Rule 1 – Hook Your Customers on the Media

“…… retailers could let customers know at point of sale that if they become a fan of your business on Facebook, they’ll receive exclusive offers for discounts on future purchases. Or customers could be given instructions to tweet out a special hashtag with a message about your store after they follow your Twitter account”

When we provide value, we get back value. It is why this is so very important for customer relationship management. I have yet to see an ad on a track feed saying: “Join us on Facebook. Tell us what you think we need to do better, we want your input. Join the conversation!” Maybe there is one, but I have not seen it.

Racings customers are screaming to be part of the conversation, and we should be doing a better job giving them a voice.

Rule 2 – Concentrate on Building Your Community

As O_Crunk and others below have commented – being a part of something and ditching the hard sales come-on’s is paramount for this.

“…….. the trick to retaining them as customers is to keep them wanting to come back. That means constantly engaging them with new content, exclusive offers and information they can’t get elsewhere. The best way to grow your community is to consistently offer them quality content. That means forgoing the sales pitch most of the time.”

In a word – respect and listening, which we tend to not do enough of in racing, in my opinion. Others do, and they are winning the fight.

Jet Blue is an airline – one with 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Why? Community building. Just yesterday for example, a customer tweeted to Jet Blue that his mom got him an ornament for his tree this year. The kicker is, it is a Jet Blue plane ornament. The customer went so far to post the tree ornament’s picture on the web for everyone to see. Jet Blue read it and they replied. This type of interaction has done them wonders.

For racing: What if youbet.com used Facebook to have a wall of pictures on “near misses” – i.e. screenshots supplied by some of their customers of tickets that just missed. Everyone loves to share bad beat stories. Maybe he missed the last leg of a pick 6, or she got nosed out of a $5000 superfecta in a really bad luck way. What if once a week youbet refunded the price of the ticket and sent the bad beat customer a hat or a shirt, for winning the bad bet of the week? I bet they will tell people, as well as feel appreciated, knowing that the company they are a part of wants to see them do well. I think things like that are a vital part of building a strong community.

Rule 3 – Play Favorites

I don’t think this  means bet the Levine horse off the claim this week at 1-5. But it does mean something important: “Social media is a great place to promote your general sales and events, but you should also consider offering your social media fans exclusive deals that cannot be had elsewhere.”

For racing? I dunno, how about a special coupon for Churchill under the lights? How about a unique, time limited extra points offer for Youbet Rewards exclusive to social media followers? Using your customers to be mavens, and work for you to help other customers is simple WOM marketing which works both on and offline.Value is provided for both of you.

I recently saw a post at Paceadvantage.com where a Youbet customer received some free stuff at Keeneland. He was floored because he does not bet too much. He told the world.

“[Youbet] did something nice for their customers yesterday at Keeneland. Since I’m guessing I am one of their least significant accounts and still was invited I must assume the offer was open to all account holders. My wife and I were planning to be at KEE anyway so this was an unexpected bonus.

At a minimum they gave each who attended free admission, good grandstand seats at the finish line, $10 food voucher, $20 wager voucher, track program, and entry to a drawing for a TV. The couple of YouBet reps I had conversations with were very nice to deal with. All in all, it left a good impression.”

These building blocks are not complex. It is simple business using a new medium, but one which spreads WOM faster than the old days. Without a plan it is doomed to fail, but with one it can succeed and help us help racing.

I am sure anyone reading has their own ideas on how to use the medium, what offers to offer, what way is best to engage bettors. The above are a few examples off the top of my head. If anyone has any to offer, fire away.

Notes – The Twitter chat has been enlightening and fun below. A news item today  – Dell rings up $6.5M in sales, attributable to Twitter, or so they tell us.

Also via Twitter, Colonial Downs offers something to only their Facebook fans. Interesting days indeed!