Referral & Influential Retailing | Brick & Mortar, Mobile, & E-Commerce

Photo Credit: Kevin Curtis

It started with Multi-Layer Marketing strategy as a way of getting big, by spending less. 

Others have always believed in an organically evolved network of consumers; and that it has a more subtle effect on the revenue stream. Be it #Bars #Cafe #Facebook #Twitter ....

Hence comes the concept of Referrals and influential sales or leads. A predecessor that we can not ignore is the buying experience of the customer and the behavior it triggers. There are several methods for gathering intelligence on Customer's purpose of visit and satisfaction index. 

Now, how can we get our customers to send us referral or influence their social circle in buying from us. Like I have mentioned above actively paying your customers is one of the option but not a subtle one.

Passively passing on the benefit to your customers is a more sustainable model.

·         Referrals: Printed coupons sent via newspapers, direct mail, or email. Cases where user intervention is required. 

·         Influence:Digital coupons for shared over social platforms that are presented to specific group of users who click on an Digital Ad, Tweet, or post. 

Tracking IDs, Coupon Codes are used for determining how much the customer has promoted the Brand Sales intentionally (Referral), or how much Brand promotion has been done that has indirectly resulted in Sales (Influence). 

Metrics & KPIs used for such analysis are; 

1. Referral Count (metric)
2. Referral Value $ (metric) 
3. Referral Count / Customer Action Count (kpi)
4. Referral Value $ / Customer Action Count (kpi)
5. Influence Count (metric)
6. Influence Value $ (metric)
7. Influence Count / Customer Action Count (kpi)
8. Influence Value $ / Customer Action Count (kpi)

One way of managing data for clustering is based on demographics and impact magnitude. 

Let me know if the idea is worth a try for your business and what are the complications that makes it seem impossible.

Customer Satisfaction Across OMNI Channel

Image by: Kelvin Quarles - @Kel.photo

Customer Satisfaction Across #OMNI Channel, but how ?

We all have heard about NPS score factor that presents a user on a website at exiting with a rating scale (1-10); for asking if they are Satisfied (10) or Dissatisfied (1) with Brand's online presence. Some of the leading Banks and Telecom operators have implemented NPS for judging customer satisfaction.

On the contrary Retailers prefer a combination of close ended Questions for their E-commerce website Outcome/Task Analysis) suggested by Mr. Avinash Kaushik, or have a research team reaching out to their customers for Brick & Mortar.

Wouldn't you do wonders, if you knew exactly who is leaving your store Happy or with a frown on their face. What is even better, if you could have your customers or a reasonable sample for your traffic answers to these questions….

• Did the Customers (She/He) get what they came for? 
• Would your customers be willing to come again? 
• Are Customers going to promote our brand among their friends and social circle?

With OMNI Channel (Global Index - PWC) being implemented by major Retailers, Banks, Telecom Operators; having an implementation of close-ended surveys, or NPS score has become imperative.

Each transaction adds up to a customer's cognitive side or as we know it "Buying Experience", and triggers different variations of "Consumer Behavior".

Sounds like straight out of a text book! But the fact of matter is that how your consumers are behaving is crucial to your business's sustainability and growth.

We need to know if they had a delighted experience or not and how can we work to get that achieved. Part of this experience is the purpose of coming to our Store (Mobile, Store, Ecom). 

Depending upon an enterprise's maturity level of OMNI implementation (openbravo's Road-Map), it is possible to track customer's journey and related metrics & KPIs required to access the right group of customers (high spenders + bad experience) at the right time (time before social impression/ Birthday) for ensuring not only retention, but also attempting for a wave of positive social buzz; triggering a series of influential and Referral Sales. 

So, what are these Social buzz Metrics and KPIs ???

You will definitely break a sweat, when going for an offline implementation, or in some cases integrating for digital presence for customer tracking.

Once you have done with the technical chaos, it is all left to your Brand Managers, Analysts, and Planners to connect the dots within the history of a customer's buying experience. 

Data in Action: 

Customers can be segmented into clusters driven by the combination of Demographics, Region and Channel and viewed for their history of responses. A sample view with hypothetical numbers might help you visualize.

First Grid: Aggregated Numbers Second Grid: Individual NPS Score History

When such figures are combined with transnational data, Campaign & Brand Managers can make a series of healthy decisions;

• Evaluate A/B options and other fixes for an Ecom and other channels.
• Inviting over a group of customer for NEW Spring Collection.
• Sending out a personally written letter, followed by a dynamic content email to a customer and saving them from becoming a detractor.