Intuit QuickBooks Online Boosts Advocacy with Burst Campaigns
Getting people to spread the word about accounting software requires building a strong relationship with customers and giving them something they’ll want to talk about.
For marketers at Intuit’s QuickBooks Online it all starts with trust. Small businesses rely on QuickBooks Online to help them manage their cash flow, send invoices, and prepare for taxes. The trust embedded in these financial tasks is the foundation for a deep relationship with customers.
To further that connection, Intuit wanted to give customers an opportunity to easily share their experience using QuickBooks with friends, family, and colleagues. To take full advantage of the refer-a-friend opportunity, QuickBooks Online partners with Extole, the leading enterprise advocacy platform, to give customers an on-brand, easy-to-use refer-a-friend experience. Since implementing the program, Intuit has created a new channel for customer acquisition that, instead of relying on paid media, grows from their current customers.
Acquisition and customer marketers jointly manage refer-a-friend at QuickBooks Online. Recently, Jenny Clauson, Customer Marketer for QuickBooks Online, initiated a project to better understand their advocates and build on their commitment to the brand.
To achieve these objectives, she paired NPS with refer-a-friend. First, considering which customers were likely advocates, she targeted in-product promotional tiles encouraging referrals to high NPS responders.
“We wanted to demonstrate the benefits of knowing who our advocates are. By showing high NPS customers that they can refer and earn a reward when their friends sign-up, we got a nice lift in acquisition and also the evidence we needed to do even more.” – Jenny Clauson, Customer Marketer for QuickBooks Online
By showing high NPS customers they can earn a reward when friends sign-up, we got a nice lift in acquisition and the evidence we needed to do even more.
With a successful lift in advocacy, referred friends, and new customers, Clauson took it a step farther. Using Extole’s ability to quickly and easily run burst campaigns — short-term increases in referral rewards — Jenny promoted a 2-week double reward campaign to their top NPS responders.
A key to the success of any burst campaign is the promotion plan to let customers know to take advantage of the special increase in rewards. The QuickBooks plan not only leveraged proven promotional placements like the in-app tiles but also dedicated emails highlighting the campaign and even targeted social ads, mostly notably Facebook.
The results of the burst were both interesting and impressive. By doubling their standard reward from $50 to $100 and by effectively marketing the burst, QuickBooks Online tripled revenue compared to the previous period and realized a 6-fold increase in the number of advocates. Referrals from in-app placements had the highest conversion rate, and dedicated emails encouraged the most sharing.
“Our outbound marketing worked in conjunction with our in-app placements,” notes Clauson. “Outbound raised awareness and drove sharing while the in-app promotions had the highest conversion rate.”
Outbound raised awareness and drove sharing while in-app promotions had the highest conversion rate.
After the burst ended, QuickBooks continued to benefit from its impact. Rates throughout the refer-a-friend funnel that were elevated by the increased reward did not return to their previous levels even when the reward did. Instead, funnel metrics remained higher than normal well after the campaign ended. “We were very excited that rates for advocacy, sharing, and conversion all stayed higher than normal after we ended the campaign,” concludes Clauson. “Bursts are a great way to drum up excitement about our program throughout the year. Thankfully, it was really simple to execute, and based on these great results I’m looking forward to running more!”