The vast majority of incentives programmes and many referral marketing programmes rely upon the delivery of a future reward as a carrot to existing and prospective customers. A need to mitigate fraud and ensure that a programme is driving proven sales necessitates the use of a validation process which in turn forces a lengthening of this timeline. With cooling off periods and returns policies often extending beyond 30 days, it isn’t uncommon for some eTailers and service providers to cite 3 months before a reward can be fulfilled to the valued customer in question.

Whereas an investigation into the need for such validation processes always makes sense, the end result is unlikely to be different. But this doesn’t negate the fact that participating in a referral programme or purchasing with a promised incentive in mind may leave the customer feeling a little uninspired. One potential option for clients in this situation is to consider whether some form of ‘instant gratification’ can be achieved? Rather than looking upon the ‘word of mouth’ or incentivised purchase user journey as a functional process, maybe there is value in thinking of it as an interactive experience – is it a grey corridor or a waterslide?

A potential suggestion to deal with this dilemma is to consider offering your engaged customers a token gesture for their interaction – not claiming it to be significant but recognising their effort on the path to the larger potential reward. Additionally, perhaps this could be complimented with some form of in-site game or more simplistically a prize draw. In this vein, it may make sense to consider keeping this aspect of your programme flexible – don’t make it core to the solution but something that can be bolted on as and when appropriate. Trying out different mixes would in turn increase the chances of your proposition being discussed virally – especially if you provide the mechanism to do so. Indeed, it seems clear that the element of surprise is rapidly becoming a prerequisite with the constantly challenging digital audience.

This week saw the launch of the Santander Refer a Friend programme using OMG’s innovative technology platform. Working closely with Santander’s digital team, OMG were able to build a technical referral solution in little more than  2 weeks – a fantastic achievement all round.  Details of this exciting promotion which offers a £25 referral PLUS £100 upon switching can be found on the Santander site.

"Thank you very much for everything you’ve done on this project. I’m amazed we managed to get it live (and looking impressive) in 11 working days.

It’s been one of the smoothest items I’ve worked on in a long time."

Caroline Padbury
Senior eMarketing Manager
Santander

Providing technical solutions and support is just one of OMG’s strengths. For more information on how our referral technology can transform your business, contact mark.solway@omgpm.com

OMG Performance Marketing are now powering the online Customer Affinity Platform for O2 Ireland. The platform provides employees of O2 Ireland’s corporate customers with the ability to register for special discounts on their mobile tariffs. The solution is hosted on OMG’s VisiOne platform that provides referral and incentives marketing functionality along with white label affiliate marketing technology across Europe to businesses such as Vistaprint, ARAG, Dell, Financial Times and Experian.

Read More...

Customer engagement stretches in many directions and continues to evolve as technology paves the way for new forms of digital interaction. According to the recent report by eConsultancy, 86% of businesses believe that an online customer engagement strategy to be either important or essential to their success. Our speciality within this environment has focused traditionally on engaging customers and prospective customers through the form of referral marketing – electronic word of mouth through incentivised member get member schemes, as we have developed in cooperation with Dell, Experian and O2 to name but a few. Unsurprisingly, the provision of these services have led us to look more closely at parallel technologies within the engagement world and in turn to consider how these solutions influence our world and vice versa.

One example of this relates to customer reviews – once the battle ground of the SEO-led ‘content is king’ strategy, this has now evolved into a critical aspect of the consumer product selection process. Those companies providing proximity and availability of ratings and filtered commentary within their website reduce the call for the user to look elsewhere by providing all details in one place – take the example of the Reevoo integration into the O2 Ireland shop or indeed the incentivised review functionality in Otto’s Austrian store. The importance of consumer reviews has more recently been underlined by the integration of product and advertiser ratings with Google AdWords and within Google Products – no doubt having a fairly clear influence on the popularity of individual listings and their subsequent ranking.

Elsewhere,  once the defining feature of the Amazon personalised homepage, 3rd party recommendation engines have become widely available for retailers to personalise their user experience. Initially this has been in the form of customer activity analysis but more recently harnessing the profiling power of facebook connect – customising what you see based on your facebook activity and stretching this over to, for example, suggest presents for your friends.

So what started as 3 disparate technologies are rapidly merging around the topic of ‘recommendations’. Whereas the offline word of mouth phenomena will remain key to every business, the ability to digitise this and more importantly to integrate this with a coherent review solution and recommendation engine will be key to paving the way for an increasingly powerful interaction with your target audience.

As a final thought, taking your 3R strategy one step further and integrating it into your own rewards platform provides an ideal framework to show appreciation in a consistent and cost-effective manner be it through mobile, web or offline.

Join the debate - Should you reward customers for favourable reviews, should you provide incentives for people to work with you despite negative reviews? Take a look at our Community pages and provide your thoughts by clicking here.

Brand advocacy is seen as the holy grail of any CRM department. But how do you leverage this power? The good news is that a digital Word of Mouth strategy provides an ideal solution.

As a technology provider in the performance marketing sector, we are often asked by clients to outline what provides the basis for a successful entrance into the referral marketing arena. For those intrigued to find out more in not so many words, here’s our 8-point plan to making this happen:

• Keep it simple – ask all but the essential questions – at least for the first phase
• Spread the word – ensure your programme receives adequate exposure by maximising the number of trigger points
• Keep your message consistent - knowledge of your referral programme takes time to spread
• Vary your offer – try changing the reward for making a referral to establish the optimal cost-effective proposition
• Embed your digital WOM solution into your other ‘social’ activity – a powerful message for your facebook page or tweet call to action
• Brand or performance – think of the solution as a half-way house between the two and manage your marketing budgets accordingly
• Analyse your results – referrals with no purchase still have significant value
• In-house or outsource – don’t trip over the complexities of coordinating technical requirements, reward partners and managing campaigns without seriously considering outsourcing