Tag Archives: referrals



Customers becoming Evangelists

October 29th, 2008
Drawing together posts such as Marketing through Action, Turning Customers into Fans, Involve your Customers and Telling a Story.    

You get the picture of customers becoming evangelists and some ways of doing this.

It was on this and Julian of [business:ProWorkflow] tweeting this:

“Talk, Blog, Syndicate, SEO, Tweet, and build a solid product. Then look after users and they’ll become evangelists.”

(in response to my query about his marketing strategy)

This later popped up on his blog.

Intrigued, I thought I’d ask him a few questions.

Share the numbers with you guys.

What’s the ROI of turning customers into evangelists?

Julian shares 25% of new sales a month are through referrals.

25% that’s 1 in 4! 

In a competitive market like Project Management, referrals are gold.

They have stimulated this through:

“Fanatical support. Fast and reliable on all support requests. We invest time into training account holders. Always have an approachable, friendly manner, unlike many US based cold, slow support teams. Response time – typically instant or less than an hour. “

He also shares that “when customers cancel, we always wish them the best and keep in touch,  many come back again later” (Marketing after the fact?)

By looking after their users, they’ve had customers changing projects or jobs and getting the new team to use it.

Great huh? Nice sweet spot.  Something to strive for.

If you’re already here, what can you do better?

Provide your customers with tools to help them spread the word,

  • Blogger Packs
  • A way of showing their loyalty, badges
  • Interactive Widgets, or in ProWorkFlows case a widget showing how much money or hours you have saved this month using them
  • Vouchers for their friends (you know, the ones you nag about to try a service)
  • Something to make the service better when your friends use it

If your customers are already evangelists, give them the tools to help them evangelise.

Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

Marketing after the fact

August 12th, 2008

Marketing after the fact should be consistent.

Case in point.

I recently canceled my storage unit at a local storage firm.

As we held a bond and prepaid a month my account was in debit.

Awesome.  At this point in time I was happy with the service, helpfulness of the company.  On my recommend list.

6 weeks later my account has still not been settled even after numerous emails.  They then post a cheque to my old address (even though i explicitly stated when i finished up my address has been changed).

Now they offer to deposit it into my account.  That’s fine.

But

From my perspective.  You have wrecked what was otherwise a positive customer experience.  Do you think I would recommend them again? Doubt it.

Marketing continues after the exchange, it is in the sizzle consumers receive, do not burn a customer because they have switched brands or ended the relationship.  That way they never come back.  Or recommend you.

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Marketing after the fact


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