2019AffinoAnnual ReviewcommerceCoronavirusFeaturedResourcereviewSales & Marketing AutomationSubscriptionsUnified Business Platform+-
Sharelines
2020, the year in review
Affino's SaaS breakthroughs for 2020
Driving forward Affino's services for our community in 2020
2020 was the year where we adapted continuously to best serve and support the Affino community during the Covid pandemic. Q1 was heavily focused on ensuring that the Affino service was delivered as effectively and efficiently as possible, so as to support our clients which had up to 1,500% traffic growth in the quarter, which averaged around 300% growth across the brands running on Affino. We had an extreme focus on delivering the service as effectively as possible whilst minimising any costs to our clients.
We greatly increased the number of help guides and videos in 2020 - so that users could quickly find the information and guidance needed at a glance. We also re-wrote and extended virtually all the guides to bring them up-to-date. Affino’s support services additionally continued to go from strength to strength, with us running clinics and advisory sessions throughout the year for our clients.
An early focus this year was around supporting the Affino brand owners with launching Covid Hubs to best serve their communities, and we set up our own Coronavirus Hub in turn, with relevant insights, case studies, interviews and references.
Along the way we delivered on many of the most requested Feature Requests, including fully automated self service subscriptions, award entry payment on submission, standardised analytics, ad and edition based sales reporting and sales targets, new generation podcasting and video services, improved cookie management, AB testing on messages, and Wysiwyg drag-and-drop message editing (preview).
Some of these initiatives took a great deal of time and effort to accomplish - in particular the subscriptions which saw hundreds of updates, the statistics standardisation which sets us up well for major new analytics and insight breakthroughs in 2021, the commercial upgrades, in particular the ones relating to subscriptions and payment gateway integrations, and the message editor which is now a multi-year project.
One of the unsung areas in Affino’s evolution is the user experience - which has seen major improvements across the board. Affino’s design and build, and product teams continue to evolve the user experience at a rapid rate, and 2020 saw a new generation of video and podcasting tools which are excellent for watching and listening to respectively. Users can now add their favourite content to their My Library screen, manage their interests and realtime or summary alerts in the My Interests channel, review, renew or cancel their subscriptions on their My Account screen, and generally interact with all content and apps more smoothly across all devices.
We released fewer service upgrade releases this year at only six compared with recent years which typically see ten new releases. The number of individual updates is up a very significant 40% year on year and is reflected in the overall levelling up of the Affino SaaS service in 2020.
Key Priorities
Principles
Focus on day to day tasks
Focus on Insights, i.e. signal vs noise
Improve and polish the overall experience across the board
Service Elements
Subscriptions
Directories
Personal Dashboard
Insight
Affino Releases
No.
6
Threads.
1459
Platform & Performance
Extensive and ongoing performance updates across all front-end interfaces and key control centre screens for ever faster service delivery
We also did a great deal of data optimisation both to minimise load and improve performance, and also to prepare for the major intel updates coming in 2021.
Subscriptions
Affino’s subscription management and retention capabilities have been the primary focus for 2020
Automation
We have invested heavily to create one of the most automated, self-service subscription platforms available.
This has meant introducing automations across the entire subscription experience for both the end users and management processes.
These automations have been extended through to the payment gateway integrations to maximise retention.
We have extensive guides covering the innovations here.
Promotion and Purchasing
Streamlined subscription promotion and sales workflows with easy to manage promotions, multiple purchase options, and greatly refined onboarding experience.
Reporting
We have transformed the subscription reporting, with end to end reporting on all key subscription activities and financials. With extensive ability to drill down on every single subscription, order, status and transaction.
Subscription Status Notifications (with Colours)
Subscription Expiry Report
Stop Code Reports
Renewal Notices
Print Renewal Notices for subs with upcoming expiries. Generates the actual PDF notices for upcoming expiring subs, and uses the user export to export the list of names / addresses to go with it.
Enhanced digital renewal campaigns with more flexibility on automatic, semi-automatic and manual renewal campaigns.
Gifting Subscriptions
Users will either be able to activate or gift subscriptions
Renewal Items
We have introduced the ability to identify new products, prices, subscription timeframes on the renewals. This is both for introductory offers, and to provide automated routes to enhanced and new services.
Cancellations
Greatly improved cancellations, with flexible control over which subscriptions users can and can’t un-subscribe from.
Commerce
Subscriptions
New fully automated self-service subscription platform
Ad Sales
Major enhancements to sales workflows and reporting to support ad sales
Sales Targets
Sales target dashboards and overview for managing advanced sales targets across subscriptions, events, ad sales and editions
Pro Formas / Orders / Order Line Items
Major enhancements for Pro Forma Orders and Orders, including search, renewals, messaging, status awareness and filtering.
Related Products
Re-introduction of Related Up-sell and Related Products to Affino.
Showcase upgrades on My Account
Reporting
Capture on each order line item the edition or delivery date for each item.
Update all commercial reports to be optionally based on date of sale or date of delivery.
Major updates across all sales reporting, in particular for all subscriptions reporting, e.g. deferred income and liability reports
Products
Advanced Product listing and display for enhanced product layouts and presentation, with the ability to run product directories including 3rd party products
Orders
New support for multiple payment dates for each order, essential for multi-part subscriptions
This year has seen a transformation of order management within Affino, with major enhancements across the board
Pro Formas
Major enhancements to support direct to consumer sales; improved reporting and automation.
Payment Gateways
Adding extended support for payment gateways
Stripe
New support for the Stripe payment gateway with subscription support, including cancellations, updates, etc.
GoCardless
Direct Debit payment gateway with subscription support, including cancellations, updates, etc.
Invoicing
Major invoicing and pro forma invoicing updates to extend the flexibility and depth of the invoicing capabilities
Social
Accounts
Accounts have been transformed both within the CRM and publicly. We have greatly improved the intelligence available on accounts with the new Content tab: showcasing all articles related to the account/ a new Page Analysis (and updated User Analysis) which showcases all the interactions with the public company page.
The public accounts directories have been transformed with the ability to showcase far more account related content, including products, videos and podcasts. Showcase dealer networks with lead generation, with direct messaging.
geo based searches for showing the nearest dealer / office, and the ability to tightly segment multiple packages with an array of new presentation options.
Addresses
Complete address management revamp, including full user management of addresses
Contact Lists
Greatly improved contact list management so that they can now be grouped, with more insight, improved auto-assignment, and the lists can now be used in many more contexts.
Cookie Preferences
New generation cookie preference management, more control and easier to immediately accept and enable all cookies
Customer Loyalty Scheme
New Badges channel to highlight reward / kudos activities for earning points.
New Rewards Design Element for showcasing and claiming rewards (and how to get them).
Multiple additional enhancements for full reward scheme delivery
Forums
Multiple incremental improvements to forums, including a new FAQ presentation style, auto-closing and answering threads, and improved un-subscribing.
Imports / Exports
Extensive standardisation updates across all imports and exports
New Edition Imports and Exports
Enhanced User / Lead Generation exports with a number of focused lead generation options now available
Member Tools
Interests Management
New dedicated Interest management for users
My Library (favourites)
New favouriting capability with a dedicated My Favourites page.
Shows all favourites with search and sort.
Dedicated article, video and audio listing with in-situ playback
My Account
Greatly improved My Account screen with improved access to all purchases and subscriptions, and the ability to renew and cancel.
My Information
Improved personal information management and onboarding workflows
On Page Feedback
Significant upgrade with improved sentiment capture, intel and new export
Media
We will be further enhancing the media display in Affino, with the improved ability to sell media; the ability to paywall / engagement wall media items; and generally enhance the media presentation
Video Library
New enhanced Video Library with great easy to use video listing and detailed screens.
Fully featured for video use throughout the site, with pop up video player, sponsor highlights, up-next video recommendation, comments and ratings, social sharing and much more.
Podcasting
Great new Podcasting library capability, with as many podcasts and episodes as you like.
Fully featured for video use throughout the site, with pop up audio player, sponsor highlights, up-next episode recommendation, comments and ratings, social sharing and much more.
Automated Image and Thumbnail Generation
Main and Thumbnail images auto-generated from PDFs
Video Thumbnail Image Generation (3 options)
Media Stats
Core Stats update to Media Item Detail view for Documents, Videos and Podcasts
Extended Download, Watched and Listened to stats respectively.
Digital Archive
New Digital Archive capabilities with enhanced PDF upload and thumbnail generation, daily download limits, tighter security and improved search and listing
YouTube Integration
Updated embed in inbound feed support for YouTube videos
Updated automation to separate out thumbnails to different media section
Enhanced Media Listing, Detail and DE
Broad enhancements to all media listings and views, with improved sharing, social and tracking.
Design
Milestone
With the release of the Menu Design Element it is now entirely possible to fully build and style sites using just the core Affino design elements and templates.
Design
There have been hundreds of design refinements throughout Affino with almost every design element and template updated over the past year - in order to add more flexibility, more meta data, and simply look better across all devices.
New Design Elements
The following new Design Elements are now available:
Menu DE
For advanced Drop-down menus, with easy drag and drop menu management
Rewards DE
New design element for showcasing customer loyalty scheme awards.
New Templates
The following new Channel Types have been introduced:
Comparison
New comparison channel for showcasing review comparisons, e.g. for car, tech, and other product review comparisons
My Interests
Where users can specify their interests and sign up for realtime or summary topic alerts
My Library
Personalised library of the user’s favourites with instant playback of videos and podcasts and quick access to articles
Topics
Topic listing channel which can showcase your key topics (with clickthroughs to browsing)
Events & Directories
Self-service Directory
Major usability enhancements throughout for easier and more intuitive self service.
Awards
New options to pay for awards on entry or post submission
Major usability updates and flexibility improvements on the judging process
Events and Seminar iCal support
Advanced auto and custom support for iCal throughout events and seminars
Seminars
Improved listing to show blank sessions where there are gaps in the seminar streams
Publishing
Editions
Greatly improved Editions at the heart of digital archives
Topic Channel
New channel for showcasing onsite topics and content.
Priority Articles
New ability to promote priority articles and products to top of listings
My Interests & Alerts
New Topic channel with relative, daily and weekly alerts
Reviews
Enhanced reviews with new filtering and search options, presentation updates, verdict panel, and upcoming launch filter and comparisons
Comparisons (Reviews)
New comparison channel for showcasing review comparisons, e.g. for car, tech, and other product review comparisons
Accounts
Greatly extended company / brand / dealer directory services
Article Attributes
We have transformed the article attribute capability to support conditional attributes, more presentation options, more nuanced management options and directly tied into the site search engine for precise searches.
Search
Improved content search and sort, with multiple new filtering and sort options
Promotion
Messaging
Enhanced Browser Preview (with width options)
Support for Campaign Placement Areas
Message heatmaps
AB Testing / targeting on messages, when combined with the targeted articles allows for full end-to-end personalisation of message to landing page.
New Wysiwyg drag and drop email creation, introduced as an alpha preview this year with the full rollout in Q1 2021
New Responsive Templates (more default template options)
Optimised sending and analytics, faster delivery and page serving.
Customer Ladder
Triggers
Multiple new triggers for birthdays, video start / finish, audio start / finish, adding / removing from favourites and many more
Conversion Events
Ability to create a task from a conversion event
Conversion Funnels
Enhanced conversion funnels with enforced sequences and automatically updated Contact Lists for users at each step in a funnel
Paywall / Engagement Wall
New text fadeout option for metering, shown to increase conversion rates for some brands
Sales and Marketing Automation
There are multiple breakthroughs with Conversion Events this year, not least the ability to display them and use them for the customer loyalty scheme and community kudos.
We have added a range of new triggers, refined how the conversion events apply, send out near realtime campaign messages, and generally enhanced the use of the customer ladder throughout
Analysis
Standardised Analytics
Extensive standardisation and optimisation of all analytics in Affino to ensure consistency across all reports.
New Analytics
We have extended the core Site Analysis engine to support a host of additional content types including:
Account Page Analysis
Edition Analysis
Media Analysis
APIs
Authentication
Extensive enhancements to the APIs to better support 3rd party authentication
User API
Greatly enhanced User API, with enhanced granular security, and numerous new methods to support a host of next generation subscription integrations.