Slim.Fast Digital Magazine

Client Spotlight

In late 2009, we were engaged by Unilever to work with Slim.Fast as they repositioned themselves as an influential voice in the social media sphere, as part of their digital strategy for 2010. With Unilever’s digital marketing agency, TMW, taking a lead on strategy, we planned a content marketing project using idio’s platform that would improve Slim.Fast’s search engine visibility, site engagement and visitor retention. Among our objectives were an increase in conversion to product sign-up, and the publication of higher volumes of relevant and shareable content. As a result of the overall project, TMW doubled the number of registrants from the last years, in just three months. The project received a prize under Best Data Strategy category at the Direct Marketing Association Awards.

At the DMA awards, TMW reported that “We got more registrants in three months than the last three years! 55,000 signed up, 90% converting instantly. eCRM achieved 32% CTR (average 23%)”.

The Platform

idio’s Platform was deployed to:

• aggregate, analyse, and categorize the content from multiple sources
• track all user interactions
• analyse for preference data, and integrated to Unilever CRM
• power on-site and email content personalization for every user

The Product

We produced a branded, digital content proposition, dubbed the “Slim.Fast Magazine”: a platform of brand-authored content, expert articles, and aggregation from a select blogger network. With weight loss, fitness, healthy eating, and lifestyle content published daily, delivery is integrated with Unilever’s CRM system to personalize the content selection for each user. Personalized monthly emails are then distributed by TMW to registered users to retain engagement. Visitors are provided with limited article access and funnelled to registration where Slim.Fast develops a stronger relationship with the user around their dieting aims and goals. All content is easily shareable across major social platforms and integrated with Facebook OpenGraph, and reader-submitted articles are encouraged.

The Process

We created Brand Persona and Moderation Guidelines to define Slim.Fast’s online personality and voice. We then reached out to our network to recruit relevant and quality bloggers, happy to be republished by Slim.Fast. We deployed idio’s platform to automatically aggregate and categorise the blogger’s content, and employed idio’s automatic moderation process for first-stage filtering. We deployed an interaction tracking system, providing detailed behaviour and preference data to Slim.Fast’s CRM. This was integrated with Slim.Fast’s email delivery system to provide automated content feeds for predefined email segments. We also delivered a turnkey solution, including ongoing automated and manual moderation, issue management, server hardware architecture, and system administration.

Benefits

As well as the headline stats quoted above, the project has increased the reach of Slim.Fast’s content, improved the depth of customer relationships, increased traffic from natural search, and increased customer advocacy through social media channels. In addition, content publication is much more efficient, through the curated content approach.

On this project we collaborated with Oglivy, TMW, Telligent, and Traction.