How To Start a Customer Ambassador Program
Woven Nook is an online home décor company with thousands of happy shoppers. The business operates in the highly competitive world of online retail. By developing a customer ambassador program for loyal fans, Woven Nook has found an unstoppable way to grow its bottom line by actively involving customers.
Working together, the customer ambassadors at Woven Nook produce over 100 user-generated content posts per month and a return of 8.4 times the company’s investment. Joel Reichart, the CEO of Woven Nook and MavenThread, has a lot to say about the success of their ambassador program,
💬 In a few short months, we have already seen significant revenue growth from Roster, and our customers are loving being a part of our program!
How can e-commerce brands build communities and encourage each customer to become a brand ambassador?
We can learn a great deal from studying how Woven Nook handles its customer ambassador program. Let’s have a look.
Customer Ambassadors Love to Sell Great Products
The online retailer started because two women were frustrated with the current retail options and saw an opportunity to fill an unmet market. Their company resonated with fellow home decor enthusiasts. Even better, once people purchased and used the product, they loved it. And this highlights the first key to attracting brand advocates.
💁 Offer a great product!
When individuals are passionate about a product, they naturally connect with the brand. Word of mouth flourishes because people tell their friends and family.
How to Create a Customer Ambassador Program
Once the ecommerce business earned a solid base of loyal consumers, it began leveraging these relationships with an official brand ambassador program.
This introduces the second key.
💁 Tap into your group of happy customers!
Woven Nook uses Roster to engage with customer ambassadors through an application form, social listening and ongoing content campaigns. They also incentivize their home decor brand ambassadors using referrals. The referral codes are automatically generated through Roster’s ecommerce integration with Shopify.
Once customers join the program, they voluntarily create and share beautiful photos of their Woven Nook merchandise on social media. Check out the gorgeous user-generated content tagged on Woven Nook’s Instagram.
Current customers post well over 100 pieces of unique content every month. As they share it with their networks, brand awareness rapidly grows.
Fast-growing brands typically find their best ambassadors in similar places. You’ll definitely want to spend some time with the following article if you need tips on finding brand ambassadors.
Promote Your Ambassador Program
Beyond extending marketing reach and content, Woven Nook’s customer ambassador program continues to grow every week. The primary source of participation is existing customers, which they target in a number of ways.
The third key to get a constant flow of applicants is to:
💁 Promote your ambassador community!
According to the marketers at Woven Nook, they spend very little time or effort pushing brand ambassador applications. Instead, they have set up some automated recruitment strategies to keep a steady volume of incoming applications.
Be Inclusive
Woven Nook’s program is an ongoing ambassador community that accepts all customers who apply. Everyone is welcome and rewarded. These customers access personal and shareable discounts for participating in awareness campaigns.
Key number four for building a customer ambassador community is to:
💁Create a home for everyone!
The CEO explained the company’s philosophy in the following quote,
💬Our customers are our biggest advocates, and we want to allow everyone into the program who applies. Our program stays consistent with consistent applicants, and we continue to grow it by always recruiting more ambassadors.
Use Multiple Touchpoints
Encouraging each person to become a brand ambassador takes many angles. The best way to recruit people is by leveraging multiple touchpoints.
Send Email to All Customers
Woven Nook designed a simple recruitment email that they send to all subscribed customers. Within each email is a link to their recruitment form.
Publish an Email Banner
Woven Nook also includes a small banner in each of their email newsletters with a link to the ambassador program application. The banner hyperlinks to their recruitment form or application page on the Woven Nook website. Hundreds of customers click and complete the application.
Having an “exclusive discount” also motivates many people. Immediately extending a benefit is very smart.
Post on Social Media
The social media manager at Woven Nook regularly posts about the ambassador program on social media. Swipe-up links are shared often. Also, application links are included in the company’s bio. Again from Reichart,
💬We recruit our ambassadors by regularly posting on Instagram + IG Stories, sending out recruitment emails and integrating our ambassador program into automated email flows.
Have an Recruitment Form on Your Website
In the footer of the Woven Nook website is a link to their customer ambassador program.
How to Start a Customer Ambassador Program that Empowers Customers
Recruiting adoring customer ambassadors is the cornerstone of every successful word-of-mouth marketing campaign.
When considering which methods would be best for your brand, think about your customers first! Apply a variety of recruitment methods instead of choosing just one. The formula is simple…the more strategies you implement, the more applications you will get.
Check out our ambassador recruiting guide specifically for customer ambassador programs. The guide includes several great samples that you may adapt to fit your own company’s KPIs and culture.