CRM Strategy

Angie’s List: Creating Pro Relationships?

The 7 Commandments of CRM analysis

Dafna Sheinberg

Welcome back to PostFunnel’s 39th episode of the 7 CRM Commandment Series.

Today, we get to Angie’s List – the online network that allows you to access top-rated Pros and more than 12 million verified reviews from real people.

So, let’s start with the first commandment. Shall we?

1. Be Transparent 10/10

The first question on the brand’s FAQ page is: How Does Angie’s List Make Money? Now, that’s transparency!

Angie’s List Super Service Award 2020 is among some of the rewards that the brand hands out to other companies. According to the network’s rating and reviews, being entitled to honor various industries ‘ services and professionals puts Angie’s List in authority.

“Despite the enormous challenges facing our service pros throughout 2020, our Angie’s List Super Service Award winners continued to provide exceptional customer service,” said Angie’s List Founder Angie Hicks. “These outstanding businesses have helped homeowners not only maintain their homes, but also evolve them into safe and comfortable spaces that can handle all the mess of life, work, school and entertainment under one roof. Our homeowners’ consistent positive reviews make it clear: these are the best pros in our network.”

The fact that companies from across the world put themselves in the running for several Angie’s List awards credits the brand with influence, authorization, and realness.

2. Incentives and Perks 5/10

As an Angie’s List member, you can shop deals according to your location and project of choice.

The brand promises, “Savings on service with deals and offers from local pros,” too.

However, before creating an account and joining Angie’s list – we weren’t incentivized in any way. Ie. No signup offers, newsletter offers, or first-time discounts that we were able to spot.

3. Be Relevant 10/10

A note about at-home projects during COVID with a link to a dedicated webpage that presents the message appears at the top of the brand’s HP. The page goes on to detail everything from “Staying safe while hiring home services during coronavirus.”

In many ways, Angie’s List promotes content relevant to the time of year, including increased wear and tear and the damage that winter weather can cause to your home. The type of thermostats you should install this time of year in terms of both comfort and energy efficiency.

The brand recognizes Black History Month on its social media accounts and so much more. Visiting this brand’s assets will make you feel like they live in the same world as you do and at the same time. That’s relevancy.

4. Be Helpful 6/10

Here’s what Angie’s List details as what they’ve done to combat COVID-19.

  • Created a health & safety measures section on Pro’s profiles: We’ve added a new area for our Pros to explain the specific precautions they’re taking to protect health and safety. When provided, this information is displayed prominently on their profile, giving you more information to evaluate the Pros you hire and feel more comfortable and informed in your hiring decision.
  • Let you declare your comfort with contact: We are adding features to allow you to state during your quote request that you want your interaction to be as contact-less as possible.
  • Educate Pros and Consumers: We’re giving guidance to homeowners and professionals on best practices for safety with up-to-date summaries of CDC guidelines and product changes.
  • Facilitate cashless payments: You don’t need to physically handle checks, credit cards or cash if you use a digital payment app. Ask your contractor what other payment methods they accept, or pay for the work via the Angie’s List App.

To further help customers make logical and smart decisions, the brand has released a number of Angie’s List Reports that cover a range of topics, including:

·       Carpet cleaning tips

·       Essential tips for homeowners

·       How to introduce a pet to your new home

·       Getting clutter under control

However, when it comes to making a more substantial donation or prominent move to give back to society – or even show support for a certain cause – we couldn’t find any.

5. Realtime Personalization 4/10

We were asked to enter our zip code in order to receive localized and personal ratings and reviews when choosing a landscaping project:

Once we filled in our zip code, we received the following popup, which led to more questions: the size of the area in our landscaping project, the design and plants we want, the kind of location it is, etc. That’s nice and helpful, but more of a UX kind of personalization, and not the automated kind.

When going back to the brand’s HP after looking to start a landscape project – no further recommendations for our project of interest were shown to us.

Also, when completely logging off Angie’s List and hopping onto social media – no realtime retargeting efforts were made by the brand.

6. Master UX 7/10

The uncluttered use of text, images, and icons allows for intuitive navigation on the brand’s website. To avoid getting lost, the use of whitespace allows users to keep their attention centered on the specific project they came for.

We deducted a couple of points here simply because people who may not be familiar with the brand may find it hard to understand what the network offers when quickly entering their website.

Also, the level of detail required to start searching for reviews felt long and tiring.

7. Leverage Social Media 8/10

On Facebook, the brand has 252K likes, on Instagram, they have almost 7K followers, and on Twitter, they have 37.6K followers.

On all three social media platforms, the brand posts in a high frequency, ranging from every day on IG and every few days on FB and Twitter. Therefore, we deducted a couple of points here as we would have liked to see full daily activity.

We were glad to see that the brand acknowledges D&I:

And that Angie’s List also uses their social media platforms to be helpful:

**

Overall, Angie’s List is getting a 50/70 here (71%), placing them in 22nd place, smack right in the middle of the group.

Here are the full rankings of all the brands we analyzed to date:

  1. Pets at Home 91%
  2. Lowe’s 90%
  3. Petco 90%
  4. Target 87%
  5. Uniqlo 86%
  6. Paul Smith 84%
  7. Vrbo 83%
  8. N Brown Group 81%
  9. West Elm 81%
  10. The North Face 81%
  11. Holland and Barret 80%
  12. lululemon 80%
  13. JD Sports 79%
  14. Brooks Running 79%
  15. Best Buy 78%
  16. Nando’s 75%
  17. Etsy 76%
  18. The Body Shop 74%
  19. Gymshark 73%
  20. William Hill 73%
  21. Essence 72%
  22. Angie’s List 71%
  23. Iceland Foods 71%
  24. Total Wine & More 70%
  25. Tommy Hilfiger 70%
  26. Walgreens 70%
  27. Kohl’s 70%
  28. United Colors of Benetton 69%
  29. Buy Buy Baby 68%
  30. Fiverr 67%
  31. The White Company 66%
  32. Next 63%
  33. Patagonia 61%
  34. Express 60%
  35. Burberry 60%
  36. Zara 59%
  37. Treatwell 58%
  38. COS 57%
  39. Dream11 53%

We publish a new analysis every week, so watch this space for more brand analyses coming your way!