About Cafe Evoke Catering

    Café Evoke Catering is Oklahoma's premier specialty coffee catering company.

    Complete menus and information kits are available for download at CafeEvoke.com. Please feel free to email us through our website or call 405-606-2200 if you have any questions about incorporating a full service specialty coffee bar for your next special event or for your office.

    Thank you for choosing a Fair Trade coffee catering company. We look forward to a long friendship.

    ..be bold (Oh, and tell your friends!)

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Friday, July 21, 2006

We Need A Referral Program

I have been thinking about a referral program for Cafe Evoke Catering for some time now. The idea is to create a customer network that talks about what we do and tells all of their friends not only about how fun their party was but to hire us. We always talk about the power of word of mouth marketing -- both positively and negatively. It is free and coming from a source people trust -- their friends and family.

This program has to have a reward that will catch the ears of our customers. It has to be something that will be useful to them. This reward cannot be the ice chest or pie dish that your local bank will give you for opening a free checking account or referral of a friend. What we are thinking is dinner for two to any restaurant in Bozeman.

Here are a few questions we have to answer:

1. How many referrals need to happen before a customer gets a gift card?
2. How much do we want to make the gift card worth -- $25? $50?
3. How will we manage this program?

We do have some of the details already together and I will post about the final program when the time comes. I really want this to be something that customers will actually get excited about. The more excited they are the more they will talk about our services. We are trying to think of creative marketing strategies. We are a new concept in Bozeman and we need to change the way we are trying to get our word out (more on this to come).

This could end up being a great way for us to have repeat customers -- which are always cheaper to keep and maintain than a new customer. We value our business practice on being flexible and treating the customer with the most respect so we think this will only add to that.

..be bold

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...a thought by Cafe Evoke Catering at 7/21/2006 07:08:00 AM

Comments on "We Need A Referral Program"

 

Anonymous RisingSunofNihon said ... (7/21/2006 07:52:00 AM) : 

Speaking from a customer's point of view, I would definitely be more likely to refer a business if there were a useful reward in it for me. That being said, the reward has to be relatively easy to achieve or I might not even try. So whatever you set your number of recommendations at, just don't make it too high.

 

Blogger Chris said ... (7/21/2006 10:26:00 AM) : 

I'd say, a good reward would be a $5 gift card to somewhere for each name you give me that is a legitimate prospect. Either that or $50 if you refer someone that turns into a lead, and focus people on giving you several names.

Then when you call the person, phrase it like this: "Janet recommended that I call you, we just catered her event and I wanted to tell you about us."

Whatever you do, my tip is to make sure it's super simple.

 

Anonymous Hasan Luongo said ... (7/21/2006 02:30:00 PM) : 

Hello,

I'm currently developing a web application that will help businesses create and manage rerferral programs. I'm just getting started, but wanted to ask you, if this application existed, and it was easy to use and mamange, would you use it instead of doing it yourself, if so, would you pay 15-30 per month to use the service.

your thoughts are right on target, let me know if I can be off assistance.

 

Blogger Jason Duncan said ... (7/21/2006 04:29:00 PM) : 

Thanks for the comments! I think this program has a lot of potential for us and I am excited to see what the final plan looks like. I will keep your suggestions in mind as I think th ey are valuable to the success of the program.

Thanks again!

..be bold

 

Blogger nothing said ... (7/21/2006 09:03:00 PM) : 

I agree with RisingSunofNihon, the reward has to be easy to earn, and with Chris who suggested a cheaper reward eg. $5. Do you have cafes that use your coffee? Because then you could offer something like two free coffees at that cafe for a referral. That way the reward involves using your product again. (More brand reinforcement).

For customers that get you lots of new referrals, offering a meal out is a great idea.
Using any restaurant of their choice is good for offering variety, but you would probably do better long term to offer a meal at the restaurants you have a closer connection with. Go for the ones that use your coffee or are likely to switch to selling your coffee. Using fewer restaurants means you can build closer relationships with the owners which could be useful later on.

abi

 

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