We all know that getting your prospects to binge on your content and self-educate on your offerings is the key to advancing them through the path to purchase.

It’s simple: allow your customers to binge on relevant content about your brand, let them self-educate, then reap the benefits of qualified leads who move through the funnel quicker. (If you need a refresher on why on-demand content is the key to converting more leads, check out this page!)

But after ink touches paper, there are still many ways you can leverage content activation in the post-sale world. The on-demand content experience isn’t just for converting buyers. It’s also a crucial strategy if you care about delivering delightful customer experiences, educating customers on an ongoing basis, and setting yourself up for long-term retention.

Here are 3 tips for leveraging content insight and activation with your existing customers—plus examples from real customer marketers of how they’re successfully doing it.

1. Create seamless, bingeable onboarding experiences

After you’ve signed a new customer, creating a smooth and easy onboarding experience is hugely important for retaining your customers in the long term. Delivering value quickly, and without too much effort is sure to pay dividends when it comes to creating successful customers, who are also more likely to become advocates in the future.

So why not package your onboarding materials together into a curated sequence of content (a.k.a. Content Track)? This makes the experience of consuming training materials easy and effortless. Plus, you can seamlessly string together content in a variety of formats, including videos, Knowledge Base articles, PDFs from your product team, etc.

Instead of one-and-done customer onboarding emails that only offer a single asset, you can get more juice from your squeeze using bingeable Content Tracks that can help get your customer ramped up faster.

Example from our own marketing

Here at PathFactory, we practice what we preach! Our customer experience team uses on-demand content to onboard new customers, including a video training series delivered in a Content Track.

And our customers love it! Here’s what Chris Mitchell, Marketing Programs Specialist at Carbon Black, has to say about his onboarding experience with PathFactory.

Getting Started With PathFactory Featuring Carbon Black from PathFactory on Vimeo.

2. Flag customers who aren’t consuming training materials for a personal touch

Sharing a beautiful package of training materials is a great first step. But before you consider your work done, you also need to make sure that your customers are making time to consume it.

That’s where PathFactory’s “content insight” comes in handy. Packaging your training materials into Content Tracks means PathFactory is collecting robust analytics on how your content is being consumed. So you can easily identify which customers are flying through your training materials (and give them a high five!), as well as which customers haven’t spent time on it.

When you identify customers who haven’t spent time getting acquainted with your product, you can flag these customers to your Customer Success team to check-in and give them a nudge.

Example from Adobe’s customer marketing

The Adobe customer marketing team uses content consumption analytics to flag customers who are not engaging with training materials to CSMs to do check-ins.

How Adobe Wins At Customer Marketing from PathFactory on Vimeo.

3. Boost product adoption by educating on current and new features

As GI Joe says, “Knowledge is half the battle.” Your customers could be getting massive value from using your product. But if they don’t know about all your features and functionality, then they won’t be getting the full benefit that they could be. So it’s your job to educate them on the full functionality of your produce or solution, as well as any new features they would love.

Both new and seasoned customers can benefit from this, at all stages of their customer lifecycle. And since adoption is the first step towards long term retention, this is a crucial piece. Consider sending customers Content Tracks with product information on an ongoing basis, especially when you’re releasing something new.

Example from Cisco’s customer marketing

Nate Ratzlaff and Doan Thai from Cisco’s customer marketing team continually engage customers post-sale by sending out relevant content on an ongoing basis. They were able to produce a 74% increase in content consumption using this approach, and saw a 3.5X increase in adoption linked to content engagement. (Read more about Cisco’s story here.)

Cisco’s Content Insight And Activation Story from PathFactory on Vimeo.

Why you need on-demand customer marketing

Customer marketing plays an integral role in generating revenue through retention. Using a combination of these strategies will help you make the most out of every customer touchpoint to create successful customers, and keep them happy throughout all customer lifestyles stages.