By Geoff McDonald, CEO of Ambassador

Every once in a while, you get a reminder of why you do what you do.

This week, I read a client review on G2 that stopped me in my tracks. It simply said:

“They seem to have thought of everything, and made it easy to use. The best onboarding process I’ve experienced. They are thorough, organized, friendly, and they know their software inside and out.”

That’s the kind of feedback that doesn’t just validate the work—it energizes the mission. Because at Ambassador, our mission isn’t to build just another SaaS platform. It’s to create meaningful, scalable, human-centered engagement—powered by AI, but built for people.

Today, I want to take a moment to thank our clients, celebrate our team, and reflect on what it means when your company is recognized as a G2 leader—and more importantly, why it matters.

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What a High G2 Score Really Means

G2 isn’t just a rating system. It’s a reflection of how well you show up for your customers.

When clients consistently rank you highly, it’s not because of clever marketing or feature bloat. It’s because you’ve done the hard work:
✅ Built real value into your product
✅ Delivered consistently excellent support
✅ Helped your customers win—not just use software

For us, a high G2 score means we’re doing the right things: listening closely, responding quickly, innovating intentionally, and putting people first. It means that our clients trust us not only to deliver—but to care.

And in today’s crowded SaaS market, trust is the true differentiator.

But here’s what most companies miss:
G2 is a scoreboard for customer experience, not just product specs. It means our support team doesn’t leave people hanging. It means onboarding is proactive, not reactive. It means clients feel seen—and heard—at every step.

That’s what we’re most proud of. And that’s what we’ll continue to invest in.

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Everything Starts with Culture

The reason our clients feel supported and successful is because of our team—and our culture.

At Ambassador, our values aren’t just words on a wall. They’re how we operate every day:

• Clarity – We say what we mean and operate transparently, internally and externally.

• Be Intentional – We don’t ship fluff. Every feature, every message, every move is purposeful.

• Stay Close to the Client-Customer – We stay in the trenches with our customers. Their goals guide our roadmap.

• Invest in Each Other – We win as a team. We hold each other to high standards—and have each other’s backs.

• One Team – No silos. No egos. Just alignment, action, and impact.

Our newest value, Let’s Go, Let’s Get Shit Done (Lean and Mean), reflects the urgency, grit, and focus we bring to everything—from roadmap execution to client onboarding.

Culture isn’t just internal. It shows up in how we build. How we support. How we respond. And G2 proves it’s showing up the right way.

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Building What’s Next—With You in Mind

As we roll out even more features across AI, automation, and engagement—including Hiro and the upcoming Ambassador 3.0—we’re doing it with one guiding principle: client-first innovation.

That means:

• Faster onboarding

• Smarter, automated workflows

• Personalized, multi-channel communication

• Real-time feedback with actionable insights

• Seamless connections across referrals, loyalty, feedback, and email

We’re creating a platform that doesn’t just respond to customer behavior—it anticipates it. A platform that doesn’t just collect feedback—but understands it. A platform that helps brands scale their relationships—not just their reach.

And as we do that, we’re asking one question over and over again:
What would make this easier, faster, more human—for our clients?

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To Our Clients: Thank You

Your feedback, your trust, and your partnership shape everything we do. Thank you for the time you invest in us—and for allowing us to play a small part in your journey.

To our employees: you are why those G2 reviews sound the way they do. You show up with purpose, humility, and fire. You live the values. You make this real.

And to those just getting to know Ambassador: if you want a partner—not just a platform—who’s all-in on your success, let’s talk.

We’re building the future of customer engagement. With intelligence. With empathy. And most importantly—with you at the center of it.

With gratitude,
Geoff McDonald
CEO, Ambassador

The post A Letter to Our Clients, Team, and the Market: You’re the Reason We’re Here appeared first on Ambassador.

In a category once defined by loyalty points, leaderboards, and static surveys, the rules of engagement are being rewritten. Customer advocacy is no longer about managing a program. It’s about managing momentum—the kind that turns feedback into referrals, users into evangelists, and signals into action.

And when the legacy platforms stop evolving, the market doesn’t wait.

It moves.

And the smart companies?
They move first.

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🧭 A Quick Look Back: How We Got Here

Customer advocacy software was born to solve a simple problem: how do we activate our happiest customers at scale?

Influitive stepped up early with gamified dashboards, community hubs, and workflows for sourcing customer quotes, case studies, and references. It was a breakthrough—for a while.

But as customer expectations grew, and as AI began reshaping how companies interact with feedback, Influitive stayed static. And when it was acquired, everything started to stall.

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🧨 The Post-Influitive Era

Over the last 12 months, we’ve spoken with dozens of companies using Influitive. The stories are consistent:

“We’re still doing all the work manually.”
“Support dropped off after the acquisition.”
“We’re stuck in a contract, but the roadmap feels dead.”
“We need something smarter and faster—and we need it now.”

This isn’t just a product problem. It’s a shift in expectation.
Today’s marketing and CX leaders want automation, intelligence, and clear ROI—without the admin overhead and platform bloat.

They want software that adapts to lean teams and makes their customers feel seen.

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💡 Enter: Ambassador + Hiro

We didn’t build Hiro to compete with Influitive.
We built Hiro because Influitive never evolved.

Hiro is the AI-powered engine inside the Ambassador platform. It listens for emotion, learns from behavior, and activates engagement automatically—from feedback and referrals to reviews and reference requests.

What makes it different?

• 🎯 Voice Biomarkers – Hiro hears tone, urgency, and sentiment (not just form fills)

• ⚡ Auto-Triggered Actions – From feedback to advocacy, no manual follow-up needed

• 📈 Built for Scale – Integrated across referral, loyalty, incentives, and CRM

• 💸 Fraction of the Cost – No bloated contracts. No slow onboarding. No BS.

For downsized teams? Hiro becomes a force multiplier.
For brands ready to ditch clunky workflows? It’s a reset button.
And for companies still waiting on Influitive’s next move? It’s already here.

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🔍 What Makes Voice Biomarkers So Powerful?

Every time your customer speaks, they’re giving you more than just words. They’re giving you data—emotional signals that indicate confidence, frustration, loyalty, or risk.

Hiro’s voice biomarker tech turns those signals into action. It knows when to ask for a review, when to delay a referral, and when to trigger a thank-you or incentive. This isn’t just NPS. It’s advocacy with intuition.

That’s not something a survey can do.

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📈 Real Results, Fast

We’ve helped companies replace Influitive and launch Hiro in under two weeks—with no dev lift and immediate wins:

• 150+ references auto-triggered in a quarter

• 2x NPS engagement via conversational feedback

• 40–60% reduction in advocacy platform costs

• Fully synced data across Sales, CS, and Marketing

This is what advocacy looks like when it works for you—not the other way around.

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📉 Why Now Matters

The companies that win in this climate aren’t the ones that spend the most.
They’re the ones that listen best—and move fastest.

If you’re using Influitive today, or evaluating your advocacy stack, now’s the time to future-proof. You need a system that reads your customers in real time and acts on what they’re really saying.

Because here’s the truth:

🛑 Surveys don’t scale.
🛑 Admin isn’t strategy.
🛑 And advocacy shouldn’t feel like another project.

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📥 Ready to See the Full Breakdown?

We created a deep-dive whitepaper comparing Ambassador + Hiro with Influitive—feature by feature, cost vs. value, automation vs. admin, and how to make the switch.

👉 Read the whitepaper: Ambassador vs. Influitive →

If you’ve been wondering what to do with your advocacy platform in 2025…
Start here to book a demo. I Then move forward.

The post The Advocacy Market Just Changed — Here’s What Comes Next appeared first on Ambassador.

Hiro and the Future of Customer Engagement: Building the World’s Most Connected AI-Feedback Network

At Ambassador, we believe the next decade of customer engagement belongs to brands that move with their customers — not brands that simply market at them.

That’s why we built Hiro: a transformative AI that listens, learns, and acts in real-time.

Hiro isn’t another SaaS tool measuring yesterday’s performance. It’s the heartbeat of a living network — capturing feedback the moment it happens, predicting future behavior, and triggering actions that deepen loyalty, advocacy, and retention.
In this article, we’ll explore how Hiro is building the Most Connected AI-Feedback Network in the world, why that matters for brands today, and how Ambassador is engineering a new type of business model: one built through the eyes of the customer, for the future of customer-led growth.

The Traditional SaaS Model is Broken

Most engagement platforms today were designed for an era of scheduled surveys, quarterly metrics, and reactive strategies.
But today’s customers move faster. Their expectations are dynamic, personal, and moment-driven.

The old SaaS model asks, “How did we do last quarter?”
Hiro asks, “What does the customer need right now, and how can we deliver it?”

The difference?
It’s the gap between slowly collecting data vs. creating living, adaptive relationships.

What Makes Hiro Different

Hiro isn’t just an insight tool. It’s an action engine.

Every interaction captured — a voice tone, a product action, a feedback signal — flows into real-time decisions:

• Deliver a loyalty reward
• Trigger a personalized offer
• Request a review at the perfect moment
• Identify and save a customer at risk of churning

And Hiro doesn’t guess.
It builds dynamic ledgers — living records that evolve with every signal captured:

• Feedback Ledgers: Deep emotional and behavioral profiles based on voice biomarkers, actions, and sentiment — without relying on traditional surveys.
• Incentive Ledgers: A dynamic understanding of what drives each customer’s behavior, fueling personalized rewards and engagement strategies.
• Engagement Ledgers: A real-time map of every touchpoint, interaction, and outcome — helping brands adapt their strategies to each customer’s journey.

 

“Hiro isn’t about collecting data for another dashboard. It’s about giving brands the power to listen, understand, and act in real-time — building a true partnership with their customers,”

— Geoff McDonald, CEO of Ambassador

 

In short: Hiro captures what matters most, when it matters most, and turns it into real engagement, automatically.

Built Through the Lens of the Customer

Unlike traditional systems that push company-driven agendas, Hiro is built to see the world through the customer’s eyes.

It listens for:

• Frustration signals that indicate the need for immediate support
• Celebration signals that open doors for advocacy and referrals
• Subtle cues that suggest risk, loyalty, intent, or opportunity — long before traditional metrics catch them

And Hiro moves at the customer’s speed, adapting to the individual journey — not forcing customers into a rigid marketing timeline.

Building the Most Connected AI-Feedback Network in the World

Hiro’s power grows with every interaction.

As brands across industries join the Ambassador platform, Hiro is weaving together the richest real-time engagement network ever built:

• Recognizing universal engagement patterns
• Refining incentive strategies based on multi-brand insights
• Predicting customer needs with greater accuracy across verticals

Each brand that joins doesn’t just benefit individually — they plug into a broader intelligence network that continuously sharpens their ability to retain, grow, and activate customers.

 

“We’re building a network effect around customer intelligence. The more brands connect through Hiro, the smarter and more predictive the entire ecosystem becomes,”
— John Larson, Strategic Advisor to Ambassador and Co-Founder of Zipwhip

 

In time, the Ambassador network will redefine how brands measure success — moving from lagging KPIs to living growth signals.

Building for Where the Customer Is Going

The future belongs to businesses that are adaptive, conversational, and customer-led.

At Ambassador, we’re not rebuilding yesterday’s CRM.
We’re creating a living growth network — designed for a world where:

• Customers expect real-time, personalized experiences
• Loyalty must be earned and re-earned continuously
• Feedback is dynamic, not static

Hiro is built for this future.
Not for the past.

And that’s why brands that move now — who shift from static engagement models to dynamic, AI-driven networks — will own the next generation of customer relationships.

Why It Matters for Brands Right Now

• Retention wins are no longer optional: Catch and prevent churn risks before they manifest.
• Advocacy needs to be activated, not assumed: Engage happy customers while the moment is alive, not after it fades.
• Incentives must be intelligent: Reward behaviors based on actual motivation, not outdated demographics.
• Feedback needs to be real-time, not retrospective: Waiting months to act on insights is a luxury brands can no longer afford.

Hiro is Here. And the Future is Connected.

In a noisy, fragmented world, customers will stay loyal to brands that know them, hear them, and grow with them.

That’s the future we’re building at Ambassador — one living signal at a time.

Hiro isn’t just an evolution. It’s a revolution.
The future of customer engagement and retention is already here.
And the brands who act now will lead it.

Learn how Hiro and Ambassador can transform your customer engagement and build your future here.

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The post Hiro and the Future of Customer Engagement: Building the World’s Most Connected AI-Feedback Network appeared first on Ambassador.

Ambassador’s Communication Co-Pilot is here—and it’s changing the way brands connect with customers. Now, you can build customized emails directly inside the Ambassador platform—empowering your team to launch smarter, faster, and more personalized communications without outside tools, delays, or dependencies. Whether you’re a small team, a mid-sized organization, or an enterprise brand, Communication Co-Pilot gives you everything you need to move faster, engage smarter, and grow stronger.

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Why We Built It

Today’s customer engagement teams are under more pressure than ever:

• Deliver more personalized messages.
• Launch more campaigns.
• Do it faster—with fewer resources.

Traditional email platforms weren’t built for this new world. So we built a better way. Communication Co-Pilot brings email engagement into the same ecosystem where you already manage referral, loyalty, incentives, and customer advocacy—allowing you to trigger communications based on real customer behaviors, all without leaving Ambassador. The result? Less friction, faster launches, and better engagement across the entire customer journey.

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“Communication Co-Pilot removes the usual roadblocks we see with traditional email tools. Now, our clients can build and launch emails that are deeply connected to real customer actions—without having to slow down or switch systems. It’s about giving teams the power to move faster, stay closer to their customers, and create impact immediately.” — Crystal McHenry, Client Enablement Product Manager, Ambassador

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How It Helps Teams of Every Size

🚀 Small Teams: Speed Without the Sprawl

For lean teams, moving quickly is survival. Communication Co-Pilot helps you:

• Create branded, personalized emails without needing outside design or dev resources.
• Trigger communications based on customer actions, milestones, or lifecycle stages.
• Launch engagement flows in minutes, not days.

Result: You keep momentum high—and your customers engaged—without overextending your team.

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🔄 Mid-Sized Teams: Control Without Complexity

As your customer base grows, so does the need for better coordination and segmentation. Communication Co-Pilot gives you:

• A centralized place to manage customer communications alongside referral and loyalty triggers.
• Personalization powered by your existing Ambassador data—no extra integrations needed.
• The ability to test, optimize, and scale without heavy IT or platform switching.

Result: You scale smarter, not harder.

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🏢 Enterprise Teams: Alignment at Scale

Enterprise organizations need more than just speed—they need cross-team alignment. Communication Co-Pilot provides:

• A unified platform where Marketing, CX, Product, and Success teams can collaborate.
• Consistent messaging across your referral, loyalty, and customer engagement strategies.
• Built-in reporting, A/B testing, and audience segmentation for faster optimization.

Result: You reduce friction between teams—and deliver a better, more cohesive customer experience at scale.

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Why It’s a Game Changer

With Communication Co-Pilot, you’re not just sending emails—you’re orchestrating smarter engagement across your entire customer journey.

• Move faster: No more waiting for outside tools, IT tickets, or ESP dependencies.
• Engage smarter: Personalize every message based on real customer data.
• Grow stronger: Align marketing, customer experience, and product engagement under one platform.

The companies that win the next era of customer loyalty won’t be the ones who move the slowest. They’ll be the ones who can listen, act, and engage—all from a single, agile platform. With Communication Co-Pilot, that future is now.

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Learn more about Communication Co-Pilot and how Ambassador is helping brands drive engagement at every stage of the customer journey. 👉 Visit our Communication Co-Pilot page to see it in action.    

The post Introducing Communication Co-Pilot: Email Engagements, Reimagined Inside Ambassador appeared first on Ambassador.

Finally, a Salesforce Managed Package That Works Where Your Teams Actually Do

At Ambassador, we understand that customer-led growth doesn’t start in your marketing department — it starts at the front lines of service and sales.

That’s why we’re proud to offer one of the only Salesforce Managed Packages built directly into Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, not just Marketing Cloud. Most of our competitors stop at campaigns and workflows. We go further — embedding advocacy, referrals, and retention mechanics where your revenue is actually created: with the teams who talk to customers every day.

👉 See the Ambassador Managed Package on AppExchange
👉 Learn more on our official Salesforce Managed Package page

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Why It Matters: Marketing Cloud ≠ Customer Connection

Most Salesforce-integrated referral and loyalty tools are built for marketers. But at companies where growth is driven by the quality of service, the power of your sales team, or the loyalty of your existing customers, Marketing Cloud alone doesn’t cut it.

With Ambassador’s Salesforce Managed Package, you can:

• Trigger referrals automatically based on Service Cloud interactions
• Embed reward and advocacy workflows into Sales Cloud pipelines
• Create loyalty logic from actual customer milestones, not just campaign opens
• Enable reps and support agents to enroll customers in programs without leaving Salesforce

This means faster program adoption, more authentic engagement, and growth that starts from real relationships — not banner ads or batch emails.

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🚀 What Makes Our Integration Unique

Most Salesforce integrations in this space stop at syncing contact lists or tracking marketing attribution. Ambassador goes further:

• Two-Way Sync – Automatically write referral, incentive, and loyalty data back into Salesforce objects for unified reporting across teams.
• Programmatic Triggers – Use Salesforce logic and events (like Case Closed, Opportunity Won, or CSAT Score) to trigger referral or reward flows.
• Custom Object Compatibility – Easily map Ambassador to your custom Salesforce objects, whether you’re tracking subscriptions, deployments, or NPS touchpoints.

This flexibility means your CRM structure doesn’t need to change to use Ambassador — Ambassador flexes to fit how you work.

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🧩 Use Cases We Power Best

• Service Cloud: Trigger referral or loyalty incentives after support tickets are resolved or milestones are hit.
• Sales Cloud: Let AEs, CSMs, or Partner Managers enroll contacts in referral or incentive programs directly from the Opportunity or Account page.
• Multi-cloud: Combine marketing triggers with real-time sales and support activity to orchestrate the perfect moment to ask for advocacy.

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📊 Prove It With Performance

Companies using Ambassador’s Salesforce Managed Package have seen:

• 2x increase in referral-driven pipeline from Sales Cloud integrations
• 30% higher reward redemption rates with Service Cloud triggers
• 90% decrease in program admin time due to automation and native setup

If you’re tired of disconnected tools and static campaigns, we’re here to help.

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Let’s Get You Started

If you’re ready to activate customer-led growth from inside your CRM, learn more here or visit us on AppExchange to install the Ambassador Managed Package.

We’re ready to help you move beyond static campaigns — and into real-time engagement with real results.

 

The post Ambassador’s SalesForce Managed Package (Detail) appeared first on Ambassador.

In a world overflowing with data, the richest signals are often the ones we ignore. The tremble in a voice. The pause before a response. The slight uptick in pitch when someone is excited—or disappointed. These subtle clues are called voice biomarkers, and they’re unlocking an entirely new layer of customer insight.

At Ambassador, we believe feedback is a gift. That’s why we’re pioneering the use of voice biomarkers across our AI Feedback Network—to hear not just what customers are saying, but how they’re saying it.

What Are Voice Biomarkers?

Voice biomarkers are measurable features in a person’s speech—like tone, tempo, volume, and pitch—that can reveal emotional and physiological states. While originally explored in healthcare to help diagnose conditions like depression, anxiety, and even Parkinson’s, voice biomarkers are now being embraced in other industries to detect sentiment, confidence, urgency, and engagement in real time.

“The human voice is the most rich source of emotional information we have access to. It’s an acoustic fingerprint of how we feel, moment to moment.”
— Dr. Yael Steinhart, AI Researcher and Lecturer, Tel Aviv University (as quoted in Harvard Business Review)

Why Voice Matters in Feedback

Most feedback tools still rely on structured text: surveys, forms, or emails. But at Ambassador, we’re building something different. With the launch of Hiro, our AI-powered voice bot, we’ve brought live, open-ended voice conversations to the front lines of customer engagement—whether it’s onboarding, retention, or advocacy.

By analyzing voice biomarkers during these conversations, Hiro doesn’t just transcribe—it interprets. This enables brands to:

• Detect dissatisfaction before it becomes churn.
• Identify enthusiastic promoters who are ready for referrals.
• Prioritize follow-up based on emotional urgency—not just answers.

“We’re building an AI Feedback Network that actually listens. Voice biomarkers give us access to emotion, urgency, and trust—signals you can’t capture with a form or checkbox. This isn’t about better surveys. It’s about smarter conversations that drive action.”
— Geoff McDonald, CEO, Ambassador

How Ambassador Uses Voice Biomarkers

As part of The Most Connected AI Feedback Network in the World, voice biomarkers enhance how our platform captures, understands, and activates customer signals. Here’s how it works:

🎙️ Signal: Voice-to-Insight Conversion

Our system captures real-time voice input and breaks it down into over 30 acoustic indicators. These markers feed into a proprietary scoring engine that evaluates:

• Emotion (e.g., frustration, joy, apathy)
• Engagement (e.g., attentiveness, interest)
• Trust (e.g., hesitations, consistency)

🧠 Understanding: Hiro Learns From Every Conversation

Each conversation with Hiro becomes a dynamic data point. The AI continually refines its detection of sentiment patterns across industries, demographics, and contexts. That means every new brand that joins the network makes it smarter for everyone.

“There’s a difference between gathering feedback and actually understanding your customer. Voice biomarkers make that difference measurable—and actionable. It’s where empathy meets execution.”
— John Larson, Strategic Advisor, Ambassador

🚀 Action: Triggering the Right Next Step

When a voice indicates hesitation? Launch an incentive. When it reflects high trust? Ask for a review. When it shows confusion? Send a support flow.
Everything is designed to act in the moment, not after the fact.

Why This Is a Game-Changer

• No more static surveys. Voice gives you richer, real-time data you can’t fake or forget.
• Proactive, not reactive. With biomarkers, you catch signals early—before customers leave or disengage.
• Universal application. From telecom to fintech, these signals scale across industries and use cases.

Feedback Is a Gift. And Now, It Has a Voice.

As the first platform to unify referrals, loyalty, incentives, and real-time voice feedback in one AI-powered network, Ambassador is changing how brands listen—and how customers feel heard.

Because if you’re not listening to tone, timing, and truth behind the words, are you really listening?

The post What Voice Biomarkers Can Tell Us—And Why Ambassador Is Listening appeared first on Ambassador.

 With the gamification industry projected to reach $2.8 billion in revenue in 2016, here are 3 ways to use gamification to engage ambassadors:

1. Sales

With technology readily available at our fingertips more often than not, businesses can boost sales by easily rewarding brand ambassadors for referrals, purchases, shares, and more. A great example (that you might even be using) is My Starbucks Rewards loyalty program. Customers using the mobile app are rewarded with stars for every drink purchased, earning a free drink after a certain threshold is reached. Gold status customers are more likely to get their coffee at Starbucks each and every time, even becoming ambassadors by referring their friends and family to use the rewards program.

According to Fortune.com, “the ‘My Starbucks Rewards’ loyalty program now has 10.4 million active members, up 28% from a year ago, and those shoppers now account for about 30% of business in North America.”

2. Experience

The brand experience is one of the most important elements of a successful referral marketing program based on gamification. By breaking the process down into simple steps, giving recognition, leveraging competition, and creatively using rewards, companies can increase referrals from brand ambassadors and, ultimately, drive new sales.

Lunatik, a technology accessories company based in Chicago, engages their ambassadors with a fully branded experience with program levels, discounts for reaching different levels, and even commission-based cash. The referral program is easily explained in a quick video on their rewards page on their site and a mobile app makes it easy for ambassadors to always be engaged and connected to the program.

3. Loyalty

Building brand loyalty by adding gaming elements to your referral program is another inherent attribute to gamification. Encouraging continual engagement through points, badges, levels, and more, companies are able to keep brand ambassadors interested and loyal to their program. By motivating and rewarding interactions, brands are creating true loyalty.

Gamification is becoming a popular way to engage brand ambassadors and continue bringing in referrals and sales for companies. Gamifying your referral program can be just as valuable and profitable to your business when done the right way. As with any game, everyone loves to win!

The post Using Gamification to Engage Your Brand Ambassadors appeared first on Ambassador.

Completely automated workflows and campaigns? Predictive analytics that help us actually achieve the Holy Grail of marketing (right message, for the right customer, at exactly the right time)? Technology stacks that intuitively and seamlessly connect with each other to deliver dynamic insight?

All of those things might come to fruition (some are already here). Or they might not. As most of us know from experience, predictions are unpredictable — just ask former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer. That said, prognostication is still a worthwhile exercise because it helps us reflect on the past, envision the future, and test new ideas that allow us to get ahead of the pack.

Click for sound

So, what is the future of marketing?

Here’s a sampling of some of the biggest marketing trends from four of the marketing world’s smartest people, all of whom were kind enough to contribute to our newest eBook.

Former HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe on the Value of First-Mover Advantage

“If you’re willing to try things before they go mainstream, that willingness — even if you’re not particularly good at that specific thing — gives you a disproportionate advantage. If something takes off, you’re already ahead of the inflection point. You’ve had time to test, learn, and get really good at it before everyone else jumps in.

That said, leaders don’t seek risk for risk’s sake. They accept risk as a natural byproduct of a worthwhile reward.”

Click to tweet

MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Ann Handley on the Rebirth of Quality

“I believe 2016 is the year content marketing grows up. Strategy, processes, and metrics will mean something. Creativity and craft will trump speed and quantity. Marketers will tell bigger stories with a braver focus and bolder voice. That’s the future. Content marketers who don’t adapt won’t like the results.”

Click to tweet

Former Campaign Monitor VP Agata Celmerowski on Self-Driving Marketing

“As much as some of our industry wants to pretend otherwise, I don’t believe the advancement of technology excuses marketers from cultivating a basic level of technical literacy.

You don’t need to know how to code your entire website to be a great digital marketer. But when your CMS defaults your clever animated gif to sit right on top of a paragraph of text, you’ll appreciate being able to adjust the padding directly in the code. Beyond small stuff like that, understanding the basic operating mechanics behind the tools you use and the medium you work in is a prerequisite for unleashing the full extent of your creativity.”

Click to tweet

Ambassador CEO Jeff Epstein on a New Pillar of MarTech

“Instead of seamlessly managing customer relationships through a handful of cohesive marketing platforms, most marketers today are drowning in a patchwork of point solutions.

That’s going to change. Instead of manually managing and monitoring post-sale customer engagement (NPS surveys, reviews, testimonials, customer feedback, referrals, etc.), marketers will come to rely on a single platform that sews all of that functionality together. This will give marketers full control over customer relationships at scale, which will yield better experiences for end users and better results for marketers.”

Click to tweet

What’s your prediction?

While I’m confident the four trends above will play a big role in influencing how we operate in the future, I’m also confident a big part of our future will be dictated by technologies and innovations none of us are talking about right now.

So, what do you see when you envision the future of marketing? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Give me a shout on Twitter @JoshZywien. And if you want to dive a little deeper into each of the trends above (plus three more), download your copy of our eBook below.

The post 4 Predictions from 4 Experts on the Future of Marketing appeared first on Ambassador.

In most cases, those failures were easily preventable.

While we routinely share referral marketing best practices with our clients, not every prospect chooses to follow that guidance. Instead, they opt to carve their own path — often building referral programs in-house that ignore the techniques that brands like Ria Money Transfer, Volusion, and SAP have used to generate thousands of new customers from referrals.

This leads to a couple of key referral marketing mistakes that almost always lead to poor results:

Mistake #1: Right for you, wrong for your customer

If your customers transact with you on a weekly or monthly basis, then it makes sense to incentivize referrals with account credits or discounts off future purchases. If, however, your customers purchase from you less than a few times per year, that reward won’t carry the same weight. In fact, it might send signals that you don’t really understand your customers.

So, what’s the right approach? If your customers transact only a few times during their lifecycle, you need to reward them with something of immediate value. Providing access to yet-to-be-released products can work, but cash and gift cards are virtually foolproof. In fact, a 2016 Nielsen Harris Poll conducted on behalf of Ambassador found that 77% of Americans prefer to be rewarded for referrals with money.

Ultimately, for referral marketing to work, brands must be selfless. Focus on what’s right for your customers and give them a relevant reason to send you referrals today. If your referral incentives fail to provide immediate, tangible value, your program will fail, too.

Helpful tip: Dual incentives, where the customer and friend both receive a reward for a referral, are a proven way to accelerate sharing and drive purchasing behaviors.

Mistake #2: A referral program that’s too complicated or hard to find

Here’s an existential question to answer: If you have a referral marketing program in place and no one knows about it, does it really exist?

If your referral program isn’t public facing or it’s difficult to use and share with the click of a button, then you’ll severely limit your ability to drive word-of-mouth and referrals. Also, if you’re requiring customers to manually input a potential referral’s information, good luck. For customers, this annoyance creates a barrier that significantly hinders referral activity.

How can you avoid that? Start by answering these questions:

– Where and when is it most likely that customers will want to share your brand/products?
– Are you requiring those customers to do the heavy lifting to find friends who might be interested in your company?
– Are you limiting your referral program to only current customers?

Here’s the bottom line: Your goal must be to make it simple for anyone (customers, fans, admirers, influencers advocates, etc.) to share your brand with everyone who might be interested in it.

Helpful tip: Ask for referrals at the point of purchase and after the first user experience. At this point, customer excitement (and the likelihood of referrals) is at its highest.

Mistake #3: Starting small with a half-hearted pilot

Over the last year, I’ve seen massive companies with millions of customers attempt to launch a referral program by testing it with just a few dozen or few thousand targeted customers. That “pilot” approach has failed. Every single time.

Here’s why: Just like converting web traffic into actual customers (and converting those customers into repeat buyers), referral marketing is a numbers game. It requires a funnel and, if you don’t put enough names into the top of that funnel, nothing will come out the bottom.

Another problem with this approach is that you can’t really know who your biggest fans and ambassadors are until you execute a referral marketing program at scale. Trust me. I’ve consistently seen clients assume they know who their “best” customers are, only to see disappointing referral results from that base of contacts. When they open up the program to everyone, however, amazing things happen. In some circumstances, people you wouldn’t expect to generate referrals end up being your best ambassadors.

For example, I’ve never been a customer of GetOutfitted, but I’ve shared the company with my friends and several have converted into regular customers. I love the idea. I love the company. And, until the time comes for me to be a customer, I’ll gladly sing their praises.

Helpful tip: While it might seem to make sense to test first and scale later, that approach typically results in “test and fail.” A better strategy is to keep it simple by starting with two programs — one that’s public facing and incentivizes new shoppers to make their first purchase, and a second one that’s tailored specifically to existing customers.

Mistake #4: Assuming no customers means no need for referral marketing

Referral marketing isn’t a magic wand. You can’t wave it and suddenly make up for poor web traffic, a weak email list, or a lack of new customers. That said, you don’t have to wait to hit a critical mass of customers to invest in referral marketing. In fact, the easiest and cheapest way to acquire new customers is through referrals.

Yes, you still need a healthy list of contacts in your funnel and you need a working website, but there’s an argument to be made for understanding the value of investing in a program before you’ve acquired hundreds or thousands of happy customers. Doing this gives you time to get it up-and-running while you scale top-of-funnel activities (SEO, shopping cart technology, inventory management, inbound marketing, paid ads, etc.). When all of that’s ready to go, your referral program will be, too.

Lull Mattress is a great example of this. The company implemented its referral program early in the process of scaling its brand, and referrals are now a critical driver of web traffic and new customer acquisition.

Helpful tip: It’s never too early to put a referral marketing strategy in place. Success is dictated less by the stage of your company and more by how well you weave every aspect of it into your overall marketing plan.

A roadmap to a more effective referral marketing program

As customer sophistication grows, the use of ad-blockers rises, and marketers are pushed to show ROI on their investments, referrals will become more and more important.

So, if you’re cognizant of the fact that referrals work and you’re prepared to invest in the benefits of referral marketing, my advice is to do it right the first time or don’t do it at all. Truth is, approaching referrals the wrong way won’t just fail to deliver value — it could do irreparable harm to your brand, as well.

The post Built to Fail: 4 Referral Marketing Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on Ambassador.

You’re now ready to take a bigger step. Off-page SEO, where the 80/20 rule applies, meaning 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your efforts. When it comes to SEO, 80% of what impacts your rankings is happening off of your website.

With that said, let’s get into the stuff that really makes a difference, but seems to be a mystery.

How Backlinks Affect SEO

Before we get started, what exactly is a backlink? A backlink is a link from a website back to your site. The more high quality links from authority websites pointing back to your page you have, the better chance you have of outranking your competitors.

So, without a doubt, backlinks are king.

Why? Simply put, a backlink is essentially a vote of confidence in your website and the more authority that the recommending website has, the more trusted and authoritative your website becomes.

Put it this way – If you have an article on your website about how to make the best zucchini bread and multiple popular TV chefs link to your recipe, you stand a pretty solid chance of ranking highly on Google when someone is searching for a zucchini bread recipe.

How To Build Backlinks

So the concept is pretty easy to grasp, right? When the most popular kid in school says you’re cool…you’re cool. There’s an instance transfer of ‘coolness.’

But how do we get those links? How do we get the popular kids to say we’re cool? (I really wish I knew that answer in high school!) And how do you determine who’s cool? How are websites considered authoritative?

Domain Authority: What Is It And How To Increase It

In the early days of the Internet, SEO’s would use Google’s PageRank to decide which domains were worth getting (or buying) a link on.

Unfortunately, Google stopped publicly updating PageRank in 2013 and it was one of the best ways to measure a link’s strength, or the authority of a site.

Domain Authority, developed by Moz – a leader in the SEO space, is another algorithm, it’s a good estimate, but it’s important to remember that it’s not from Google. Simply put, it’s a good way of gauging the value of the link you’re earning.

So, let’s get started: I’ve listed my favorite (and most proven) ways of earning high quality, authoritative backlinks below. Under each section I’ve also linked to multiple guides that will give you further tips, advice and show you step by step how to put that particular backlink strategy into action.

Guest Posting 

Around the time Google put their foot down about guest posting, there were a lot of spammy guest blog networks. People would join these networks and sell links on their blogs or buy links from other blogs. There was no quality control, it was all about making money selling links and gaming Google.

However, if done correctly guest posting is still one of the safest and most effective methods for getting high quality backlinks to your website.

One clear advantage of guest posting on authority websites is that you also get to tap into their audience – driving real visitors directly to your site where you can convert them into leads, customers, and revenue.

Here are some great resources for guest posting (the right way):

     Backlinko

     Content Marketing Institute

Point Blank SEO

Broken Backlink Building

Broken backlink building is one of the oldest link building strategies around. Simply put, you find broken links on relevant websites, let the webmaster know that they are linking to a resource that no longer exists and request that they link to you instead.

The Good: It abides by Google’s rules.

The Bad: It’s very tedious, and success rates are generally low. If you email 100 webmasters about a broken link, a small number will open your email, an even smaller number will respond, and an almost nonexistent amount will actually take the time to add your link to their site.

With that being said, if you can streamline the process and craft an effective way to reach out to  webmasters, it’s still worth doing.

Here are a few resources to get you started off on the right foot:

     Moz

     ShivarWeb

HARO

Joining HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a great (free) way to establish yourself as an expert in your industry, build your brand, and earn strong backlinks.

However, there are some best practices that you should follow if you want to get the most out of HARO. Afterall, your competitors are also using HARO for the very same reason.

Here are a couple of resources to help you stand out to the reporters on HARO:

Help A Reporter

     Ahrefs

     The Digital Elevator

Content Marketing

It’s not enough to simply write good content anymore. You’ve got to market your content, get it in front of the right eyes. Those people will share it, link to it, their followers and friends will do the same and so on and so forth.

The most important step, the one that most people don’t bother doing after creating content is marketing and promoting their assets.

Below you will find a few resources to help develop a content marketing strategy that fits your business:

     HubSpot

     Hootsuite

Off-Page SEO: It’s a daily grind, but it’s worth the effort

Building links to your website takes hard work and consistency. There will be let downs when you don’t land a link you had your heart set on, but it’s one of the strongest signals to Google that your site belongs at the top of the SERPs. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas that you can start implementing immediately.

The post Off-Page SEO: The Stuff That Makes The Biggest Difference, But Remains a Mystery to Most Marketers appeared first on Ambassador.