The pandemic changed customer motivation
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The pandemic changed customer motivation. What’s happening now?

ByLiza Colburn

At Persado, we talk a lot about how messages motivate customers to take action. One of the ways they do that is by tapping into a feeling or emotion that fits the context of a campaign. And quite frankly, during this pandemic, we’ve all had a lot of feelings.  By “feelings”—or its more formal equivalent,…

COVID-19 Communications During the Next Phase of Recovery
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COVID-19 Communications During the Next Phase of Recovery

ByEvan Blair

COVID-19 has been a reality of daily life for a full year. Vaccines have brought hope that the strictest lock downs, remote work policies, and social distancing measures can ease, returning people to something recognizably normal. Society can get there faster and more safely if employers, healthcare companies, and government actors leverage the power of…

Retail Expert Veronika Sonsev Shares 5 Insights for a Winning Holiday Season
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Retail Expert Veronika Sonsev Shares 5 Insights for a Winning Holiday Season

ByEvan Blair

Editor’s note: Veronika Sonsev may be stuck at home like the rest of us, but she hasn’t lost her line of sight into what separates thriving retailers from stragglers in these strange COVID-19 times. The co-founder of CommerceNext and Retail Practice Lead at Chameleon Collective spoke to Persado about the general picture in retail and…

Language Analysis Pinpoints How COVID-19 Is Changing Brand Communications
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Language Analysis Pinpoints How COVID-19 Is Changing Brand Communications

ByEvan Blair

Just as certain words and phrases tend to resonate more in real life–think of the difference between “have the report ready by noon” and “please have the report ready by noon, thanks in advance!”–certain emotions consistently outperform others when it comes to engaging customers and encouraging them to take action. From 2018 to 2019, Attention…

Achievement-Focused Language Makes a Comeback
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Achievement-Focused Language Makes a Comeback

ByEvan Blair

April saw a marked shift from the way brands communicated before COVID-19. Gone were the attention-grabbing all caps and clever plays on words (e.g. “Let the MADNESS BEGIN” for the NCAA basketball tournament). Language that evoked the Trust-based emotions of Safety, Intimacy, and Gratitude drove the highest engagement in April, when people seemed to be…

Increase Pre-Collections Payments and Reduce Consumer Financial Distress with AI-Powered Language
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Increase Pre-Collections Payments and Reduce Consumer Financial Distress with AI-Powered Language

ByEvan Blair

Businesses that invest in language increase pre-collections payments and will stay ahead of the coming spike in missed payments. Companies as diverse as telecommunications companies, retail banks, utilities, and the finance arms of automotive manufacturers are bracing for a surge in missed payments from the 43% of U.S. households that have lost income since the…

How a Leading Telco Increased Call Deflection by 24% with AI-Powered Language Experiments
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How a Leading Telco Increased Call Deflection by 24% with AI-Powered Language Experiments

ByEvan Blair

Telco providers facing a rapid spike in calls to their contact centers have an underused and powerful tool they can use to relieve pressure on agents and increase digital self-service—the most effective words.  That’s what a European telecommunications provider found when it leveraged AI and machine learning to fine-tune voice digital assistant (IVR) language and…

Trust-based Emotional Language Engages More Customers During COVID-19
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Trust-based Emotional Language Engages More Customers During COVID-19

ByEvan Blair

COVID-19 has changed how we communicate and the words we use make that clear. As people across the planet #stayhome to #flattenthecurve, they looked for opportunities to maintain connection in the context of social distancing. Words that conveyed the warm emotions of Intimacy, Gratitude, and Safety offered that connection and produced the most successful messages…

Drive More Completed Payments with AI-Guided IVR Prompts
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Drive More Completed Payments with AI-Guided IVR Prompts

ByEvan Blair

What if changing a few words or using the right emotion in an IVR prompt could increase payments and prevent delinquencies?  That’s exactly what happened for one of the largest US insurance companies. Small changes to the language in its IVR prompt convinced 10% more customers to “Press 1” to begin the process of making…

How AI-Based Language Can Help Engage Customers More Effectively in the Pre-Collections and Early Collections Journey
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How AI-Based Language Can Help Engage Customers More Effectively in the Pre-Collections and Early Collections Journey

ByEvan Blair

Delinquency rates on the $1 trillion of debt held by U.S. households were increasing even before the COVID-19 crisis. With over 33 million Americans filing for unemployment between March and May 2020, banks are now preparing for a wave of payment challenges. New forecasts even suggest delinquency rates could be 3X higher than they were…