The Work: When Paper.li contacted me in 2014, the brand was facing a unique problem that many brands would love to have. Paper.li had found that it had many ‘power users’ who were fans of the brand, and who were proactively teaching friends and family how to better use the content curation service. Paper.li wanted a way to better connect with these power users, not only to empower them to reach more people, but to also thank them and put the spotlight on these users as valuable partners to Paper.li’s growth. Additionally, Paper.li wanted to find a process that would help the brand covert more free users into paid, and reduce the churn rate for paid users.
My Role: Paper.li brought me in to serve as a strategic advisor to give Paper.li a plan of action for addressing its multiple challenges, as explained above. Paper.li wanted to create a process that would help it meet the challenges of better connecting with its power users, while also giving new users a reason to stay with Paper.li and eventually become power users themselves. My job was to give Paper.li the strategic vision to solve these problems, then execute on the creation of a solution that addressed these problems either collectively, or separately.
The Results: Working with Paper.li, I created a Brand Ambassador program for the brand that addressed four key areas:
1 – Helping Pro Users more effectively connect with new users
2 – Reward users that were actively recruiting new users to Paper.li
3 – Providing better educational materials on using the Paper.li service so that new users can more quickly get up to speed on what Paper.li offers. This also helps address new user churn.
4 – Creating ways to better promote Paper.li’s most passionate users and increase customer loyalty. As I always tell my clients and write about here, “Reward the behavior you want to encourage”.
Paper.li was presented with a plan of action that gave it a process to better connect with its best users, to better engage new users so they stay with Paper.li longer, to reward the users that were helping to grow the Paper.li brand, and to increase Paper.li’s revenue.
Testimonial from Paper.li: During this project, I worked directly with Kelly Hungerford, who at the time was Paper.li’s Director of Community. Here’s Kelly’s thoughts on my work with Paper.li:
“A company’s first-to-market product advantage can quickly fade. After a viral launch, Paper.li needed a solid strategy in place to reward and retain our most valued end users.
Mack’s in depth experience building Dell’s customer advisory panel, coupled with his record with building strategic brand loyalty initiatives and passion for connecting companies with consumers for win-win scenarios was the perfect partner for defining and structuring Paper.li’s 4 Pillar Brand Ambassador Program.
At the end of our twelve month engagement we had far more than an ambassador program: we had a blueprint for organic growth that proved to increase growth and loyalty simultaneously, exceeded stakeholder expectations and earned long-term end-user loyalty.
If you are working on customer retention and loyalty or just want to better understand what you need to do to move your marketing plans forward, I highly recommend working with Mack Collier for your next project.”
Would you like to have a Brand Ambassador program that drives business growth and increases customer loyalty such as the one I created for Paper.Li? Then email me today and let’s get to work on creating something equally amazing for your brand!