised content that speaks to where they are
in the lifecycle. All comms were aimed at answering one of the three pre-established Truths.

Below are examples of the emails created based upon our understanding of each persona and their customer journeys. The Post Purchase email for 'The Discoverer' contained album recommendations for various other artists similar to the artist they had just purchased as well as a Staff Picks section for further ideas. This contrasted with 'The Superfan' who received much more focused suggestions including the back catalog of the artist they purchased as well as gig dates and merchandise. The result was that each persona received their own unique experience.

The Approach

I approached the project by defining the key elements influencing success and using those to drive the decisions we made throughout the project. Once I had this I needed to understand the customer and use personas in order to bring them to life and be our north star for the creative work and strategy.