Intuit’s TurboTax product has had over 20 million customers, and over 50% of those folks are using Facebook and have, on average, 150 friends. They obviously like to share, and most certainly have an opinion about their tax preparation experience.
What to do next was obvious, says Seth Greenberg, director of national media buying and digital marketing. “They can become our biggest salesforce.”
To turn them into that, this year the Mountain View, CA-based company began using Gigya’s social sharing platform to share customer reviews on sites like Facebook.
TurboTax is a key property for Intuit — it’s a billion dollar business in the 15-week period following Jan. 1 every year, says Greenberg. Customers are very passionate, but they need to be re-won annually.
This winter, Intuit launched the “Friend Like You” area of the TurboTax site, where users can narrow down the various selects of dozens of profile types to find others in their particular tax situation — new homeowner, new parent, etc. — or find people they know, via Facebook Connect. As folks leave reviews on the site after finishing their own taxes, they’re encouraged to share that through Facebook or Twitter, which is then promoted through the newsfeeds.
“We’re learning that people are four times more likely to click on a shared review than a banner ad,” he says, noting reviews are filtered by recency, rather than as good or bad. “You can sort by lowest rated, which I like because it shows we’re transparent.”
Over 50,000 people shared reviews. The review sharing has worked more as a prospecting tool for TurboTax, as over 75% of people who viewed the reviews and clicked through were new customers.
“It’s becoming more and more important for sites to optimize for social the same way they’re optimizing for search,” notes Ben Pashman, senior vice president, business development at Gigya.
The next step will be looking at other ways to share — say, perhaps taking a group of reviews from people who recently sold a house and promoting that bucket of reviews via a real estate site, says Greenberg. “It would be great to let the customers sell our product and get the heck out of the way.”
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