Digital strategy for the SVO group
Digital strategy for the SVO group
Definition of data-driven personas and the development of their customer journeys to optimally engage customer groups on the new website.
B2B and B2C personas were developed along with their customer journeys. Using user stories, specific requirements for the new website were defined.
What does the SVO group do?
The SVO group combines tradition and modernity. It has been an energy supplier and network operator for the Celle and Uelzen region in Germany for over 110 years. The SVO group supplies its customers with electricity, water, natural gas, drinking water, fiber-optic internet and takes care of network operation. One of their concerns is creating a sustainable and digital future for their region. For this, the enterprise group promotes electromobility by expanding the necessary infrastructure and offers solutions to advance the energy transition in the region.
SVO’s goal is to supply all its customers with 100 percent green electricity in the future and, as a group of companies, to be completely emission-free by 2026.
Goals of our cooperation
SVO approached us in the course of a relaunch of its websites www.svo.de/ and www.celle-uelzennetz.de. In order not to consider websites as isolated entities, but rather as one marketing and customer loyalty tool that comprises different sites, we decided to first define personas and then describe their respective customer journeys. This enables us to identify the stages in the customer journey where the website works best and construct and design it accordingly.
Personas and customer journeys for SVO Vertrieb GmbH
In order to form target groups and personas that are as well-founded as possible, we rely on data. In this case, we drew it from the market research institute SINUS and the geomarketing agency Microm. To form segments for the target groups from the data, we determine characteristics that are particularly relevant for our use case (e.g., home ownership vs. renting). Data clusters that have similar behavior with regard to our defined characteristics form the basis for the target groups and personas (example below: B2C customers).
The result was a total of 5 personas for B2C and 4 personas for B2B. Individual customer journeys were then defined for each persona, which will form the basis for all sales and marketing measures in the future.
Sample personas with their customer journeys from the B2B and B2C sectors.
Website requirements
Once we knew in which phases of the buying process the new website would be effective, we started to look at the specific requirements for the website. We collected these with the help of so-called user stories. A user story is structured as follows:
As <role> I want <goal> to <benefit>.
For example: as an unregistered user <role>, I would like to learn more about SVO electricity rates <goal/desire> in order to assess whether SVO may be a suitable electricity provider for me <benefit>. After collecting the user stories in workshops, we derived acceptance criteria per user story, which formed the basic requirements for the website.
We identified the following sections of the new website:
- Product Marketing: this involves checking which products are in the portfolio and how they are prioritized as well as how they are ordered and their cost calculation.
- Company image: the vision and positioning of the brand must be presented. Regionality and sustainability may be an important criterion.
- Customer loyalty: transparency in billing, loyalty campaigns, and constant communication of benefits must be presented.
- Service pages such as career, contact, press and news: The company’s own presentation as an employer, contact options, and news must be clearly visible and accessible to all users.
Our projects with SVO
