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When most think of customer loyalty programs, these are the types of programs that come to mind. Earn your way to a free cup of coffee or a flight upgrade. Or, maybe you’ll get an “exclusive” discount. While many customers sign up for these programs and redeem their rewards, they’re . And, oftentimes, the perks aren’t enticing enough to keep customers interacting with the program (or company). Customer service, product consistency, and just  may be stronger predictors of loyalty in these cases.

Customer loyalty programs date back to 1793 when retailers gave customers copper tokens with their purchases that they would redeem for future purchases. Because the tokens were expensive, they started using stamps in 1896.

In today’s online world, it’s easier than ever for customers to switch products. Consumers are not as loyal to brands due to just convenience or necessity. The low (or non-existent) barriers to entry for new players make new options common. With COVID-19 making it more difficult for businesses to engage with customers, there has been a rapid shift toward digital engagement. Customers who embrace digital technology make it even easier to switch to them.

Customer  as they expect a consistent, personalized experience from every interaction. And the payoff is big. Customers are  with brands that are exceptional at meeting their individual needs. This makes keeping your customers loyal more important than ever. And, like many of the shifts in business, there are big shifts in how you need to think about customer loyalty.

Shifts in customer loyalty programs

 date back to 1793 when retailers gave customers copper tokens with their purchases that they would redeem for future purchases. Because the tokens were expensive, they started using stamps in 1896. These programs evolved through time from boxtops with coupons or rewards and prizes in cereal boxes to modern-day frequent flyer mile programs and loyalty cards that track purchases. 

In 2009, Starbucks launched its mobile app that now includes its  loyalty program and ties earning additional stars to paying through the app. They made it simple and convenient for customers to track their progress toward rewards and make purchases. Customers quickly changed their paying habit making it the . And, by adding personalized offers based on past purchases, it also drives additional sales.     

With more purchase points and consumers engaging across many channels before deciding to buy, businesses need to find a way to consolidate customer share of spend and increase share of wallet. Brands are increasingly competing for customers’ mindshare and retention. Understanding how customers want to engage with loyalty programs is key to keeping competitors from pulling them away.

Experiential customer loyalty rewards

Loyalty programs offer a powerful vehicle to acquire customers and . However, this rich data is not being effectively used to drive experiences based on true understanding of customer preferences, affinities, and behaviors to build an emotional connection with the brand. Analyzing the data is the key to building better loyalty programs that offer the level of personalized experiences customers expect.

Brands are increasingly competing for customers’ mindshare and retention. Understanding how customers want to engage with loyalty programs is key to keeping competitors from pulling them away.

As consumer expectations continue to evolve (and because they are very aware that they’re sharing their data with companies in exchange for personalized experiences), loyalty programs also need to change to adhere to these new expectations. To increase customer “stickiness,” companies need to expand their programs to provide better value and offerings. Instead of earning the same free cup of coffee after the tenth purchase that everyone gets, companies need to shift to experiential rewards. Some companies, including the Starbucks Rewards example above, are embracing this approach. A leading airline offers tickets to premier league soccer games based on the top-tier member preferences. Top retailers offer rewards including early online and in-person access to major sale events or opportunities for top-tier members to earn trips to major global events and special classes.

Expanding your loyalty strategy beyond ”earn-and-burn” and making it an enterprise-wide strategy is what helps to drive experiential programs. Many companies stick their customer loyalty management program with one department or even small teams within a department. This often limits the scope of the program, resulting in transactional experiences. A loyalty program shouldn’t be a siloed endeavor — it should span the entire business. Customers expect consistency across all interactions and touch points they have with companies, regardless of department or the reason for the interaction. Boosting internal adoption and engagement for today’s successful program requires buy-in and engagement from all areas of the company.

Also, developing a complementary partner ecosystem can expand the experience beyond the limits of a company’s own products. Consider what complementary products may provide more value and increase stickiness to the program. For example, a frequent flyer program could partner with popular restaurants so travelers can redeem their points for a meal in the city they’re visiting. That increases the engagement of the overall program.

With , the goals are engagement and advocacy rather than just retention. Personalized rewards build emotional connections that transform customers into advocates. It’s what takes customers from getting their card punched to being truly delighted with an experience they can’t wait to tell their friends about.

Reimagining the customer loyalty experience

Creating the type of experience customers now demand takes more than an evolution. It’s time to completely reimagine what the loyalty experience needs to be. 

Companies need to address and remove organizational silos that inhibit customer experiences. Are your marketing, commerce, and customer service teams taking advantage of rich loyalty insights to deliver a coherent and consistent customer experience? Or are there business, cultural, or technology blockers inhibiting the ability to drive a consistent member experience?

Providing the right technology and tools is key for success. Gone are the days of paying for highly-customized programs that take years to deploy and are outdated before launching. Integrated loyalty ecosystems enable personalized, connected experiences that can connect the dots throughout the customer journey to deliver on the brand promise across every customer touch point. 

Are your marketing, commerce, and customer service teams taking advantage of rich loyalty insights to deliver a coherent and consistent customer experience?

Next generation loyalty programs are all about driving highly personalized, contextual, and dynamic experiences. And creating this kind of experiential loyalty program requires brands to harness data and leverage it across every customer interaction. Companies can glean powerful insights about customer affinities and preferences from the digital footprints of customer interactions and then put them to work.

Embedding loyalty insights – powered by metrics and analytics –  that are available to all employees and driving business processes influenced by loyalty can lead to holistic and differentiated experiences delivered by everyone across the customer journey spectrum. An end-to-end loyalty platform empowers businesses to create intelligent, differentiated experiential engagements that grow relationships and increase customer lifetime value.

Aligning B2B and B2C loyalty programs

While customer loyalty programs are more common for B2C companies, B2B companies are adopting programs as they realize the value it brings. B2B loyalty programs can better engage partner and distributor channels with incentives that will improve performance and foster long term relationships. It also helps them align their channel partner initiatives with end-consumer initiatives, which is a must. 

Beyond driving economic value from increased purchases, B2B companies can use loyalty programs to increase both stakeholder and brand value by including rewards that bring long-term value for both. For example, setting up a program in which the partner earns points for additional product training, providing feedback, and engaging with the program. The points earned could unlock co-marketing funds to drive even more sales or “exclusive” training to help them sell better. Or, as customer interest in purchasing from companies who support corporate citizenship continues to grow, point redemptions could go toward a cause or local community development.

What’s next?

Earning a customer’s loyalty is both valuable and important. Effective customer loyalty programs require putting the customer experience at the center of your program and delivering personalization at scale. Salesforce Loyalty Management gives access to tools companies need to create the experiences that can help increase customer engagement and value.

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We show that this effect occurs because strong hope and strong anxiety motivate individuals to engage in action planning—that is, to contemplate actions that support the occurrence of hoped-for outcomes and actions that avoid the occurrence of anxiety-arousing ones. Action planning boosts new product adoption by enhancing consumers’ perceived control over outcomes from new product adoption. Our findings aid marketers in understanding how emotions like hope and anxiety can affect new product adoption. They also aid policymakers by suggesting that disclaimers that make consumers anxious about potentially negative outcomes from new product purchase or usage could encourage thoughtful processing in the form of action planning when hope is also strong.

Specifically, if market research reveals that consumers already have strong anxiety about outcomes from new product adoption, marketing communications should emphasize the product’s relevance to the goals that consumers hope for, as opposed to downplaying consumers’ anxiety about potentially adverse outcomes. Conversely, if market research reveals that consumers have strong hope for the product but low anxiety, our results suggest that marketers might benefit by providing warning labels, disclaimers, or disclosures. Beyond encouraging new product adoption, such communications could also enhance product satisfaction. Specifically, if consumers consider goal-incongruent outcomes and plan for how they can be avoided, they may ultimately be more satisfied with the product than would consumers who never considered potential anxiety-evoking outcomes or engaged in action planning.

Relatedly, and from a public policy perspective, our findings suggest that disclosures or labels that evoke strong anxiety about goal-incongruent outcomes from new product use might encourage more thoughtful decision making when hope is also strong. Whereas marketers may be loath to use such disclaimers, our research suggests that when a new product evokes strong levels of hope, anxiety-inducing disclosures might not harm, and could potentially help, new product adoption.

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From: Yu-Ting Lin, Deborah J. MacInnis, and Andreas B. Eisingerich, “,” Journal of Marketing.

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Across six studies and four supplemental experiments (studying over 3,000 consumers), our research team provides converging evidence that unfairness in negative reviews evokes empathy for the firm from third-party consumers reading the reviews. This empathy is associated with increased purchase and patronage intentions. A study on the content of one thousand 1 – and 2- star hotel reviews from Trip Advisor finds that more than a quarter of these negative reviews contained elements that were perceived to be unfair, offering preliminary evidence about the prevalence of “unfair” negative reviews.

Our findings suggest that unfair negative reviews consistently result in more favorable responses to the reviewed firm than fair negative reviews and, at times, even better than positive reviews. We highlight the role of empathy for the firm as a motivator for increased favorable firm intentions. We also identify how firms can leverage empathy from consumers reading reviews, even for those reviews that do not naturally evoke empathy (i.e., fair negative and positive reviews). First, we show that responding to all reviews in a manner that is more personable in visual appearance and tone (e.g., show your employees, use first names, respond from a person instead of a “brand”) increases empathy and thus positive responses to the firm. Second, we show that spotlighting the employees involved in the creation of the product or service (e.g., employee profiles, “meet your barista,” naming the employee who helped make the product) can increase empathetic responses such as higher sales and overall firm attitudes.

Overall, our research highlights that unfair negative reviews are not necessarily bad for the brand and that firms can learn to capitalize on these reviews. By embracing the reviews, as some companies have done in the past (e.g., Ski Resorts, National Parks, Vienna Tourism all turned ridiculous 1-star reviews into something positive in their advertising campaigns), firms can strategically leverage consumer empathy and benefit from potential downstream consequences. We identify techniques managers can use, such as responding to reviews in ways that increase a sense of personal connection or by bringing focus to individual employees, to increase consumer empathy and ultimately foster more positive responses from consumers.

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Read the authors’ slides for sharing this material in your classroom.

From: Thomas Allard, Lea Dunn, and Katherine White, “,” Journal of Marketing.

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Brand architecture is one part spring cleaning, one part sorcery. Architecture is organization; it’s about finding a spot for everything and putting it in its place. The process of developing brand architecture is about uncovering the deep meaning of what we have as a brand, what we can optimize, what we can leave behind and where we can grow. In doing so, we unleash a sort of magical spell that shows us the future.

I’m not being all that hyperbolic—strong brand architecture can show you the future like a treasure map. It reveals the trajectories of your innovation pipelines, your unexpected growth opportunities and your underserved but ripe-to-tap consumer segments. In short, it lays out the strategic path to visionary growth and innovation.

The Age of Endless Proliferation

In a market burdened by proliferation of virtually endless options and consumer choice, it’s easy to feel like our brands are in a constant state of reaction. Shifts in channel demands, a sea of competitive SKUs and offerings, more agile niche brands, and category demands that change faster than business can seemingly keep pace with all play a factor. Architecture helps brands break the reaction cycle. It brings their gaze up out of the weeds and elevates it toward the horizon, where future opportunities can provide brands with a needed paradigm shift—from chaotic reaction, to proactive future-facing response and category leadership.

But What Is Brand Architecture?

Brand architecture, strictly speaking, is industry language for the organizational strategic framework of a brand’s complete offering. Similarly, portfolio architecture is the organizational framework of a company’s portfolio of brands and sub-brands, products and services. Effective brand architecture creates a symbiotic and actionable system of need-states, benefits and consumer targets that help instigate more intuitive and inevitable choices in brand expression and communication strategies. These strategies can include positioning, naming systems, design assets and any other brand expressions that can be actionably informed by deep consumer insight. Importantly, brand architecture’s first priority must be to respond to the way that consumers cognitively organize themselves and the world around them.

When we organize our offerings to respond to their needs, we elevate ourselves beyond the struggle to force our products and benefits into consumers’ lives, and allow them to intuitively understand where we fit. We anticipate them, instead of chasing them. We build deep affinity and loyalty into the brand relationship and move beyond reacting. Brand architecture articulates and focuses the breadth and depth of a brand. It can provide needed clarity to your breadth of offering, assuring that well-defined need-states are met with unambiguous offerings, and that you aren’t cannibalizing other offerings in your portfolio. It can provide deeper connection points with consumers that reveal the nuanced contours of how to reach them by articulating their need-states, desired brand experiences and barriers. It eliminates overlap and carves out discrete, differentiated whitespace in the market landscape where consumers are waiting for us. 

Powerful Innovation Trajectories

In this organizational exercise, brands clarify the relationships not only between consumer and offering, but also between offerings in the portfolio. It makes transparent the benefits of both positive brand halos and the inevitable challenges of negative brand baggage. In turn, we are provided with the ability to correct, focus and optimize quickly, with a look to the future to uncover right-fit innovation for the next two, five or 10 years. We see more clearly where innovation opportunities can thrive in our brand portfolio and uncover fresh spaces where we previously didn’t see innovation trajectories at all. This structural framework provides brands a much clearer path to growth and confidence in strategic decision-making. When everything has a place, and resonates with our consumers’ needs, choices become obvious, inevitable and informed.

Consider Campbell’s Soup Company. Founded in 1869, Campbell’s is a profoundly iconic brand, so famous for its seemingly countless SKUs of condensed soups and woven into the fabric of pop culture that it was immortalized by Andy Warhol. As consumer needs and behaviors shifted and evolved over time, Campbell’s needed an organizational framework (or brand architecture) to tap into new opportunities. Their current architecture is largely organized and defined by need-states, offering soup for soup-lovers of every stripe, in any context: new and refined taste experiences include hearty, adventurous, slow-cooked and gourmet; usage need-states include portable, sippable and ready to heat; dietary need-states include low sodium, high protein, vegetarian and clean label offerings. Understanding consumer usage behaviors also unlocked new adjacent opportunities, such as their lines of sauces for skillet, slow cooker and oven cooking that better meet the convenience needs and creative aspirations of consumers who once used condensed soups in recipes.

Focusing and organizing these consumer need-states gave Campbell’s the clarity to understand where growth opportunities lay dormant, where they could right-size their offering, where future innovation opportunities can be found, and what right-fit equities, assets and hierarchy choices best differentiate and communicate with each consumer and need-state. They lifted their gaze from the weeds of SKU proliferation, up and forward to a future of opportunity.

Ultimately, the science and magic of brand architecture is about seeing the future with focus and confidence. If you have strong, courageous systems thinkers on your team, you’re already halfway there. The roadmap you create together can drive your business strategies and your innovation pipelines into a future of growth, smart strategic planning and exciting possibility.

Photo by Simone Hutsch on .

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A new study in the Journal of Marketing investigates this business challenge and opportunity. One way companies market their products is to feature reviews authored by independent consumers. Our research team suggests that marketing managers may inadvertently omit exactly the reviews that increase persuasive influence. Specifically, because people are often skeptical whether reviews are authored by well-informed consumers, they first evaluate whether a reviewer is credible before deciding whether to rely on his or her review. We identify one counterintuitive predictor of reviewer competence: People are more likely to conclude that a reviewer has significant expertise, and are thus more likely to purchase the product recommended by that reviewer, if the reviewer admits to having made a previous mistake in his or her purchasing history. We suggest that featuring exactly these types of purchase mistakes in online consumer reviews is a promising persuasive marketing tactic.

The primary takeaway of our research for practitioners advises featuring mistakes, where possible, in order to drive more online traffic and, ultimately, more sales. As such, outlets where online retailers have control over the decision environment provide the best point of entry for this recommendation. Even though they cannot control the content of online reviews authored by independent consumers, online retailers do have the power to flag certain reviews as “featured” or “highlighted,” warranting placement ahead of an otherwise long and undifferentiated list of reviews. By identifying one or multiple reviews that mention a previous purchase mistake and bumping them up to top billing, online retailers can make online shoppers more likely to see, read, and accept the advice of those reviews that our research suggests these buyers find especially persuasive. However, it is not only online retailers that aspire to put helpful reviews in front of their audience. Review curation websites benefit not necessarily from persuading customers toward any particular course of purchase-related action, but instead toward viewing the website as a valuable source of information. If customers believe that sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Rotten Tomatoes offer consistent, reliable reviews, they return to them more frequently before making purchases and this traffic increases advertising revenues for curation sites. Broadly speaking, then, any firm or brand in the business of offering helpful, positive advice should feature reviews that mention previous purchase mistakes.

Firms are not alone in their desire to persuade and our findings might also benefit any attempt to convince others to take purchase-related advice. First, friends often exchange purchase-related advice, driven either by the relatively selfless joy of facilitating a positive purchase experience for a friend (e.g., a great gym) or more self-interested motives (e.g., a gym that promises a referral bonus). We propose that both objectives should be facilitated by making mention of a previous mistake, thus extending our work to develop closer interpersonal relationships. Second, many individuals have taken to online forums to build personal brands around product reviews and tutorials, as evidenced by the thousands of personal blogs reviewing electronics and YouTube channels demonstrating how to apply makeup. Insofar as these influencers hope to build their personal brands in the form of likes, follows, and mentions, they need to be seen as credible. Our model offers the possibility that they would be more likely to attain their objectives if they incorporate mention of previous mistakes into their content. Aside from the content of the review, they might also persuade others to click on their written and recorded reviews in the first place by including mention of a mistake in the title itself (e.g., “Learn from my mistake!”). These applications suggest that inferred expertise, via admission of mistakes, can not only drive sales, but also build brand equity. 

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From: Taly Reich and Sam Maglio, “,” Journal of Marketing, 84 (January).

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The techlash has hit.

As marketers barrel toward a brave new world of marketing technology, many are heading straight at an unexpected obstacle: the consumer.

According to a new report published by ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř New York, titled “,” Americans will ease off of social media use and online gaming in the next three years, even as advertisers plan to up their stakes in these arenas. Moreover, American consumers are worried about smart speakers, the internet of things and other marketing innovations. They’re also fearful about privacy, falsehoods and psychological harm. But many marketers overrate how positively consumers view marketing change and underrate their concerns.

“Techlash is here,” says Karen McFarlane, president of ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř New York. “Despite their fast adoption, consumers have profound concerns about their personal data and how it will be used or compromised. When it comes to the growing intersection of IoT, ad tech and artificial intelligence, marketers must amplify brand trust and become unmatched champions of consumer privacy.”

So what is the techlash? Last year, defined it as “a strong and widespread negative reaction to the growing power and influence of large technology companies, particularly those based in Silicon Valley.” (They rated it a “word of the year.”) For marketers, techlash means consumer hostility or unease about new marketing technologies or approaches—and whomever deploys them. It takes many forms, including shunning products, quitting platforms, reducing usage or reputational damage.

Signs of Techlash

Signs of the techlash are visible in media use trends revealed by the study, such as the expected leveling off of social media use and online gaming in the U.S. Overall, net audience change (i.e., proportion expecting to spend more time minus proportion expecting less) expected for social media use is a predicted 6% decrease and a 4% decrease for online games. This is consistent with other recent studies by and .

It’s true that consumers are moving from older media to online alternatives, but the big gainers are likely to be websites, email and streaming media rather than social media or gaming, despite their hype. In particular, Facebook and Instagram use is forecast to level off through 2022, while consumers expect net declines in their use of Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn. Growth is forecast only for YouTube, similar to streaming media in general.

Facebook’s spectacular stumbles and the resultant damage to its image have drawn widespread publicity, but social media anxiety has spread further. found that in general to protect their data.

The consequences of consumer mistrust are real. An of trust in 100 tech companies revealed Facebook plunged from 51st place in 2018 to 94th this year, while Google dropped from No. 28 to No. 41. Polls show Facebook’s worsening image has hurt usage and engagement.

But even as techlash has hit America, the ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř New York research shows that some marketers haven’t noticed. Marketers report over-indexing on many social media platforms already. Despite the projected slippage in social media and gaming audiences, 68% and 25% of marketers anticipate increased marketing spend in these respective categories.

The Digital Disconnect

Beyond shifting their media use, the Future of Marketing study shows Americans are ambivalent and divided about martech and the IoT—which may surprise many marketers. None of the nine marketing innovations tested with descriptions in the study are favored by a majority of consumers, though pluralities preferred four of the innovations and noteworthy proportions say they “don’t know.”

The innovations most consumers are skeptical about include many popular with marketers, including personalized ads (just 35% of consumers found favorable), IoT-connected home devices (37%), micro-influencers (29%), employee influencers (32%) and augmented reality (36%). At present, the only innovations with plurality consumer support are ones that can be voluntarily used, such as virtual reality (45% favorable), smart speakers (44%), AI assistants (46%) and omnichannel (41%).

These findings are not outliers and are consistent with other recent research by the , .

But of all the new martech tested, substantial proportions of consumer respondents—from 10% to 24%—are uncertain about what they think of the changes. This suggests a big chunk of consumers may be convinced by the merits of martech.

American consumers are relatively open to the benefits of new marketing technology, but they have a lot of anxiety about the potential drawbacks.

When we tested positives for the martech innovations described above, Americans agreed with most of the claimed benefits (except those for IoT). Percent majorities from the low 50s to low 60s say that new technology will make shopping easier, quicker and better-informed, and improve access to brands’ understanding of their needs. Almost half of consumers also say shopping will be more fun. But favorability is not consistent: Despite moderate numbers for each claimed benefit, only one in four Americans agree with seven or eight of them.

On the other hand, majorities or pluralities of consumers worry about all six negatives we tested. The most widespread concern was that four in five consumers fear fake accounts, falsehoods, hackers and bots will mislead them. Nearly as many fear that they will lose their privacy and be under constant surveillance. Two-thirds say that martech will take the human touch out of shopping or that it will spread isolation and depression. Almost half believe it will make ads less creative.

The digital disconnect is sharp: American marketers overrate the perceived positives of marketing innovations, while not taking consumer concerns seriously enough. Most expect U.S. consumers to consistently welcome them, but the perception gap between marketers and consumers averages 27 points. Marketers are more aware of the possible problems, but still underrate them. Although majorities recognize customer concerns regarding five of the six negatives (all but loss of creativity), the proportion expecting consumers to be bothered by each consistently runs below that of consumers who are—by as much as 22%.

Toward Digital Dialogue

Consumers and marketers agree: In a decade, marketing will live mostly online, while buying will remain omnichannel. Yet to close the digital disconnect, marketers must recognize the trends and dangers, educate consumers and lead changes to improve marketing practices and privacy.

This will mean:

• Putting ad dollars where consumers are actually going, even if the marketing herds are stampeding toward social media and online games.
• Educating consumers about the benefits and value of new martech.
• Accepting the continuing differences between online marketing and omnichannel sales.
• Giving consumers control and transparency regarding use of their data, as well as incentives.
• Emphasizing consumer choice regarding technology and introducing changes that consumers can choose to use (virtual reality, for example).
• Establishing standards of online conduct and data protection through company codes, industry action and negotiations with regulators.

For a future of online marketing to win consumer trust, marketers need to listen and respond to related consumer concerns—and the time to start is now.

The ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř New York’s Future of Marketing study surveyed consumers and marketers and looked at industry trends for the coming three to 10 years. The study consisted of an online poll of approximately 500 consumers and marketers in the U.S. fielded in January by YouGov, along with similar numbers in China by Kadence in March, and questionnaire and analysis by Charney Research. The U.S. sample was nationally representative, the Chinese sample mostly urban and middle-class. The full report is available at .

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Just as some customers walk directly to the back of a store, knowing this is where the retailer displays sale items, many shoppers quickly scroll down a web page to seek product reviews. Checking reviews has become second nature to consumers. Looking for a new taco joint? See what’s rated well on Yelp. Torn between two vacuum cleaners? See which has the better star rating.

The age of ratings and reviews was arguably ushered in by Amazon. The company has perfected the art, implementing a standard five-star rating system that allows customers to post photos and videos of products, and even making reviews searchable for those with a specific question or concern. But they’ve also opened themselves up to abuse, spawning fake reviews and manipulated ratings.

Customers still rely on these systems to guide their purchasing decisions. Ethical brands shouldn’t directly guide or censor customer feedback, but they can help build robust, trustworthy review systems that can help answer shopper questions.

Why Ratings and Reviews Matter

According to Pew Research Center, 82% of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes read online ratings or reviews before buying items for the first time, including 40% who say they always or almost always look at ratings or reviews. According to , the typical next step after reading a positive review is for the consumer to visit the company website (50%) or search for more reviews to validate their choice (19%). This marked a notable shift from 2017, when visiting the website as a next step was chosen by 37% of survey respondents and 26% said they searched elsewhere for validation.

The robots are also looking at reviews: Moz’s 2018 research found that review signals—defined as review quality, velocity and diversity—in local search-ranking factors.

Cheryl Sullivan, president of price and promotion at DemandTec and previously CMO of PowerReviews, says that customer reviews—also referred to as user-generated content (UGC)—went from “nice to have” to “need to have.”

“Shoppers have lost a lot of faith and trust in retailers and brands today, and they’re really starting to turn more toward other shoppers,” Sullivan says. “Brands and retailers are starting to realize that [UGC] has to be part of their overall marketing strategy.”

How to Get Customers to Post (Helpful) Reviews

Sullivan says that encouraging shoppers to review a product can be difficult, so it’s incumbent upon marketers to guide them to take action and provide robust content. For example, she recommends directing post-purchase consumers to a display they can fill out with their review, one that asks questions that are customized to their buy.

“We’ll try to get images, we’ll try to get video, things like that up front because that’s more compelling content,” she says.

Many companies compel customers to review their products or services by offering something in return. Perhaps you’ve been to a dentist that offers a free tube of lip balm if you review them on Yelp, or maybe you’ve received email offers to be entered to win a gift card if you review a clothing purchase online. Incentivizing reviews is absolutely a strategy, but it should be done cautiously.

“There is a debate in the industry right now specifically on that question [of ethical incentivizing],” says Jared Watson, assistant professor of marketing at New York University. “There are some who suggest that it creates a biased account of the product when you incentivize reviews. And therefore, when companies choose to incentivize reviews, they’re actually sort of misleading their potential customers. My personal take on it is that [it’s acceptable] as long as you’re forthright about, ‘You’re entered into this contest, regardless of what kind of review you write for the product.’ But anything that helps encourage more reviews is better for the ecosystem.”

If you do plan to use a specific review in marketing collateral, be sure to make that clear to the reviewer. Either explicitly mention that their reviews may be used in advertising upon submission, or contact the reviewer before using it in an ad.

Highlighting Your Reviews

The best reviews go beyond a simple, “Product xyz was good,” and provide details—especially as it relates to use.

“Anything that helps the consumer visualize usage helps,” Watson says. “Obviously, pictures and videos help consumers visualize how it might be used, where it might be placed, how it might fit with other things. You can also do the same thing with text: Descriptive text describing the flavors and the contrast of everything at that restaurant might be more impactful than simply, say, ‘This was good’ or ‘It had a fair price.’ Take some of those descriptive words that might be sort of emotionally laden—beyond ‘I was satisfied with things,’ use ‘I was thrilled, I was exuberant, etc.’ Everything that can evoke emotion and invoke the ability to visualize the experience or the usage of that product helps.”

Watson says consumers often place more weight on the actual text of the review, relative to aggregate metrics. Think of the ability to search reviews for keywords on Amazon, or the way some clothing retailers allow review filters by item size.

“Advertising specific lines or sentiment that comes from other people could help you overcome some of those deficits that you might have in the aggregate categories of ratings or the number of reviews,” Watson says.

Highlighting specific use cases via UGC can help potential buyers imagine themselves using the product or service as well. It’s similar to brands migrating to microinfluencers: It’s easier for a consumer to relate.

“What shoppers really want to see is people like them, that they know—not a Kim Kardashian that’s going to have a makeup crew behind them to make the product work,” Sullivan says. “They want to know what somebody like me, like you [thinks] and how their experience was around this product.”

Be Honest ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍřt Ratings

Consumers want to trust other consumers, but brands need to do some work to make the whole process more honest and transparent.

Because of the issues surrounding fake and paid reviews on Amazon, some other review companies have instituted systems to check the validity of reviews. For example, Sullivan says PowerReviews combines artificial intelligence and human moderators to ensure content is authentic.

The reviewers aren’t the only ones who need to be honest: Brands need to let all reviews live, not just the best ones. Killing a one-star or angry review won’t win you any new fans—and it can even hurt a brand’s authenticity. It would be akin to saying you don’t have any shortcomings in a job interview. “A lot of people try to prevent the bad ones from going through,” Sullivan says. “There is a misnomer that five stars is good. In reality, what’s good is 4.5 and 4.6. People don’t even trust five stars anymore.”

Brands also have to work against a simple reality: Research by Watson and his co-authors shows that consumers are more willing to trust a product that has more reviews with a lower average rating than a product with fewer reviews and a higher average rating. But the product with more reviews may simply have been on the market longer—it isn’t necessarily the superior item. Watson suggests pointing this out to consumers, or running a promotion seeking reviews and explaining why.

Watson also suggests promoting velocity metrics over absolute numbers of ratings in volume. “[This is] being able to say that over the last week the number of reviews has increased by 10% or the change in ratings has changed by 10% up or 10% down,” he says. “That gives consumers some insight into that time dimension. … Knowing how many people are buying it today or this past week or this past month might be better than knowing how many people bought it over the lifecycle of the product. That’s something that I think managers and retailers from the brand and the retail perspective aren’t emphasizing enough, the philosophy when it comes to word of mouth, because that would be a more accurate picture to the consumers.”

The post The Most Effective Ways to Promote Customer Feedback appeared first on ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř.

If phone calls are important to your business, having the right analytics on callers is critical to the success of your search and digital marketing. This new ebook shows 10 advanced call tracking and analytics reports you can use to significantly increase the impact of paid search, SEO, and digital advertising on business results. If you aren’t getting data on calls — or you only measure call volume, but not the lead quality or value of callers — these reports are a real eye-opener. Download this ebook to learn how to use these new insights to:

• Optimize marketing strategies to drive more conversions for a lower CPL
• Accurately measure the impact of your marketing on business results
• Target the right callers with the right ads based on their conversations
• Help your locations and call centers convert more calls to customers

The post The 10 Call Analytics Reports That Will Change Your Marketing appeared first on ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř.

The bottom line is this: you simply can’t afford marketing production and fulfillment operations that fall down at the moment of truth.

If any of the budget-draining fulfillment fails discussed in this eBook sound familiar to you, maybe it’s time to reassess how your company’s materials get to market. You can do this analysis on your own or lean on a marketing fulfillment expert for help with the process.

Either way, you need to get the back end of your marketing program aligned with the front end to ensure an outstanding experience for your customers and help your business grow.

The post Does Your Marketing Fulfillment Program Suck? appeared first on ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř.