We’ve been building Chatbots on social media since 2011. Since then our bots have grown ever more intelligent, with the ability to deliver the right message and reward, at the right time, on the right channel.

Some examples of Chirpify platform Chatbot functionality include responding differently, and delivering different rewards and marketing outcomes, based on complex rules such as a user’s geolocation. Frequency rules governing how often consumers can engage, or how many times they must engage. Rules to govern rewards like points, promo codes, contest entries, and reminders. Moderation and blacklisting to prevent bad human actors. Our bot will respond in a user’s native language. The bots can reply differently based on user and campaign criteria so that members of a loyalty program will receive different responses than non-members. Messages and rewards can be differentiated based on membership tier, influencer level, time of day, status of a member, language, campaign parameters, and more. And all messages and rewards can be delivered by your brand over public reply or direct message.

You get the idea, these are just not conversational bots, these actually deliver rewards to consumers, collect consumer data, and connect engagement to real business systems producing real business outcomes.

We wanted to highlight an interesting use case that some of our customers are doing – Trivia games! Using Natural Language Processing, our bots are able to differentiate between right and wrong answers to questions posed by brands, delivering different responses and rewards based on these answers. Let’s take a recent campaign from Marriott and the NFL.

Which state has produced the most @NFL Hall of Famers? Answer with #RewardsPoints by 8pm EDT on 10/22 and score 1,000 points if you get it. pic.twitter.com/AKyiv0zlof

— Marriott Rewards (@MarriottRewards) October 22, 2017

Every Sunday Marriott and the NFL have been asking people trivia questions during NFL games. People who answer the questions correctly earn Marriott Rewards points inside their Marriott Rewards account. Behind the scenes Chirpify’s platform is checking multiple different criteria instantly before responding and rewarding. The first check is to see if they answered the questions correctly. The bot can interpret answers in multiple languages and also check for common misspellings.

The second check is to verify whether a Twitter user is a member of Marriott Rewards and has connected their Twitter account to their Marriott account. Our integrated Bot can look up, add, and edit members. If they are not yet a member, the chatbot will invite them to join. Chirpify’s platform even provides the mobile landing page for consumers to connect. Responding differently based on member status provides valuable member acquisition for brands.

Correct! Now connect your accounts by 8pm EDT today to get your points: https://t.co/pXbE3nKiPM pic.twitter.com/rke9AUgfgy

— Marriott Rewards (@MarriottRewards) October 23, 2017

If they are a member, the bot will check to make sure they have to exceeded their points limits and will issue Marriott Rewards points inside their Marriott Rewards account. The exact point total can differ based on tier, influence, or other campaign criteria.

You got it! Your points will post in 24 hours. Come back next week for another chance to score. pic.twitter.com/knrCnRYUK5

— Marriott Rewards (@MarriottRewards) October 23, 2017

All participation is tracked by Chirpify’s platform as well, delivering valuable data inside our CRM system, and pushing into our client’s systems of record.

As you can see, complex games can be designed that can engage consumers at scale, responding to hundreds of thousands of consumers at once based on complex logic. When you weigh this type of organic engagement vs an ad buy, our brands know that this is a better way to create more active, engaged, and loyal customers. Brands like Marriott, who have been using our Chatbot for years understand the power, and the ROI, of organic engagement at scale.

Sending the right message and reward, at the right time, on the right channel. This is the mantra that has guided our product roadmap, and the functionality we’ve enabled for brands.

When these things come together, consumers are absolutely delighted. Let’s break down how we do this. It all comes down to data.

Sending the right message

Chirpify enables brands to send messages over email, social comment, or private direct message across multiple social media and messaging platforms. These messages can be sent automatically based on triggers and rules, or manually from a brand’s dashboard. The key is that these messages can be differentiated based on data owned by the brand and/or social data we know about a consumer. A good example of this is sending different messages to consumers based on whether or not they’re a member. Here’s an example of that…

Member – Instantly entered into contest

Thanks! You've been entered to win a pair of adidas Tango Nemeziz shoes. Stay tuned for other ways to earn Goal Club points.

— SOCCER.COM (@soccerdotcom) September 6, 2017

Non-member – Invited to join

Thanks for the tweet! Go here to complete your entry for Tango Nemeziz shoes. https://t.co/mLyjJUw324

— SOCCER.COM (@soccerdotcom) September 6, 2017

The Right Reward

Just as messages can be differentiated based on data points, so can the rewards your brand sends out. Whether it is points, coupons, promo codes, content, contest entries, free tickets, or any other reward, the key is to make sure it is relevant to a members status, geography, influence, birthday, tastes, and other data points. These data points can live on social, inside the Chirpify CRM, or inside your brand’s CRM. Either way, Chirpify’s platform is built to leverage them, sending the right reward. Here’s an example of that. Marriott is able to send different points totals, images, and copy to different members based on anniversary, tier, and status. What’s more is this happens automatically, without the brand having to do any work. The platform just runs. It just works.

Platinum

@cclawrence28 Happy Member-versary! Time flies when you’re Platinum Elite—celebrate with 500 #RewardsPoints on us! pic.twitter.com/Zc6U0Iq4P8

— Marriott Rewards (@MarriottRewards) September 21, 2017

Thank you @MarriottRewards, it has been a great year as a Platinum member!

— Chris Lawrence (@cclawrence28) September 21, 2017

Gold

@scottrohrig To you from us, please enjoy 300 bonus points. Happy anniversary! #MembersGetIt pic.twitter.com/kMrPTNThPe

— Marriott Rewards (@MarriottRewards) August 16, 2017

Thank you! Wouldn't imagine staying anyplace else! #brandswhogetit https://t.co/339PiYNqcv

— Scott Rohrig (@scottrohrig) August 16, 2017

At The Right Time

I think it’s safe to say consumers have zero patience. The expectation on social is to receive responses immediately. Not in a couple of hours. When a person takes action on your CTA, our platform responds to them within seconds. There is no delay. On mobile this is an amazing experience. Your brand IM’ng on a 1:1 basis with thousands of people simultaneously at scale.

Over The Right Channel

It’s impossible to understate the importance of being able to message consumers on the same channels that they’re taking action on. If your marketing automation does not include social and messaging channels you’re ignoring consumers on the channels they literally spend all of their online time on.

Leveraging This Data Inside Your Dashboard

The data points that enable differentiated marketing automation is also available in your Chirpify dashboard and CRM, so you can filter and segment users based on these data points.

According to Simply Measured’s annual The State of Social Marketing report, the leading challenge for social media marketers is measuring ROI, with nearly 60% saying they struggle to tie social to business goals. Indeed, aligning social media marketing strategy to specific business objectives is the number one area of focus for agencies this year. In this regard, the biggest challenge for many social media marketers is having the data to connect the dots between consumer social media activity and measurable business outcomes. Connecting social media to the CRM and loyalty marketing efforts can directly address this delta while giving marketers an opportunity to drive even greater value.

It’s not just driving value that’s important, though. Marketers also need to illustrate the power of their efforts. While 88% of respondents in a recent study from Social Media Examiner saw increased exposure from their social media marketing efforts, few have translated those efforts into improved sales.

The Challenges Social Marketers Face in 2017

Source: Simply Measured’s annual The State of Social Marketing report

Connect Loyalty To Social For Measurable ROI

We’ve known for a long time that connecting social media and loyalty programs is a direct way to increase and measure ROI. Our customers have proven it by doing their own independent ROI studies.

L2 Research — who benchmarks the digital performance of consumer brands and categories — recently released its annual Loyalty Intelligence Report which highlights four key ways that loyalty marketers could help fill the ROI gap for social media marketers while using social media to help further specific business goals around customer lifetime value and customer spend.

Promoting Loyalty On Social

“Winning brands leverage multiple channels for communication” says L2 Research. However, according to the firm, the majority of surveyed companies do not take advantage of opportunities to communicate about the loyalty program in social media. For example, only 7% of brands promote their loyalty program in their Facebook bio and even fewer do so in Instagram.

The opportunity to promote the loyalty program within social media is a large, untapped opportunity for many brands. According to research conducted by a Chirpify retail brand customer, socially connected loyalty members are more likely to engage and become advocates on social media. Indeed, they have a higher Net Promoter Score, (of 79% vs 73%) and are much more likely to share their activities on social media, at 53% vs 42%. This advocacy drives earned media and new customer acquisition — two important business goals.

Leveraging Existing Followers

“Given that launching a robust rewards program can be costly, brands should take advantage of their existing social media assets to drive visibility.” Whether a brand already has a loyalty program or wants to start one, social media can provide a sound foundation for promoting the program — and is an ideal way to reward customers for their advocacy activities.

Moreover, Chirpify can help brands connect their existing loyalty program database with customer activity in social media. By asking loyalty members to connect their social media handle(s) to their loyalty membership account, brands can begin collecting a variety of meaningful data points in the CRM and can help drive activities that directly map to specific business goals. For example, if a sports retailer is interested in increasing store traffic, Chirpify can listen for geo-specific posts and automatically reply to those consumers with a reward for visiting the store.

Non-Transactional Loyalty

“Leader brands have begun to focus on non-transactional loyalty programs, which can increase brand engagement and offer opportunities for improved marketing personalization.” According to L2, only 35% of brands currently reward members for non-transactional engagement. Yet, as reported by Loyalty360, 84% of consumers say they would spend more with brands that offer points for activities other than spending.

This approach offers the opportunity to provide a differentiated value exchange for customers and the brand. For example, in exchange for a social media participation with the brand, customers might receive a sneak peek, behind the scenes video, VIP access and more. In exchange, marketers get the opportunity to gather additional information about their customers which allows them to further personalize their efforts.

In this way, marketers can immediately identify customers in social media and provide offers that better reflect their personal interests and needs, creating a deeper relationship. This relationship translates into customers participating more often with the brand and converting seamlessly within the social media context. As this virtual snowball grows, the value exchange becomes deeper and more meaningful to both customers and brand.

Integrated

“The best loyalty programs will be integrated across all digital touchpoints, providing consumers with an always-on experience and increasing program engagement.” In addition to CRM integration, this level of integration can be achieved by allowing consumers to link their social accounts to the reward program directly within the brand’s owned channels. In this way brands can feed the CRM with important social and messaging data that allows the brand to recognize customers wherever they are — in social media, messaging, eCommerce, and more.

The future of marketing is providing utility to consumers. With ever decreasing time and attention spans, consumers will be loyal to those brands that save them time, engage in the moment, and make doing business with them easier across all channels. With the new ability to recognize customers regardless of the digital touchpoint, marketers can come ever closer to achieving this goal.

Bringing it all Together

According to Chirpify customer research, 75% of socially connected loyalty program members are more likely to purchase from the brand three or more times per year, compared to 68% of those that have not connected their social media accounts to their loyalty program account. On the retail side, customers spend 13% more with the brand. On the hotel side, socially connected loyalty members spend 75% more and book 2x in the same time period. For brands and agencies looking to align social media strategy with the business, uniting loyalty marketing with social media is an important step to meaningfully and measurably impacting business goals like topline growth, customer loyalty and lifetime customer value.

L2 remarks that there is a clear correlation between their brand index rank and loyalty program adoption with 88% of Genius and Gifted brands having loyalty programs. Yet, of these, there is distinct room for improvement. By connecting social media and loyalty marketing disciplines, marketers can directly impact business goals — and the topline through social media loyalty initiatives.

For more information about how Chirpify can help your social media and loyalty programs create strategic business value contact us here.

We’re pleased to announce integrated registration, enabling brands to embed engagement loyalty opt-in directly into their owned properties on web and mobile. With integrated registration, consumer opt-in is as easy as logging in with their favorite social media platform. For brands, installing registration is as simple as adding a link to your website or mobile app.

Clients that are using integrated registration are seeing conversion rates over 80%. Wut?!

Here’s how they’re doing it…

Kimpton Hotels

Kimpton enables their Karma members to opt-in to their engagement loyalty program by adding our links to simple social login buttons on their Karma portal. All a Karma member needs to do is log in with one of these social accounts and our platform instantly links social identity to their existing customer record. Once connected, that member has a social media remote control to participate in brand campaigns and earn Karma for their advocacy. Brands are able to pass any data they would like through our embeddable links. Or, they can use our registration form builder to collect additional data, as well as incentivize them right in the flow for different actions such as connecting multiple accounts or following the brand across social channels.

Silver Diner

Silver Diner has integrated their engagement loyalty registration into their mobile app, making it super slick and easy for their members to connect social and start earning. The app passes all the relevant consumer data to our platform, and in return we connect social identity to a Silver Diner member record. The consumer is able to start earning instantly for their social media engagement.

Silver Diner has developed award-winning fresh and local menus to address today’s lifestyles. To stay relevant and participating in our customers’ lifestyle, we know we need to engage our diners between meals on social media. With Chirpify, Silver Diner gains new customers and valuable customer data, and diners accrue rewards for dollars off their next visit. This virtuous cycle of rewards, earned media, new customer acquisition, and customer-driven data underscores our philosophy of “Eat Well, Do Well”.

Joe Howell, Senior Marketing Manager, Silver Diner

CRM

All of the data collected during registration, as well as ongoing campaign participation and engagement history, is presented inside a brand’s Chirpify CRM dashboard. The CRM allows brands to see their member’s social, engagement, and earning history, as well as first party data that is located in existing client CRM systems. For example, brands can see member tier, anniversary, and other data points alongside their social engagement and campaign participation. The dashboard also shows non-member data for member acquisition. Read more about our Social Loyalty CRM.

While the process of linking social accounts to a rewards program has always been easy with Chirpify, it’s become even easier, allowing customers to immediately begin earning loyalty program rewards for their social and chat engagement directly from brand’s owned properties. Contact us today to get a demo.

Accounting for loyalty program points can present a challenge to organizations looking for ways to modernize their program by expanding beyond “spend and get” to reward for engagement. After all, the argument goes, points are a liability and creating more of them can’t be done lightly. This perspective will not only keep you from much needed transformation, but will also keep your program from reaching its true potential. To understand why, let’s take a look at the logic behind loyalty programs in the first place, how marketers get trapped in accounting-related exercises, and last, how we can collectively break free to modernize our programs for a truly customer-centric rewards experience.

Discount vs. Loyalty Program

Prior to loyalty programs, companies would offer a discount to encourage sales. Discounts are customer neutral, meaning that anyone can redeem them — whether they are a new or existing customer. Intuitively, some customers are worth more to the business than others. However, discounts do not differentiate and are just as easily redeemed by loyal customers as they are by deal seekers.

Now, if an organization applied the same discount via accrued points to loyalty program customers, not only would they ensure a repeat sale, but they would create goodwill and build value in the relationship. The dollars are guaranteed to come back to the business when points are redeemed and even then, not all points will be used.

Accrued Points

The downside to this approach is that is has created a phenomenon of certain customers who like to bank their points for a future big purchase. The impact of this is two-fold if you are a business that tracks the value of your loyalty points in financial statements. First, points are a liability in the accounting sense which makes loyalty marketers concerned about creating too much liability for the organization. And, second, as most organizations’ loyalty programs revolve around a spend-and-get approach, there is a defined equation between revenue generated by loyalty program members and the liability they are able to create through their activity.

It is important to note here that while some organizations don’t track rewards on their financials at all, others have created their own guidelines for doing so as there remains no standard accounting method for tracking and reporting on program-created rewards.

The Flip Side

While loyalty marketers have become sensitive to the balance between revenue and reward, introducing new methodologies to this equation can be seen as challenging, or at worst, a threat. However, a fixation on the spend/liability equation ignores the flip side of the coin — the impact loyal customers have to business operations. To maximize the impact of a loyalty program, marketers should consider how they can maximize the value of customers to their business, further boosting the topline.

More to the point, customers are maturing and demanding more from brand relationships. Consider that according to research by Accenture, 51% of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands that interact with them through their preferred channels of communication. Increasingly, that channel of choice is mobile and social. Indeed, as reported by comScore, one of every five minutes of digital media time is spent with social media. Of this, roughly 80 percent is spent on mobile. Given all this, it’s clear that there is a large opportunity to use social media as a mechanism to turn the smartphone into a key component of your loyalty program.

Engagement Loyalty Drives ROI

Bringing it all together, engaging customers in these new channels–enabling them to earn rewards for their brand advocacy–allows loyalty marketers to modernize their programs and focus on the operational, topline value loyal customers bring to the business. By taking a social engagement approach to loyalty marketing, with an emphasis on providing utility and a fair value exchange, brands are able to drive social actions that not only engage customers but also create social proof, earned media, and word-of-mouth that simultaneously serves to grow new customer acquisition.

Moreover, research from brands that have added social media components to their loyalty programs have found that socially connected members buy twice as frequently as non-connected members. And one hotelier with such a program found that its connected members, in a given year, spent 75% more than the average member. They also had 2X more purchases than the average member in the same time period. Companies that track engagement loyalty find that the ROI is just as attributable as with “spend and get” programs.

Independent ROI Studies

Independent ROI studies conducted by our enterprise retail and hotel customers found that their socially connected loyalty members (connected via Chirpify) had the following data points vs non-connected members. To find out more, download the ROI study.

Leave Liability Behind

Traditionally, brands have approached the loyalty equation with points, but research featured in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that “providing social rewards [e.g., a member-exclusive personal lounge, health club, concierge services, and invitations to special events] increases customers’ emotional attachment and effective commitment to a company, and hence they are more likely to behave in ways that are beneficial to it.” This insight is important as brands look to create a value exchange that converts in social media.

Successful ideas for creating value in exchange for social participation and loyalty include invitations to social VIP only events, free upgrades or sneak peeks, unique or exclusive content, and the opportunity to engage with a brand celebrity — none of which result in liabilities you need to report to finance. For example, a leading sports retailer found that its members who were socially engaged spent on average $40 more per year. Multiply that by total connected members and it’s easy to see how the old accounting of points and liability must be modernized to reflect the new math of social engagement ROI.

At the end of the day, customers want to engage and interact with their favorite brands — and they want to be rewarded for it as they recognize the value of their time and their voice. Simultaneously, customers at organizations who have connected social media to their loyalty program are more engaged, participate and spend more with the brand, positively impacting the topline.

Sports Endeavors Incorporated (SEI), the company behind popular sports brands such as Soccer.com, Lacrosse.com, and WorldRugbyShop.com, thinks of its employees, its community and its customers as a team. To that end, we’re teaming with SEI and soccer clubs across the country to not only outfit teams for the season, but reward them with a free 12-month Goal Club Membership.

When soccer club athletes receive their team uniform this summer, it will be accompanied by a uniform care guide and a free membership to Soccer.com’s rewarding membership program, Goal Club. Additionally, now through December 31, 2017, members sharing a photo of their new team jersey on Twitter or Instagram using #soccerdotcomteam will score 100 Goal Club points for registration and 50 Goal Club points for sharing the photo. Accumulated points can be redeemed for coupon codes good for dollars off the next order.

SEI engages customers with our engagement loyalty platform that listens in the background for social triggers — in this instance the hashtag #soccerdotcomteam — and rewards customers for the action automatically and immediately.

Avid soccer players and fans are already posting fun and exciting pictures on social channels; SEI is simply acknowledging and thanking them for their advocacy when the pictures are of team uniforms bought through Soccer.com. At this point, it’s game on; customers are recognized for their advocacy, positive social publicity ensues, and a virtuous circle is created. (Read here further background on how Soccer.com worked with us to expand its Goal Club program to embrace its loyal fans on social and messaging channels.)

While this particular campaign runs for a limited time, coincident with summer uniforms, it is part of the larger, ongoing SEI loyalty program designed to enhance customer loyalty by actively engaging people in their social channel of choice. Once the member’s Goal Club email account is linked with their Twitter and/or Instagram social accounts, SEI can use its CRM to seamlessly gather valuable social data to both analyze and fine-tune marketing efforts.

Thanks to our reporting tools, SEI can measure and calculate ROI on a variety of matrices. For example, they can assess which social channels are most frequented by their customers and sports communities; they can compare this campaign to previous campaigns to see what worked; and they can even quantify and pinpoint trends by moderating social conversations to address any customer support issues or glean ideas for improving products. Most importantly, though, the data can help SEI better understand how to effectively communicate with customers to build and strengthen team relationships.

The Chirpify engagement loyalty platform creates a win-win situation, rewarding loyal customers and providing valuable data to businesses, all while increasing customer loyalty, advocacy, and spend. Our customer research has proven that people are loyal to smart companies like Sports Endeavors that engage them in the moment. This loyalty generates brand advocacy that brings new customers to the game. The cycle repeats, positivity grows, and so does revenue.

Learn the many ways your business can actively engage your community and customers and increase revenue with social media engagement loyalty. Contact us for a customized social media game plan for your company today.

There has been a lot of talk over the years about bots on Twitter. Since we invented instant transactions from a single social media action, with Chirpify itself being a bot on Twitter since 2011, I thought I’d share some thoughts on Twitter bots and brand campaigns. Today there are a LOT of bots on Twitter, and as this recent Adage article points out, brands are worried about it, and concerned about automation in general. Since automation of social media marketing is inevitable, as it was with email and other marketing channels, brands need to get comfortable with this fact.

As the article points out, marketers have seen their campaign metrics be skewed by bot accounts engaging with their campaigns.

The advertiser had asked Twitter if any of the activity was from bots, which Twitter denied. So the agency decided to scrutinize the campaign itself. It turned out that between 10% and 20% of Twitter activity on that particular campaign came from bots, according to the agency executive.

10% – 20% is a lot of “fake news” to handle as a marketer. It is especially frustrating when Twitter itself has provided no tools for marketers to avoid this. Since we’ve literally been a currency conversion between Twitter and financial and loyalty programs for 5 years, we’ve been forced to build tools specifically designed to avoid fraudulent bot activity. Our brand’s campaigns literally ignore bot accounts like they don’t even exist, not responding to or enabling them to transact or earn points, enter contests, get content, promo codes, or any other marketing outcome enabled by the platform. They do this utilizing the following features:

Automatic Bot Detection

Our rules engine can govern campaign engagement by several criteria, including geo-fencing, influence, and frequency. Using the influence filter brands can specify how many followers an account needs to participate in their campaign. They can also specify that their campaign ignore other bot identifiers like “eggheads” (accounts without profile photos), or accounts that have not tweeted much, or accounts that do not match other custom campaign or user criteria set by the brand.

Member Verification

Since Chirpify is integrated with membership databases, our platform can lookup customer details based on their social identity. So, if a brand doesn’t want any non-members to participate in a campaign, they can block them.

Frequency Limitations

Our rules engine can also limit participation in campaigns based on frequency, for example limiting contest entries to one Twitter account, or making accounts perform multiple actions to be rewarded, single use promo codes, and more.

Targeting

Brand campaigns often involve a call-to-action, instructing people to set off a social action like sharing a photo to be rewarded. When they do, our platform performs marketing automation, rules checking, automated smart responses and rewards. However, more brands are starting using our platform to mine social data for topics to surprise and delight consumers with a DM containing a reward or content. In this case, our dashboard enables brands to aggregate all posts and accounts containing the topic, and review all posts for quality before responding and rewarding. This gives marketers manual human control, while still saving them a lot of time by having responses and rewards preloaded into the system.

Blacklisting

If a bot account does pass the rules engine qualifiers brands have a fall-back – They can universally blacklist accounts, preventing them from participating in any future campaigns.

Conclusion

Enterprise brands have run millions of transactions through our platform, making our engine smarter along the way, eliminating fraud and bot activity. Our analytics dashboard provides the data metrics for brands to realize and confirm their campaign participant authenticity.

If you’re a brand concerned about false campaign activity from bots, you should consider utilizing tools built for the exact purpose of avoiding it. Contact us today to learn more.