Rewarding Customers for Interactions: Dropbox

Promotions, giveaways and coupons have been standard marketing tools for decades, and will be for decades to come.  As an incentive to try a product, marketers will basically give it away.

Tried and true this technique has certainly got a lot of customers to experience new products and services, but I've never been a huge fan.  The customer has no buy in or attachment to the experience, just clipping a coupon or hunting for a deal.  As they have no skin in the game I believe they have a lower chance in converting into a repeat (at full price) customer.

I have always preached that brands need to exchange value with customers to build any relationship.  This is not a rebate, or added service at no charge.  This is a tangible item that they otherwise would have otherwise had to pay for.

Social makes this easy for marketers to do as bringing an influencer strategy down to the everyday user is very powerful motivation for consumers.  Tweet, share, repost and I will give you something for it.  That something needs to be more than "free upgrade" or "be the first to know".  It needs to be something that your company values, and by providing it to your customer demonstrate that you value their time and effort.

Kellog's executed a great campaign this summer using this approach with their Tweet Shop program.  A storefront with Kellog's products was setup and customers could "buy" items in the store by tweeting it out.  Obviously this isn't sustainable in the long term, but I'm sure they easily exceeded their campaign goals.

Dropbox does an excellent job of providing tangible, continuous value to their customers in exchange for their activity.  While their basic service (3 GB of storage) is free, premium accounts (100 GB +) are available on a subscription basis.  You can however access additional free storage through a number of simple activities. 

Connecting your Facebook account?  125 MB
Connecting you Twitter account?  125 MB
Writing feedback to Dropbox about why you love their service?  125 MB
Tweeting that feedback?  125 MB
Referring a friend (who then signs up)?  500 MB

Some math can tell us what the monetary value of that service is.  The premium account is available for $99 / year for 100 GB.  That makes the tweet (125 MB) worth $0.12.  This is a very easy cost for Dropbox to absorb and is relational to the effort taken by the customer.  Real value, for actions that have limited intrusion and are completely optional, in exchange for service.

As savvy customers start breaking this down new competitors may emerge and discover a whole new service offering.  Not to be confused with offers and product constructs like in credit cards.  This is a free service that provides additional free service for your effort.

Now, if you all rush out to sign up for Dropbox send me your email address, I could use the 500 MB.

Generating Leads online for Small Businesses

Digital and social are fantastic ways to generate leads for your business.  The problem for a lot of small businesses becomes where should they focus first, and why?

That of course is a complicated question - or series of questions.  A better approach is to think about two pragmatic ones first.

1. What do you want to achieve?
2. What are you able to do?

Understanding what your short and long term business challenges and objectives are will let you answer question one.  Looking within your company to know if you have the time, budget and will to do anything or everything is question two.

I recently had a chance to conduct a digital review for a small business in the Business Intelligence and Analytics space.  Their current website was well designed and generating a lot of traffic for them.  As a smaller player in their field however they have a common challenge of not being well known to their prospective customers and were not generating any leads from their digital efforts.  They had also invested a fair amount of money into their current website and wanted to keep any changes (even improvements) at a minimal cost.

Here are three recommendations I made to help generate leads.

1.  Give content away
Within their service areas and industry vertical sections they had provided some limited examples of their work.  Most of these examples however were password protected and as a technique to generate contact you needed to connect with them to get the password to view more.

I believe that before you can ask a prospect to take that step, you need to show them true value.  My recommendation was to provide a single, solid example of their work within each area and vertical.  No passwords and no hassles for prospects.  Within each example I would also recommended providing a clear call to action to see or learn more by contacting an Account Rep to arrange for an online demo or access to other examples.

2.  Testimonials

No eye rolling here, as this is not news, but is an essential piece of content that helps provide credibility.

For each example of their work my recommendation was to contact the customer who that work was for and ask them to write a recommendation for it.  For this particular case I suggested that they may even write it for them to start and to focus on explaining a) why they chose to use their service and b) what they got out of using it.

No one wants to be the first customer.  People want to know that the tool / service / approach that they are considering is tested and true.

Some new businesses do not have case studies to demonstrate their work, which is a whole new challenge.  Delivering a proof of concept for prospective customers at no charge can help overcome this barrier.

3.  Lead on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the leading professional networking site and can be very valuable for companies to create awareness, whether you're a massive multi-national or 2 person shop.  Company Pages and Discussion groups are a great opportunity to connect with like minded people, participate in discussions and demonstrate leadership.

The employees of this company had incomplete profiles that linked to the company page, and even then the description of their jobs was not consistent.  Cleaning that up is easy.

My recommendation to them was to dedicate time and energy into leading conversations and establishing credibility through discussion groups.  Identifying groups that their customers (current and prospective), competitors and peers were involved in and joining in the conversations is the start of that.

Starting conversations topics and leading discussions within those groups to get their point of view out is the next step.  This company has a treasure chest of content around their ideas and approach on their website.  By using this content through LinkedIn they can easily get more mileage out of it.

From a budget point of view, none of these recommendation cost very much.  This to me seemed more like an exercise in understanding what the true business objectives are and thinking about how to best achieve them.

Combining Social with CRM - how to, and must do

In the digital age, customers own the conversation.  They determine what is important and what the merits of an individual product or brand are.

Traditional CRM however is based on push messaging.  While advancements in dynamic messaging and customized content are helping, Customers are fatiguing from traditional marketing channels like email and direct mail.  Social CRM allows brands to better support users an improving interaction by entering into a collaborative conversation with them.

Social is the platform of choice for a select group of key natural human behaviours
1.  Giving and getting advice "can anyone tell me where a good place to get my oil changed is"
2.  Establishing or building your personal identity "home with my little one today, time to be mommy"
3.  Sharing your interests with others "I love the new batman, Bane is crazy!"

The opportunity for marketers is to identify these behaviours within their customers and support the conversations that are happening around them.  CRM methodology typically builds towards Advocates and the sharing of their message to recruit other customers and support the brand.  Social let's us identify opportunities to amplify our message through the activity of all the user groups (Prospect, Customers, Advocates).   

How?
Giving them the content that will allow them to create social currency within their networks.  You can use the content that you built for your current website, or you can ask users for content.

Behavioural targeting through social lets us align product offers and engagement with actual user activity.
…"looking forward to my family coming over this weekend"
…"school is back, I haaatttte making lunches"
This can be done through Facebook media and community management.

Combining these worlds as a single ecosystem is tough for a lot of companies / brands to do, but it will become a must-have very soon.