By Akbar Jaffer, Social Annex
In the growing struggle to build loyalty among omni-channel shoppers, harnessing the power of social data is a smart business strategy.
Nearly every retailer and consumer goods manufacturer can vouch for the fact that it’s tough to engage shoppers and build brand loyalty. The fact is most shoppers today know more about a product or brand — as well as its availability and price — than the average salesperson. Research from Deloitte found that customer loyalty among omnichannel shoppers is at an all-time low, too, averaging 58% and dropping.
One reason it’s so difficult to create effective omni-channel marketing programs is that many popular information gathering tactics, such as phone surveys and in-store surveys often do more to turn customers off than they do to solicit helpful feedback. Rather than trying to coerce customers into engaging with them on retailers’ schedules, savvy marketers recognize that they need to enable customers to share feedback on their terms. And, more now than ever, effective marketing is happening via social media channels.
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Social Media Gives You Myriad Personalized Data Points
Nearly 46 percent of online users turn to social media when making a purchasing decision, according to research from Nielsen. Additionally, being active on social media has been shown to Increase companies’ and/or brands’ visibility in search engines and plays a key role in boosting website traffic. But the big question for marketers is, “What kind of data points can be garnered from social media activities?” The answer is surprising to those companies that have yet to start taking social media marketing seriously.
The types of social data available that benefit marketing efforts the most include:
- Personal information. This comprises key customer demographics, such as their age, gender, education, and lifestyle.
- User behavior data. This entails information such as whether customers like to share positive/negative shopping experiences with their friends, what they share, and what they click on.
- Social connections. Discover who your customers follow and how closely they associate with various individuals and groups (e.g. first circle, second circle, third circle).
- Choices they make. Based on the topics your customers comment on, you can find out the news sources they like, the types of articles and content they consume, the products they’re shopping for, and the things they’re most interested in.
- Technology preferences. What percentage of your customers are using Android, iOS, and Windows devices? Social media marketing can give you these important insights.
- Location based information. Where are your customers when they’re sharing this information? At work? At a coffee shop? At home?
- Timing. You can also discover the best day of the week and the best time of day to engage with them.
After gathering social data on your customers, the next step is determining what to do with that information. What’s nice about many of the aforementioned stats (e.g. location based information and timing) is that you can use the data at face value to make better marketing choices. When you can analyze multiple data points and draw inferences is where things really get fun. For example, let’s say one of your customers is a 65-year-old male who is looking up information about the band Green Day. With a few more data points you can infer that perhaps this person’s grandchild is going to a Green Day concert and the grandparent is doing some research to get a better sense of what kind of music their grandchild is into. What sort of messaging could be targeted to that person?
Make Social Media Data Actionable Through Data Analytics
Ski equipment retailer Summit Sports is a good example of a company that’s learned how to harness the power of social media marketing. After experiencing mediocre results with its previous ratings and reviews provider, the retailer reached out to enterprise Software-as-a-Service vendor and social media marketing expert Social Annex for assistance. Social Annex helped Summit Sports implement a new ratings and reviews program that entailed transferring 33,000 customer reviews and 10,923 questions and answers to a new platform. The new platform featured a comprehensive analytics dashboard and robust customized curation reporting. The new program contributed to a 51% increase in contest entries over the previous year and a 20% increase in Summit’s site traffic.
The more in tune you can become with your customers via social media, the more effective you can be with marketing activities such as contests, share and save, post purchase sharing, social login, and visual commerce activities. Keep in mind, that gathering data is only half the battle. Being able to aggregate it, analyze it, and respond to it in a timely manner — before your customers’ interests change — is equally important.
Akbar Jaffer is the Vice President of Products and Marketing for Social Annex (www.socialannex.com) Social Annex is a social commerce and loyalty enterprise software company that helps retailers and manufacturers acquire, convert, and retain customers with the only purpose-built, complete omnichannel customer loyalty and social commerce platform. Through its software and best practices as-a-service, Social Annex makes it cost effective and easy for marketers to know their customers intimately, build loyalty and increase revenue.
