Who are your ambassadors and how can you engage them further?

Gaining consumer trust is important, especially in a context where competition can be fierce, it can be more complicated than you think. Today's consumers have many ways to gather information about brands and form their opinions, whether it be through advertising, websites, online reviews, social networks or their friends.

According to Kantar, 93% of them believe that the opinion of their friends and family about a brand is of major importance in their purchasing process. This is why identifying your ambassadors and stimulating them, thanks to adapted customer sponsorship programmes, to share your brand's products with their friends and family, is an indispensable strategy in the creation of a healthy and solid community.

The aim of this article is to help you to :

• Measure customer engagement and identify your ambassadors;
• Stimulate them with personalised customer referral programmes.

What is a brand ambassador?

Before determining who your who your ambassadors are, it is important to understand the different terminologies associated with the concept of sponsorship. We are talking about customer sponsorship, not to be confused with a partnership strategy with an influencer. Here are the main differences between an influencer and an ambassador:

• An influencer or blogger is not necessarily initially a customer of yours, but is usually paid to share and communicate about your brand to their community.
• An ambassador with a difference is an engaged, satisfied and and convinced customer who buys and follows your brand on social networks. They are most likely already sharing your brand's products with their friends and family on social networks.

How do you measure customer engagement?

Engagement is measured by the frequency and proactivity of the interactions a customer has with your brand. It's up to you to decide which types of interactions are worth scoring to measure what you think would reflect your customers' engagement:

• Email open and click rates
• Frequency and duration of visits to your website
• Do they respond to your satisfaction surveys, NPS ?
• Do they leave notices?
• Do they give you data about them (birthday, etc.)?
• Are they members of your loyalty programme?
• Do they subscribe to your social networks?
• Frequency of purchase
• The average basket

Measuring your customers' engagement will allow you to increase customer knowledge, personalise your messages and better convert your campaigns. The engagement rate will also allow you to identify the most responsive customers to your messages but contrary to what one might think, the customers with the highest engagement rates are not necessarily your ambassadors. The first referral campaign you launch to your customer database will allow you to identify the customers who willingly share your referral vouchers, and therefore determine your ambassadors.

How to run an ambassador programme based on engagement?

Your database is a real gold mine, it's time to extract the nuggets and exploit its full potential. Your first customer referral campaigns will be key to determining the levels of engagement of the different types of customers and animating them. Below you will find the three main types that you will find:

1. Ambassadors 

Who are they? The customers who will have the highest engagement score and who will be the most active in your first referral campaigns.

Which referral program: Ambassador Program

• Objectives: Recruit new customers, boost customer engagement and satisfaction, generate additional revenue
• Possible segmentations :
  • Best Buyers
  • Customers with multiple 5-star reviews
  • Customers who follow you on social networks
• Types of rewards :
  • Acknowledgement: small extra touches, thanks on a dedicated page of the site, interviews with them
  • Event invitations: founder's meeting, exclusive events, launch parties, VIP fashion show
  • Testing new products (samples)
  • Participation in surveys on their desires.

• Benefits : 
  • Increase customer loyalty
  • Increase brand visibility on social networks
  • Create a strong community of engaged customers

2. Ambassadors in the making 

Who are they? They are all your customers who like your brand but are waiting for a little push to share with others, as well as your new customers who are waiting to be won over.

Which referral program: Accelerator Program

• Objectives: convert them into ambassadors, boost engagement, increase average basket, increase purchase frequency, build loyalty
• Possible segmentation :
  • Referrers who have made a first purchase
  • New clients
  • Customers who have not purchased for more than 6 months
  • Customers whose average basket size has decreased
• Types of rewards :  
  • Good plans
  • Free products
  • Participation in surveys on their desires
  • Recognition (sharing on social networks)
•  Benefits :  
  • Increase brand visibility on social networks
  • Stimulating re-purchase

3. The opportunists

Who are they? These are the contacts and customers who are primarily interested in the reward of your customer referral program.

Which referral program: Loyalty program

Objective: to build loyalty, increase the average basket, increase the frequency of purchases

• Types of rewards :
  • Discounts
  • Free products
• Benefits
  • Increase brand visibility on social networks
  • Stimulating re-purchase

To remember: how to create a referral program?

• Determine your goals, what rewards you want/can offer.
• Use a platform dedicated to the creation of customer referral programs such as Splio Referral.
• Create specific segments according to your objectives.
• Create segment-specific messages with tailored rewards.

The trick: integrate the customer referral program into your marketing automation platform.

• Integrate your referral programs with your loyalty program, score the commitment of your referrers by awarding points for each referral and reward the most committed.
• Integrate your referral programs into your marketing automation tool, and create new segments and campaigns using your referral program data. Example: Top 10 sponsors
• Link your feedback tool to your programmes.

You are now equipped to identify your brand ambassadors and build a solid relationship of trust through customer sreferral program adapted to their profiles. If you are interested in this subject in our previous article on customer referralwe talked about what customer referral is and the advantages of integrating it into your marketing strategy. Do not hesitate to contact us for a demo of our customer referral platform.