Today I was speaking at the Strategic Communication Management Summit – hosted by Melcrum Publishing.
I spoke on word of mouth marketing and what drives one person to tell another something. Basically the RedBalloon growth story
I was asked the question. “If a representative of RedBalloon is not there on the day when an experience is delivered – how do you know if your brand is being represented well?”
This is the fundemental question about the success of our brand whilst being an agent. RedBalloon Days lists more than 1500 experiences between Australia and NZ. We simply cannot be everywhere.
So one thing that we did very early on was make sure that what appears on the website forms part of our contractual relationship with the supplier of the experience.
Secondly we closed the loop by creating a way of hearing directly back from the participant with a follow up ‘How was it for you?’ email. The results of the survey then appear on the intranet where suppliers pick up their bookings. So they know what people are saying. We view and review the content of the surveys which gives us the ability to continue the dialogue with the participant.
Many of our suppliers have now worked for us for years – and they are brilliant at what they do. Suppliers tell me they love ‘RedBallooners’ – after all we make good business sense for them – bringing them incremental business they would not usually have access to. Hence they take extra special care of RedBalloon participants simply because they want us to keep sending lots more.
Marilyn Miller says
Hi Naomi: I heard you speak at this conference and I asked this question, so am thrilled to see it on your site. You are a brilliant speaker and it’s no surprise that Red Balloon Days is doing so well. Your experience is a great lesson in how a great idea can be turned into a profitable business with lots of planning, persistence and – as you say – constantly closing the loops.