Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

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Employees: Your Brand Evangelists

by Ron on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

One of the drivers of growth in the social shopping space is the recognition that personal recommendations are among the most trusted marketing communications. What many companies in the space, including Zavee, are trying to accomplish is to maximize the timeliness, reach and relevance of those recommendations. This need is most acute for smaller merchants, who don’t have the option of simply buying reach through conventional media.

Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth (via Mo - Creative Commons 2.0)

Smaller merchants do have one significant advantage over larger competitors: because they are close to their customers they should be better able to deliver the kind of customer experience that results in credible, actionable, recommendations. Because they know that word of mouth is so important, and because they are more likely to be competing on service than on price, smaller local merchants are uniquely positioned to provide the Wow! factor that launches word of mouth recommendations.

Smaller merchants also have a related advantage, one they should leverage more fully. Unlike much larger competitors, most small company employees are customer-facing at least part of the time. These employees should be hired, trained and required to promote significant, relevant brand equities at every customer interaction. They also should be encouraged (and empowered) to provide the same Wow! factor as the sales associate or the owner/manager herself.

But just as word of mouth is no longer restricted to face-to-face interactions, the role of employees in promoting the brand can also extend beyond individual encounters. In particular, merchants should require – or at least encourage – all employees to actively promote the company’s brand equities through social media.

As companies consider how to implement a social media program, the role of employees should be an integral element of the strategy rather than an afterthought. What role might employees play in a social media program? Here are some suggestions:

  • Create a group blog for employees. It’s easy to do, you can link from your web site and blog posts are indexed by search engines. Some content could be expressly about the company (e.g., as a workplace, if that is a key equity) but most of the content could be about what interests the bloggers. Here the message is more subtle but potentially very effective: You should shop here because this company hires people like us. Amazon now has numerous blogs with this subtext – even a car blog – something they may have learned from having acquired Zappos, which pioneered the concept.
  • Let your employees run your Facebook page. Facebook is now so flexible that a company’s fan page easily can accommodate both “official” content from the company and less structured content from employees. Employees can leverage their own social graph to expand the company’s reach. One objective should be to pierce the wall between the company and its customers. Here’s a simple example: instead of the company simply announcing its “Employee of the Month,” why not post nominations (perhaps including video clips of the employees in action) on Facebook and let the community vote?
  • Get your employees Tweeting. There are many ways in which employees can use Twitter to benefit their company. One is simply to tweet actively about topics that relate to the company’s business. This does not necessarily mean promoting specific products or deals, although (with disclosure) there is nothing wrong with that. But the employees of, say, a fashion boutique should be on Twitter constantly providing value-added content about fashion, art, music or anything else the clientele would find interesting (and bringing useful information back to the company). Employees also can be the “canary in the coal mine” for their company. By setting up keyword and hashtag searches on Twitter they can see and respond to mentions of the company, its products, suppliers, etc. and respond appropriately. The scope of this task will vary by company and it needs to be handled carefully, but any established company that isn’t using Twitter in this way simply has its hands over its ears.

One final note about empowering employees to use social media on behalf of the company. It’s in everyone’s interest to clearly specify what employees must, can and may not do. Transparency and disclosure are vital to every social media plan, and it’s important to have someone in charge of ensuring compliance. Mistakes are inevitable but they need to be addressed promptly, lest your lawyers come in and advise you to prohibit employees from using social media altogether (note: pdf download req’d).

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Your employees can help provide the kind of experience that produces word of mouth recommendations.
  • They also can help you increase the reach and impact of your word of mouth marketing if you integrate them into your social media strategy.
  • There are countless ways to leverage employee involvement in social media – be creative!

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A New Aviation-Internet Creation

by Ron on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Remember Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger? He’s the US Airways pilot who landed a fully loaded jet in the Hudson River in January 2009 with only minor injuries to the 155 people on board. His skill and heroism brought him well-deserved fame, but the quick actions of smartphone-enabled witnesses brought his actions to light nearly in real time, as they posted photos to Twitter almost before the plane stopped moving. This event didn’t just catapult Capt. Sullenberger into the public eye. It also changed the perception of Twitter from a forum for narcissistic ramblings to a mainstream social media tool.

Emergency Slide (via NASA)

Now the airlines have given us another social media star, Steven Slater. Mr. Slater is the JetBlue flight attendant who got into an altercation with a passenger as his flight approached the gate at JFK, then grabbed his bags, grabbed a beer and fled down the plane’s emergency chute. In addition to extensive coverage by local media in New York, Mr. Slater’s own Facebook page has more than 25,000 friends and growing at the rate of several thousand friends per hour. Other Facebook users have started their own pages about the incident, including one called “Free Steven Slater”. On Twitter, the event is reported to be the number one trending topic in New York and several other cities

Will Mr. Slater’s instant celebrity, which is owed in no small part to social media, make him, as some suggest, “an online folk hero”? That depends, I think, on whether Mr. Slater’s actions tap into something authentic about how we feel about employers, airlines or both. The urge to tell your boss to “take this job and shove it” is timeless, but people rarely act on the sentiment. (Although this resignation by storyboard is pretty classic). The combination of tighter security, increased baggage fees and, perhaps, fuller planes has led to either customer service failures on the part of the airlines or more abuse from passengers, depending on who is asked.


Perhaps, then, it is timely to remind businesses of every size how valuable social media can be as a customer service channel. With all the buzz that this event has created, there is no good reason for JetBlue, no stranger to social media, to have stayed largely quiet about it. Whether to reassure passengers about their safety (and the airline’s hiring standards) or even to laugh it off, JetBlue should be much more engaged with its customers.


The Zavee takeaway:

  • Of course he shouldn’t have done it, but the getaway slide is pretty impressive.
  • JetBlue is doing no favors to itself or its customers by yielding the social media (and conventional media) environment so completely to Mr. Slater.
  • There is a difference between being a folk hero and a real one, even online, and most people know which is which.

Update (8/11/10): TechCrunch confirms that the “resignation by dry erase board” is a hoax.

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The Social “Ask”

by Ron on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Remember Ask.com? Back before Google became almost synonymous with internet search (sorry, Yahoo!), Ask had users enter natural language questions rather than strings of keywords. Ask is about to relaunch with an interesting new structure. First, the search engine now returns natural language answers instead of links. Second, and even more interesting, users will be able to open their query to the user community for a crowd-sourced answer.

via Horia Varlan (Creative Commons 2.0)

Ask is hardly alone in making Q&A part of social search. A startup called Aardvark enables social Q&A by finding a person in the user’s network to answer a question. Aardvark may have been onto something, as it was recently acquired by Google. Other social search sites that have enabled social Q&A are Quora and Formspring. Quora considers itself a “continually improving collection” of user-generated questions and answers. Formspring is oriented toward “conversational Q&A [that] helps you express yourself”. Among the major social networks, Facebook is developing a Q&A application, which is currently in private beta. LinkedIn long has supported the ability to ask questions and hold threaded discussions within user groups, while Twitter can support Q&A but doesn’t have a specific application.

We think that Q&A is a natural extension of social search and will become a permanent part of the social media landscape. We think Q&A is particularly relevant to social shopping. The process that now begins with a shopper’s review or recommendation can just as easily begin with another shopper’s request for information. Like writing reviews, answering questions is a way for shoppers to provide value, demonstrate expertise and gain influence. Of course, we at Zavee are continuing to develop and refine our own social search capabilities, so you can look forward to exciting new features over the next several months.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Social Q&A is suddenly hot, but that doesn’t make it a fad.
  • Q&A is a natural extension of the social shopping feature set.
  • Look for exciting new social search features coming soon from Zavee.

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Facebook vs. Twitter: Do You Have to Choose? (Pt.2)

by Ron on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Last week we blogged about how valuable Facebook can be for local businesses and suggested that it wouldn’t take much additional time to add Twitter to the marketing mix. We are strong believers in Twitter as a complement to Facebook, but we realize that many local merchants are able to devote only limited time to Social Media.

HootSuite logo

The key to making Twitter easier and more efficient is to use one of the free third party Twitter management tools instead of Twitter’s own site. HootSuite and TweetDeck let you do two things that can save a lot of time: manage multiple searches and cross-post into multiple Social Media streams.

In a previous post we blogged about four ways that local businesses can use Twitter. Some involve more time and attention than others. First, we suggested using Twitter as a listening post, gathering information from other users. The net you cast can be as wide or narrow as you want. Use your Twitter manager to set up searches for your industry, competitors, community, etc. If you can’t do all of these, establish some priorities and set up fewer searches. Checking them should only take a few minutes a day.

Second, we discussed using Twitter to build your brand. This is the most time-consuming aspect of making Twitter work, and while we think it’s worth the time not everyone will agree. This is where cross-posting can come in handy. You can use your Twitter manager to publish your Facebook posts as tweets – same content, two streams. You can do the same with blog posts (every Zavee Thinking post is automatically tweeted as soon as it’s published). Cross-posting isn’t a substitute for frequent tweeting, but it’s a reasonable compromise between committing to a major brand-building campaign on Twitter and ignoring your brand altogether.

Third, we pointed out how Twitter can generate leads. There is a passive and an active component to using Twitter this way. The passive part involves setting up searches for keywords that potential customers are likely to use when tweeting. The active part involves tweeting with those same keywords. Not enough time to do both? Just set up and monitor the searches and see how that works. You may need to adjust the search terms but that still should take less time than actively tweeting to gain leads. As you get better at finding potential customers on Twitter, however, don’t be surprised if you find yourself spending more time building those relationships online.

Finally, we recommended using Twitter as a customer service channel. At a minimum, you should use your Twitter manager to display mentions of your business on Twitter. Whether and how you respond to tweets that mention your business is up to you, but there is no reason not to see what people tweet about you.

We think that this minimalist approach to Twitter is a good way to start, especially if you don’t think you have a lot of time for Twitter. We also think it’s likely that you will ramp up your Twitter strategy as you gain experience with the medium. Take an hour or two on a weekend afternoon to get familiar with one of the Twitter management applications and play around with both searches and cross-posting. Let the technology do some of the work and you can get value out of Twitter without putting in more time than you want.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Use a third party Twitter manager for multiple searches and to publish Facebook posts on Twitter (and vice versa).
  • An active tweeting strategy takes more time than reading relevant tweets, so if time is an issue focus on using Twitter passively – at least for now.
  • Don’t be surprised if you find yourself spending more time on Twitter than you expected – not because it wastes your time but because it builds your business.

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Fun and Games at Zavee

by Ron on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

We came up with a fun idea to attract new Zavee shoppers: a Sweepstakes! Details are available on the Zavee website, but our contest is a random drawing for cash prizes, with a twist. All Zavee shoppers are automatically eligible to win. The twist is that shoppers get an additional chance to win for every new Zavee shopper they refer. The more referrals, the more chances to win. Shoppers can invite their friends right from the Zavee site, which is easy for them and makes tracking referrals easy for us. The contest opened yesterday – the first day of summer – and runs through July 31.

Farmville Badge

via Rusty Boxcars

Adding an element of game play is one of the latest trends in marketing. At first blush, game play might not seem likely to resonate with adult consumers, but we all engage in competition in one form or another from a very early age. The viability of game play can be seen in the popularity of virtual games such as Farmville, which has almost 65 million monthly active users on Facebook. The location-based social network Foursquare also has a significant gaming element, with users earning points and “points” for specific activity.

Why should game play increase marketing effectiveness? The rationale is that encouraging the audience to participate and be rewarded helps a message earn attention in an increasingly noise-filled environment. Game play also is consistent with consumers’ increased expectation of control over the marketing messages they encounter. One result of meeting these expectations is that consumers not only pay more attention to messages presented as games, they have better recall of messages presented in games.

For small businesses, introducing game play into marketing programs can help level the playing field with competitors that have larger budgets. And it doesn’t require a lot of cost or complexity. The key is to figure out how to get the consumer involved in the message. We took a simple contest model and tweaked it by rewarding referrals. Social media platforms make game play even easier to implement. We plan to run a video contest on YouTube later this year, and the cost to us, apart from prizes, should be minimal.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Marketing messages that have an element of game play increase awareness, attention and effectiveness.
  • The key to game play is user involvement, not expensive technology.
  • Small businesses can and should add game play to their marketing.

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Can Social Media Clean Up BP’s Image?

by Ron on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Imagine that something having to do with your business goes catastrophically wrong, in public, and you don’t look like the blameless victim. That, and worse, is the situation BP finds itself in following its disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And, perhaps even more than the Toyota recall, social media is affecting perceptions of the disaster and those involved in it.

via Noah Scalin

BP itself is providing a real-time video feed from a dozen cameras of the oil spewing out of the wellhead. This feed is becoming the defining imagery of the disaster, the constant flow representing for many the helplessness of the “experts” on the surface a mile above. BP also maintains a YouTube channel. BP has supplied its wellhead video feed to the web site of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which has maintained a steady flow of press releases focusing on BP. In addition to video, BP’s own site contains maps, claims forms (in English, Spanish and Vietnamese) and, of course, press releases.

BP is also trying to participate in the conversation on Social Media, but does not appear to be having much success in overcoming anti-BP sentiment. The “Boycott BP” page on Facebook is liked by more than 450,000 users, although it is unclear whether this movement will be able to affect BP’s business. On Twitter, an anti-BP impostor has amassed almost 140,000 followers while BP’s own Twitter feed is hovering at about 12,000 followers.

Much like Toyota several months ago, BP cannot expect to be portrayed other than as the villain. All BP can do is communicate openly and actively, and if its mea culpas come off as somewhat self-serving, at least the company isn’t stonewalling. The difference between the recall and the oil spill is, of course, scale. Toyota fixed the problems with its cars relatively quickly and was able to begin to rebuild its reputation. BP faces a much greater challenge, because the spill has not been contained quickly, the environmental impact may be enormous, and as an oil company BP did not start out with the kind of reputation Toyota had among the public.

So far, BP has demonstrated a certain sophistication in not trying to shut down the parody Twitter feed or the flow of satirical treatments of the company’s logo. In March, the environmental activist group Greenpeace provoked Nestle into overreacting to critical videos and Facebook postings that included modified versions of the Nestle logo. BP hasn’t fallen into that trap. Nor has it attempted to co-opt the fake Twitter account. This is a wise choice, since if trying to shut down the account would be bullying, trying to fold it into the company’s own communication strategy would seem, um, slimy.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • In a bad situation, openness and honesty really are the best policies.
  • The better you do at solving the problem, the easier it will be to rebuild your reputation.
  • Frustrated people need to express their frustration. Don’t try to stop them.

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Do You “Like” Me? Do You Really “Like” Me?

by Ron on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Remember Sally Fields’ famous acceptance speech at the 1985 Oscars? “You like me! You really like me!”  But what if we didn’t mean it?

One of the recent changes to Facebook has been a great expansion of the “Like” concept which, among other things, replaces the “Fan” concept.  Yelp and other social networks have followed suit.  At least for now, Zavee is still inviting shoppers to become “Fans” of merchants they haven’t yet shopped at and not just “Like” them.  Why?  Because we think that, on some perhaps subtle level, being a “Fan” implies a higher degree of emotional engagement than merely “Liking” someone or something.  How substantial is that difference? It’s hard to tell.  If you follow sports you might agree that there is a difference between liking a team and being a fan.  If you follow the New York Mets or the Miami Dolphins you almost certainly do.  At Zavee we are considering changing the “Fan” concept to something completely different – something that retains a high level of engagement but provides greater flexibility.  More news to follow on that new feature.

One thing we didn’t think about when we were debating “Fan” versus “Like” was whether a lower level of engagement might make it easier for users to be less than candid about what they say they “Like”.  Would people really do this?  And why?

Starbucks Barista Badge from Foursquare (via pbende)

No less a social media authority than Robert Scoble says they would, and do.  In fact, he says that he has done that very thing.  Why?  Scoble says that it comes down to a fundamental truth about human nature: we present ourselves as we want others to see us.  Since the pages, users and merchants we “like” become part of our public social persona, we can change that persona by changing what we say we “like”.  If our tastes run to country bands and donut shops, but we’d rather be thought of as someone who prefers singer-songwriters and vegan restaurants, our “likes” can reflect that.


Is this a problem for smaller businesses? It might be. For one thing, advertisers tend to take us at our word.  Check in frequently enough at Starbucks and you can win a discount off your coffee.  Starbucks can’t tell whether you like the coffee, just how often you showed up.  Clicking the Like button on Yelp for a bunch of restaurants gives rise to inferences about your preferences and behavior, and advertisers will target you accordingly. Providing a misleading social persona is just a waste of time for both advertiser and user, unless it’s being done as a form of protest against behavioral targeting.

Like much about social media, behavioral targeting presents legitimate privacy issues, and they need to be worked out. However, if advertisers lose faith in the accuracy of consumers’ self-descriptions the effectiveness of social media for marketers is likely to decrease. For small marketers who are drawn to social media marketing by, among other things, its low cost and high effectiveness, this could be a very unfortunate result.

It’s probably true, as Scoble says, that advertisers have ways to verify, at least in part, the accuracy of the things we claim we like.  But the deeper point is that the value of social media as a communications tool for users in the network depends in large part on the credibility of other users.  A user who creates a false or misleading social persona may only lose personal credibility within the network, but if enough users do the same thing the credibility of the network as a whole may suffer. A recent paper about dating sites reports that deception in profiles is rampant. The paper suggests that one reason is that users understand what makes them desirable to potential mates, and create profiles to reflect those expectations. Dating sites like to advertise their successes, but they may have become just one more system to game.

Whether Zavee stays with “Fan”, changes to “Like” or goes in a different direction altogether, the principal means by which Zavee shoppers communicate the quality of their shopping experience is by writing reviews. It takes more effort (and commitment) to write a review than to click on a button, but that very fact gives proportionately more weight to the reviews and less to a simple “Fan” designation. One safeguard we put in place expressly to improve the accuracy, timeliness and fairness of reviews is for the system to accept a review of a merchant only if the reviewer has made a Zavee purchase at that merchant within 30 days.

We hope that social networks and their users develop means to limit the influence of false social personsas, not to protect advertisers but to protect the networks themselves and to permit them to continue to deliver valuable, relevant experiences to their users.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Once it becomes trivially easy to create a social persona, that persona may itself become trivial. The problem is that those personas are taken seriously, both by advertisers and by other users.
  • It’s natural to present ourselves as we’d like to be seen, but invented personas can make the the network as a whole less valuable to users who rely on other users for timely and accurate information and opinions.
  • Local businesses will suffer disproportionately if social media marketing loses credibility, because it’s a particularly attractive tool for them in an environment where conventional alternatives aren’t nearly as cost-effective.

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Zavee, Privacy and Data Security

by Ron on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

When I was writing this post I wanted to link to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post. I had previously signed up for Facebook Connect for the Post so I was taken directly to the article. And I have a small confession: I don’t think I fully understand how Facebook Connect works and, more importantly, what its implications may be for the privacy of my information on Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg at f8 2010 (Washington Post photo)

In his op-ed Zuckerberg admits only to “mov[ing] too fast” to introduce privacy tools that “were too complex”. Zuckerberg goes on to say that Facebook’s intention was to provide “lots of granular [privacy] controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted.” The ability to fine-tune privacy settings seems like a good idea given the wide variety of content available on and through Facebook. However, the risk of missing something significant and inadvertently setting a control incorrectly may well outweigh the value of granular controls.

However, Facebook’s recent history of introducing, then modifying, changes to the platform, along with its enormous size and influence in the social media space, has created an environment in which not everyone is willing to take the company’s statements at face value (the comments on almost any post on the allfacebook blog are instructive). We believe that it is in the interest of everyone in the space – users as well as networks – for Facebook to get a better handle on how to develop, introduce, explain and refine significant changes to its platform.

It is axiomatic that users should control the amount of personal information they share, and with whom. I’m not sure there is one best way to ensure this, and granularity versus ease of use for privacy controls seems to me a debate worth having. Zavee is oriented toward the ease of use end of the spectrum. We provide very clear but fairly granular choices about who gets to see what information. Furthermore, all of our privacy settings default to the most limited distribution, which minimizes the downside risk for the user.

In addition to receiving credible assurances about the privacy of their personal information, users of social networks – especially social shopping networks – need to be completely comfortable that any financial information they provide will be maintained and transmitted with the utmost security. Platforms such as Mint ask for a wide range of personal financial information since Mint’s model is to aggregate that information and make it easier for the member to use. Blippy and some other sites require registration of a credit card, as their model involves sharing purchases over a social network. Zavee also requires registration of a credit card, although unlike Blippy Zavee does not share purchase details over the network.

Zavee has a number of safeguards in place to protect users’ credit card data. First, we use Secure Sockets Layer technology from industry leader Verisign to provide secure access to the platform for every Zavee user. That’s why our URL starts with “https://” and has a distinctive green band in the address window. You can see the Verisign seal in the footer of our site and can click on it to learn more about Secure Sockets Layer technology.

Second, we only collect the minimum card data necessary for the Zavee platform to function. Anyone who has ever made a purchase online, or even over the phone, knows that the merchant is required to collect not just the the card number, but also its expiration date and security code, and sometimes the zip code for the billing address. Zavee only needs the card number, so that’s all we ask for. Anyone who improperly obtained that information would still be unable to use the card for an unauthorized transaction.

Third, Zavee itself never collects or stores any credit card information. The card registration page may look the same as other pages on the Zavee site, but it isn’t actually on our site at all. When a user registers a credit card the card number is automatically encrypted and sent directly to our data provider, a company called TSYS. TSYS is one of the largest credit card processors in the world and maintains secure credit card databases for, among others, VISA itself. Once TSYS receives and registers the card number it sends a secure, unique identifier back to Zavee. Our system is set up to use only this identifier when we process shopper transactions, so the actual card number remains within TSYS’s secure environment. Our databases are stored in a secure facility in the US, but if anything happened to the card identifiers we would simply get a copy of the relevant database from TSYS.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Overly complex privacy settings may have the effect of inadvertently decreasing actual privacy. No one should find that acceptable.
  • Zavee is a simple platform from a privacy standpoint and has simple, intuitive privacy controls that are designed to minimize user risk.
  • No one should ever be in doubt about the security of their financial data. Zavee uses industry best practices to protect the credit card numbers that members provide.

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Rebates: The Loyalty Monster?

by Ron on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

The Palm Beach Post recently ran a story about rebates and how frustrating it can be to redeem them. The article reprints the famous strip in which Dilbert confronts the three-headed Rebaterus monster and finally gives up trying to get his money.

Rebates aren’t something most small business have to concern themselves with, and they certainly aren’t part of Zavee‘s model. Nevertheless, they are an interesting touch point between marketer and customer. How large companies handle the complex questions about rebate redemptions may have implications for how smaller businesses deal with analogous situations in which the cost of making a customer happy may be to lose her altogether.

Consider what happens with a rebate: On the one hand, the marketer is willing to pass along an amount of money that may be significant both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the purchase price. This should create a positive interaction, especially for rebates that result in, say, a mobile phone costing the customer zero out of pocket. On the other hand, a redemption process that the consumer views as overly complicated or simply unfair can leave an unpleasant aftertaste and potentially threaten a relationship that may just be beginning.

Marketers have a legitimate reason for making the redemption process at least somewhat complex: preventing fraud. Fake bar codes and forged receipts are only two of the ways companies could be preyed upon if redemption were too easy. Moreover, some non-redemptions, or “breakage”, is attributable to consumers’ own inability to follow directions, such as mailing in the rebate by the deadline. Unfortunately, it is difficult for the consumer to differentiate between redemption strategies that are designed to protect the company (and, ultimately, consumers), from strategies that are expressly intended to increase breakage. And consumers do not seem inclined to give rebate marketers the benefit of the doubt.

We haven’t seen a great deal of discussion about the potential impact on customer loyalty of rebate redemption strategies, and we think there a great many unanswered questions. Here are a few that we hope loyalty professionals will consider and talk about:

  • If a consumer comes away from the rebate redemption process convinced that the marketer was attempting to (or did in fact) prevent her from redeeming her rebate, how long does that ill feeling remain? What are the variables that determine whether the consumer chalks it up to lessons learned or is lost to the marketer forever? Assuming that a given rebate redemption strategy will result in some loss of customer business, how do marketers calculate those losses in determining the ROI of a rebate program? Does the breakage always pay for the lost customers?
  • Do marketers take into account the propensity for frustrated consumers to share their experiences with their social graph, e.g., on Facebook and Twitter? What steps are marketers taking to participate in the conversation with consumers, e.g., to explain how the marketer’s redemption strategy reduces fraud and keeps rebate programs alive?
  • What are the fulfillment industry’s goals in structuring rebate redemptions? More specifically, is maximizing breakage an overt goal or merely an inevitable byproduct of loss prevention strategies? Is it reasonable for consumers to expect that marketers are capable of balancing their desire to prevent fraud with the customer’s desire to receive the rebate without undue difficulty or delay? Some companies have taken steps to make the redemption process easier, without changing the underlying eligibility rules, by walking consumers through the process on their Web sites. Is this the wave of the future, or do these marketers have unique reasons for making redemption easier?

At Zavee we don’t have answers to any of these questions but we hope the loyalty industry recognizes their importance and gives them the consideration they deserve.

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