WO2013120160A1

WO2013120160A1 - Sales promotion system

Info

Publication number: WO2013120160A1
Application number: PCT/CA2012/000136
Authority: WO
Inventors: Logan VOLKERS; Jeff CROWE; Will FRASER
Original assignee: Yupiq Solutions Ltd.
Priority date: 2012-02-13
Filing date: 2012-02-13
Publication date: 2013-08-22

Abstract

In a computer-implemented method for promoting sales of offered products or services, filtered data is accepted from a social media site indicative of customer sentiment relating to the offered products or services. The filtered data is associated with unique identifiers indicative of a customer conversation originating the data. Particular filtered data, such as a particular customer conversation, is selected as meriting a reward/offer. After identifying the customer conversation originating the particular filtered data from the associated unique identifier, a link is posted to a reward/offer redemption web page available to the customer in the identified customer conversation. A subsequent connection from the identified customer to the reward/offer redemption web page is then authenticated and the selected reward/offer displayed to the authenticated customer.

Description

SALES PROMOTION SYSTEM

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to the field of consumer analytics, and in particular to a method of promoting sales.

Background of the Invention

Social media plays a big role in the Internet marketing campaign of a company. Using the various social networking sites is usually free. It provides a platform for communicating with and building relationships with a business's existing clients and prospective customers. Examples of social networking sites are: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg and Linkedln. These sites allow the public to write comments about a company's services or products. These are often part of a conversation or "thread" on a certain topic, with many people offering comments and opinions on the particular topic. The people writing these comments and opinions are called posters.

There are many companies that search these various conversations and provide tools to mine this information and provide feedback.

One example is Radian6, a company that provides organizations with a platform to: listen, discover, measure and engage in conversations across the social web. Their social media monitoring and engagement software captures posts each day, including the full Twitter Firehose, Facebook, blogs, news sites, discussion boards, video and image sharing sites, and returns the results for exploration, understanding and action. It simplifies interactions on the social web, allowing the user to communicate directly to clients on Twitter and Facebook all through one desktop application. They have tools to:

• find meaningful results and actionable data in social media

• know what customers are saying and have the ability to join the conversation • monitor the health of a brand on the social web

• provide information from posts and sources, including demographics, influence, geolocation, sentiment and topic categorization

OfferPop is a company that has tools to build end-to-end campaigns for companies that get fans to participate and spread the word. Fans are rewarded by giving them access to special offers, deals or content and drive online and in-store redemption by supporting unique promo codes and printable coupons.

Lithium is a company that has tools to monitor, host, and manage social conversations that drive business results. They accelerate businesses through social conversations that connect customers and employees. They help to find the best advocates, tap their passions, and motivate them to help increase sales and deliver better customer service. They use a game like approach to rewards by giving advocates badges, privileges and social recognition. They also can group posts into positive or negative sentiment, and allow for company representatives to respond back.

Summary of the Invention

According to one aspect of the invention there is provided a computer-implemented method for promoting sales of offered products or services, comprising accepting filtered data from a social media site indicative of customer sentiment relating to the offered products or services, said filtered data being associated with unique identifiers indicative of a customer conversation originating the data; selecting particular filtered data as meriting a reward/offer; identifying the customer conversation originating the particular filtered data from the associated unique identifier; posting a link to a reward/offer redemption web page available to the customer in the identified customer conversation; authenticating a connection from the identified customer to the reward/offer redemption web page; and displaying a selected reward/offer to the authenticated customer. The agent is typically a human agent who makes a decision as to whether to offer a reward/offer based on a menu of choices stored in a database and presented on a display screen. However, the process could be automated, in which case the human agent could be replaced by a software agent.

Embodiments of the invention are implemented as a cloud service for monitoring social media conversations on company sites, filtering the conversations looking for keywords within messages, using a third party cloud service for determining the sentiment of the message. Optionally, a software agent can automatically respond by posting additional questions back to the thread to gather more information on the poster. The conversation is monitored to see if the poster responds to these queries.

Once it is determined that there is enough information, a message is then sent to a company representative according to keyword, sentiment and source. The company representative then has the ability to view the message on a single interface that handles all source types. The representative then has the ability to add a comment and attach a reward or offer (via a web link) and send it back to person making the comment in the social media thread it occurred in. The system only allows the user that made the comment in the conversation thread to access the reward or offer by clicking on the link and signing in to a site to receive it. The software may use the Oauth standard to authenticate the user using their ID at the social site they made the comment at. The offer can be tailored to the person using data gathered from the social media on the person (done using a third party cloud service) or from the automatic query responses. Once the poster has signed in and been verified, they can receive any one of the following:

• a coupon or offer for free or discounted service or product

• they can be engaged in a conversation with a live agent using any means of communication (voice, text, twitter, etc.) • a web form filled out with as much information that is gathered about the person beforehand, that the poster just has to complete and accept to receive a service or offer

A sales lead can also be generated from this information and sent to a sales agent. There can be a feedback loop on the use of the reward or offer, so that a further comment can be posted to the thread to say thanks for using it.

Monitoring can be used to detect:

• when a person is intending to buy an item because of dissatisfaction with an existing one

• When a person makes a comment (good or bad) about a product or service

A unique part of this system is the offering of a link that can provide various different private services (based on information gathered from social media) in the same conversation thread and providing a method for the correct user in the conversation thread to receive it. All the other parts are done by numerous companies.

According to another aspect of the invention there is provided a sales promotion system comprising a social network interface module for accepting filtered data from a social media site indicative of customer sentiment relating to the offered products or services, said filtered data being associated with unique identifiers indicative of a customer conversation originating the data; a selection module for selecting particular filtered data as meriting a reward/offer and identifying the customer conversation originating the particular filtered data from the associated unique identifier, said selection module being configured to post a link to a reward/offer redemption site available to the customer in the identified customer conversation; an authentication module for authenticating a connection from the identified customer to the reward/offer redemption web page; and a display reward/offer module for displaying a selected reward/offer to the authenticated customer. Brief Description of the Drawings

The invention will now be described in more detail, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:-

Figure 1 is a block diagram of a system in accordance with one embodiment of the invention;

Figure 2 is a diagram showing the software implementation;

Figure 3 illustrates the reward/offer software;

Figure 4 shows a possible implementation of the user screens; and

Figure 5 is a flow chart that maps out the order of events for the embodiments shown in Figures 1 to 3. Detailed Description of Embodiments of the Invention

Referring now to Figure 1, a Customer Site 100 has software human Agents 101 that respond to communications sent via standard ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) Software 115 through the LAN 102 to Web Pages 116 displayed to Agent 101. The LAN 102 at the Customer Site 100 is connected to the WAN/LAN 106.

End Users 103 use Browsers 104, connected to the WAN/LAN 106 to post comments and questions to Social Network Sites 105. Software 107 runs on a Cloud Server 109. The software 107 is made up of different modules described in more detail below. The Social Network Interface Software 118 is responsible for interfacing to the various Social Network Sites 105.

Monitoring and Analysis Software module 110 is responsible for monitoring all the Social Network Sites

105 that belong to the Customer 100, looking for keywords in conversations and analyzing them using

Third Party Sentiment Analysis Software 117, which is a service connected to the WAN/LAN 106. The

Routing Software module 111 is responsible for creating a message and sending it to the Customer Site

100 ACD Software 115 through the WAN/LAN 106. The Web Page Server module 112 is responsible for the web pages that the human Agents 101 see when they receive a message from the Software 107, and the pages that the End Users 103 see when they respond to a link that they receive from a message posted by a Customer 100 Agent 101. The Reward/Offer Software module 113 is responsible for keeping track of all rewards and offers and linking them to a particular End User 103, which then get offered via the Web Page Server 112. All the data for this system is stored in a Database 108 which is accessed using a Database Interface module 114.

Figure 2 shows a breakdown of the Software 107, which runs on a per Customer 100 basis on the Monitoring and Analysis Software module 110. It is broken down into different portions. The Scanner Software portion 501 is responsible for interfacing to the the Database Interface 114 to get the

Keywords 502 that is uses to find relevant conversations. It scans for keywords 507 using the Social Network Interface Software 118 that knows how to communicate with Social Network Sites 105 to look for relevant conversations. A relevant conversation might relate to a particular product or service of interest. For example, a customer might indicate particular satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the particular product or service. When a relevant conversation is found (Conversation ID 510), the Scanner Software 501 passes it to the Analysis Engine 503. The Analysis Engine 503 uses the Third Party Sentiment Analysis Interface to Determine the Sentiment 508 from the Third Party Sentiment Analysis Software 117. If the correct sentiment is determined the End User ID 511 is saved.

The Analytics Engine 503 has the option to invoke the Automatic Reply Software 506, which will use the Social Network Interface 118 to add a Reply 509 to the particular conversation using the Conversation ID 510. If this is done, then the Scanner Software 501 will reintroduce it into the Analysis Engine 503 if more responses are found. Once the Analysis Engine 503 has determined it has enough information, it uses the Message Creation Software 505 to create a message to be sent to the Customer 100 via the Routing Software 111. Figure 3 shows a breakdown of the Reward/Offer Software 113. It is broken down into different portions. The Agent 101 uses Web Pages 116 connected to the Web Page Server 112 to choose a reward or offer to post in the appropriate Social Network Site 105 conversation for End User ID 511. The Select Reward Software 600 chooses the appropriate rewards and/or offers to display and retrieves them from the Database 108 using the Database Interface module 114 (Get Rewards 606). Once Agent 101 selects the reward/offer, the Select Reward Software 600 creates links connecting the End User ID 511 and the Reward ID 601 and the Conversation ID 510. These are stored in the Database 108 using the Database Interface 114. The Select Reward Software 600 then posts a link to the offer (Post Offer 608) into the correct conversation (Conversation ID 510) using the Social Network Interface Software 118. When the End User 103 clicks on the link displayed in Web Pages 104, The Web Page Server 112 asks them to authenticate themselves using the Authentication Software 602. The Authentication Software 602 uses the Database Interface 114 to get the data 605 to authenticate the End User 103. It uses the Oauth standard to authenticate the user 610 with the Social Network Site 105 using the Social Network Interface Software 118 . For example, in one embodiment the customer may be required to access the reward/redemption site through their Facebook account.

Once the End User 103 has been authenticated, then the Web Page Server 112 uses the Display Reward Software 603 to query the Database 108 through the Database Interface 114 to match the End User ID 511 to the correct Reward ID 601 for the particular Conversation ID 510. This is displayed to the End User 103. The reward can be displayed as a reward code, for example, in the form of a coupon permitting the customer to purchase the products or services at a discount.

The Display Reward Software can also optionally store a Sales Lead 609 into the Database 108 using Database Interface 114 to be retrieved by a sales agent at a later time. Figure 4 shows a possible implementation of the screens for the various steps 1-8 that are done to get the End User 103 their reward/offer. In step 1, the end user posts to the social network site 105. In step 2, the monitoring agent receives the message and at step 3 decides to respond. At step 4 the agent picks a reward/offer , adds a message and posts it. At step 5, the end user is notified of the new post, which he sees at step 6. At step 7, the end user clicks on a unique provided in step 4 and sees the reward/offer.

Figure 5 is a flow chart, which maps out the order of events for Figures 1-3 at steps 500 to 511.

The described system has the advantage that each customer has a unique code that can only be used once. Typically it might be a coupon with a bar code or Q code, stored in a database, that can be scanned at the point of sale and then canceled upon use. For example, if customer A posts a

conversation on Facebook, an agent might see it respond with a reward. After authentication, customer A might receive a coupon "FreeCoffee-1234". The customer can redeem this at a point of sale, where it is scanned. Once it has been scanned it is canceled in the central database so that it cannot be used again.

Another feature of the invention is that the software 112 can monitor the redemption of the coupons for analytics purposes to determine their effectiveness. For example, if only a small percentage of the coupons are redeemed, this would indicate lack of effectiveness and suggest a different strategy.

The system in accordance with embodiments of the invention, unlike prior art offerings, allows promoters to target specific users/customers and offer something that is uniquely tailored to them.

It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that any block diagrams herein represent conceptual views of illustrative circuitry embodying the principles of the invention. The invention may be implemented on a processor, which may be provided through the use of dedicated hardware as well as hardware capable of executing software in association with appropriate software. When provided by a processor, the functions may be provided by a single dedicated processor, by a single shared processor, or by a plurality of individual processors, some of which may be shared. Other hardware, conventional and/or custom, may also be included.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for promoting sales of offered products or services, comprising:

accepting filtered data from a social media site indicative of customer sentiment relating to the offered products or services, said filtered data being associated with unique identifiers indicative of a customer conversation originating the data;

selecting particular filtered data as meriting a reward/offer;

identifying the customer conversation originating the particular filtered data from the associated unique identifier;

posting a link to a reward/offer redemption web page available to the customer in the identified customer conversation;

authenticating a connection from the identified customer to the reward/offer redemption web page; and

displaying a selected reward/offer to the authenticated customer.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the reward/offer is in the form of a unique code usable by the customer at a point of sale to redeem merchandise or services and stored in a database accessible to points of sale where the code can be redeemed, whereby the unique code can be canceled on redemption.

3. A method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the unique code is in the form of machine-readable data.

4. A method as claimed in claim 3, wherein the machine-readable data is in the form of a one- or two-dimensional bar code.

5. A computer-implemented method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein redemptions of reward/offers are tracked to monitor performance.

6. A method as claimed as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the link is posted in the identified customer conversation.

7. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 6, wherein the filtered data is presented to a human agent on a display device, and input is accepted from the human agent selecting the particular filtered data as meriting a reward/offer.

8. A method as claimed in claim 7, further comprising presenting the human agent with a choice of reward/offers stored in a database and accepting input from the human agent identifying the particular reward/offer to be posted in the identified customer conversation.

9. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the customer is authenticated through the social media site.

10. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein one or more reply messages are sent to the customer conversation originating the particular filter data, and customer responses to the reply messages are monitored for further indication of customer sentiment.

11. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 10, wherein identified customers are stored as sales leads in a database for retrieval at a later time.

12. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 11, wherein the selected reward/offer comprises a reward code for use in purchasing an offered product or service at a discount.

13. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 12, wherein filtered data originates from multiple social media sites.

14. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 13, wherein the filtered data comprises conversations filtered by keyword.

15. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 14, wherein the selected reward/offer is displayed to the authenticated customer after receiving requested personal information from the identified customer.

16. A method as claimed in any one of claims to 1 to 15, further posting a comment from the agent with the link.

17. A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 16, wherein the reward/offer is a coupon or offer of a free or discounted product or service.

18. A sales promotion system comprising:

a social network interface module for accepting filtered data from a social media site indicative of customer sentiment relating to the offered products or services, said filtered data being associated with unique identifiers indicative of a customer conversation originating the data;

a selection module for selecting particular filtered data as meriting a reward/offer and identifying the customer conversation originating the particular filtered data from the associated unique identifier, said selection module being configured to post a link to a reward/offer redemption site available to the customer in the identified customer conversation;

an authentication module for authenticating a connection from the identified customer to the reward/offer redemption web page; and

a display reward/offer module for displaying a selected reward/offer to the authenticated customer.

19. A system as claimed in claim 18, wherein the reward/offer is in the form of a unique code usable by the customer at a point of sale to redeem merchandise or services, and further comprising a database accessible to points of sale where the code can be redeemed to permit the unique code to be canceled on redemption.

20. A system as claimed in claim 19, wherein the unique code is in the form of machine readable data.

21. A method as claimed in claim 20, wherein the machine-readable data is in the form of a one- or two-dimensional bar code.

22. A computer-implemented method as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 21, further comprising a monitoring/analytics module for tracking redemptions of reward/offers to monitor performance.

23. A sales promotion system as claimed as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 21, wherein the software/offer reward module is configured to post the link in the identified customer conversation.

24. A sales promotion system as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 23, wherein the selection module is configured to present the filtered data to a human agent on a display device, and accept input from the human agent to select the particular filtered data as meriting a reward/offer.

25. A sales promotion system as claimed in claim 24, further comprising a database storing reward/offers, and wherein the selection module is configured to present the human agent with a choice of reward/offers and accept input from the human agent identifying the particular reward/offer to be posted in the identified customer conversation.

26. A sales promotion system as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 25, wherein the authentication module is configured to authenticate the customer through the social media site.

27. A sales promotion system as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 26, further comprising a message creation module configured to send a reply message to the customer conversation originating the particular filter data.

28. A sales promotion system as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 27, further comprising a database for storing identified customers as sales leads for retrieval at a later time.

29. A sales promotion system as claimed in any one of claims 18 to 28, wherein the selected reward/offer comprises a reward code for use in purchasing an offered product or service at a discount.

30. A sales promotion system as claimed in claim 29, wherein the reward code is a coupon or an offer of a free or discounted product or service.