Building Online Community Builds Your Brand

As an example of Brand Interactivism at its best, Daily Candy CEO Peter Sheinbaum told an audience at the Direct Marketing Assocation (DMA) Email Evolution conference that building community is the path to brand loyalty. Online Media Daily reports:

Companies that want to build brand loyalty should focus not only on communicating with their customers, but helping their customers communicate with each other, a wildly successful email newsletter targeting young women with fashion and lifestyle content.   

In fact, Sheinbaum, speaking at the Direct Marketing Association's Email Evolution conference, said he thinks of Daily Candy as a community, although it might look like a broadcast medium....

Predicting that online populations will increasingly group themselves into "communities of interest," Sheinbaum advised the audience of marketers and publishers to mine their databases of subscribers and customers to discover commonalities, whatever they may be. Once these segments and subsegments are identified, he went on, the company should equip members of these groups to communicate with each other and form communities--all, of course, under the aegis of the company or brand.

Sheinbaum's advice seems to jibe with two studies from the United States and Britain which found that, respectively, 64% and 70% of online shoppers in those countries want consumer ratings and reviews on commercial Web sites. Respondents said these reviews would help inform both online and offline purchase decisions. The UK study was conducted by Jupiter Research and Bazaarvoice; the U.S. study by Forrester.

Note: You must have an account on MediaPost.com in order to read the full article.