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Below is a transcript of the Chatbot Marketing Training Course by Customers.ai and Isaac Rudansky, of Adventure Media. Get the full course here and become a messenger marketing master.
Howdy chatbot fans, and welcome back.
We’re continuing this topic of building incentive structures, and in this lecture, we’re going to briefly talk about a few different types of common incentive structures to get your previous and current customers to promote your brand to their entire Facebook network, and generate a massive increase in leads and business.
So, here are a few common incentive structures.
We have the single incentive structure, which rewards the original referrer with a cash incentive, or some other form of incentive, like a promotion or a discount.
An example of this that we’ve run for one of our current clients, is an is a large e-commerce company, it’s one of the largest online retailers of picture frames in the United States, and we send out chat blasts with a referral link, and again, don’t worry, I’m going to teach you how to get these links and how to set this stuff up.
That offers a 20% coupon on their next order for each customer that purchases through their link, you could also offer a 20% discount, or let’s say a little bit of a lesser discount, 10% for people who just share the link, right?
it’s up to you, and you could test different offers out, but that’s the single incentive structure, you’re rewarding the original refer with something.
Then you have the double incentive, which still only rewards the original referrer, but it rewards them potentially twice, once for sharing the link, and again if that link that is shared generates new customers.
So, here’s an example, back to our IV hydration company, and here’s a sample test promotional offer where we’ll offer $5 cash just for sharing the link, so just share the link, it’s one click, you get $5 cash into your PayPal account, and a 35% discount on their next treatment for each new customer generated through their link. So, that’s a double incentive.
One, you get an incentive just for sharing, and you can get additional cash award.
Studies have shown that monetary incentives are much more appealing and effective than non-monetary incentives. Well, duh, I think that’s pretty obvious, but just keep that in mind as you go ahead and build out your incentive structures.
Then you have the dual incentive, where you’re offering both the referrer and the new customer an incentive, and again, these are straightforward concepts that we’ve sort of touched upon, but it’s worth covering them because these are the most common structures that are used successfully.
So, just an example, a medical equipment client of ours that sells portable oxygen concentrators to athletes, and to elderly people struggling with different types of illnesses will use Facebook chat blasts to offer an extended support service contract for sharing the link, plus an extra free battery for new customers who buy a product through their link.
That’s a dual incentive, where the original refer is getting an incentive that says “we’ll extend our service contract from 12 months to 36 months on your unit that you’ve already purchased from us”
which is a very significant incentive for those customers, and just as a side note, it’s important to really understand what’s important to your customers.
In this example, actually, for this company, a few weeks ago our team did phone interviews with their entire sales force, we had a 15 minute phone conversation with every single person in their call center, we had a fully built out spreadsheet of all the questions we were asking them, we compiled that data, we crunched that data, and it’s incredible how much we learned about their business, even more so than talking to the owner of the company for hours and hours.
We got more insight into what customers actually were looking for, and what they actually cared about, by being on the phone with the people in the trenches, the people in the call center, and that’s what’s helped us to develop better incentive structures that work better.
Because we’re able to just talk to the desires and the needs of the customers in a much more accurate way.
Back to the main back to the main programming, we would also offer an extra free battery which is, let’s say, of $300 value, to customers who buy through that link, so you’re rewarding both people at the same time.
And just to end off this lecture, I want to read this interesting blurb from Get Ambassador, which says, “In a 2016 Nielsen Harris Poll conducted on behalf of Ambassador, 67% of Americans said they’re a little more likely to purchase a product after a friend or family member shared it via social media, email, or text message.
Further, across a variety of industries, 92% of 18-to-34-year-olds say they seek recommendations from friends and family when considering a product purchase.”
92% seek recommendations, that should show you the potential power and the importance of running these sorts of referral programs effectively, and there’s no better place to do that than through Facebook chat bots.
So, Get Ambassador, www.getambassador.com is a software that you have to pay for, I am not affiliated with Get Ambassador at all, they don’t know that I’m promoting their brand in this course, I’m a customer of theirs, our agency uses their software, they are fantastic, it allows you to set up these sophisticated referral programs and use them in conjunction with Facebook Messenger bot.
So, for example, you could send secret and unique links through Facebook chat bot that if any given user clicks on it, it tracks exactly what happens.
So you could wire money from Get Ambassador from your PayPal account right into their PayPal account if they share a link, you could send money if anybody from their link ends up purchasing on your website, you could send all different types of referral structures, and that’s the software that allows all this to happen.
If you don’t want to use something like an ambassador, there’s other sites like referral candy, and many other less sophisticated software’s out there, and more sophisticated software’s out there. But, you could also do this without any software, right?
You could potentially set up a referral program, especially if you’re dealing with a small-scale group of customers, you don’t necessarily have to have a third-party software to do this.
You could even test the waters of getting referrals by just asking for it, you could just tell your customers, especially if you have—
If you go back a couple lectures, remember we said if you have trust, and people had a pleasant experience with your brand, and you can get them to go on record saying they had a good experience with your product or service, you could just simply outright ask them in a nice way and say:
“You know, it would mean a great deal to us if you would take a moment to just share this message, or share your experience on social media. Would you mind doing that for us? it would it would really help us, and it would show us that you appreciate the product or service, and we’d be extremely grateful for you for doing that.”
And that’s the long version of a bad copy, but there’s nothing wrong with going out and just asking for a referral, I’ve done this before, it works.