Caspio: A Case Study on Customer Learning and Marketing

If you’re a regular reader you’re probably aware that I’m a practitioner and fan of lifelong learning. I love learning everything about everything, from astronomy to history to geology to tree farming. Currently, I’m working with a list of about 50 core topics (and growing!) that interest me. I try to learn one new thing every day in at least one of these categories. And that’s what brings me to Caspio.

These days, Talented Learning is a core topic on my education topic list. In addition to the creative aspects of researching and writing about extended enterprise learning technology, I’ve had to become knowledgeable and proficient on a whole series of subjects that are new to me. This ranges from starting a business, setting up and managing technology, accounting, taxes, blogging, search engine optimization and the business side of social media.

Like all learning, it’s fun to first discover something you didn’t know you didn’t know — and then go about getting to know about it and apply it. I’ve hit that stage now with Talented Learning. It’s no longer conceptual learning. I’ve put the framework in place for the business, and now I’m filling in many gaps with formal and informal learning.

Customer learning is exactly what you think it is. Companies educate their prospects and customers in multiple ways, so  they will see the value in a product or service and purchase for the first time, or purchase more over time. Businesses rely on customer education to drive brand awareness, loyalty, cross-selling, customer success and more.

I’m really impressed by the quality of the content in the customer education space, and I’ve been making use of it. For example, yesterday I had a great experience with Caspio. I’m researching cloud-based databases I can integrate into WordPress for Talented Learning research. This is one of those topics that isn’t clear to me. So I’m still trying to figure out what I need to know. And Caspio made it much easier than I expected.

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How I Discovered Caspio as a Potential Customer

When searching on Google for “online databases” I saw a paid text ad from Caspio that sparked my interest. So I clicked on it. This led me to a Caspio free trial screen that offered no options for any other information.

Like most people, I’m hesitant to sign-up for anything (even a trial) until I’ve researched the website and feel familiar with the company’s products, services and customers. Then, if it makes sense, I’ll start a trial – but only if no credit card is required.

Here is a screen capture of the landing page I stumbled upon:

Notice Caspio’s simple yet effective marketing messages: “Sign Up and Start Building Today,” “Online Databases Made Simple,” “You’re 30 seconds away from a trial account,” and logos of reputable organizations such as Red Cross, Comcast and ESPN. All of these elements convinced me to consider the free trial.  Since there were no other links to any other information, I took the plunge and signed up.

Caspio immediately sent me a simple confirmation email with clear instructions and credentials to log onto my account. The email also immediately directed me to videos and written how-to guides so I could get smarter about the product. See a clip from the email confirmation below:

I skipped the links from the email and logged into the site directly as a trial customer. Immediately on the entry page, I was presented with a narrated demonstration video about how to get started. The video briefly introduced me to key topics and examples.

In no time I was testing a real-life scenario by importing my spreadsheets into the tool. I learned about applications, forms, reports, embedding code and much more. Here is a screenshot of the Caspio homepage when I logged in:

Turns out, Caspio offers a complete curriculum of these videos, so I spent about 90 minutes learning before I ever clicked in the upper right-hand corner to see how much the service cost. The $250/month fee is a little steeper than I need right now, but through elearning, Caspio got 90 minutes of my attention, plus this blog post.

Key Customer Learning Lessons From Caspio

I won’t forget Caspio’s name. I learned a lot. I would recommend their site to a friend. They have set the bar high for online or cloud database services in my research. Our business may very well grow into a need for this product in the near future, so my “welcome” tour was time well spent.

Caspio did all this through a strategy involving customer/prospect elearning. Customer learning is a big business, and with good reason. Smarter customers = happy customers = purchasing customers. And customers who purchase are the basis of every successful company.

This experience with Caspio is a great example of how extended enterprise learning differs from employee learning. All through the introduction process, the company’s marketing, learning strategy and underlying technology worked together to attract, entice and engage me.

The whole Caspio “hello” process was so easy and effective, I nearly purchased this solution. Folks on their marketing team clearly focus on the right keywords to gain organic search visibility, in parallel with paid advertising just to get prospects in the door. And when it happens, they’ve anticipated what’s needed to educate prospects so they’ll feel comfortable commit to a purchase. Smart move.

What brand wouldn’t want to do this to gain a competitive edge?

Thanks for reading!

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