How Labelium works with Contentsquare to stimulate performance-driven growth for its customers

Labelium is a digital marketing consultancy firm. With a global team of over 500 experts, Labelium aims to drive business growth through performance-driven branding strategies in more than 17 countries.

We spoke to Karl Hoquante, Chief Operating Officer at StratNXT, the digital consulting entity of Labelium, to find out more about their work, their partnership with Contentsquare, his views on what makes a good customer relationship, and the recent trends he's noticed in the world of experience analytics.

Customer behaviors are often driven by years of habits and analytics can throw up some odd data. Working with Contentsquare helps us understand any unusual numbers. Our teams complement each other very nicely, and that brings a lot of value to the client.

Karl Hoquante

Chief Operating Officer at StratNXT (the digital strategy consulting entity of the Labelium Group)

By way of introduction, what is your role and what types of customers do you serve?

Karl Hoquante: Labelium was born as a media agency 20 years ago. Now we have more than 20 offices worldwide, for our 10+ entities (and more than 1,000 employees). Labelium is also the largest Google partner in France and first agency certified Mobile Web by Google.

At StratNXT we complement the group's media DNA by providing consulting services around digital insights, onsite performance, and growth plan acceleration. Incubated in 2021, StratNXt now has more than 20 consultants—all certified on Contentsquare!

What trends do you see in the experience analytics space?

KH : Well, I think there are a few key trends. The major trend, in my opinion, is that experience analytics is not only a day-to-day tool. A few years ago, the solution was hardly used regularly by any level above a Digital Analyst. C-level were never exposed to customer journeys, pain points or more largely analytics. Now this is at the heart of our conversation with them.

Secondly, brands and retailers have invested significantly on acquisition, and now they really understand that experience analytics can enable them to be far more cost-efficient, and reduce acquisition budgets.

What do you think makes for a good customer relationship?

KH: We maintain great relationships with our customers because we understand their business. Experience analytics is not only about providing customers with stats and action plans. We complement our services with benchmarks—and not only of our customers' competitors, since visitors can be exposed to other experiences just before visiting the website of our customer.

Also, our unique value proposition is that we can really provide our customers with a seamless journey for visitors, from media strategy to landing pages and optimized onsite experience. That's why we have branded this service PerfXP.

I had the opportunity to work on the client-side for many years, with industry leaders such as La Redoute or LVMH, and I am convinced that this is instrumental.

Next to that, I think it is essential to engage our customers at various levels in their organization around customer experience. And that makes a great & balanced relationship.

How do you differentiate yourself from the competition?

KH: The DNA of Labelium group is performance. And I really know what it means for customers, because I used to be a (happy) customer of Labelium when I was at La Redoute!

We have an end-to-end approach and are possibly the only 'one-stop shop' for customers who want performance for media combined with onsite performance at a global scale.

What about your business and the industry keeps you up at night?

KH: Performance. Thanks to my retail industry background, the ecommerce performance of our clients is really the thing that keeps me up and I always propose ideas (but also challenge them) to perform better. I love ecommerce from the early days I was given the opportunity at LVMH to do Retail.

Tell us about a successful customer engagement you worked on together with Contentsquare?

KH: There are quite a few now, but I really enjoyed engaging successfully with Afibel (Damartex Group) earlier this year.

Having led digital transformations of mail order companies, I can bring lots of insights and expertise to our clients to help them speed up their transformation—but I also get to work with our consultants to really understand what is still quite specific about this industry.

Where Contentsquare's expertise came in was around analytics data. Customer behaviors are often driven by years of habits and analytics can throw up some odd data around certain KPIs. Working with Contentsquare helps us understand any unusual numbers.

Fun question: what's your favorite vacation destination, and why?

KH: I have possibly visited more than 60 countries, but I do indeed have a favorite destination: the Basque Country.

I have always loved it, but then I was fortunate enough to marry a Basque from Biarritz! So my wife and myself enjoy spending time 'at home' there with our children. The perfect destination for sea lovers, hiking and trailing, golfing, food, etc.