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Top Three Brands with Alexa Skills - Voice Marketing

Which companies have the best Alexa skills? Which brands are succeeding with voice marketing?

It’s the ones who understand that voice is all about enhancing or improving the customer experience. Keep it simple. Make things easy on people. That’s the “killer” app.

Your customers want convenience. The best voice apps offer it. It’s that simple. The Starbucks Reorder skill and Domino’s Pizza Alexa skill accomplish this.

Your customers want convenience. The best voice apps offer it. It’s that simple. The Starbucks Reorder skill and Domino’s Pizza Alexa skill accomplish this.

By 2021, the number of US voice assistant users will reach 122.7 million, representing 42.2% of US internet users and 36.6% of the US population (eMarketer). Digital voice assistants in use will triple to 8 billion by 2023 (Juniper Research).

Amazon Alexa has maintained market share for smart speakers so let’s look at which brands are succeeding on Alexa and why. Note, these brands also have Google Actions but we’ll just examine their Alexa skills here.

Here are three slam dunk examples of major brands using Alexa to drive sales and/or add value through voice-first content marketing.

Which brands have the best Alexa skills?

  1. Starbucks Reorder Alexa skill: you can:
    – Reorder your Usual from one of the last 10 stores you’ve ordered from
    – Check your primary Starbucks Card balance
    – Switch between your last 5 previous orders

    1. Why we like it: This lets customers easily order hands-free. It’s convenient to do while you’re busily getting ready to head out the door. This makes Starbucks even more ubiquitous and reliable, two of their brand success hallmarks (consistency of experience, much like McDonald’s provides so well).

  2. Domino’s Alexa skill: With the Domino’s skill, you can build a new order from scratch, place your Easy Order or your most recent order. You can ask Alexa for your order’s status with Domino’s Tracker®. Available only for orders placed in the U.S.

    1. Why we like it: Thanks to the AnyWare suite of technology, customers can place their favorite order via text, tweet, TV, smartwatch and more. Domino’s Alexa skill is just another channel making it more convenient for people to buy pizza. It demonstrates a commitment to ease of use. This will drive sales because like Starbucks does too, this removes friction and makes Domino’s ubiquitous.

  3. TED Talks Alexa skill: Explore TED's vast library of inspiring talks and ideas worth spreading by world-renowned speakers and thought leaders from around the globe. You can play the latest TED talk, play random TED talks, or search for talks by topic or by speaker name. You can also play talks that are funny, inspiring, persuasive, courageous, or jaw-dropping. New TED talks are available every weekday and are always free to the world.

    1. Why we like it: This is the best example of content marketing unrelated to voice shopping or commerce. Content marketing works when it adds value and is published consistently. This checks those boxes. Read more on TED’s blog: “Alexa, open TED Talks”.

starbucks-reorder.jpg

Starbucks Reorder

Reorder your usual coffee, check your Starbucks Card balance, and switch between your last five previous orders.

TED Talks

With their Alexa Skill, nonprofit organization TED allows you to play the latest TED talk, play random TED talks, or search for talks by topic or speaker name.

Domino’s

With the Domino’s Skill for Amazon Alexa you can build a new order, reorder your most recent order, place your Easy Order, or track an order using Domino’s Tracker®.

Takeaway:

Voice offers your brand an opportunity to be of service. Help before you sell.

And look, don't be intimidated by voice! You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Look how simple the Starbucks, Domino’s, and TED Talks skills are. They just voice-enabled the most common customer activities. Reduce friction, increase sales. Convenience for the win. It’s what Amazon sells, after all.

Domino’s AnyWare is the strongest example of the real driving principle behind all of this: it’s not about the specific channel (be it voice, SMS, or social media); it’s about being widely and easily available where your customers are. Voice just happens to be the fastest growing consumer technology, and an obvious and growing use case for voice commerce (AKA v-commerce), expected to be over an $80 billion market by 2023 (via Juniper Research).

Domino's Pizza (NYSE: DPZ), the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, knows that customers want to be able to order their pizzas from anywhere, at any time, on any device including Alexa. Thanks to the AnyWare suite of technology, customers can…

Domino's Pizza (NYSE: DPZ), the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, knows that customers want to be able to order their pizzas from anywhere, at any time, on any device including Alexa. Thanks to the AnyWare suite of technology, customers can order via text, tweet, TV, smartwatch, and more.

What you can do:

Identify the top three or five things that your customers want or need. That could be simply re-ordering or asking an FAQ or checking their account balance. Then voicify it. We can help.


Your Brand and Voice Marketing in 2021

If you need help creating a custom voice experience, whether that's an Alexa skill or a Google Action, or adding voice or chat to your mobile app, reach out to us. Get ideas here: check out our case studies from clients we’ve helped.

Learn more:

Binge our 3-minute daily briefing podcast about voice marketing with Emily Binder:

Or hear Emily’s briefing on Alexa News (new episodes every weekday). How to listen:

  1. Enable Voice Marketing with Emily Binder - Alexa Flash Briefing here

  2. Then say, “Alexa, news.”

Case Study: Alexa Flash Briefing - Ritholtz Wealth Management Voice Marketing

In 2018 we began working with Ritholtz Wealth Management on a voice marketing strategy to get their foot in the door of the Alexa ecosystem. As trailblazers in blogging and social media in the finance and investing space, “Downtown” Josh Brown and the Ritholtz Mafia wanted to beat the crowd to voice, too.

"Downtown" Josh Brown (@reformedbroker) asks Emily about the voice marketing work she’s done for Ritholtz. Hear why Ritholtz is "kind of a big deal" when it comes to voice in the investing and finance space.

Barry Ritholtz and Josh Brown. Image credit: thereformedbroker.com

Barry Ritholtz and Josh Brown. Image credit: thereformedbroker.com

Top Flash Briefing about Stock Market History & Investing


Market Moment is an Alexa Flash Briefing we created with Ritholtz Wealth Management, a New York City RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) run by two of the most online-savvy and established advisors in the industry: Barry Ritholtz (Masters in Business podcast and Bloomberg columnist) and Josh Brown (The Reformed Broker). Josh and Barry wanted to be first and best in voice in the investing space - and now they are.

IN ITS FIRST MONTH IN 2018, MARKET MOMENT BECAME THE FASTEST GROWING BRIEFING IN THE ALEXA BUSINESS & FINANCE CATEGORY … ORGANICALLY ($0 MEDIA BUDGET).

Based on the popular “Today In Market History” tweets from @RitholtzWealth, Market Moment hosted by “Downtown” Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) is a 5-star briefing packed with great information about business and the market.

The Ritholtz team has been a blast to work with. They’re hands-on, ahead of the curve, and excited to invest in voice branding.

Having vision in 2008 that social media would explode helped Josh and his team get millions of followers. They’re doing the same thing with voice. Check back in a couple years and see who in finance-related content marketing had the head start voice.

Tactics:

We took care to choose keywords, title, and description for Amazon SEO (search engine optimization). Through monitoring and tweaking these fields, we have been able to climb the rankings for our top search terms, including investing, stock market, and financial advice. For example:

Improving Alexa Skills store page rank (SEO):

  • After eight weeks, with $0 spent on promotion:

    • We improved from position #75 to #20 for "investing", a 73% improvement. I.e. we were #75 of total results and now we are #20, on page 2.

    • We improved from position #24 to #8 for "stock market" (and to #7 a week later, below):

Amazon SEO: Market Moment Flash Briefing climbed rankings in Alexa Skills store from #24 to #7 for keyword “stock market” in first nine weeks.

Amazon SEO: Market Moment Flash Briefing climbed rankings in Alexa Skills store from #24 to #7 for keyword “stock market” in first nine weeks.

Phase 2: The Compound Show - Mini Podcast and Alexa Skill

In March 2019, we launched a first-of-its-kind custom voice skill and mini podcast about investing based on The Compound YouTube channel.

What if you could listen in on regular conversations between professionals working in money management today?

Josh Brown:

I invented the mini-podcast. All the financial industry and investment-oriented podcasts are an hour long or more. I think that’s because the person whose podcast it is feels bad about asking a guest to come on and then cutting them short. Some podcasts should be an hour – Patrick O’Shaugnhnessy interviewing Michael Mauboussin, for example, or Barry Ritholtz interviewing Ray Dalio, or Michael Kitces interviewing Ric Edelman.

But most podcasts are too long and not every guest has an hour-plus worth of stuff you want to hear. However, the format persists. I think it’s just something that’s become a tradition – to interview each guest for an hour and change – even though that’s not what the listener actually needs or wants from every conversation.

read more about The Compound Show on The Reformed Broker

Click here to enable The Compound Show on Alexa then say, “Alexa, open The Compound Show!”