When Your Best Content Is Impossible to Find

Put a curator at the door

The way I saw Axis was a giant library. Walk into one looking for a specific book and it can be hard to know where to start. Overwhelming, even. You might leave without choosing anything at all. That's a problem.

So the work we did for Axis started with a simple realization. They needed a better way for people to reach the resources they came for.

My goal was to take that abundant library, with resources across every parenting theme, and automatically match each person to the ones they're looking for.

The smart survey

We built a smart survey and kept it as frictionless as possible. Just a few questions, and we trimmed even those by using what we already knew. If someone arrived from a particular ad, or had been reading up on a certain topic, we can already infer a lot about them. So we ask only what we can't already tell, and fill in the rest of the blanks with a short survey right after they opt in.

Here's how the flow works. It starts with acquisition. We drive traffic to a landing page and personalize that page to the ad that brought them, which lifts opt-ins. They subscribe, and then we send them to that short, on-brand survey. It asks who they are, a parent, grandparent, coach, mentor, youth pastor, or other. What their main concern is. And a couple of other things.

From their answers, we instantly build a profile. It syncs straight to their HubSpot, so it follows them onto the site and into their inbox. Now we can change what each person sees, in both places, based on who they are.

The Axis Resource Hub

This is where the Axis Resource Hub comes in, the centerpiece of everything we built.

The hub is dynamic. It reassembles itself from resources the content team has approved, tailored to each segment, and to each segment paired with a specific concern.

So say you're a parent with young teens and your main concern is media and tech. You'd see resources tagged for exactly that: content on media and tech written for parents, the Culture Translator issues that touch it, and anything recent that fits.

The same goes if you're a grandparent whose concern is social media, someone who doesn't quite get it and wants a better handle on screen time with your teenage grandkids. Or you're a coach, a teacher, a mentor, a youth pastor, each with your own needs. The hub rebuilds itself for you. It follows you, and it is yours.

So when the welcome sequence goes out from Axis, it already knows who you are, because you told us. It sends you to your version of the hub, where you can always come back for the latest. And it stays current both automatically and by hand, kept up by the content team and our agency, so the best resources are always front and center.

The door with a curator

This was our solution. A curator at the door. Someone who walks you in, asks who you are and what you need, and points you straight to it. In fact, I've built a space just for you, one you can return to any time.

The theory was that this would make for a better experience. It helps people find what they need, instead of sifting through a giant library of valuable resources that aren't relevant right when they're needed. It puts the right one in front of them at exactly that moment, in email, on the site, and eventually in ad retargeting, which we're yet to test.

I'm happy to say the theory was correct. Here's what Google Analytics shows on the Axis Resource Hub.

The data

Over the last 30 days:

Roughly one in six sessions has someone staying active for at least four minutes.

A 57% engagement rate, with an average engagement time of just over two minutes a session.

11.6% of visitors were returning users.

Visitors are sharing resources straight from the page.

None of this came from making more content. Axis already had the library. We just put a curator at the door, someone who knows you, so the right resource is the first thing you see, not something you have to sift for. That was the whole idea, and the numbers say it worked.

When you're sitting on this much value, the work isn't making more of it. It's making sure the right person finds the right piece at the moment they need it. Do that, and people stop wandering the shelves. They come back. And sometimes they bring someone with them.