Mystery Shopping for Research: Using Shoppers to Identify a Breakdown in the Purchasing Process

Mystery Shopping

Aug 20

Request

A boutique strategy consulting firm reached out to Zintro looking for support on a project for their client, an email delivery software company. The client had seen a noticeable drop-off in conversion rates in their self-serve channels. They rolled back recent marketing and product changes, but the lower conversion rate stayed the same. Before engaging the consulting firm, the company spoke with some of their prospects who didn’t buy the product to understand where they were going wrong. They were met with unhelpful feedback that failed to identify the problem, and as a result, the company was left wanting to understand how marketing buyers perceived their sign-up flow in comparison to that of competitors.

Solution

The consulting firm, the client company, and Zintro considered possible research approaches and landed on a mystery-shopper format. The plan? Recruit five marketing leaders from Zintro’s extensive network to go through the inbound self-service channel process of the client’s product, as well as the equivalent process of seven relevant competitors. Throughout the process, the marketing leaders would take detailed notes and learn about things such as pricing, feature options, and terms. The consulting firm also requested various forms of engagement with the professionals including a focus group, topic-specific surveys, and daily online journal exercises. The feedback gained from these engagements would then be used to tease out challenges in the inbound self-service flow as well as understand how it compared to those of competitors.

Results

With Zintro's help, the consulting firm learned that the email service company’s product team rolled out a feature months before that forced all prospects to enter email protocols (i.e., DMARC, SPF, DKIM) early in the self-serve process. Small business buyers had no problem adding that information but *enterprise* marketers were unable to explore or even purchase the product without inputting these details. As this information needed to come from the IT team, enterprise marketers were becoming frustrated with the blockages and exited the flow. Armed with this insights and now able to streamline the process for prospects, the company ultimately increased their conversion rate. Additionally, with their newfound knowledge of the market, the company was able to better understand their competitors and the preferences of buyers.

By the Numbers