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

Earning consumer trust is important, especially in a competitive environment, but it can be more complicated than expected. Today's consumers have many ways to gather information about brands and form their opinions, whether it's through advertising, websites, online reviews, social networks or even their friends.

According to Kantar, 93% of consumers admit that the opinions family and friends have of a brand is of major importance to their purchasing process. Therefore, identifying your ambassadors and engaging them, thanks to adapted customer referral programs, is an indispensable strategy in the creation of a healthy and solid community.

In this article we want to help you

• Measure your customers' engagement.
• Identify your ambassadors.
• Stimulate them with personalized customer referral programs.

What is a brand ambassador?

Before determining who your ambassadors are, it is important to understand the different terminologies associated with the concept of referral. In this article we are talking about customer referral, 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 part of your customershe is most of the time paid to share and communicate about your brand to his community.
• An ambassador is a committed, satisfied and convinced customer who buys and follows your brand on social networks. He is most likely already sharing your brand's products with his friends and family.

How to measure the engagement of your customers?

Engagement is measured through the frequency and the degree of interactions' proactivity 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
• Are they responding to your satisfaction surveys, NPS?
• Do they leave reviews?
• Do they give you data about them (birthday...)
• Are they members of your loyalty program?
• Do they subscribe to your social networks?
• Purchase frequency
• Average shopping cart

Measuring your customers' engagement will allow you to increase customer knowledge, personalize your messages and better convert your campaigns. The engagement rate will also allow you to identify your most reactive customers, however 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 drive an ambassador program based on engagement?

Your database is a goldmine, it's time to exploit its full potential. Your first customer referral campaigns will be key to determining the levels of commitment of your customers and the different ways of animating them. Below, discover the three main groups that you may find:

• 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

• ObjectiveRecruit new customers, boost customer engagement and satisfaction, generate additional revenue
• Possible segmentations:   
  • Best buyers
  • Customers who have left multiple 5-star reviews
  • Customers who follow you on social networks

• Types of rewards:   
  • Recognition (small extra touches, thanks on a dedicated page of the site, interviews with them)
  • Invitations to events (founder's meeting, exclusive events, launch parties, VIP fashion show)
  • New product testing (samples)
  • Participation in surveys on their desires.

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

• Future Ambassadors

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

Which referral program: Accelerator program

• Objective: convert them into ambassadors, boost engagement, increase the average basket, increase purchase frequency, build loyalty.
• Possible segmentation:   
  • Referrals who have made a first purchase
  • New customers
  • Customers who have not purchased for more than 6 months
  • Customers whose average basket has decreased
•  Types of rewards:    
  • Good deals
  • Free products
  • Participation in surveys on their desires.
  • Recognition (sharing on social networks)
• Benefits:   
  • Increase brand visibility on social networks
  • Stimulate repurchase

• Opportunists

Who are they? These are the contacts and customers who are mainly interested in the reward provided by your customer referral program.

Which referral program: Loyalty program

• ObjectiveTo build loyalty, increase the average basket, increase purchase frequency
• Types of rewards:   
  • Discounts
  • Free products
• Benefits  
  • Increase brand visibility on social networks
  • Stimulate re-purchase

Key takeways: how to create a referral program?

• Determine your objectives, 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 specific messages for your segments with adapted rewards.

Tips: integrate the customer referral program with your Marketing Automation platform

• Integrate your referral programs with your loyalty program, score the engagement of your referrers by awarding points for each referral and reward the most engaged.
• Integrate your referral programs with your marketing automation tool, and create new segments and campaigns with your referral program data. Example: Top 10 referrers
• Link your review collection tool to your programs.

You are now armed to identify your brand ambassadors and build a solid relationship of trust thanks to customer referral programs adapted to their profiles. If you are interested in this subject, in our previous article on customer referral, we 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.