How Vimeo increased trial conversions 300% by optimizing abandonment

Vimeo is a video-sharing and streaming platform that enables its 300 million-plus users to upload, host, and share high-quality videos. The company also provides easy-to-use tools for users to customize and distribute their videos and view performance analytics.

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Most of Vimeo’s revenue comes from subscription-based plans for solo creators and small and enterprise businesses. Their base subscription is free but there are four paid subscription levels offering additional features and upload capacity. Users of the free account can trial the premium subscriptions at no cost for seven days.

The Vimeo team knew that converting a free account user to the seven-day free trial hinged on one crucial factor – the successful upload of their first video. The team developed a user onboarding experience that focused on driving this critical step in the user journey. However, they soon discovered that the generic email series designed to nudge the user just wasn’t cutting it. A large cohort of free account users abandoned their first video upload and never returned to the platform to convert to a free trial.

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After basic tracking of the abandon-upload event, the Vimeo team used Simon Data to trigger an email (via Salesforce Marketing Cloud) that reminded the user to complete the action. But engagement rates remained low, prompting them to set their sights on more granular event data at a lower latency to ensure the abandonment message was sent at the exact right moment.

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Through Simon Data’s direct connection to Snowflake, the team could now access all the data they needed – including the precise moment a user abandoned their video upload. The team then turned to the Simon CDP to test their hypothesis. They used Simon’s no-code segmentation tool to quickly build a dynamic segment of their target audience: free account users who abandoned their video upload. Leveraging the real-time connection between Simon and Snowflake, the segment was continually and automatically updated in response to real-time user behaviors.

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The Vimeo team then set out to build the optimal email experience using the experimentation tool within Simon’s journey builder. When users in the segment abandoned their upload, they randomly received one of two emails reminding them to complete their upload. In Journey A, users received the reminder after 24 hours. In Journey B, the email was sent after just six hours.

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To make this abandonment campaign more effective, Simon and Snowflake came together with a unique solution that:

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• Enables the Marketing team to access the full scope of Vimeo’s customer data within Snowflake via Simon Data
• Fine-tunes abandonment campaigns by serving up real-time data through Simon’s connection with Snowflake
• Supports experimentation across customer segments to maximize ROI of abandonment campaigns by usingSimon Data’s unique connection with Snowflake

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When it came to testing send times for the abandonment reminders, Simon Data had the strongest experimentation capabilities and most accurate real-time user data within Vimeo’s Snowflake Data Cloud. Simon Data’s direct connection with Snowflake meant the Vimeo team could streamline its workflow and quickly get its campaign into market.

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Through real-time access to granular customer data via a marketer-friendly user interface, the Vimeo team personalized and optimized the onboarding experience for free account users with dramatic results.

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• Simon Data’s real-time connection to Snowflake allowed Vimeo to build segments using data that was not readily available within SFMC, test experiences, and feed the resulting engagement data into their analytics systems for continued learning and optimization.
• Simon’s experimentation capabilities allowed them to optimize the timing of abandonment emails to drive more engagement with the Vimeo platform resulting in a 300% increase in conversions to free trials.