If your hair stylist gave you $10 every time you sent one of your friends her way, you might be more tempted to tell all of your buddies what a fabulous stylist she was — or you might even try to make new friends to refer.

This clever method of customer acquisition is a form of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing known as a referral program. While such programs have been used for decades by not-for-profit organizations like PBS, similar customer referral programs have also become increasingly popular with companies in a wide range of industries, from financial services and automobiles to newspapers and hotels. Christophe Van den Bulte, a professor of marketing at Wharton, describes customer referral programs as an effective way to attract higher quality customers. “They are an old idea that’s getting more traction these days,” he notes, “and we now have solid evidence of their financial benefits.”

via ‘Turning Social Capital into Economic Capital’: Straight Talk about Word-of-mouth Marketing – Knowledge@Wharton.

In Your Shoes

We have launched the very first insurance industry customer centric online video site and that to in record time! Check out the video’s on In Your Shoes and feel free to leave your comments. If you do enter the In Your Shoes contest and win please feel free to let them know you were refered to the site by Gavin Lobo – Brand Marketing.

We have been getting constant calls from a “1-800″ number for a few months now. I do not have a problem with receiving a few unsolicited telemarketing calls that have a person you can talk with but to receive calls that are blank? This is very frustrating and time consuming.

So today (after I received another blank call) I decided to do some online digging of my own and here’s the scope:

The company calling at all times of the day is “Gemma Communications Corporation“.

They have office in Toronto & Montreal. I have called their office number and asked to be put on their “Do Not Call List”. Will this work? Well I’ll keep a call score and let you know in a month’s time.

As with shady telemarketing firms like “Gemma Communications” there is no way to reach a company representative and you only know them by a voice mail voice prompt.

It should be made mandatory that these companies have all their senior management business and residential phone numbers listed for customers to reach them all times of the day as well (This would a ton of fun too!).

I feel helpless to their telemarketing barrage and hope my attempts at getting on that “Do Not Call” list work. Wish me luck!

I found this great Blog on Gemma Communications they give you some great tips to get of telemarketer call lists:

http://jim.roepcke.com/6980

Mr. Lobo

P.S. I have also entered my telephone number into the CMA’s (Canadian Marketing Association) “Do Not Call” list and hope to be solicited less frequently!