Success Stories & Case Studies

Situation: Product success stories at Withings were only collected through mentions on social media or appreciation emails sent to the customer service team. However, the number of these success stories was not enough to maintain a consistent posting schedule. I presented this problem to the Head of Marketing, and she agreed we needed a different way of doing things. I offered to lead the project with the Director of Content overseeing my work.

The problem I had not truly appreciated was the amount of time it would take to complete this task due to cultural considerations between the Paris office and Boston.

Task: I needed to identify the product that would yield us the most success stories possible. Then, I had to identify all of the relevant teams needed to create a more scalable success story collection mechanism. Afterwards, I would need to convince the relevant teams or the Head of Marketing to apply pressure to these teams to deliver the assets I needed to carry on the project.

Action: I identified the Withings weight scales as the first product line to highlight in success stories; Withing had brought to market the first Wi-Fi connected bathroom scale in 2008, and we needed more coverage of this in the mainstream.

I then considered the following teams I would need in order to carry out this project: Data, CRM, and Design. The first team was the hardest to get on board due to them being short-staffed and needing pressure from leadership. I knew I would have to let time run its course before the Head of Marketing applied pressure, and after showing I had attempted to work with the Data team several times, she directly asked the team to help me with my request.

Withings has billions of points of health data from all over the world, and we needed to target specific users. We did so by filtering for the following:

1) Weight goal, 2) weight loss, 3) healthy rate of weight loss, 4) several other factors

The rate of weight loss was especially important as we did not want to identify anyone with cancer or unhealthy weight loss tactics.

We identified several thousand users who could potentially contribute success stories related to their Withings scales. We divided potential users into tiers of weight lost — 50+ lbs, up to 50 lbs, and up to 25 lbs.

Afterwards, I met with the CRM team to see how we could elicit these stories. I created a Typeform survey with questions around weight goals, their keys to success, and other important information. Once these questions were approved by the Director of Content and the CRM team, I created a solicitation email we sent to specifically targeted users.

Result: Users’ answers were logged into a Google Sheets document, and after running a social media background check to make sure I did not endorse anyone with a questionable public preference, I carried out interviews and was able to locate and write success stories quickly. I also tasked the Design team to create a new success story format to be displayed on our new blog (the design and format of which I had directed). Finally, the new success story funnel provided more monthly content to our mailing list which enhanced engagement as well.

You can find other articles I wrote for Withings here, including my article interviewing Tour De France champion Chris Froome.

Moichor

Situation: Street cred is everything when it comes to veterinary medicine, especially in the diagnostics field since there are only one or two major players. Moichor didn’t have enough public testimony stating that our laboratory was a viable option, and any testimony that was there was being scrolled over quickly according to Crazy Egg, the page optimization tool I used to track viewer interest in content. Finally, veterinarians are incredibly busy and have little time to devote to an interview.

Task: I needed to collect more case studies highlighting veterinarians’ use of Moichor’s animal diagnostic services and build a section devoted to this public testimony.

Action: I asked the Head of Marketing and the CEO to identify several veterinarians who had a certain volume order per month with the laboratory as well as a track record of positive sentiment towards the lab. I then tasked the Head of Marketing to supply specific testing analytics to me, including what tests they were using as well as species, to develop tentative language to use and questions to build for the interview.

After confirming an interview, I used a transcription service to record each conversation so that way I could focus on getting a deeper story.

One of the hardest parts other than getting a veterinarian to agree to sit down to an interview is acquiring photos. Luckily behind every veterinarian is an administrative assistance or veterinary tech who helps run operations at the clinic. I called each clinic and was able to secure photos for us.

After I wrote the success stories and used them in email marketing, paid marketing, and social media, I tasked our designer with producing a case study page users could navigate to. After selecting from multiple versions, I verified that the design in question could be implemented by our front-end developer based on the Webflow architecture we were using. This was the result.