EAST Framework: Helping you influence customer behavioral for the better

We have been talking about using Behavioral Economics and Behavioral Insights to meet marketing and experience management goals of an organization for long now.

While the focus of understanding customer behavior has always been key, we have already established using behavioral insights mixed with techniques intended to better the life/journey/interaction of the customer is the focus area or so-called developmental area.

Behavioral Insights and Marketing

Behavioral insights is about understanding and changing behavior – and ultimately, as marketers, that is our goal too – through the understanding and optimization of customer experience.

To simplify processes, make brand interactions more intuitive, achieve higher click-throughs on our emails, and encourage more conversions online – these are all goals shared within BI and marketing.

Where behavioral insights aims to improve the lives of people; with marketing, it only works if you have visibility of the overall customer experience beforehand and can identify a need, want or desire to change, to begin with.

The customer must already have a desire or need to fulfil – it’s the job of the brand, and therefore the marketer to make it as easy as possible to achieve that goal, empowering them to make positive, conscious decisions across their journey.

You are helping and nudging them along their journey, not changing their path with persuasion. 

The EAST Framework

With the prime focus on influencing behavior, make your intervention/nudge – EASY, ATTRACTIVE, SOCIAL and TIMELY (EAST).

EASY - If a decision requires minimal effort, it’s more likely to be the one that’s chosen.

• Harness the power of defaults – making the desired action the default option makes it more likely to be selected.
• Reduce the hassle factor of taking up a service - The effort required to perform an action often puts people off. Reducing the effort required can increase uptake or response rates.
• Simplify messages – Making the message clear often results in a significant increase in response rates to communications. In particular, it’s useful to identify how a complex goal can be broken down into simpler, easier actions.

Example: Auto-enrollment in paid subscription on OTT platforms – saw renewal rates rise from 53% to 72%

ATTRACTIVE - If something is attractive, we will be drawn to it.

• Attract attention - We are more likely to do something that our attention is drawn towards. Ways of doing this include the use of images, colour or personalisation.
• Design rewards and sanctions for maximum effect - Financial incentives are often highly effective, but alternative incentive designs — such as lotteries — also work well and often cost less.

Example: Gamification and ‘lucky draw’ have been favorites for a while now – to drive more business.

SOCIAL – We are social beings – we care about what our peers are doing, and what they think of us

• Show that most people perform the desired behaviour: Describing what most people do in a particular situation encourages others to do the same. Similarly, marketers should be wary of inadvertently reinforcing a problematic behavior by emphasizing its high prevalence.
• Use the power of networks: We are embedded in a network of social relationships, and those we come into contact with shape our actions. Marketers can foster networks to enable collective action, provide mutual support, and encourage behaviors to spread peer-to-peer.
• Encourage people to make a commitment to others: We often use commitment devices to voluntarily ‘lock ourselves’ into doing something in advance. The social nature of these commitments is often crucial.

Example: ‘People like you’ campaign run by an insurance company, in 2020 lead to 20% increase in click rates.

TIMELY – The time that you choose to prompt or ‘nudge’ someone towards a desired behaviour is vitally important

• Prompt people when they are likely to be most receptive: The same offer made at different times can have drastically different levels of success. Behaviour is generally easier to change when habits are already disrupted, such as around major life events.
• Consider the immediate costs and benefits: We are more influenced by costs and benefits that take effect immediately than those delivered later. Marketers should consider whether the immediate costs or benefits can be adjusted (even slightly), given that they are so influential.
• Help people plan their response to events: There is a substantial gap between intentions and actual behavior. A proven solution is to prompt people to identify the barriers to action and develop a specific plan to address them.

Example: Payment management method - introduced by a NBFC in 2020, saw 30% increase in timely payments, without reminders being sent.

Applying the EAST framework to your marketing efforts

Before you apply the EAST framework to your marketing, you must first understand your customers’ journeys and any challenges faced on their path to conversion.

Mapping out the customer experience like this allow you to identify moments of truth, which can barriers and blockers that might dissuade the user from continuing onto the next step – whether that’s contacting you, signing up for an email, making a purchase or simply completing an action on your site.

Carry out Customer Experience research, including journey and empathy mapping.

Looking at the ‘moments of truth’, identify the challenges people have within their experience – this step takes the guesswork out and gives you true context and perspective from real life customers (existing or potential).

List out which behaviors and outcomes you want to change – Consider what the particular behaviors are that can contribute to what you want your customers to do? Decide how these are going to be measured so you know how effective your activity has been (or not, which remember isn’t always a bad thing, but instead is a learning).

Decide on your specific activities that need to be used to change the behaviors. These are known as ‘interventions’ in behavioral terms but can also be called your ‘solutions’.

For each of these, list out what is needed from the EAST principles:

• How EASY is it for them to do what you would like them to do?
• How ATTRACTIVE is it for them to do it?
• What are the SOCIAL implications?
• When is the right TIME for them to do it?

Test and learn – start to implement your activity but make sure you test and learn from this, then adapt your activity accordingly.

Summing up

The EAST framework can be of help for simplifying processes, removing unnecessary information, changing complicated steps, designing a user friend product/service or crafting communication/messages: it all translates into better marketing experience leading to more business and better customer loyalty. Which ultimately leads to better brand equity and brand recall.

Overall, EAST framework can be the backbone for brand development, customer experience management, digital management and even growth marketing.

The original EAST Framework was developed by The behavioral Insights Team in early 2012 - read more about it here: BIT-Publication-EAST_FA_WEB.pdf (behaviouralinsights.co.uk)