By popular request, here are the easy steps in the care and feeding of your local, word-of-mouth (WOM) Connection Engine.
Our marketing folks made a simple acronym – J-D-I-C-R-S-F-R. (There’s a complimentary, lifetime membership for the first person who creates a catchy mnemonic.) It’s very much like Facebook or LinkedIn, so you Web 2.0, social networkers will feel right at home.
1. Join – you already did that? Woo-HOOO! If not, just go to www.YouGottaCall.com
2. Designate your favorite charity –identify the not-for-profit organization that will receive funds generated from your word-of-mouth referrals. This feature was added a few months ago. All Members can edit their designated not-for-profit (NFP) by logging in and editing their profile. Please do this. Otherwise your donations will go to the NFP of the Month.
3. Invite – tell your friends, neighbors and co-workers about your Connection Engine. On your Member home page, click on “Invite a Friend or Trusted Service Provider” to
a. invite from your email contacts in Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Hotmail
b. upload from your Outlook contacts; or
c. invite individuals by email
Or you can tell your friends to go to www.yougottacall.com. They can indicate they were invited by you when they register.
4. Connect – find your friends, neighbors and co-workers who are already Members. This will enable you to locate their trusted service providers (TSP) and vice versa.
5. Refer – This is the whole point, so listen up. YouGottaCall.com handles your WOM referrals just like normal WOM. These referrals fall into 2 categories:
a. Active – This is just like when you tell your friend, “You gotta call so-and-so for this or that…” In YouGottaCall.com, you give an active referral to either a Member or non-Member by sending a link from the TSP’s Home Page.
From your Member Home Page, just click the TSP’s link and then click “Refer a Friend” on the left.
b. Passive – your connected Members can find and connect with your TSPs without you doing a thing. And you still generate donations for your favorite charity. Sound easy? It is. That’s why we call it passive.
6. Search for / Find a TSP - These passive referrals happen when another Member searches for a Vendor. Results can be filtered the results to see just those TSPs trusted by their connected Members.
7. Reward – when a Member becomes a new customer of a TSP, they split the TSP’s reward with the Member who referred them. Their designated NFPs receive the reward amount* in the Members’ names.
Folks – this is not rocket science. Sure, it may look complicated, but remember your high school English assignment to write step-by-step instructions for tying your shoes? And now you tie your shoes without even thinking too hard, right? Same thing.
We’re always working on adding other neat stuff, like iPhone and Facebook integration, real-time reports so you can track your connections, referrals and rewards. But this is the “need-to-know” in 578 words or less.
Our success in raising $$$ for your favorite charity depend on more Connecticut-ians** learning about YouGottaCall. You now have all the tools you need to invite and refer, so what are you waiting for? Log-in and grow your Connection Engine.
We expect to see a huge surge in Membership – call it a nice little 50th birthday gift for your network’s humble founder.
Thanks – and good referring,
- - Tim
* You were probably wondering “What’s in it for them?” YouGottaCall.com retains a percentage of this - currently 20%.
** Just in Connecticut for now.
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