Guest contributor Mark Stansbury from Annex Cloud, a SuiteCentric partner, shares his thoughts on the importance of micro-experiences for ecommerce in this blog post.
What are ecommerce and retail brands doing today to differentiate themselves in this competitive landscape? In our ever-expanding, digital world businesses have the unique opportunity to interface more regularly with consumers. In turn, consumers are looking for authentic brand experiences across their social media platforms, loyalty apps, and general online usage. These micro-experiences are an important opportunity to engage customers and make them feel like a part of your brands. Is your brand doing everything it can to maximize micro-experiences across all digital channels and engage your customer base in an authentic way?
We released a white paper entitled Micro-Experiences: Key Secrets to Brand Loyalty, it takes a deep dive into micro-moments and how those tiny interactions turn into great rewards. That being said, let’s take a look at which brands are leading the way with awesome, unique, and authentic micro-experiences.
SuiteCentric: Trends & TransCAREncy™
As a business, it’s key to be transparent about communication throughout every step of the process. SuiteCentric has been a champion of this, they even coined their own micro-experience called TransCAREncy. It lies within the philosophy that businesses should be transparent with partners and clients as not to delay the overall process. By nurturing these relationships, they’ve been able to develop a full-proof process of direct communication to help retailers and ecommerce businesses scale to their full potential.
Papa John’s Pizza: Twitter Takeover
One of the best ways to engage customers is with good old democracy. Just this past February Papa John’s urged it’s fans to hop on Twitter to vote for a new pizza flavor. Hot Honey Chicken and Waffles was the winner. Utilizing Twitter as a voting platform made it simple for its 602,000 followers to engage in the vote; no extra links, websites, or e-mails required. This democratic approach allowed customers to feel control in their brand experience and created an authentic micro-experience.
Ulta: 21 Days of Beauty
Each day of Ulta’s 21 Days of Beauty campaign offers an exclusive deal on select beauty products via the Ulta website and Ulta app. Customers that are members of the Ulta Rewards Program are able to earn points on their purchases.
As more points are collected, status can be elevated to Platinum or Diamond which leads to more offers and free shipping. Ulta keeps the customers engaged and excited, by offering these exclusive daily deals, reminiscent of the joys of an advent calendar. The integration of their loyalty program into this campaign allows them to attract new members while keeping their current customer base satisfied.
Califia Farms: Cooking with Califia
In the not so distant past of 2010, Sun Pacific and Odawalla teamed up to bring the world Califia Farms, a plant-based beverage company. Califia is dedicated to promoting a plant-based lifestyle and offers easy to follow exclusive Califia recipes with “Cook Dinner” and “Wake Up” on their Instagram page.
In turn, this has sparked an army of Califia Cooks, who share their own Califia recipes on Instagram and tag Califia Farms, a classic example of micro-experiences and user-generated content (UGC) coming to together.
Fruit of the Loom: Jingle and Mingle
Fruit of the Loom is another great example of social media utilization. With 104.7 Million Americans on Instagram (Emarketer.com), it’s safe to say Instagram is one of the most popular used social media platforms.
Fruit of the Loom is giving the Instagram world a chance to write their next jingle, simply by posting their jingle to Instagram with the #breathablejinglecontest and tagging @FruitoftheLoom. The winner receives $10,000, but the real winner here is Fruit of the Loom, who is increasing its social media base while benefiting from UGC.
Brayola: Find the Right Fit
Brayola has exploded into the lingerie market, touting its diverse range of bras that use real measurements and not just a factory setting. Brayola offers a fun way guaranteed to find your best bra fit. They ask about your favorite bras and build a custom collection just for you. This allows Brayola to gather user data for future reference and also helps the customer feel that they are part of a personalized, genuine experience.
Taco Bell: Let’s Taco-bout it!
Several brands have turned to Snapchat for creating the perfect micro-experience. Snapchat offers branded filters and many companies such as Starbucks and Target have turned to this unique feature in an effort to promote their brands. However, one of the most successful filters to date has been Taco Bell’s Cinco de Mayo Filter which according to Wallaroo Media was viewed 224 MIllion times. The filter allowed users to transform their face into a taco and share with their friends, who wouldn’t want to see what they look like as a taco?!
Dove Beauty: Show us!
Back in 2004 Dove launched its real beauty campaign in an effort to be more inclusive in its advertising efforts. This campaign focused on showing women of all different shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. After research indicated that 70% of women still don’t feel represented, Dove recently launched their #showus campaign “more women who look like me.”
They’ve teamed up with Getty Images to take photos of women from all over the world. Women also have the chance to tag themselves with the “show us” hashtag @dove to show Dove who they are and promote inclusivity. This campaign gets its consumer base involved, utilizes social media, and shows that Dove cares.
How can you add micro-experience to your ecommerce strategy?
Utilizing micro-experiences can take your business to the next level. With so many easy and authentic opportunities for direct customer interaction, it is important to seize any and all opportunities for micro-experiences. Download our white paper to take a deeper dive into micro-moments and how they create retention!
You need a loyalty provider that can help your business make the most of these interactions. Our strategists, at Annex Cloud, have decades of experience in creating and implementing marketing strategies for a variety of successful companies. Leverage our experience and boost your conversions. For more insight into implementing micro-experiences into your marketing and loyalty campaigns, talk to Annex Cloud today!
About Annex Cloud
Since 2010, Annex Cloud has provided more than 250 leading brands and retailers, including Hewlett-Packard, Bed, Bath & Beyond, G.H. Bass, Olympus and VF Corp., with the ability to engage tens of millions of their customers one-to-one at scale.
Annex Cloud’s customer marketing platform provides fully integrated Customer Loyalty, Referral Marketing, and User-Generated Content solutions that work together to optimize the customer journey and deliver a unified customer experience, a greater quantity and quality of referrals and content, and more high-quality and resilient customer relationships.