Challenge
Talkbe partnered with Universal Music Group and Sony Music to improve how their marketing teams engaged fans. Existing email channels were limited, with uninspired campaigns that resulted in low engagement rates. A more direct, interactive solution was needed to meet marketing goals.
Solution
The design and delivery of custom chatbot SaaS tools, enabling marketing teams to connect with fans instantly. This new channel provided creative and customisable methods for marketing teams to engage with fans, achieving 75% read rates and 25% click-through rates.
Discover
Collaborating with clients and stakeholders at Universal Music Group & Sony Music UK allowed us to intimately understand our core user: the marketing teams of top record labels. Proximity to users facilitated a seamless understanding of their challenges through regular calls, visits, interviews, and workshops, thereby crafting practical problem statements.

Define
With a lean, user-centric approach, we prioritized authentic user needs from actual data, resulting in documents such as personas and "how might we" statements. These needs informed our roadmap, bolstered by research, user stories, and success metrics. This essential documentation streamlined the project, keeping the team focused on attainable goals while offering users a glimpse into future updates.

Design
Our small team effectively prioritized high-value, low-effort tasks, consistently delivering value. We evaluated requirements collectively, addressing technical limits and brainstorming ideas. This led to sketches, journeys, and low-fidelity prototypes, with key figures from UMG and Sony often participating in the workshops to explore new concepts.

Deliver
Designs underwent usability and viability testing, with validated work backed by functional specs that avoid development confusion. Final concepts, aligned with our style guide, transitioned into visual design. Post-release, solutions were monitored and compared against predefined success metrics.

Result
Talkbe empowered Universal Music Group to create custom chatbots for top artists, reaching a new audience. The UMG marketing team achieved a 75% read rate and a 25% click-through rate, significantly higher than email's 17% / 3%. Additionally, Detonate festival sold out 2400% faster.
