AAA Northeast Reimagines Roadside Assistance for Members with Adobe and Microsoft
With the holidays just around the corner, many Americans are busy planning travel. Whether they’re taking to the roads, rails or skies, people want their travel to be as smooth as possible. Knowing there’s help along the way when taking the road is important; that unexpected events can be dealt with easily and efficiently. This is precisely why over 59.7 million people across North America are members of AAA – a name synonymous with roadside assistance.
AAA Northeast is one of the association’s largest clubs, serving 5.7 million members in Rhode Island and parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. The club understands its success hinges on members’ happiness, which goes beyond providing exceptional services. It must provide a unique, personalized experience each time a member interacts with the club – online or offline.
Understanding members’ changing needs
Several years ago, AAA Northeast launched a transformation of its digital channels to better address member demands for a fast, effortless website experience and easier access to helpful online interactions. This effort, supported by a dedicated team with the power to experiment and adapt, is called Permission Based Digital Experience (PBDE).
“Responding to members’ needs has been a driving force behind reimagining our digital experiences,” said Mark Pelletier, Vice President at AAA Northeast. “Members often need to reach us immediately, whether they’re looking for roadside assistance or simply want to renew membership or pay a bill.”
AAA Northeast turned to Adobe for help.
“We needed an environment that offered strong AB testing, personalization and advanced analytics as part of a broader solution to address our digital marketing goals. Adobe provided the most powerful, integrated platform for delivering digital experiences. We started with Adobe Target for optimization, Adobe Analytics for insights and Adobe Experience Manager as our content management solution, launching all three in less than nine months,” said Pelletier.
Data-driven digital strategies to improve the member experience
Determined to continually improve member experiences, AAA Northeast selected Adobe and Microsoft’s combined solutions for their strong testing and analytics capabilities. With Adobe Experience Manager, the club could easily and quickly push content to its website with flexibility. AAA Northeast saw value in its seamless integration with Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, enabling digital teams to respond to customer needs with target experiences.
“We are constantly testing different parts of the experience to validate whether or not our content and transactional funnels are as effective as possible. Adobe and Microsoft provide a full end-to-end solution for measuring our marketing tactics, not just to the sales lead, but right through to the offline sales,” said Pelletier.
AAA Northeast has used Adobe Target to run over 450 real-time AB tests on its website over the past 18 months, measuring every interaction with Adobe Analytics to make informed decisions about the digital strategies that work best.
For example, the team performed extensive testing on its “join” landing page to increase membership process completion. Adjusting the hero image, call to action and ways of displaying membership benefits and fees led to increased signups from 26% to 45%, bringing in thousands of new members online.
The digital team also modified the member login process, informed by behavioral data in Adobe Analytics that its multi-step process was discouraging people from renewals. “Using Adobe Target, we found that a simple guest login option made the process much easier. The change improved online renewal rates by 13% – at 5% of the cost of traditional channels such as the call center,” said Pelletier.
Driving personalization
AAA Northeast aims to consistently deliver more relevant experiences – translating complexity behind the scenes into simple, compelling interactions with members. Adobe Audience Manager and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales play a critical role here.
“Our wide range of offerings can be overwhelming to members. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Adobe Audience Manager, we’ve started mapping content and offers to different audiences based on what we know about them, so we can more efficiently use the limited space on our website.”
With Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics, Adobe Audience Manager combines website analytics with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales records and third-party data to paint a clearer picture of members and potential members-including propensity for interest in certain products. With more detailed segmentation, AAA Northeast can become more targeted with content delivered through Adobe Experience Manager.
Adobe and Microsoft’s tools leveraging AI also help AAA Northeast optimize processes to grow its own digital transformation. For instance, Adobe Target leverages AI with Microsoft Dynamics data to perform real-time personalization and automation.****
A smoother road for sales leads
AAA Northeast knows the digital experience goes far beyond the website. Integrating Adobe Experience Manager Forms with Microsoft Dynamics 365 is driving lead generation and management, coupled with Adobe Campaign to drive traffic to its landing pages.
“By integrating Adobe Experience Manager Forms with Microsoft Dynamics 365, we gain full visibility into our digital marketing efforts, so we know which campaigns drive leads and which turn into memberships or other revenue sources,” said Pelletier.
In addition, AAA Northeast created an end-to-end analytics integration between Adobe Analytics and Microsoft Dynamics 365, offering ROI calculations right down to the tactic level based on connected offline sales activity.
Fast, impactful results
AAA Northeast is seeing impressive results in membership numbers, revenue, cost efficiencies and member satisfaction, with its nationwide digital satisfaction ranking in the AAA federation rising from #14 in 2017 to #1 in 2018. Digital revenue and transactions are up 25% and 30% year over year and repeat website visits have increased 60%.
Travelers’ expectations will only continue to grow. AAA Northeast is a great example of a company that is embracing this to drive customer happiness and true business impact, enabling them to create long-lasting, loyal relationships.
AAA Northeast uses Adobe and Microsoft’s solutions to become a true Customer Experience Management company. Learn more here.
