Mobilize the Fanboys with Influitive

Influitive on Influitive: The service can be used by customers to generate referrals.

Every marketer knows the value of happy customers. It’s not just that they buy more of your stuff. They also help non-customers become customers. In the Internet era, they can even do customer service and tech support. For free!

But wrangling a posse of fans takes a deft touch. You want to keep them informed, but you don’t want to spam them. You want to ask for their help, but you don’t want to overload them. And you want to reward them for their work, but you don’t want to actually hire them (nor do you want to appear cheap).

The new “advocate marketing” service, Influitive, makes a game, of sorts, for your happy, active customers. End users can sign in and get “challenges” as simple as following the company on Twitter, or as involved as visiting a potential future customer or speaking at an industry event. In return, they get points or status, which they can cash in for rewards.

CEO Mark Organ says the automated, hands-off system actually encourages companies to get more high-touch with advocates, since it helps them identify the people who are doing the most, or perhaps the formerly-active who are now flagging in their activities.

Organ also says Influitive leads to advocates that generally do “more than four activities per session,” which is a lot more stuff than they’d likely be doing otherwise. He says that an advocate base can be mobilized quickly to swarm an issue if needed, like a critical review popping up somewhere.

It is a smart business. And frankly, it’s a pitch we relate to here at Evernote. Our advocates (we call them ambassadors) are unbelievably valuable to us as emissaries and advisors. We put a lot of work into keeping them happy, and a tool that makes them even happier sounds like a good bet for us and for any company that’s fortunate enough to have earned itself a fan base.

Influitive is a subscription online service, but there is a free tier of service to get marketers started.

-Rafe

See also:
Get Satisfaction, Zuberance, Crowd Factory
And: In defense of fanboys (CNET News)

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