The Sciences Behind Whichit

Jonathan Gan
Founder & CEO

If the Whichit Interactive Commercial Content (ICC) is so effective, it is only due to the fact that the psychology behind it is very powerful. Understanding why the technology that Whichit utilizes has so much potential comes from looking at what happens behind the scenes and the very foundation of the concept. From the first year when we started to define and build the product, and even those days with the next generation of the Whichit for Advertisers, we used those eight science principles as a core guideline in order to achieve a powerful and useful tool for our users’ clients and their customers, while also building the technology around it.

Let us take a look at the aspects that make the Whichit Interactive Commercial Content so powerful, by analysing what is happening in a user’s head when he/she is engaging with this type of content.

1. The Power of Choice

Learning how to make your own decisions is probably the first responsibility you earn as a child. For instance, you learn to decide what color tee-shirt you prefer, what flavour of ice cream you ask your parents to buy you, or what you want for your birthday.

Choosing is in our mind forever, and our everyday life is comprised of a number of choices that we make with each passing minute. The result is that people love having choices and love making choices. As a marketer, offering choices to a customer helps to transfer the power to the customer, putting his/her personal choice first, thus creating a more democratic relationship.

Let’s take a look at an example: have you ever walked down the street and felt really annoyed by people trying to give you a flyer? This annoys you because the person is trying to impose something on you, that you did not ask for. More specifically, something that you did not choose. Now think about this situation in a different way; what if that person had offered you the choice between two different elements? Fundamentally, it would have been different, right?

Indeed, it has been proven that in a situation relative to choices, humans often turn to take an action and choose one of the options rather than be passive, even if they don’t fully know or understand all of the information related to their potential choices.

In Sheena Lyengar’s speech at TED Global 2010 about the art of choosing, she explains that our choices are often quite similar: The value of choice is created based off of the ability of someone to perceive differences between the options.

This power of choice is the first principle that Whichit applies: instead of imposing one single element to a potential buyer, Whichit is offering multiple choices to customers through polls, surveys, trivia, and other types of interactive content. In this way, the end-user can do what he or she feels is most easy to complete. Users can express their preferences by choosing from default options. In addition, users tend to feel better understood and listened to.

2. Crowd Mentality

The crowd mentality (also called the Herd mentality) describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When faced with a decision, humans often turn to the people they trust for guidance, resulting in a choice that is likely influenced by their peers or society as a whole. In simple words, the herd mentality describes a behavior in which people act the same way or adopt similar behaviors as the people around them — often ignoring their own feelings throughout the process.

The Whichit Interactive Commercial Content can be described as a psychological funnel delivered as a game. Even though the topic of the content is not necessarily in the user’s core interest, they will be attracted to engage with it in the first place for two key reasons that can be categorized under the crowd mentality:

• Joining the crowd: “Many people are already engaged, I’d like to try it as well”

• Comparison: “I want to know how I perform compared to the others.”

The Whichit Funnel [Whichit for Advertiser Dashboard Screenshot]

Based on those principles, Whichit decided to present users with the first message in a clear and appealing manner, and after their first engagement, Whichit would continue with a smooth and clean user-experience and interface to ensure high performance and conversion throughout the series of questions attached to the interactive content. Users will eventually earn the Whichit Commercial Engage Card.

3. The Wisdom of The Crowd

The collective opinion of a group of individuals is more accurate than the opinion of a single expert. This notion was most compellingly justified in James Surowiecki’s book, “The Wisdom of the crowd,” but its origin comes from Francis Galton’s observation in 1907: He observed that the average of answers to a “guess the weight of the ox” contest was extraordinarily accurate, even more accurate than the expert guesses. Lior Zoref repeated this experiment on the TED stage in 2012.

When it comes to Whichit, we gave the marketers direct access to all the answers. The preferences of the audience to the interactive content such as the polls, surveys, or quizzes provide valuable information on the accurate preferences of the users. The Whichit dashboard delivers a lot of information throughout a campaign and the corresponding creative levels, providing actionable insights and mini market research with the tip of a finger. Through this analytics, the marketers in the agencies, and the brands themselves can synthesize micro-audiences in seconds and discover their preferences. Learning, for example, that 40% of people that like the black boots also love the yellow backpack, and 78% of them are going on Ski holidays at least once a year. By analysis, there is no better way to determine the various profiles of potential customers within the audience.

Votes Breakdown and statistic Correlation [Whichit for Advertiser Dashboard]

4. Four is the Magic Number

Choosing is a basic instinct, inherent in our homo-sapiens brain. It is magical to see the reflex of the Human brain when asked a “Which” question rather than an “open” question. The differences are shocking every single time.

By its definition, choosing is picking the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives. So, at the minimum, there must be 2 options. While the maximum number of options could be as much as we want, even dozens or millions, according to Sheena Liyengar’s talk, when you give people 10 or more options, they make poorer decisions.

So, what will be the optimal number for multiple-choice items?

Three options are optimal for multiple-choice items. Michael C. Rodriquez, University of Minnesota, carried out a meta-analysis of 80 years of research to synthesize these results to estimate the effect that the number of options in multiple-choice items has on test score reliability and validity.

In addition, the human brain can most effectively process up to four things at a time: When more than 4 options are given, the ability to focus is diminished. This can be explained by the “Working Memory.” Working memory relates to the information we can pay attention to and manipulate, or in other words, the temporary storage of information.

A Whichit Post contains a textual question, along with 2, 3, or 4 visual options in the form of multiple-choice questions. The images are with or without overlay text. The structure of the Whichit Post is rectangular and symmetrical, with subtle design lines. We limit the options to 4 and the images are squared.

Those design guidelines and restrictions achieved higher engagement from users in answering a Whichit Post with multiple questions consisting of polls, trivia, or quizzes. In addition, the guidelines provide a smooth user experience and interface, with added fun for the experience of the user.

5. Social Proof

Social proof is the idea that consumers will adapt their behaviour according to what other people are doing. There are 5 main types of social proof:

1. Expert

2. Celebrity

3. User

4. “Wisdom of the Crowds”

5. “Wisdom of your Friends”

Different types of social proof lead to different influences and needs to be used wisely according to the specific situation and the user’s experience.

In Whichit, we are using several types of social proof simultaneously:

• The Wisdom of The Crowds Social Proof — As an integral part of the Whichit questionnaire; includes showing the results as feedback on the user’s preferences for each post and in the end of the Whichit questionnaire as a summary of all feedback.

• The Expert / Celebrity / Wisdom of Your Friends Social Proofs — As the distribution channels; includes validation of the content when sharing and distributing the Whichit content, in addition to supporting the viral wave and the organic reach.

Example: Birchbox quiz

The Whichit content is defined as interactive from its nature and people want to engage with and inquire about their results — “How do I compare to the others?” Their instinct to tap into their digital ego by understanding the social proof is natural, and it leads to the following Whichit USPs:

• High engagement

• High completion

• Sharing the content

• High conversion on the Whichit commercial Engage Card

6. The Effectiveness of Personalization

Personalization is key for driving high performance and conversion. The more tailored the content and experience become to the individual and his/her personal preferences, the more likely they will continue to engage with the content and ultimately convert.

In Whichit, we took personalization to the next level! We appeal to the audience with attractive and interactive content, reaching to the “rainbow of people,” and leading them via a personal path. We are getting to users in the decision-making point with a bespoke commercial offer that they will likely engage with. Everyone likes to feel that they receive special treatment tailored to their needs, even when it comes to content consumption. But, by delivering personalized interactive content to our customers, Whichit makes them feel like the brand understands their unique needs and their interests.

Moreover, through the Whichit Interactive Commercial Content, while users engaging with the content, they are creating personal paths with each stage. The number of possible paths for each Whichit Post is exponential and being raised by the fourth power (n4, n=number of Whichit Posts). Those paths are translated into micro-segments, effectively colouring micro-audiences from the same traffic flow in just a few steps.

There is an even deeper level reached within Whichit — we invented an algorithm, a machine learning algorithm that profiles users in real time based on their preferences. By using the Whichit Posts as sensors to recognize user’s preferences, we changed the way marketers engage with their audience.

By recognizing and analysing user’s preferences, the Whichit Machine Learning algorithm, winner of the Innovate UK Smart TSB, allows marketers to:

• Categorise users into preference groups

• Segment users based on demographics

• Identify future trends

• Identify anomalies in trends

• Getting to users in the decision-making point

• Tailor content and commercial offers to users in real time

• Position options based on the wisdom of the crowd

7. The Principles of Consistency and Consensus

In his book “Influence”, Dr. Robert Cialdini exposed 6 famous principles of persuasion: Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Liking, and Consensus (Social Proof). In the case of Whichit, two principles are playing an important role:

• The principle of consistency

• The principle of consensus

The Principles of Persuasion; “Influence”, Dr.Robert Cialdini

The principle of consistency refers to the fact that people like to be consistent with the things they have previously experienced or expressed. That consistency can be activated by encouraging people to engage in small initial commitments, such as answering a survey. A study in a health centre showed that if people were asked to write the hour of their appointment down themselves, missed appointments would be reduced by 18%.

Engaging with Whichit Interactive Content requires a very small commitment by users. In addition, the interval of the engagement is quick and instant, which drives consistency within the user’s responses on their preferences. This is one of the fundamental principles that the Whichit Machine Learning algorithm is based on, in order to profile the users based on their preferences, rather than through traditional marketing methods.

The principle of consensus, similar to the “Crowd Mentality” and “Social Proof” (see previous chapters), means that people will look to the actions and behaviours of others to determine their own, especially when they are uncertain. Most likely, you have noticed the small notice in your hotel bathroom encouraging you to reuse your towel to save water. It is said that about 75% of people who check into a hotel for four nights or longer will reuse their towels at some point during their stay. A study on the principle of consensus looked at what would happen if it was included on the cards that 75% of guests reuse their towels at some time during their stay. It turns out that towel reuse rises by 26%, which had confirmed the principle of consensus.

8. The Psychology of Gamification

“People can be made to be more intrinsically motivated simply by presenting an activity as a game,” Andreas Lieberoth explains.

The Whichit Interactive Content can be compared to a game: it enables users to transform a traditionally one-sided, non-engaging experience into an exciting, personalized, and enjoyable experience. Interactive content will always seem more appealing to the brain as opposed to standard text.

Since 2011, gamification becomes a trend, and these days it’s almost a basic function in user-experience and interface development. Gamification is the process of using game-like elements when designing business and marketing strategies. The reason for this being that gamification works. It triggers real powerful human emotions such as happiness, intrigue, and excitement; these are positive user-experiences, and positive a user-experience leads to better engagement, loyalty, and higher sales.

Example: Whichit Gift Builder

We are using the Whichit Interactive Commercial Content to deliver information and to interact with the audience in a playful manner. This approach delivers higher results on nearly every level: engagement, completion of polls and surveys, commercial conversion, and data collection.

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Whichit is an interactive commercial content platform that enables marketers and advertisers to increase user engagement, open new revenue streams, and gain user-related insight. The company utilizes innovative technology that profiles users based on their preferences and uses machine learning to provide bespoke commercial incentives in real time.

The company is working with top agencies and brands and is based in central London.

Whichit Earns Campaign Management Software Distinctions from Top Business Software Directory

Alexandra Radugina
Senior Marketing Manager

Whichit was designed to help businesses utilize a singular platform for capturing the attention of potential clients with an unobtrusive, fun, and inviting experience. The expert B2B reviewers from FinancesOnline managed to experience this first-hand when they conducted a thorough analysis of Whichit, and we received praises for fulfilling our value proposition. With this, we were honored with two distinctions: Great User Experience award for 2018 and Rising Star award for 2018.

FinancesOnline also recognized our increasing popularity on the market and our high positive user feedback. With this, we received their Rising Star award. This isn’t a surprise as Whichit prides in its cutting-edge technology in gathering actionable insights so you can increase your conversions exponentially.

While determining which marketing plans would best capture the interest of your audiences is a difficult endeavour, Whichit eliminates this arduous task with its machine-learning insight engine. It collects all audience information and turns them into actionable insights.

“Whichit removes the guesswork from your advertising and marketing plans and campaigns by helping you identify and utilize the right messages they respond to, driving conversions and ROI to the roof,” stated FinancesOnline’s experts. Our product was also recommended in the platform’s popular what is campaign management software guide.

We encourage all our users to check out FinancesOnline’s review and share how Whichit transformed your ads and marketing campaigns.

See full review here

5 Facts to help you plan Mother’s Day Marketing Campaigns

Alexandra Radugina
Senior Marketing Manager

Mother's Day is another great opportunity for all types of retailers to encourage consumers to spend more on beautiful gifts. If you want to create a stellar promotion, you have to start with a plan; below you can find some interesting facts that can help you.

1. Mother’s Day in numbers

Mother's Day is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent and precisely three weeks before Easter Sunday. The 2017 Mother’s Day spend was valued at almost 1.4 billion pounds, in comparison to the 700 million pounds spent for Father’s Day 2017. 30% of the purchases were made online followed by a Mother’s Day spark in social media posts. According to Facebook, people around the world uploaded 1B+ photos and videos, which shows how much people care about family and how grateful they are.

2. Shoppers' persona

Harvest Digital suggest that 67% of female shoppers purchase more gifts than men. But on average, men spend £10 pounds more on their gifts. Also, the most significant spenders belong to the age range of 25-34 years old. Those insights can give some ideas on who you want to target with your campaign, as well as how to gain social media boost on Mother’s Day itself.

3. What are the most common presents…

Mothers’ Day's gifts aren’t just flowers, cards or chocolates. These types of gifts are a must-have addition to a main treat. Shoppers are more interested in personalised gifts that stand out from the rest. There has been a noticeable increase in personalised presents in the UK, and we estimate an increase in that sector this Mother’s Day.  The hottest gifts for Mother’s Day are:

4. What Mummy really wants…

We found out that what Mothers actually dream of receiving on Mother’s Day are surprisingly affordable:

5. Promotional tactics to attract shoppers:

The goal of this Mother’s Day marketing opportunity is of course to increase sales and revenue. Marketers use the full range of promotional tactics to attract shoppers: special product selection, email marketing, social campaigns, price promotions. According to Bing Ads, more than 60% of Mother’s Day gift searches are made from a mobile device. Searches increase by up to four times in the 48 hours leading up to Sunday as well as most of purchases are made last minute. So, starting a marketing campaign just two-three weeks before the day would be a wise tactic.  Last year’s statistics show us that email remarketing was most effective the week before Mother’s Day.

What do shoppers want? What leads them to make up their mind about a purchase? The main decision-making factors— the same as for any other occasion, will be online search. According to HootSuite, 60% of shoppers use social networks for product search, so consider running a social media campaign to reach your consumers.  Another factor is saving time on shopping: If you can offer consumers all-in-one services like a card, flowers and chocolate there will be a greater chance of success. Adding your slogan, hashtag, or brand to any gift pack can encourage some consumers to thank you online.  Cooperate with local businesses (i.e. flower shops, spas, restaurants) and create offers together.

Shoppers want inspiration for Mother’s Day presents. Look for a personalised shopping experience based on their buying behaviour.  Offering savings and rewards based on past purchases is a proven tactic. You can also offer consumers a personalised gift finder (Whichit example), which will lead them to the perfect present or add the competitive element to keep participants checking back and sharing their contributions for more exposure. How about a mum and daughter selfie competition? Perfect for Mother’s Day.

Click here to see full infographic!

Win Your Audience's Heart with 4 Fun Christmas Marketing Campaigns

Phuong Huyen Linh Le
Business Development Intern

Now that Halloween is out of the way, Christmas is right around the corner.

Last year, the average British family spent around £800 on Christmas and it’s expected to be even higher this year. It’s never too early to run the Christmas advertising campaign.

Want to give it a try?
Register for FREE & get $50 Ads Budget!

So… Have you prepared any ideas for your Christmas Marketing Campaigns?


Let us inspire you with these 4 Fun Christmas Marketing Campaigns ideas that we’ve prepared for you to stand out this holiday season and win your audience’s heart:

1. Help to find the perfect gift with a fun Gift Creator Wizard

Santa is coming to town!!! Christmas lights are unpacked and switched on in the street. Have you prepared gifts for the ones you love?? Probably not… right?

AND neither have most of your customers…Well, let’s make their ‘looking-for-a-gift’ task become easy and fun! You can do it with the Whichit Gift Creator Wizard.

Through Whichit’s unique technology, by answering a simple series of questions, users will be directed to the perfect gift that matches their answers and demands. Along the way, they’ll see an array of products and in a fun, engaging manner.

I'm looking for a Christmas gift for...

As a result, customers don’t have to spend a lot of time reading and looking for the perfect gift. Instead, they’ll choose it themselves with a few clicks. They will be able to see an array of your products and be seamlessly directed to the perfect product.

Click the example to see how wonderful it really is! >>>

Amazing? Wait there’s more… This can be easily embedded on your website, as a display campaign and on social media.

 

2. Run a Festive Holiday Contest

Christmas is a great time to say “Thank you” to your loyal customers and reward them. Running a festive contest with some great prizes is a perfect way to do that, raise brand awareness and collect tonnes of email addresses too.

According to Mailchimp, segmented email campaigns have 14.21% higher open rates and 59.82% higher click-through rates. Whichit Contest Campaigns offers affordable Native Lead Gen with auto-segmentation, feeding straight into your CRM and email marketing platforms.

COMPETITION! What's your magical Christmas destination?

After someone submits an email using the Whichit unit, you can retarget them with relevant offers based on their preferences. Super easy & So valuable!

Ask your audience to enter a contest (or to subscribe to a newsletter) with our Lead-Gen Engage Card. With Whichit you can acquire leads for only $0.10 on Organic Campaigns (Social Media or your website).

Now, let’s create a Festive Holiday Contest with Whichit like this one!>>>

How Whichit works? After answering fun interactive polls or quizzes or participating in a contest, the audiences will reveal the ‘Engage Card’ – Engage Cards are the commercial actionable Call-To-Action layer that redirects users to bespoke content, based on their votes, which achieve up to 95% engagement rate per campaign. Whichit Engage Cards are your way to convert traffic into revenue, based on your campaign goals.

Want to give it a try?
Register for FREE & get $50 Ads Budget!

3. Add a sparkle to your Social Media Content

Coming up with a new content for your Social Media channels can be challenging as you need to keep coming up with new ideas to capture your audience’s attention. Christmas is a great opportunity to sparkle up your content!

If you’re looking for effortless and exciting ways to create engaging content for your social channels, Whichit can offer you a great platform to create content that can scale and also turn your social traffic into revenue.

By using Whichit, you can easily create interactive content in minutes, wrap it into a campaign and share it on social media channels like Facebook. On Facebook, Whichit will appear on an ‘Instant Article’. This fast and responsive content, is 10X faster than standard mobile web articles and makes your readers 70% less likely to abandon the article and it also helps in generating high engagement with your audience & new targeted audience.

4. A winning Advertising Campaign

Christmas is the perfect time to try something bold and new to boost your sales. If you've not got a lot of experience or you’re new to Display Advertising, we can totally understand you… It can be quite complex to create banners and publish them. You’ll need designers and developers and it can be a little daunting.

Luckily, Whichit is offering a simple, fun and affordable tool to create, publish and monitor interactive Display Ads. You’ll feel like a pro after a few minutes! You can create a Whichit creative that will automatically run in multiple sizes. Whichit delivers a Click-Through-Rate of 40X than the classic banners and you can gain actionable insights about your audiences at the same time! Defiantly a win-win situation for Christmas Marketing Campaigns.

Want to give it a try?

Register for FREE & get $50 Ads Budget!

Whichit for Advertisers is now live!

Galit Gan
Creative Director & Co-Founder

Let's face it, as marketers there are tons of challenges we encounter: reaching our audience, engaging with them, understanding them and having them understand us, not to mention the amount of time it all takes! Well, what if you had a window into your audience? What if you could engage with them like never before and save time by streamlining your campaigns and marketing efforts?

Great news! Whichit for Advertisers has now launched.

Using the new platform, you can now create rich media interactive ad units that run on multiple channels.
By creating content, connecting to traffic and targeting an audience, discover how Whichit will redefine your digital marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look!

Whichit for Advertisers

Whichit for Advertisers

Build your own creative

Create rich, commercially driven interactive content, delivering a new and improved experience for your audience. The ad units come in the form of polls, surveys, quizzes or simple questions illustrated with visuals of your choice.

If you were looking for a way to make advertising more inviting for your audience, Whichit provides a tool for you to pull them into your world so you can take a look into theirs. 

Try it yourself, check out how to make an awesome post to engage your audience.

Connect to traffic

How do you reach your audience? Twitter, Facebook, your blog, paid advertising? How many posts or ads do you need to create for each and how much time and effort does it take? Save time and create one Whichit Post that can be run on multiple channels and in multiple sizes. Through our three campaign channels, you will be able to run an organic campaign using your own assets, launch on paid traffic or share it to social media in a few easy steps.

I WANT TO GET MORE INFORMATION

I WANT TO GET MORE INFORMATION

Target your audience

You can now create Whichit posts and use them to target your audience. Target by age, gender, location and more to reach out and engage them. 

Targeting your audience has never been easier thanks to our playful dashboard

Dashboard

Now that your campaign is running, you’ll probably want to see how it’s performed. Our platform includes an integrated dashboard for each live campaign that allows you to monitor and analyse your campaign’s success in real time. It is super easy to navigate and presents you with actionable customer insights.

Closing the Loop

Whichit is a One-Stop-Shop with a full range of marketing services. Engage your audience, find out more about them and retarget with the right message using our integration tools to automate your marketing and sales ops. Check out all the available integrations such as EMAIL, SLACK, MAILCHIMP, IFTTT and more.

Available integrations in Whichit for Advertisers

 

What's in it for me?
 

Anybody can create an interactive campaign in minutes

All services are accessible from our platform in an intuitive way. Whichit will take you by the hand, step by step to run a campaign like a pro. Building a campaign has never been so quick and accessible.

Success

Using our interactive posts’ Engage Card, achieve up to 95% engagement rate per campaign! This will be the perfect way to catch a glimpse into your customers' mind and share with them an experience, a story or a call to action.

Market research as a Bonus

By asking a question, you encourage your audience to interact with you and you also benefit from the insights provided by their answers. Want to showcase your products? Want to know which one is the most popular or which colour they prefer? Just ask!

 

Want to give it a try? 

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo call with us!

Whichit's in the Fast Lane! We're featured in the The Fresh Business Thinking Shift 100 - MAdtech Edition!

Galit Gan
Creative Director & Co-Founder

We are delighted to announce that Whichit has been included within The Fresh Business Thinking Shift 100 - the MAdtech edition - in association with KPMG Small Business Accounting. We're in the Fast Lane! 

The Shift 100 has been put together to identify Madtech (Marketing and Advertising) entrepreneurs who are using technology to bring new ideas to marketing and advertising, which is fundamentally reshaping the advertising and media industry and altering how consumers “consume” content.

The Founding team: Jonathan, Yarden and Galit

Fresh Business Thinking is recognising and celebrating the entrepreneurs who are building cutting-edge solutions and bringing tech innovation to the UK’s marketing and advertising scene.

We are very happy to announce that Whichit is one of those chosen!
You can check out Whichit’s profile page here.

About Whichit:
Whichit is a platform to create and publish Interactive Commercial Content. Within minutes advertisers can create a beautiful bespoke interactive display ads. These can be embedded practically anywhere... including our network of publishers. These highly engaging ads not only drive traffic, they also provide highly useful insights about your target audience.