After 200,000 downloads in nine (9) months, here’s why we decided to pivot our business.
If you Google ‘Arbit’, you’ll see a lot about our app.
But today Arbit has taken on a new life of its own. And in order to understand what has happened between “the app” and where Arbit is today requires starting from the beginning to ask: Why did we start Arbit?
Our team studied for years how brands interacted with customers. And, at a more granular level, how customers interacted with each other.
To start, we combed through thousands of social media posts. And I mean thousands.
We were constantly on social media, seeing how brands — whether it was a personal brand like a celebrity, or a brand like Nike — were interacting with customers. Tweets, Instagram posts, Facebook feeds. Everything.
Every time we’d see a post from a big brand, we noticed they held what we called a “one-way conversation”: They controlled the content. You’d chime in but most likely got lost in the shuffle. Rinse and repeat.
“Check this out.”
“Buy this product.”
“Give us (me) your time and attention.”
It was all very…bland.
There was never a moment of “Hey you, our customer/my follower, let’s have a 1:1 conversation. We’re a massive company or I’m a massive star and we (I) want to know you”.
But there was also something else we dove into. It was the way in which brands went about eliciting customer feedback. We’re talking surveys. And what we found was a glaring gap between:
Amazing Brands
and… the look of their surveys.
A business must be innovative or it will get eaten by competitors. Businesses stay innovative by understanding customer behavior — their wants, needs, and why they buy.
So if your most important goal is to be innovative, but the way you survey your customers isn’t, therein lies a massive disconnect between building a great brand and understanding the customers you hope to build it around.
That’s why we built Arbit. A mobile app where people could interact with brands and one another through seamless, engaging polls. Authentic, two-way conversations. And the result? 200,000 downloads in nine months. 30,000 users on it each month. Thousands of conversations had, debates wagered, and opinions shared every single day. We also allowed companies to pay to sponsor polls to reach a broad consumer base.
Between how seamlessly we let people create polls and gave brands exposure to an active audience with real-time feedback, we started a massive engine of opinion sharing and B2C interaction.
What were we missing?
Well, it didn’t take long to realize we needed to share Arbit polls more often and in more places. Not as an app. But as a holistic survey tool that could be embedded in emails, placed on websites, and shared across social media.
The world is in continuous conversation; so why not give people as many opportunities as possible to have their voices be heard and connect with brands and each other?
And we wanted to design it in a way that would make surveys flat out stunning, more appealing, and brand-centric. That massive gap between being a really freaking cool brand and using poorly designed surveys? We addressed that with our new B2B tool.
Today, we give companies the ability to produce seamless, design-driven surveys to captivate the minds of their customers and spark authentic conversations.
Don’t believe in the power of having a brand-driven survey? Just ask B3 Bistro, a new restaurant opening in Baltimore, who used Arbit to poll potential customers on new menu items and drive awareness. B3 produced 800 votes, 600 emails, and an 80% response rate in 36 hours with an Arbit campaign.
They paid $0 on advertising. They were able to reach a large audience because that audience is already actively engaging with content on social media. So to go where the conversations are being had and distribute an Arbit poll is a prime example of why we decided to get away from being a mobile app.
Or you can also look at Loyola University MD who boosted their response rate from alumni by over 400% through Arbit.
How? Because with our surveys, customers and supporters identify with the questions, the imagery, and creativity. From a business to consumer, it translates to: “Hey, we get you, we care about you, and we want to know your thoughts, so welcome to our interactive experience”. As a result, we are able to produce creative, authentic insights from customers and deliver them to your brand.
That’s what we’re doing today at Arbit. And you’ll see more and more of these polls pop up, as marketers from all businesses are looking to gain an edge on insights, be innovative, and match the way they approach customer feedback to the image of their brands.
If you’re looking for a new approach to reach your customers, you can get started here for free; or, if you want to partner with us to build campaigns with top-level engagement, contact us for more information.
Happy polling!
