Adagio Teas sells a remarkable 68,050 blends of tea. The vast majority of blends are created by its customers either for their own enjoyment (think private blends) or as a blend that is sold to others on the site. Creating blends via crowdsourcing is a brilliant strategy for driving social interaction, because people are eager to share their creations on networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
“The idea of customer-created blends came from growing up in a Russian background,” says Ilya Kreymerman, chief technology officer and member of the family that founded and runs Adagio Teas. “Tea was always something that was in the house, and when my mom and dad had company over, they would always drink this blend of tea that my mom made herself. So the idea of having people create these unique blends was second nature to us. We found a way that people can not only make it but also share with friends, the same way that my mom would share it when people came over. The idea is not just making it for yourself but making it for yourself and for a large community.”
Avid tea connoisseurs can search the database for a perfect blend, or, as with Amazon’s bestseller list, browse teas based on popularity and customer reviews. That’s another important social aspect: Like popular authors on Amazon, those who create delicious blends build a following with Adagio Teas customers, driving sales with their ratings and reviews. If you like a blend, you can see what other blends that creator has made. Repeat customers can create a profile to keep track of teas they enjoy most, and they can also add teas they want to try.
For example, a top-ranked tea as I write this, Sherlock, is a blend by Cara McGee: “All at once exotic and mysterious and perhaps a little bit insane, with a lingering hint of smoke. Inspired by BBC’s Sherlock, which I am in no way affiliated with. This is created purely for my own enjoyment. Ingredients: Lapsang souchong, Assam melody, Oriental spice.”
McGee uploaded a video where she talks about the blend. There are also customer reviews and social sharing tools that include Facebook (with over 1,000 likes), Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest. The Sherlock blend is part of a theme that Adagio calls Fandom Signature Blends, which also include such teas as Avatar, Big Lebowski, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and many more blends based on popular movies, TV shows, and books.
“A lot of what drives people to buy the tea is not really the tea itself—it’s this story around the tea,” Kreymerman says. “You take a pot of tea and infuse it with a character or TV show or video game and suddenly people have an attachment. You’re piggybacking on their love for a specific character. Instead of it just being a cup a tea, it’s now got all of this background and emotion baked in.” And people are naturally eager to talk on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks about tea that has a connection to the books, movies, and TV shows they love.
Another social aspect kicks in when customers add friends to their profiles. If you log in to Adagio Teas with a Gmail account, you can instantly find out whether one of your contacts also has an Adagio Teas profile. Or if you’re reading a review and like someone’s taste in tea, you can friend that person.
With all the sharing going on with customers at Adagio Teas, it’s no surprise that the company itself is active on social networks. It has an excellent Tumblr blog4 (“The official blog from the people behind Adagio”), and is active on Twitter (@AdagioTeas, 29,000+ followers), on Facebook (72,000+ likes), and on other social sites.
“People historically have spent a lot of money to advertise products,” Kreymerman says. “But we never use traditional marketing, advertising, things like that because it’s incredibly expensive. You’re kind of shooting in the dark. I think the more interesting thing is to provide customers with value by putting the money towards a really interesting site or really interesting idea or making their experience better instead of just kind of directing them towards your store. We listen to the audience, and a lot of our good ideas come from listening to what people are talking about on Twitter and Tumblr. And once in a while, we hear the same question coming up over and over again and realize that we have to address it.”
And Adagio Teas really is active, using social networks to communicate with customers. The mistake made by so many other companies is just using social media like Twitter as a one-way broadcast advertising channel. For example, @AdagioTeas tweeted: “We are developing a wish list feature & would love feedback. Would you use it as a bookmark for yourself, or as a list to help guide others?” A follow-up tweet thanked customers for their suggestions, announced the launch of the wish list, and prompted further discussion.
People love this kind of interaction and happily talk up organizations that provide it. For example, @jamieworley tweeted: “It’s so cool that @AdagioTeas sends me twitter DMs to let me know where my tea shipment is!” And it is cool. I wish some of the companies I frequently do business with used Twitter Direct Messages (DMs) to communicate.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison made her own blend because she wanted to have interesting Christmas and holiday gifts for family and friends. The “Create a Blend” widget is really easy to use. Many people love mixing teas, and Adagio has made it fun and easy to mix different flavors to create a unique and tasty blend: You name your creation and choose the types of teas and the percentages of each. You then have an opportunity to create a custom label, either simple text or something much more elaborate.
Here social networking pops up yet again, because you can upload a Facebook photo to be part of your custom label. Instead, Allison made a hand drawing for her label, which she scanned and saved as a JPEG and then imported into Adobe Photoshop. There she added text before uploading the image to the Adagio Teas app. Her “scottea dog” blend is “Just a cute jumpy Christmas blend of assam melody, hazelnut, and peppermint.”
Another fun social aspect of Adagio Teas is that the creator of a custom tea earns points whenever a customer buys that blend. Points can be used to get discounted or free tea. This encourages social sharing by people who create blends—when their new blends are ready to be sold, many people will tweet about them, or post an image of the label with a link on Facebook, or make a Tumblr post talking about the blend. After all, it’s in their best interest to do so.
By building social networking features into all aspects of the customer experience, Adagio Teas drives business success. As customers talk about teas on social networks, fan their favorite blends, or even create their own to share with their friends, new people learn about the company. It sure beats traditional advertising to get the word out.
Social media sites are places where people congregate to discuss things that are important to them. Where are people discussing your industry and the products and services you offer? If that place already exists, you should monitor it and participate as appropriate. If it doesn’t yet exist, consider starting a place for colleagues and customers to meet and revel in information that is important to your market.
Now let’s turn to blogs, another form of social media.
Notes
3 3adagio.com
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