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Approach
Our team started by conducting an audit of our partner’s existing infrastructure. We then conducted a solutions engineering analysis to determine the best approach to building a referral system, data platform, and custom integrations that would meet our partner's needs. Next, we worked on designing the architecture of the referral system and its integration with the existing web platform. Finally, we overhauled the CMS platform to integrate the referral system.
Assessing the landscape
We did some research to gain a deeper understanding of their target audience. We then created user flows and wireframes to ensure that the website's navigation and content were intuitive and user-friendly and worked well with their existing copy.
Infrastructure Audit: We audited our partner’s existing infrastructure to understand how to best integrate our recommended solutions without replacing the existing infrastructure entirely.
Solutions Engineering: We developed a customized approach that helped us identify the most suitable technologies and platforms that could be used to build the required systems and infrastructure for our partner’.
User Experience: We focused on developing an exceptional user experience that would make it easy for users to navigate the website and access relevant information.
CMS Development: We developed a customized CMS that could be easily managed by our partner and enabled easy content publishing.
Accessibility Audit
We conducted an accessibility audit to ensure that the existing web platform met accessibility standards and was accessible to all users across devices, various browsers, and Email Service Providers (ESPs) regardless of ability.
Site Migration
Once the audit was completed with a solution in place, we moved to migrate our partner’s web platform to a self-hosted environment to ensure that it was more secure, scalable, and could support the new features and functionalities that we were planning to add while supporting scalability as their subscriber’s base grew.
This included:
Setting up a staging environment to ensure the current site was available while the migration was in progress until launch. It also allowed us to test for potential errors (missing links etc.) before launching the migrated web platform.
Setting up subdomain DNS.
Creating the new staging subdomains for various instances of their newsletter
Running the CMS in a self-hosted environment
Migrating all content and assets from current site to new self-hosted environment
Building a referral system prototype
Referral Strategy: Our team worked on developing a referral strategy that would incentivize subscribers to refer their friends to the newsletter and drive traffic to the web platform.
Referral Architecture Design: We designed the referral architecture that would enable users to easily refer others to the website and track their progress. Then built a prototype as part of a “test and iterate” approach to ensure the programs were airtight and couldn’t be gamed while simultaneously red-teaming the prototype as their user base grew exponentially.
Referral Prototype Development: We then integrated the referral prototype with the web platform and email service provider to ensure seamless communication between all systems.
We also implemented referral automations, business automation rules, and CMS + ESP sync to ensure seamless integration across all endpoints.
Referrals Automation: We automated the referral process to ensure that users received incentives for referring others to the website.
Business Automation Rules: We developed custom business automation rules that helped our partner manage the referral program more efficiently and ensured seamless integration across all endpoints, eliminating most of the manual process involved in managing the referral system.
CMS + ESP Sync: We synced the referral program with our partner's CMS and ESP (Email Service Provider), ensuring a two-way communication between the platforms. It enabled emails sent from the ESP to post directly to the web platform and news posted on the platform to be sent as a newsletter.
Building a 360 Analytics Dashboard
Our goal for this phase was to build a 360 dashboard that would allow our partner’s team to visualize all their data in one place.
Part 1: Designing tracking architecture and implementing a tracking system
Cross-Platform Analytics Implementation: After defining analytics goals and parameters, we designed and implemented a cross-platform analytics system that enabled them to track engagement across multiple channels, including the web platform, social media, and email marketing campaigns.
Conversion Tracking Implementation: We also implemented a conversion tracking system to enable them to monitor the performance of the referral system and conversion rates across all the various inbound and outbound end-points.
Part 2: Building an analytics dashboard
We built a comprehensive 360 analytics dashboard that enables them to monitor the infrastructure's performance and track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to user engagement, conversion rates, and overall website performance. The data dashboard was designed to provide real-time data on inbound traffic and engagement.
QA Engineering
Our team conducted rigorous testing to ensure that the entire infrastructure met all requirements and were free of bugs and errors. We conducted thorough testing to ensure all systems and functionalities worked as expected.
Deployment
The referral system and data infrastructure we built were deployed on a secure and scalable production environment, and our team provided support to ensure a smooth transition.
Overview
Our partner was looking to build a Newsletter Referral Engine that works with their website and sends all data to an analytics dashboard. They wanted a robust and effective referral system that would help them grow their subscriber base and increase engagement with their content
Goals
The project's primary objective was to build a referral system infrastructure that would enable our partner to grow their subscriber base and increase engagement with their content. The infrastructure would allow subscribers to refer friends to the newsletter, receive incentives, and integrate with their website and email service provider to ensure seamless communication between all systems.
Additionally, a secondary goal of the project was to improve the user experience and accessibility of the website and build a comprehensive 360 analytics dashboard to track the performance of the referral system, marketing campaigns, and website.
Challenges
The primary challenge of the project was to build a referral system and data infrastructure that was easy to use, effective, and integrated seamlessly with our partner’s web platform and email service provider. Additionally, we needed to ensure that the website was accessible to all users and compliant with accessibility standards.
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Outcomes
The referral system our team developed was effective in helping our partner grow their subscriber base and increase engagement with their content.
The data platform we built provided valuable insights into captured data, enabling the partner to make data-driven decisions to improve their referral system and website and understand which growth channels to leverage and double down on and which channels to stop pursuing.
Additionally, the web platform overhaul and automation we implemented enabled our partner to decrease the time spent manually managing an entire infrastructure and decrease overall resource costs while increasing their newsletter growth.
Together, we were able to achieve the following outcomes:
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Increased visibility into their referral program's performance
Improved ability to measure and track customer referrals
Increased engagement with their customers through a streamlined referral process
Improved data accuracy and reliability, leading to better business decision-making
Improved website user experience and accessibility
Solution provided
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