Marketers Bolster Branded Tutorials with Social Features

Web-based learning tools are often seen by brands as a way to maintain consumer engagement and increase conversions. If engagement is the goal, should marketers consider enhancing their tutorials with community features like comments, ratings and social tagging? Currency exchange company Travelex is poised to do just that using a newly integrated learning and community platform from Powered.

Travelex’s learning center uses Powered’s Panorama social commerce platform to offer its online prospects video tutorials, podcasts, RSS, and persistent communities. Additionally, end users will be able to set up profiles, rate tutorials, participate in polls and discuss learning materials in forums hosted by Travelex.

Travelex Online Marketing Director Jeff Smith joined the firm in February. “One of the areas of opportunity I noticed quickly was that they weren’t interacting with their customers,” Smith said. Smith had worked with Powered at his previous company and welcomed the dialog it enabled. “I am all for bi-directional conversation.”

Travelex has produced B2B courses on how to use Excel for currency exchange and how to maximize Windows Vista for basic search and enhanced connectivity. Smith said the company began producing content for the branded learning destination several months ahead of the November 20 launch. Panorama’s white label community features accelerated the process.

“It allowed us to launch in November instead of January,” he said, adding Travelex intends to leverage learnings from customer interaction with the social features to guide future marketing, messaging, and branding efforts.

Other Powered clients include AOL, Atkins, AT&T, and Circuit City. Powered VP Mark Drosos said Sony and HP are in the process of adopting Panorama’s social commerce features to existing programs on their Web sites.