Iconic doughnut chain Krispy Kreme has been making use of word-of-mouth marketing since it began 75 years ago, says CMO Dwayne Chambers. Social media platforms are the modern day equivalent of word-of-mouth, reinforcing customers’ ownership of the brand, says Chambers, who shares his take on how social media has changed how restaurants market. Click here to read more
Here is a case study I read recently on Direct Mail advertising + SMS (also known as text message)…. this is a long case study but worth reading…
SUMMARY: If you want to build a strong membership base for your customer loyalty or rewards program, you have to make it as easy as possible for customers to sign up.
See how a pizza restaurant chain used SMS, a contest and direct mail to get customers to register for their loyalty program. Total membership increased 5%, and the team saved enough money to roll into later campaigns.
CHALLENGE
Chris Bright, President, zpizza, and his marketing team have one major business goal:
They want at least 1,000 heavy‐use customers for each of their restaurant locations. The team defines a heavy‐use customer as someone who spends at least $50 per month at a restaurant and visits at least twice a month. The trouble is, it can be difficult to identify these customers.
So the team created its zTribe loyalty program to help identify regular customers and to reward them for their patronage. In order to continually attract new members (and identify more heavy‐users), the team wanted to make signing up for zTribe as convenient as possible. They saw an opportunity in SMS messaging.
“SMS text right now seems to be the easiest way to get someone on board with a loyalty program,” Bright says.
CAMPAIGN
Bright and his team combined a cash prize, direct mail and SMS messaging to encourage customers to register for zTribe, and to introduce new products to the public.
Here are the five steps they followed:
Step #1. Build registration architecture.
The team asks all customers signing up for zTribe to complete a survey. Rather than reinvent the wheel, they used the same survey for this effort. The Web‐based survey takes about five to six minutes to complete, Bright says, and asks visitors questions about their zpizza ordering habits and their contact information. The last frame of the survey asks visitors to opt into the team’s promotional email list.
Step #2. Design contest and direct mail piece.
The team set up a $5,000 cash giveaway contest tied to a direct mail postcard. Contestants entered by scratching a portion of the card and texting the revealed
keyword and their email address to a provided mobile short code number. The team then emailed contestants to tell them if they had won, and to encourage them to register for zTribe.
Here are the key parts to the contest:
The postcard featured a “scratch‐off” section. When scratched, it revealed a keyword that the user would text to the short code to enter the contest. The
team mostly used brand‐related words such as “fresh,” Bright says.
Step #3. Disseminate postcards.
The team mailed the cards in October to residents within two miles of each zpizza restaurant ‐‐ approximately 3,000 people per location. They also sent the cards to each restaurant to be handed out to customers as they ordered in the store.
Step #4. Promote.
As with most of their marketing campaigns, the team mentioned this effort in two additional places:
Step #5. Monitor SMS entries For the most part, the campaign went smoothly.
However, an issue did surface related to the keyword they had selected for certain game pieces.
The team used a product name for one keyword, “zBread.” After scratching, some customers thought they had won a free zBread and tried to redeem the card in stores without first texting to see what they’d won, per contest rules.
“That was a lesson learned,” Bright says. “Don’t use product names in the scratch‐off because they can create a lot of confusion.”
RESULTS
“We were pleased with the results and with the lift in zTribe memberships,” Bright says. Compared to their normal zTribe registration rate, the rate during the six‐week campaign grew by 17%. Total registrations increased 5%.
The team realized a 1.06% conversion rate from the mailing.
No grand prize awarded yet.
The overall cost of the campaign was kept down since no one redeemed the grand‐prize winning postcard.
“We’ll be rolling that $5,000 into another campaign this year.”
Just when I thought that Facebook could not get any bigger, it just did. Recently, Express, the retail company, expanded its Facebook marketing platform by adding a new application tab “Shop EXPRESS” that enables Facebook users to access its retail products and buy from the Facebook page.
While reviewing the application on Facebook, I have to say I was quite impressed. By adding these functions and app, EXPRESS is able to both promote their product and sell some products. One of the functions that I love is the ‘Like’ function. When a Facebook user click ‘Like’ on one of the products, that action will automatically be shown in the user’s news feed, thus promoting the brand to the user’s circle. After researching more about shopping through Facebook, I discovered that a similar function that enables Facebook fans to shop in Facebook has actually been done by other retail companies such as DKNY and BANANA Republic before although each company seem to utilize it differently. An interesting article titled “Would you go shopping on Facebook?” by theclosthingmenu.com discusses further the topic of online shopping through Facebook.
As for the matter of integrating Facebook for shopping, my opinion stands that I’m not really sure of what the future holds for shopping through Facebook, but I find the use of Facebook for marketing the brands is definitely effective. The ‘Like’ functions and the ability to comment on the product from the company’s Facebook page are quite brilliant. In a way, it’s like an upgraded version of the word of mouth marketing.
What should people who have a physical location be considering? Would they want to combine their Facebook Page or their Facebook Place? What does that look like?
Facebook has recently rolled out a specific type of Page called a Place page. It’s still fairly early in the adoption of Place Pages. If you are a single-location business, it might be better for you to use a Place Page instead of a fan Page just because there’s some additional things that you can do with a Place Page, such as the ability to do offer ―deals.
Deals are when somebody checks in at your location and you give them an offer. You pay for that in a similar way you pay for advertising. It’s the only form of mobile advertising available on the Facebook platform right now.
If you are the type of business with multiple locations, then it would be a good time for you to continue to keep your brand Page but then roll out a Facebook Place Page for each of your locations. And again, that allows you to roll out deals specific to each of those locations, and it allows people to start to then interact with the other fans. This interaction is one of the key things that people are looking for from the whole fan Page experience, and they can do so with people who are from their same geo-location.
If you are a massive franchise or a very large business, something like a CVS Pharmacy or a McDonalds or Starbucks, then you would have thousands of Place Pages to roll out. Right now, the problem that we have seen with brands is most brands are just trying to figure out how to manage a single brand page.
The idea of adding the complexity of thousands of these individual locations when the tools really aren’t mature enough to allow you to be able to manage a volume of Place Pages like that, it’s probably a little too early for a brand like that to get in unless they have some large investment that they plan on making for a Herculean effort to manage it.
The toolkit for marketers on Facebook is a little different from the more traditional toolkit that marketers are used to. Advertising has been the traditional path of most marketers. But few marketers are finding that path successful today for a variety of reasons, including the cost of advertising and its effectiveness.
Even though advertising is available on social networks like Facebook, it is not a guarantee of success.
While Facebook offers advertising as a way to reach out to your customer, it also includes tools that address the more viral nature of the social network. You can maintain a presence on the site and distribute your content. To enhance your Page, you can add elaborate software apps. Why not hold a contest or host an event?
Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is the process of information exchange, especially recommendations about products and services, between two people in an informal way. In the past, word of mouth has been a spoken phenomenon, but other types of dialogue (such as email and Web postings) are now included in the definition. It differs from other types of communication in that the source credibility is very high. That is, the person giving the information is generally seen as a much more credible source by the person receiving the information. This is especially true when someone knows the person that is giving him or her the information.
With Facebook attracting more than 400 million users, the question is no longer if you need to create a Facebook brand presence, it’s how you’re going to use one. If people are talking about your brand, you want them to be doing it on your official page so that you can leverage Facebook’s open social graph and drive users back to your site. But you can only do that after you jump one very important (and large) hurdle.
You have to make people want to join your Facebook page.
It’s simple: You can’t market to or build brand awareness with someone who’s not opted in. What’s not simple is getting a user to hit that ‘like’ button. Users are a lot more discerning on Facebook than on other social sites. For them to opt into your page, they need a compelling reason. It’s a big step from passively liking a brand to publicly ‘liking’ them in full view of friends and colleagues. You have to make it worth their while.
How do you get something to like you enough to make it Facebook official?
Listen to Your Target Market
Use social media to research the needs and preferences of your target customers. Here are three options to consider:
• Twitter: Track what people say about your business by signing up for the free TweetBeep.com service (tweetbeep.com) and receive email alerts whenever there are tweets on particular topics and/or within predefined geographical areas. An athletic shoe store could receive tweets from new runners in its geographic area.
• Blogs: Sign up to receive daily emails or RSS feed updates in your favorite feedreader program, such as Google Reader (google.com/reader), from blogs that focus on your area of interest. Be sure to read the comments posted on the blogs. They provide valuable insights into the views of people in your target market.
• Facebook: Many businesses or organizations have their own Facebook pages and groups. Join a handful in your area of expertise and pay attention to what others in your market are saying. You might also choose to pose questions to gather intelligence about a particular topic or market need.
Choose What Works For You
Building a social media presence can strengthen customer relationships, foster open communication and generate new business. However, it can also consume a substantial amount of time. It’s not all work, though. Social media can also be fun and personally rewarding as you discover new ways to connect with others and to enrich relationships.
It’s not necessary to dive into all aspects of social media all at once. Instead, you might want to start small, familiarize yourself with the various sites and then decide where to focus your resources based on specific company objectives.
Track, Measure and Refine
Use social media measurement tools to gauge your success. This isn’t determined by the number of Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have but by the amount of business you actually gain from social media channels. Tools such as Google Alerts and Google Brand Alerts are available to help monitor online mentions of you, your products or your brand.
Social media is changing how consumers make buying decisions and how companies run their operations. With a commitment of time and effort, you can take part in this revolution.
With social media, the investment is less expensive, but it requires a time commitment to reap the rewards. Potential customers may be more receptive to your marketing messages via social media and less likely to view them as annoying interruptions than they might traditional advertising.
This dynamic shift occurs when your company is visible on social media venues that customers rely on. Consumers and businesses are increasingly seeking purchase information on Twitter and Facebook® or through consumer review sites, such as Yelp® and Angie’s List®.
By identifying and securing your place on the sites that matter most to your customers, you are able to direct prospects your way.
1. Establish Yourself as an Authority
Social media tools can help you gain recognition in your industry. Here are a few examples:
• Start blogging. You might choose to start with a free blog authoring tool, such as WordPress (wordpress.com) or Blogger™ (blogger.com).
User-friendly services like these don’t require previous technical knowledge. The challenge is in creating fresh content on a regular basis. When you blog you are representing the company, but you’re doing it as a human being with personality.
That’s why the blog needs to be in your voice, not “corporate speak.” People relate to people more than they do corporate entities.
If you are unsure what to write about, consider commonly asked questions from your customers. Use your blog to demonstrate how your expertise can fit their needs. For example, as a contractor, customers may like to know what home improvements can yield the best return on investment or what the most energy-efficient windows are. Once you establish your blog, you should refresh the content at least once a week.
• Create a Facebook fan page. Share company news and information with clients, potential customers and industry advocates with your own Facebook page. Unlike friends on a personal account, a company’s page has fans, who subscribe to stay updated on news and product developments. What’s more, friends of your fans can see their choices. This becomes a vote of confidence for your business and increases the likelihood that your fan network may spread to other Facebook users.
• Create a Twitter account. Use Twitter to spark interest among consumers looking for the types of products or services you offer. These short messages of up to 140 characters can spread information in an easily digestible format.
For example, a caterer could offer a recurring recipe of the day. To increase the number of followers, identify fellow Twitter users in your target market or region and follow them. More than likely, they’ll follow you in return. Twitter is also good for starting a dialogue and being reactive to those who respond to your tweets and retweets.
• Connect through LinkedIn. People use LinkedIn to network with past colleagues and friends, find leads, look for jobs and share industry news. You can also use LinkedIn to become an industry expert by answering questions in online group discussions.
• Participate in online communities and forums.
Find related industry forums that have active, engaged participants. Instead of pitching your company’s offerings, establish yourself as an expert. Answer questions, post questions and start a conversation to demonstrate your depth of knowledge to a very specific audience.
Examples of this include LinkedIn’s Answers (linkedin.com/answers), Business.com Answers (answers.business.com) and Business.gov’s small business community (community.business.gov/bsng).
Case studies and testimonials introduce two powerful ways in which brands can successfully magnify the happy voices of their customers and win over more followers. Creating case studies enables companies to convert passionate customers into influential “evangelists” who will spread specific messages and thus initiate word-of-mouth marketing.
Case studies and testimonials not only allow marketers to harness the power of peer-to-peer influence, but they also equip salespeople with targeted examples of customer success stories. In this way, they empower businesses to “show” and not only “tell” about the value their product or service brings. Case studies provide sales people with examples of solutions relevant for potential audiences. The palpable results and personal quotes of featured customers demonstrate the real value of your product or service.
