Embodied Philosophy’s platform comes in three parts; the traffic generating media website, the subscription-based video library and the LMS.
Embodied Philosophy provides a wealth of free information on its media site, and aims to move consumers of this free information into various marketing funnels, eventually leading to the sale of paid materials such as one-off courses and course and video subscription.
They faced three main challenges that were impacting engagement and retention:
One of EP’s main challenges was how disconnected their service was, scattered across several platforms. They had a website on WordPress, the LMS on Teachable and their video content on Vimeo OTT (a video platform service that allows organizations to build their own video apps for distribution in app stores).
But each site had its own design with limited opportunities to combine them into a cohesive user experience, and each platform had their own logins with no single-sign-on technologies available. So we built one platform to rule them all; the website, LMS and video library.
We built a custom video library, deeply integrated with Vimeo OTT, allowing the display of Vimeo OTT videos on the website itself. Our content management tools meant that Embodied Philosophy could build their own Video Homepage, complete with curated lists and categories of videos to help drive traffic to their best content.
A custom video library meant that we could also enhance the experience in ways that Vimeo’s own ‘closed’ apps couldn’t. We integrated with the website’s personalization engine, meaning that video content could be recommended to users based on their interests and past history on the site, so every user’s homepage was tailored to them, ensuring high levels of engagement.
At the top of EP’s funnel was their free media site, bringing free and binge-able articles, podcasts and webinars together into a highly personalized interface. Once users have consumed some free content, they’re invited to sign up for a free account to access more content. This happens on partially visible articles, through the use of popups and through locked-content displays.
Later on, users are invited to sign up for paid memberships, granting them access to exclusive content, from documentaries to courses, recommended to them based on the content they have consumed in the past.
Community would be key to engagement and long-term retention of users. Once engaged with the learning, users are invited to join the community, powered by the exclusive “Plume Communities” plugin. With a Facebook-group style interface, users could comment on their learnings and post videos, images or files.
Integration with the LMS’ groups feature meant that communities would be created for each cohort, ensuring that learners and teachers could only interact with members they share a class with. And with “Plume Messenger”, teachers and learners could communicate privately and securely via encrypted messages.
At the heart of EP’s lead generation strategy were free webinars. We built a webinar events system, allowing users to find and register for free webinars, with integrations with Zoom, Google Meet and other video conferencing/webinar tools. Calendar integrations, dashboard displays and automated reminders meant that attendance rates would remain high, and no-shows kept to a minimum. This same system would also support paid webinars, allowing EP to provide premium, interactive learning experiences.
The personalization engine is at the core of the site. Having established customer journeys and sales funnel strategies early on in Discovery, we were able to design a platform that aligned with these, helping to fully realize Embodied Philosophy’s sales funnel strategy by bringing certain content front and center. From a development perspective, we were also able to suggest specific content designed to upsell users alongside the distribution of highly targeted accessible content.
