We’re freshly on the heels of our second acquisition, a sentiment analysis and natural language processing company called Repustate. As we welcome the Repustate team and product under our umbrella, I’ve been reflecting on partnerships and what makes them work—and what doesn’t. When done right, partnerships make your business stronger, add value for your customers and open up a new world of opportunities.

Approach partnerships with purpose

Everyone is facing economic headwinds right now. When it comes to the tech industry, that’s compounded by the fact that the era of the single-point solution is over. As companies tighten their belts and tech stacks, their expectations for your products are rising. We all know that one company can’t provide everything for everyone, so how can you ensure your solution is business critical?

Enter partnerships. Combined efforts will always be stronger than singular approaches when your potential partners are looking to achieve the same goals you are. You can get more done when you work together, even if that means working outside of your company walls.

For smaller companies, joining forces with a larger firm can give you more resources and financial solvency. Companies can hit product roadmap milestones faster with integrations and acquisitions. Marketers looking to find new audiences in their ideal customer profile can pursue co-marketing efforts with like-minded partners to widen their funnel.

At Sprout, partnerships are just the way we do business. Whether we’re working with LinkedIn to host a webinar or launching a new network integration like TikTok, our business couldn’t thrive without our rich portfolio of partners.

Corporate compatibility tests

We’ve forged enough partnerships to be able to quickly evaluate which will work and which aren’t the right fit. There are three things we look for in a potential partner.

Customer value

If you’re a customer-centric company, you always start with how any decision will impact the customer. That couldn’t be more true with partnerships. From marketing to product, the partnership has to create additional value for the end user. Asking yourself what a potential partnership will add to your customer experience or how it will address their pain points should be the first step in evaluating any partnership.

For example, we found that most of our current (and ideal future) customers were leveraging Salesforce solutions like Service Cloud and Tableau. We partnered with Salesforce to provide greater social media control and empower our customers with a 360 view of customer interactions and data–all in the tools they know and love. In the age of the product suite, partnerships are a cheat code to level up your business value.

Complementary goals

You’re likely not going to partner with your direct competitors. But no matter what you’re selling, there’s a product or service someone else offers that’ll make yours even better. Think about your current and ideal customers. Figure out what else they need. Find the businesses that are meeting those needs and explore ways you can help each other.

Another thing to consider is complementary markets. There may be another business that solves your customers’ needs, but if they’re going after a completely different segment than you are, it won’t work out. If your business is aimed toward enterprise manufacturing companies and a potential partner is pursuing mid-sized restaurant chains, it’s not going to be a good fit—no matter how symbiotic your products seem.

Mutual benefit

It should go without saying that both partners should stand to benefit from your efforts. It’s likely that one partner may be more invested or have more to gain from your partnership, but everyone needs to get something out of the deal. An uneven partnership is destined to fail.

Doing the partnership do-si-do

So you’ve picked your partner. What comes next? Navigating partnerships can be tricky but with a solid foundation, you can set yourself up for success.

Assemble your team

Every person on your team won’t be involved in orchestrating your partnership. There is such a thing as too many cooks. But at the same time, you need to loop in the right folks from the beginning. You might have to make adjustments as your plans progress, but evaluating who needs to be involved at the start will ensure a smoother transition.

If you’re pursuing an integration or a product-based acquisition, your product team needs to be involved from day one. When we evaluated Repustate, our internal product team was invaluable in helping us determine how much upside the deal presented. They know the product inside and out. They know where you’re planning to go on your roadmap. Lean on that internal knowledge.

Get to know each other

If you’ve decided to partner with another organization, you already know their product and audience are a good fit. But what about your goals and values?

Early on in your partnership, it’s imperative to sit down and find out what you have in common. How do your cultures align? Where do your roadmaps sync? What values do you both hold? The answers to these questions will be your north star throughout the process.

Be transparent

On day one, you and your partner have to be honest with each other about what you want to gain. Maybe you’re hoping to increase your customer base. Maybe you want to offer new functionality for your customers. Maybe this project is a trial run to see if you should form a longer-term relationship down the road. Whatever the case may be, you have to lay your cards on the table at the beginning.

Having an open line of communication is key to a healthy and successful partnership. You need to be honest with each other about what’s going well and what needs improvement. You need a clear understanding of which team is responsible for what and what your expectations are on cadence and speed. Transparency is what turns good partner match-ups into great relationships.

Howdy, partner

Partnerships are one of the most effective ways to grow your business, especially in uncertain economic times. Working together increases your efficiency, provides more value to your customers and creates a more robust product. Sometimes two is better than one.

Want to see partnerships in action? Learn more about the power of social media management integrations.

The post 1+1 is more than two: How partnerships can level up your business appeared first on Sprout Social.

Yet, data breaches and opaque collection practices have also turned customer data into a minefield. To harness the full potential of the data you collect, it’s imperative to demonstrate to your customers that their personal information is in good hands.

In this article, we’re giving you the tools to master customer data management on social media, so you can open up the door to gaining actionable business insights, improving cross-collaboration and delivering more effective sales and marketing strategies.

What is customer data management?

Customer data management (CDM) is the process of lawfully (and ethically) collecting, storing, organizing and protecting customer information for the purpose of gleaning insights that improve a brand and its offerings.

Social and business intelligence data offers companies a wealth of information about their customers. By taking the raw data and distilling it into important insights, you will learn powerful ways to improve customer satisfaction across the board—from your customer care operations to product development. Bottom line: For long-term growth and success, your brand must always find new ways to improve your customers’ experience and optimize your targeting efforts. And you can’t do that without customer data.

Why customer data is one of your most valuable assets

Customer data is the root of business intelligence. The good news is your brand already has a wealth of data at your fingertips, and there’s probably more available you haven’t tapped into yet.

Collecting data and understanding your audience at every stage in the customer journey is key to nurturing relationships. It starts with having up-to-date information about your customers (like valid email addresses, their past experiences with your brand and psychographic data) and determining which channels they’re most likely to use (like social media or text). These insights empower you to create a better experience with your brand, which increases customer loyalty, retention and evangelism.

For example, when a customer contacts you on social media about an issue with their order, having their order history, shipping address and past interactions on file will save your team and the customer time, while making the customer feel like you value their business. But remember: You must use customer data effectively and securely store it for people to trust your brand.

We all have brands we’re loyal to. And when they contact us or we see their posts, we’re more likely to engage and get reeled in by their promotions. Customer data helps your brand narrow-in on your ideal target audience with your marketing and sales tactics. With customer data on-hand, you can build more impactful marketing campaigns and create ample opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

Customer data plays a pivotal role in making informed business decisions across the organization that foster continued growth for your company.

4 tips for managing and sharing customer data org wide

When it comes to data collection, there are infinite things you can learn about your customers. From basic attributes (like name, email address and demographics) to how they interact with your brand online (engagement, cost per click and conversion metrics). You can track their purchasing behavior (order history, average order value, usage) and source attitudinal data (voice of customer, sentiment and psychographics).

With so much rich customer data available, proper management is key. The data you have is only as good as your ability to use it. Here are four tips for managing and sharing customer data at your organization.

1. Gather information with customer consent

It’s non-negotiable to be transparent about your data collection process. If you don’t give your customers full visibility into the data you’re collecting and how you’re using it, you will violate their trust and could face legal consequences, including harsh fines and penalties.

Instead, aspire to be a consumer privacy advocate and make your data collection processes customer-centric. When you gather customer data via surveys, website forms, transaction history, tracking cookies and social media analytics, explicitly tell your customers and prospects what you’re using the data for. Only collect the details you absolutely need and use it for the exact purpose(s) you specified. Also be clear on how long you will keep and use the data.

2. Invest in management software

Housing your customer data in a spreadsheet is both unsafe and inefficient. Improper storage of any kind opens your company up to the risk of a breach or misuse of data. To up-level your customer data management, invest in software that solidifies your security measures and harnesses/manages your data in one place. Having a single source of truth is crucial.

For example, Salesforce CRM software offers layers of security like multi-factor authentication, regulation compliance, user activity tracking and anonymized data to protect your customers (and your business). Sprout Social’s integration with Salesforce enables users to manage all their social customer care requests directly from Service Cloud, while enriching customer CRM profiles with social data. This is a major win for your data security and customer service efforts.

Request a demo of our integration today.

3. Train your team

Managing customer data is only possible if your whole team is on board. Host regular customer data trainings to empower ethical access and usage. Emphasize why customer data is important, how to use it for different business use cases and ways to share important insights across departments.

We recommend creating specific data collection, usage and sharing policies for your company. Make relevant details of your policy public-facing to provide additional transparency to your customers.

4. Regularly backup and update your data

To be a good steward of customer data, make sure your data is always current. Perform frequent updates by recycling unresponsive leads, validating customer information and amalgamating duplicates. Regularly delete data you no longer use or that is past its expiration (like we mentioned in step one).

You should also have a customer data backup plan in the event you accidentally lose valuable data due to tech or human error.

How social media fuels your customer data engine

Social media platforms contain an endless supply of consumer data—you just need to know how to analyze it so you can discover actionable insights. Like identifying who your most engaged followers are. Or figuring out what your target audience is saying about your brand when they don’t tag you.

A person’s interactions with a brand on social—from the first time they like a post to the last time they DM a brand—give businesses so much insight into their customer experience and journey. From social data alone, you can learn:

• Customer demographic and psychographic information
• Interests and hobbies
• Other brands they follow
• What content they engage with
• Their feelings toward your brand, products and industry

Use these findings to create a more holistic view of your customer by infusing social metrics into your consumer data engine.

How Sprout Social can help make managing (and using) customer data easier

With Sprout’s social media management features, it’s easy to collect, manage, analyze and utilize customer data. Our all-in-one social media management platform unlocks the full potential of social customer data to transform not just your marketing strategy—but every area of your organization.

Customer service features

The Smart Inbox unifies all your social messages into a single stream so you can foster relationships and respond to your audience quickly. It helps you visualize all inbound message volume across profiles, find new conversations happening about your brand and respond from one place.

Contact Profile Views within the inbox provide a window into a user’s social media presence. From this view, you can reply, add custom contact information, notes and even see message history between you and your customer—streamlining all customer care actions. If you’re a Salesforce customer, you will be able to see if the user is already a lead or contact.

Listening

Sprout’s Listening tools help brands tap into global social conversation to extract actionable insights, identify industry gaps and improve brand health. Use listening to find and explore actionable audience data like demographics, sentiment, conversation topics, campaign analysis and competitor performance.

Social analytics and dashboards

Sprout’s analytics tools speed up data collection and distribution. Access metrics from owned and paid media like impressions, engagements, audience growth and cost per click. Dashboards—including interactive charts and graphs—reveal trends in customer data, and make it easy to share findings with internal partners and stakeholders.

For example, with Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, combine the power of social data with your other business channels. The tool enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources. This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance.

To start collecting, managing and sharing customer data from social media, begin your free 30-day Sprout Social trial today.

Start your free Sprout trial

The post 4 tips for managing customer data end-to-end (and how social media can help) appeared first on Sprout Social.

On Cheers, or at any neighborhood haunt, there are only so many employees and so many regulars to keep track of. When your business goes online, you’re dealing with thousands of potential customers at any given moment. Mastering a 1:1 feel, even when you’re operating 1:many, is crucial for customer loyalty.

According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, 30% of consumers will switch to a competitor if a brand takes too long to respond to questions or feedback. In economic times like these, that’s not a chance worth taking. The key to staying in your customers’ hearts—and wallets—is customer centricity.

What does it mean to be customer-centric?

A customer-centric approach means putting the customer at the forefront of every decision you make as a business. The customer experience should be the starting point for any new initiative, improvement or change you make. In practice, this means actively gathering intel on your customer through surveys or social listening, analyzing that data and proactively giving your customer what they want, or what they don’t yet know they want. Across teams, everyone is working towards keeping their customers happy.

This approach pays off. Over two-thirds (77%) of customers are more likely to increase their spending with brands they feel connected to, up from 57% in 2018, according to Sprout research. According to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023 Report, leaders are taking notice, with 81% seeing customer experience and support as a growing priority for 2023. Another 71% are looking to revamp their customer journey this year.

As Sprout Social President, Ryan Barretto, has said, “Customer success is the new sales.” Developing relationships with your customers is a nonnegotiable moving forward.

Examples of customer-centric brands on social

Social media is a perfect complement to your customer-centric strategy. Whether you’re connecting with your customers to triage when something goes wrong or communicating with them about a new product or trend, social is the perfect arena for relationship building. Here are four brands embedding social into their customer-centric strategy–and takeaways for how you can do it yourself.

Listening and learning with Cava

Cava, a Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant, serves up customized bowls and pitas. When they made the decision to discontinue their sweet potatoes, customers were quick to voice their unhappiness on social media. Cava listened to their customers and brought back the popular ingredient, announcing the news with a TikTok video featuring screenshots of customers begging for the tuber’s return.

In this example, Cava recognized their error and shifted accordingly, a key pillar of any customer-centric approach. But they took it a step further. Rather than relaunching sweet potatoes as an internally sourced campaign, they gave credit where credit was due and showed their customers that they’d been listening to their social media pleas.

Obviously, Cava didn’t relaunch an ingredient based on a few comments. This is where social data comes into play. Social listening tools like Sprout’s can help you aggregate the voice of your customer so you can make crowd-pleasing decisions and bring the best possible product to your customers.

Engaging in empathy with ban.do

Relationships, regardless of their form, are built on empathy. This goes for brands as well. Two-thirds of consumers who feel that a company cares about their emotional state are more likely to be repeat customers. But how do you show you care about the emotional state of thousands of individuals at once?

A lifestyle brand, ban.do, managed to capture the frenzy their customers were feeling on Black Friday with a single Tweet.

By focusing on a particular day of the year and understanding their customer, they were able to empathize with all 24,000 followers at once. As a lifestyle brand, ban.do customers are likely to be frequent shoppers, whether that’s with them or across the board. With that information, it’s not hard for a brand to decipher what their customers might be feeling during retail’s busiest season. If your customers are sales professionals, the end of a quarter might be a particularly prominent time for them. If your customers are avid bakers, they might feel excitement when the holidays approach. Get to know your customers and their seasonality so you can understand how they’re feeling.

Seizing the opportunity with Quest Nutrition

Your customers are talking about you on social. Do you know what they’re saying? By paying attention to your brand mentions on social, you can create organic moments that aren’t possible within your own feed.

One company that understands this is Quest Nutrition, an energy bar brand. A Quest fan had recently been laid off and in his announcement post, made the admission that he’d been secretly hoarding the complimentary Quest bars from his office. The brand saw an opportunity and commented that they’d send him some more bars as a condolence and a boost in his job hunt. It was an excellent example of “surprise and delight”.

Quest got over 5,000 engagements with that comment. It begs the question of how much engagement you’re leaving on the table by simply focusing on your own posts. Instead of monitoring mentions solely for potential problems that need addressing, look for opportunities to proactively engage with your fans.

Practicing efficiency with Salesforce

By now, businesses have a set way of triaging customer issues on social media. Get the customer into the DMs and solve from there. There are major benefits to this approach from internal routing to traceability. But sometimes, the answer is sitting right in front of us.

A customer reached out to Salesforce with an issue. While the textbook response would be to move the conversation to the DMs, they directed their customer to help desk articles tailored to their problem in a reply. Not only did this move help the customer in fewer steps, it kept the conversation transparent so other customers who might be facing the same problem could troubleshoot on their own.

When you’re working toward customer centricity, it’s important to remember the burden on the customer. If something can be fixed with fewer clicks, that’s probably the right way to go.

How to become a customer-centric company on social

Feeling inspired to strengthen your customer-centric culture after seeing those examples? Us too. Here are a few ways you can prioritize customer centricity in your social strategy.

Get competitive

Being customer-centric means being the best choice for your customer. But you can’t measure your success unless you know what your competition is doing. Competitive intelligence is crucial for a customer-centric strategy. Keep tabs on your competitors through targeted social monitoring and listening, tracking your wins against competitors in your CRM and working with your sales team to hear what prospects are saying about them. You’ll be positioned to win in no time.

Sprout users can take advantage of Competitor Reports for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter—along with a Competitive Analysis listening template—to pull these insights on a regular basis.

Never miss a message

More than three-quarters of customers expect a business to respond within 24 hours on social media. Without the right tech behind you, that’ll take some pretty fast typing. Luckily, there are tools available to help you manage your inbox without missing a message.

Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox tool aggregates every message from all of your profiles in one place. From there, you can easily triage the requests to the relevant team—whether that’s sales, customer care or marketing. You can even create canned responses for frequently asked questions or concerns. You’ll be a master of customer communications.

Get cozy with customer care

Anyone who has ever endured a support interaction knows all about the silos in the customer experience. Whether customers are having to repeat their issue to multiple team members before finding a solution or getting inconsistent answers from the companies’ inconsistent systems, they’re leaving unhappy.

Business leaders are beginning to recognize this opportunity for improvement and they’re making big plans to fix it. Over two-thirds (72%) believe that merging the teams surrounding the customer experience will increase efficiency and 62% plan to act on it.

But don’t stop at rethinking your team structure. Rethink your tech stack as well. Finding social media management systems that integrate with your customer support platforms can go a long way to eliminating concerns for both your team and your customer. Sprout Social integrates with Salesforce Service Cloud, so you can have a single view of your customer no matter where they’re contacting you.

Listen before you speak

The benefits of social data are invaluable for your business, whether you’re working in R&D or investor relations. The first step of customer centricity is understanding your customer. Sprout’s tool gives you instant access to an aggregation of your customers’ opinions and needs. Wondering if your new serving sizes are working out? Listening data will tell you faster than any survey can. Want to gauge customer reception to a new product before launch? Post about it on social and let the data roll in.

The best part of listening data is the ability to make agile decisions. Instead of waiting on survey and focus group results to decide how to pivot, you can access real-time sentiment and make the call then and there.

Becoming a customer-centric company

A customer centric strategy is a great way to encourage loyalty. By listening to your customers’ needs, understanding and empathizing with their pain points, efficiently solving their problems and going above and beyond where needed, your brand can become their forever fan favorite.

Wondering how your brand stacks up when it comes to customer centricity? Use our customer experience audit and find out how your customer experience measures up to industry benchmarks and consumer expectations.

The post How to make your brand customer-centric (& top examples) appeared first on Sprout Social.

Chances are at least one person you know shares your enthusiasm for that place. And you’ve probably told a handful of other people about it, too. Maybe, you’ve even left that business a review. Or, helped them get new customers in exchange for a discount or freebie.

Referral marketing is a powerful tool that can help you leverage your existing customers and fan base to build relationships with new ones. By tapping into your customers’ networks, you can quickly reach potential prospects who are eager to learn about your business.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about referral marketing, its benefits and how to create a successful referral marketing program.

Table of contents:

• • What is referral marketing
  • Why referral marketing is important
  • How does referral marketing work
  • Referral marketing strategies
  • Types of referral marketing

What is referral marketing?

Referral marketing is a form of advertising in which businesses encourage customers to recommend their services, products or experiences to other people. Unlike word-of-mouth marketing, which relies on people spontaneously sharing information, referral marketing is a deliberate strategy involving incentives and rewards for customers in exchange for successful referrals.

For example, a company may offer a discount or special promotion to customers who successfully refer their products to someone else. Or, they might partner with an influencer or offer an affiliate program to incentivize people to promote their products. This not only encourages people to share product information but also to become active participants in the marketing process by finding potential leads and providing referrals.

The best part of referral marketing programs is they don’t just benefit companies–customers also reap the rewards of their efforts. This makes referral programs an excellent way to build loyalty, as well as increase your customer base.

Why referral marketing is so important

Referral marketing is an effective way to attract new customers and increase sales. Here are a few reasons your business should consider having an active referral marketing program.

Little to no cost

There are very few upfront costs to this strategy. All you need is a passionate customer base, a strategic plan and some creative referral marketing ideas. 

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t reward your customers for their referrals. Offering incentives like discounts or free products helps to encourage people to spread the word about your business. Be sure to factor in some costs for incentives and planning.

High customer lifetime value

A study from the Wharton School of Business shows that referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value than average customers. This means that over time, customers who come via a referral will bring more revenue to your business than those you acquire elsewhere.

Remember, every customer you bring in costs your business money, whether from advertising, discounts or other marketing techniques. If referral customers have a higher lifetime value than the ones acquired through paid channels, they can pay off those costs more quickly and help your business save money in the long run.

Likelihood of conversion

Referral marketing often leads to higher conversion rates than more traditional forms of advertising. With word-of-mouth referrals, customers receive personalized recommendations from someone they trust. This makes them more likely to take action on the recommendation and purchase.

According to data from McKinsey, 63% of GenZ consumers say that recommendations from friends are their most trusted source for learning about products and brands.

Establishes trust

Humans trust other humans. That’s just a fact. Think about it, if you’re looking for a new product or service, it’s much more likely you’ll purchase if you get a recommendation from someone you know. You might even read online reviews before you buy, to make sure you’re getting exactly what you expect.

We often call this social proof, which is the idea that if people around us are doing something, it must be alright to do it as well. It’s why people stand in line for the latest Jordans, or why Supreme drops are such a big hit. They aren’t necessarily offering the best product on the market, but it’s the most coveted because everyone else is buying it.

How does referral marketing work

Referral marketing encourages customers to promote a company’s products or services in exchange for some type of reward. This could be discounts, free items or other perks that make it worth their while to do so.

B2B and B2C businesses may need to approach their referral marketing strategies a bit differently. Here’s a quick breakdown of both strategies.

B2B referral marketing programs

B2B businesses are no strangers to a long sales process. It requires in-depth research, months of vetting and gaining the trust of multiple stakeholders to finalize a deal.

A 2023 study found that 82% of B2B sales leaders believe that referrals generate the best leads. That makes referral marketing programs essential for B2B businesses.

If you want to build out your B2B referral program, there are a few ways to go about it. If your business sells products, you could start by offering incentives like discounts to customers who refer you to their colleagues. Or, you could offer a loyalty program where customers receive rewards points for referring you to their peers. Check out Sprout’s Partnership Program as an example.

If you’re running a service-based business, consider offering timed service discounts. For example, a free day or free month. You can also offer credits for future purchases or services.

Remember, referrals don’t have to come only from customers. Accepting referrals from other businesses in exchange for discounts or rewards is a great way to generate new leads. Consider who in your field may be looking for referrals and create a referral marketing program that benefits both parties.

If you’re a SaaS company, you may want to partner with a tool that fills a gap in your offering and offer customers a discount for signing up for both platforms. Similarly, if you’re selling machine parts, partner with a delivery company that can fulfill orders for your clients and provide them discounts for choosing that shipping method.

B2C referral marketing strategies

B2C businesses are perfectly positioned to take advantage of referral marketing because they have a direct relationship with their customers.

One of the best referral marketing ideas for B2C companies is to offer rewards in exchange for referrals. This could be a discount code, free product, gift card or another incentive that encourages customers to tell their friends and family about your company.

You can also incentivize customers with loyalty programs, where they earn points for each referral or purchase their referee makes. This allows customers to save up points over time and redeem them for discounts, exclusive offers or other rewards.

Email campaigns are also an effective referral marketing strategy. By including social sharing buttons in your emails, you allow customers to share your products, news and offerings quickly and easily.

The most important thing to remember when creating a referral program is that it should be an integral part of the customer experience. Referrals should be included in every customer touchpoint, from website navigational menus to the checkout page. Similarly, be sure to integrate your referral program with other critical systems, such as your CRM, eCommerce technology and point-of-sale systems, so you can keep track of all referral activity.

Referral marketing strategies

If you’re looking to get started with referral marketing, there are a few core concepts you should understand.

1. Create shareable content

The best referral marketing programs go beyond just providing discounts or rewards for successful referrals. Your program should also include content that is easy to share, such as blog posts, helpful guides and interesting video clips that potential customers can use to help them decide whether your product or service is right for them.

As well, make sure your posts are easy to share. That means adding social media sharing buttons, such as a “Share to Facebook” button, on your website, blog posts and email marketing campaigns.

2. Provide excellent customer service

The backbone of any successful referral marketing program is excellent customer service. If your customers are happy with their purchase, they’re more likely to recommend you and share their positive experiences with others.

You can provide exceptional customer service in a number of ways:

• Give customers the option to contact you directly via phone call, text message, email or live chat.
• Have a well-trained customer service team that can quickly and effectively answer any questions, concerns or complaints.
• Make refunds, exchanges and shipping as simple as possible.
• Answer all feedback on your social channels promptly.

The better the experience customers have, the more likely they are to become loyal customers and refer others to our business.

3. Define your goals

Goals give businesses direction and help measure success. When building out your referral marketing program, think about what success looks like to you. Ask yourself questions like:

• How many referrals should our program generate?
• What kind of customers do we want to connect with through referrals?
• Are there any geographic areas we’d like to target?

Once you know what you want to achieve, you can focus on tactics to help get you there. For example, if you want to target customers in a specific area, you might try offering coupons only to people in that location. If you’re looking to connect with people outside of your direct network, partnering with an influencer or influencer marketing platform can help you reach a broader audience.

4. Plan your campaign

With your goals in mind, it’s time to plan your referral marketing program. This includes choosing the right platform, setting up tracking and analytics tools, crafting an email strategy to encourage referrals and developing incentives that will motivate customers to share your brand with their friends.

Some things to consider when planning your campaign include:

• How long will the program run?
• What types of rewards will you offer for referrals?
• How will customers track their referrals and collect rewards?
• Will there be any restrictions on where people can share your referral link?
• How will you measure success and track ROI?

Once you have a plan in place, you can get creative with your referral marketing ideas. From creative email campaigns to social media contests, there are many ways to spread the word about your company.

Types of referral marketing

There are several types of referral marketing that you can use to promote your business. Here are some of the most popular.

Direct

Direct referrals involve asking your existing customers to refer people they know. You can use email or even in-person events to ask for referrals. You can also consider hiring a brand ambassador to present your company to a broader audience.

Incentivized 

Incentives are a great way to encourage customers to refer their friends. Who doesn’t want more of a product they already love? Referral marketing incentives can include discounts, free products or cash rewards. If you offer incentives, make sure they are generous enough to be enticing and promote loyalty among customers.

Email

There are more than 4 billion active email users worldwide, making it one of the most powerful tools in your referral marketing arsenal. With email marketing, you can send personalized messages to customers and prospects to inform them about promotions or referral programs. You can also use email newsletters to keep contacts up-to-date on new products and services.

Reviews

According to a recent customer survey, 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. This means that it’s important to nurture and cultivate a positive online reputation through customer reviews. You can encourage customers to post reviews on your website, Google My Business page or other review sites like Yelp. Or, build up your Amazon review ratings for products that you offer.

Social

Social media can be a powerful referral marketing tool. Your advocates can share their experiences with your brand, post promotional content and messages or even host live streams to engage with other customers and prospects. 

You can create a referral program with special incentives for people who refer new customers or reward loyal followers for engaging with you on social media. Just make sure you’re using a custom URL or hashtag when customers make referrals so you can track and measure the success of your program.

Increase referrals by finding your brand advocates

Brand advocates aren’t always easy to come by. Luckily, there are resources available to help you identify and reach out to potential brand advocates.

If you’re feeling stuck figuring out campaign strategies, check out our list of marketing campaign ideas to help get you started.

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From popular creators to celebrities to corporations, social media has become the face of the public apology. Social media managers and communication professionals must craft tactful corporate apologies—or else they risk facing even more backlash during a brand crisis. And customer care reps are all too familiar with disgruntled clients.

Admitting you made a mistake can feel tough and emotional. When you’re doing it on behalf of a brand, it can feel even more stressful. Today, people want a sincere apology and they aren’t afraid to call out their favorite brands if it’s lackluster. Creating a Notes app apology or press release simply isn’t enough sometimes.

We’ll show you how to draft a quality brand apology, along with nine examples so you can be prepared when it’s your turn to say sorry.

Public apology 101: How (and when) to make a brand apology

Perhaps your company didn’t deliver a package on time or a leader made an insensitive comment during a pivotal cultural moment. Regardless of the situation, several pillars of drafting an apology remain the same. Here are four things you should do when drafting a brand apology:

Take accountability

One of the worst things you can do is not acknowledge the mistake. A sincere apology admits wrongdoing and the best public apologies explain why.

Taking ownership and remaining transparent about the brand’s role in the situation can ease the public’s qualms. Even if other parties were involved, steer away from shifting blame. Instead focus on the brand’s role in the situation.

In some scenarios, a company can’t take full accountability for legal reasons. But remember, the main point is to acknowledge the wrongdoings and how they impacted the aggrieved party. In these cases, collaborate with your legal counsel and public relations teams to shape an apology that doesn’t incriminate but still shows sympathy.

Show empathy and remorse

If your apology lacks empathy or ​​contrition, the public may interpret your brand as tone-deaf and remorseless. Make it clear the brand empathizes with the victims involved and understands why customers are upset.

Social media is all about personal connection, so embrace the human side. Step into your customer’s shoes: what would you like to hear in a heartfelt apology?

Listen before speaking

You should work fast to issue an apology, but make time to understand your audience through social listening. It’s difficult to craft a genuine apology without knowing why your audience is upset.

Why are they upset? What actions are they demanding? Social listening data can help you answer these types of questions because it provides more context to online conversations beyond the brand’s network.

You can tap into your audience’s feelings by measuring sentiment, the scope of conversations and more. This allows you to shape a public apology that directly addresses their feedback. Essentially, social listening allows you to be a fly on the wall, so don’t hesitate to use it to your advantage.

Communicate a plan for redemption

In a Sprout survey, 89% of people said a business can regain their trust if it admits to a mistake and is transparent about the steps it will take to resolve the issue.

In your apology, state what your brand is doing to resolve the issue, along with any preventative measures you will implement to avoid similar situations in the future.

In some cases, you won’t be able to deal with the specifics of corrective actions right away. For instance, you might be in the early stages of the crisis or facing issues surrounding legality or brand safety. That’s okay—this is where transparency comes in.

The dos and don’ts of sharing company apologies on social media

We’ve covered the four pillars of drafting a public apology, now let’s cover some quick dos and don’ts of brand apologies on social media.

Do: Be proactive

What’s the best way to recover from a brand crisis? Prevent it from happening in the first place. You can use social media to minimize a brand crisis. Remember to use social listening to help keep your ear to the ground. Use it to gauge whether or not you should comment on a social or political movement or participate in a trend.

Don’t: Gaslight the aggrieved

Avoid saying a message was misinterpreted or the “I’m sorry you took offense to that” apology. It can come off as cold and unsympathetic.

Also, avoid focusing too much on positive intent. Even if you mean well, it doesn’t take away from the damage. Think about it this way: If you dropped a bowling ball on your best friend’s foot, an apology wouldn’t stop the pain—you would get them medical attention or even nurse them back to health.

Do: Embrace transparency

You may not have all the answers, but you can let your audience know the brand recognizes the issue(s) and is working to resolve it. Provide one action item your team is currently doing and communicate that your team will continue to provide updates once more information is available.

Here’s an example:

After a thorough review by our internal team, we have begun the process of creating new procedures and protocols to prevent this situation from happening again. Due to our ongoing investigation, we are unable to present all of the details at this time, but once these new initiatives are implemented, we will share more information. Our team is doing xyz to handle the situation currently. Thank you for your patience as we work towards rectifying the situation with the respect and forethought it deserves.

Do: Fulfill your promises by doing the work

Show your audience you’re truly sorry through ongoing actions until the issue is resolved. Implement initiatives that will help the affected in the future. Actions speak volumes, so always look for ways to work towards redemption.

Redemption isn’t overnight. A singular apology isn’t enough depending on the severity of the situation. If you’re dealing with sensitive topics such as racism or toxic workplace culture, your brand needs to do more than make a statement on social media. It will take months, or even years to fully recover. You might even need to hire a DEI expert or crisis consultant to help you create a plan.

The road to redemption doesn’t happen overnight—it’s a journey so embrace it by continuing to do the work.

9 public apology examples to bookmark for your social strategy

Saying you’re sorry can be tough, but these public apology examples are a masterclass in owning up to your mistakes:

Apologies in pop culture

1. Lizzo

Grammy award-winning artist Lizzo received a swarm of backlash online after the drop of her single, “Grrrls”, which many fans said included an ableist slur. Lizzo and her team acted fast, re-recorded the single and released a statement on social media.

Lizzo accomplishes several things in a short apology: she acknowledges the mistake, she identifies why she sympathizes with her audience and ends with an actionable step to redeem herself. Lizzo’s personal brand is all about inclusivity and self-love, so her apology feels sincere and spot on.

2. The Hollywood Reporter

One thing we all know is that you don’t mess with comic book fans, especially Marvel fans. In early July 2022, the Hollywood Reporter came under fire on Twitter for its confusing headline about Anthony Mackie reprising his role as the new Captain America.

The headline read, “Anthony Mackie is reprising his long-time Marvel character of Sam Wilson, but will not, however, portray Wilson’s long-time alter ego and #CaptainAmerica sidekick, Falcon.”

Marvel fans were not happy and urged the entertainment publication to simply call him the new Captain America.

And you know it’s bad when Chris Evans has to step in:

The Reporter responded to Evans’ tweet and used it as an opportunity to apologize. Their apology was short and sweet, but still acknowledged they made a mistake.

Corporate apologies to current customers

3. Abbott Labs

CEO of Abbott Laboratories, Robert Ford, apologized for his company’s role in the national baby formula shortage via an op-ed in the Washington Post. In the article, he apologized for “every family we’ve let down” and explained what caused the recall of their formula.

He also noted the company’s plan to avoid a shortage in the future, including restarting one of its facilities in early June 2022 and prioritizing baby formula over the company’s adult products.

Some argue this isn’t the most accessible apology (the Washington Post has a paywall), but it’s a great example of a crisis that requires a long-form approach. Although not everyone has access to a Washington Post subscription, the company received mass coverage from several reputable publications, including the Wall Street Journal, pushing the apology to the masses beyond social media.

4. Skittles

Not every apology has to be super serious. In 2013, Skittles replaced their legacy lime-flavored candy with green apple and customers have been begging the brand to bring it back ever since.

In September 2021, the candy brand announced the return of its lime-flavored candies. They followed up in 2022 with an apology tour complete with social posts, sports sponsorships and more.

Skittles live streamed a press conference on Twitch and YouTube. On the stream, a spokesperson apologized for replacing the beloved lime flavor and read real comments from social media.

They also teased the press conference on TikTok.  

Skittles’ apology tour matches the brand’s humorous, lighthearted voice, and is a great example of balancing the famed public apology with a marketing campaign.

5. Target

In 2013, hackers stole 40 million credit card records and 70 million customer records from Target. As a result, the big-box retailer needed to take several steps to regain the trust of its customers and the public.

Target released several written apologies detailing what they did to stop the breach, detailing their plans to restore security and help affected customers.

The company replaced their Redcards with chip and pin technology, installed new payment terminals, offered free credit card monitoring services to customers for one year and gave an extended discount.

Not only did Target take several measures for redemption, but the brand also included the situation on its company page as a milestone, linking to a blog post giving readers a behind-the-scenes look. Rather than trying to forget about the pitfall, Target branded the data breach as an opportunity that led them to being a leader in cyber security.

Target’s effort is a great illustration of how brands can do more than just apologize. They went above the standard by implementing a communications campaign to keep their audience updated on changes and how they’re making things right long term.

Apologies for missed expectations

6.    Chick-fil-A

Along with its beloved chicken sandwich, Chick-fil-A is known for its incredible customer service. So it’s no surprise their customer care on social media is just as good. They frequently interact with customers in their Instagram comments.

If someone has a question, complaint or concern, Chick-fil-A apologizes immediately and provides next steps to help the customer.

For complex or specific issues, they provide patrons with a customer service number and an online form to complete, allowing the customer to get help at their own pace.

7.    Evian

TikToker, food critic and pro MMA fighter, Keith Lee called out the water company after having a bad experience at a brand event. In his TikTok vlog, he films flooded floors, dirty cups, unsanitary food—the list goes on. He also mentions spending $100 after leaving the event since he couldn’t eat any food because of his shellfish allergy and food safety concerns.

Evian listened and righted the wrong by giving him a $100 gift card and a mini-fridge filled with products. In result, Lee felt the brand sympathized with him and he posted a follow-up video explaining how the brand went above and beyond to apologize.

Evian shows how food brands can give a meaningful apology by listening. Everyone loves a free gift, but what stands out the most is how the brand listened to a specific complaint. Since the brand listened, the aggrieved party ended up coming to their defense in the end.

8.    PwC

In 2017, the wrong movie was announced as the winner of the Best Picture category at the Oscars. If you remember that night, social media was in a frenzy.

The Big Four accounting firm, PwC was quick to own its mistake, following with a brief yet effective apology on Medium and Twitter.

PwC has counted votes for the Oscars for decades, and instead of drawing out the situation, they quickly took ownership, apologized and were able to move on.

9.    FedEx

FedEx also uses Instagram comments to help facilitate customer service. As you would expect, most negative messages address missing or delayed packages.

FedEx representatives respond to these comments, apologizing for the inconvenience and then providing next steps to help the customer, including a case number and a form.

It’s okay to say sorry, you just need the right plan

Now that you know how to craft a sincere apology and have a few brand examples under your belt for inspiration, you’ll know what to do if your brand is ever in the hot seat.

Handling public apologies with grace is just one part of brand reputation management.

Read our guide on how to create a social media crisis communication plan to learn more.

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You need new hires onboarded quickly, armed with the right tools to represent your brand and deliver a strong customer experience. By staffing strategically, companies can rely more on freelancers as opposed to viewing them as a last resort in their talent strategy. In fact, 38% of businesses plan to significantly increase their usage of remote freelancers in the next 2 years. Social and customer success are the epicenter of how brands market and engage their audience. Hiring the right social media professionals and customer support specialists will be critical to your company’s success.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How the changing workforce impacts the rise of independent talent
• Why social is critical to your brand voice and customer experience
• Tips for social media freelancers

The post Social Media Team Expansion: Staffing Strategically with Freelancers [Webinar] appeared first on Sprout Social.

The experience visitors have with your brand on social can mean the difference between a loyal or lost customer. But how do you evaluate that experience? Conducting a customer experience audit is the best way to understand what you’re doing right and where to course correct. 

Use this template to create a social-specific customer journey map that analyzes your social customer experience performance from the awareness stage through post-purchase care. This process will empower you to:

• Enhance your strategy by identifying customer pain points and process gaps
• Identify whether your response rates and times are up to speed or need adjusting
• Understand whether you’re hitting your industry or personal benchmarks
• Hone in on experience elements that need updates, like chatbot routes

Your work schedule may have off hours, but your customers expect a stellar brand experience 24/7. Use this customer experience audit template to ensure your channels will keep people coming back—even when you’re signed off.

The post Conduct a Customer Experience Audit to Optimize Your Customer Journey appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this guide, we’ll take a deeper dive into why building customer relationships is so important as well as share nine strategies to help you get started.

Why is it important to build customer relationships?

Social media has changed the way businesses and customers interact with each other, and it’s important that social media is seen as an avenue for real-time communication and feedback.

And just because you’ve converted a new customer through lead generation or a sale doesn’t mean your work is done. You need to continue to build and nurture those customer relationships on social media so they keep coming back again and again. When you do, they’ll start advocating for your business and assist in the marketing for you.

There’s nothing quite like word-of-mouth marketing, and having solid foundations with your customers is a great way to keep them excited about your business. When you have customers who have enthusiasm for your business, not only will they continue to shop with you, but they’ll tell their friends and family about you as well.

This is why building strong customer relationships is an essential part of business and marketing. It’s smarter to retain loyal customers and continue to build customer relationships than to try to solely convert new ones.

To break it down further, it’s important to build customer relationships because it:

• Reduces customer turnover and improves customer loyalty. As with any organization, the less turnover the better. The same applies for customers: the longer you can retain your customers, the better mutual outcome. They receive excellent customer service and products from your business and, in turn, you receive their loyalty.
• Increases the customer lifetime value (CLV). This is a great social media KPI to capture. The longer a customer remains loyal and purchases from your business, the greater the value this customer has in their relationship with you.

Now, let’s dive into nine strategies to help you use social media to build customer relationships that last.

How to build customer relationships with social media

While there are many avenues you can use to help you build customer relationships – a forum, your website, email marketing, your blog and so many more – we’re here to talk about how you can do so through your social media platforms.

After all, you’ve worked hard to grow your following. Why not use that audience to convert and nurture longterm relationships with customers?

Here are our top nine tips for you.

1. Create a customer service social media channel

One great way to get started with relationship building on social media is to create a dedicated customer service channel. There are a few ways to do this.

First, you could take a page out of Sprout Social’s book and create a Twitter account specifically for handling customer service requests as well as communicating product support issues and resolutions. (Do a “support” or “customer support” search on Twitter to find even more examples of customer service Twitter accounts across a variety of industries.)

Additionally, you could add an option to your Facebook Messenger chatbot that allows customers to input customer service requests, or direct people to a support page on your website.

Ensure that all response times are quick and helpful to build a good reputation for your brand.

2. Use social listening to build customer relationships

Social listening is the act of monitoring certain topics and keywords online to ensure you find important mentions of your brand or related topics.

Sprout’s social listening tool collects and centralizes what people are saying about your brand, industry and related topics around your brand. With this information, you can modify and improve your campaigns and messages. Make more informed decisions to help your customers solve their problems and provide valuable answers to questions.

Or, utilize this knowledge to gather a list of blog posts, new features and learning resources that you know your audience wants to see.

3. Listen to customer feedback

It’s one thing to have an outlet for customers to provide feedback. It’s another entirely to actually do something with that feedback.

Show your customers that you care about their input by putting their suggestions and wants into practice.

Whether it’s a new product that you launch or a new feature in your software, listening to and implementing customer feedback is an essential step in gaining their trust and loyalty. It shows that you hear their concerns and needs and you’re willing to act on it for their benefit.

4. Personalize customer experiences

Another great way to build customer relationships is through personalization. Consider adding a live chat widget onto your website for support and customer questions. Your audience will be able to speak to a real person who calls them by their name and provides a real experience.

Other ways to personalize experiences is by ensuring social media interactions and email newsletters include your recipient’s first name. Here’s an example of how Visme personalized a response on Twitter.

Whether you’re dealing with customer service issues or simply interacting with your followers’ Tweets, creating that personal connection is key.

5. Create a relatable brand voice

One of the best ways to build strong connections to your audience: be relatable! Social media should be fun, and while you don’t have to be overly casual, there are still ways to let your audience enjoy your presence through your brand voice.

Take a page out of MoonPie’s Twitter account. They share humorous content, jump on memes they can relate back to their brand, and they take any opportunity they can to bad mouth the sun.

Try sharing memes that are timely and relevant to your brand, use current lingo and take a look around at other brands to see if you can get any ideas to help your brand voice become more relatable online.

6. Offer rewards and incentives

We all love free stuff, which is why putting together contests and giveaways is one great way to offer rewards and incentives to your audience.

Check out this giveaway from Aerie on Instagram. They ask Instagram users to leave a comment with a branded hashtag and tag a friend to enter. It’s effortless and it gets their followers excited and engaged.

Consider sharing flash sales on social media, including freebies and discount codes.

Here’s a great example from Fast that gets their audiences engaged and gets their business in front of potential customers.

Think about the ways that you can implement these tactics in your own social media strategy.

7. Share user-generated content

Customers love to share and tag brand products in their photos when posting on social media. This is called user-generated content, or UGC, and is a helpful tactic both for community building and for filling your social calendar up with hyper-relevant content.

For example, online swimsuit retailer Cupshe uses UGC in their social strategy to showcase their customers wearing their different styles and sizes. In turn, they tagged the original account who shared the photo of herself in one of their bathing suits. It’s important to note that you should ask permission before reposting a users’ photograph onto your brand account.

As a way to build a community and encourage your customers to share their photos of your product is to create a branded hashtag. Share this in your bio, like we see below on A Color Story‘s Instagram bio.

8. Provide value on social media

There are so many different types of content you can create on social media. Some will – of course – be more promotional in nature, because your business is to make a profit both solve customer’s problems and needs as well as make a profit.

However, you need to ensure there’s a good balance between your promotional content and the educational and free value you provide to your audience, whether it’s freebies, discount codes or knowledge.

Share your business’ value visually in a Facebook or Instagram carousel, or you can create a Twitter thread that shares information like Grammarly did below.

Share blog content and create educational videos to inform your audience even more. Providing free value helps to showcase how beneficial your product must be, bringing in new customers and building a relationship to help those customers stick around.

9. Build an online community

Our last tip for building customer relationships is to focus on building a community. Whether it’s through a Facebook Group, an other online community or branded hashtags, invite your audience to participate.

One great example of a highly active Facebook community is The Daily Carnage, a marketing-focused Facebook Group run by agency Carney. The agency publishes posts in the Group, but the conversations tend to be member-run and always all about marketing.

You can create your own Facebook Group, start a Slack community or look into other platforms perfect for community building. This is a great way to keep people aware of and talking about your brand, even when you’re not directly selling to them.

Start building customer relationships

Are you feeling ready to set off on your own and build valuable relationships with your followers and customers? Use these nine tips to help you navigate your relationships and don’t forget to look at our free social media templates for even more content ideas.

The post 9 Ways to build customer relationships with social media appeared first on Sprout Social.

Sprout Social & Twitter share data-driven insights on how you can better care for your customers with Twitter.

In this guide, you’ll get:

• Exclusive data on how consumers and Twitter users prefer to interact with brands
• A pulse check on the current social customer care landscape
• Data-backed building blocks for a successful social customer care strategy
• Actionable customer care advice–tailored to your brand’s maturity–to hit the ground running

Your customers want to talk to you. Take the first step in the conversation and download this data-packed guide to fuel your strategy.

The post How to Use Twitter to Take Better Care of Your Customers appeared first on Sprout Social.