Creating a One to One Dialogue Through Social Interaction

white paper | 2012

Creating a One-to-One Dialogue Through Social Interaction

Developments in social marketing provide rich opportunities for

companies to drive higher engagement and conversion rates

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©2012 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights protected and reserved. 2

Creating a One-to-One Dialogue Through Social InteractionDevelopments in social marketing provide rich opportunities for companies to drive

higher engagement and conversion rates

Facebook’s launch of its Timeline feature in 2011 represents a sea change in how companies

can connect with customers and prospects in social media.1,2 As companies seek to replace

display ads with sponsored stories, organizations can now plug in rich apps to engage their

current fans, easily convert fans into their direct marketing programs, and attract new fans to

the brand.3

This change has dramatic business implications for marketers—not just on Facebook, but

across the social media universe, including Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.4 The continuing

evolution of social media is leading to profound changes in the ways that marketers can and

will be able to engage with hundreds of millions of customers and prospects going forward.5

“Social media has become the central mechanism that consumers use to talk to each other

and to share information about what they like about brands and products,” says Wayne

Townsend, CEO of ClickSquared. “The level of brand impact that consumers can have on these

interactive platforms is significant—especially when you consider the viral effect that is central

to social media.”

The online marketing discussion is no longer solely about behavioral targeting. Instead, the

evolving social scene is about companies creating rich opportunities—contests, communities,

polls, games, and other approaches—for fans to engage with their brand, and by doing so,

attracting their circle of friends to the brand as well. Companies can also use these engagement

devices as a bridge for transitioning prospects to the company’s one-to-one direct marketing

programs.

Companies that fail to take advantage of these types of engagement opportunities could

see market share shift to more socially aware competitors. By 2014 more than 70 percent of

Fortune 2000 organizations will have at least one “gamified” social application, according to

Gartner.6 By engaging social customers and prospects with interactive activities, companies

can create considerable brand loyalty, increase their fan base, increase their understanding of

their customers, grow their direct marketing database dramatically, and generate greater rev-

enue.7 According to a recent Bain & Company report, customers who engage with companies

in social media typically spend 20 to 40 percent more with those companies than customers

who don’t engage.8

Additionally, consumers are increasingly relying on social media to inform (and broadcast)

their purchasing decisions. For instance, a recent examination of “The Facebook Factor” on

consumer purchasing behaviors by Forrester Research finds that Facebook fans of Best Buy

are about twice as likely to purchase from and recommend Best Buy as non-Facebook fans.9

With more than 500 million regular visitors to Facebook alone—many of whom invest a great

deal of time there (e.g., Americans spend nearly 8 hours per month on Facebook, according to

Nielsen)—the reach of Facebook is tough to ignore.10

Of course, social marketing isn’t limited to polls, contests, and games. Some companies

also focus on social engagement by asking visitors to share their favorite experiences with

a product or to submit product reviews and new product ideas. These types of engagement-

oriented activities can improve the effectiveness of social marketing activities by keeping

Executive Overview

Contents

Participating in the Social Conversation __________ 4

Case Study: The Boston Celtics’ Social Slam Dunk ____________ 6

Building the One-to-One Relationship ___________ 6

The Most Meaningful Metrics _______________ 9

Conclusion ___________ 10

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customers—and prospects—coming back to social sites to interact with each other and with

the brand.

Peppers & Rogers Group believes there are four key success factors that make social activities

truly meaningful for their participants.11 These activities:

1. Appeal to participants’ egos and needs

2. Target the right audience

3. Create interactions that engage and excite

4. Maintain the proper balance between freedom and control

The Boston Celtics is one company that utilizes these success factors to create a compelling expe-

rience for its customers and prospects.12 Since the launch of a Facebook game called 3-Point Play,

a game in which fans compete to predict the game statistics for a trio of Celtics players, the Celtics

team has added 85,000 Facebook fans to its direct marketing database (see case study, page 6).13,14

That type of social interaction creates buzz and excitement, says Dietrich Chen, a director at

Peppers & Rogers Group.15

Of course, customer engagement–oriented activities like games, contests, and user-generated

content are just the first step in social marketing success. Companies that hope to convert anony-

mous fans into prospects, prospects into customers, and casual customers into loyal ones also

need supporting tools and techniques.

For instance, if customers engage in an online contest on a company’s Facebook page, many

companies make the mistake of requesting that fans share their Facebook profiles to “fan-gate”

the user or prompt her into becoming a Facebook fan. This decreases participation significantly.

The company should fan-gate her by requesting her first name, last name, and email address—

a request that is acceptable to nearly all consumers. Basically, fans are telling companies that it’s

OK to contact me, but I really don’t want to share information about my family, friends, schools,

and interests—at least not yet. Trust has not been established.16

Once this basic information is captured, the company should then push the data into its marketing

database and use it to start a one-to-one communication stream with those customers via email.

By successfully converting anonymous, often passive fans into marketable customers in this

manner, companies can now learn more about the customer’s likes and dislikes, and measure

open rates, click-thru rates, conversion rates, and impact on revenues, according to Dan Smith,

senior vice president of marketing at ClickSquared.

“Social media has become the central mechanism that consumers use to talk to each other and to share information about what they like about brands and products.”

—Wayne Townsend, CEO, ClickSquared

Highlights:Supported by insights from ClickSquared and Peppers & Rogers Group, this white paper will help

business leaders discover:

• How to gain value from the dramatic changes

occurring in social media.

• How the right tools and techniques can enable

companies to build engagement with “fans”

and increase their likelihood to purchase.

• Which metrics are the most meaningful for

measuring the results of social strategies.17

• Which approaches to social marketing

resonate best with customers, as well

as recommendations for avoiding social

media gaffes.

• How to connect the dots between social

media and other channels to engage most

effectively with customers and prospects.


Participating in the Social ConversationWhenever executives ponder the various approaches for connecting with customers via social

media, invariably one of the first questions they ask themselves is, “How can I use social network-

ing to sell more to my customers?”

“This is the wrong question to be asking,” says Martha Rogers, Ph.D., founding partner at

Peppers & Rogers Group.18 “Instead, what decision-makers should be asking themselves is, how

do I use the tools and information that’s available to me to better understand our customers and

then do the right thing for each one of them confidently and proactively?” In turn, doing the right

thing will lead to sales and other positive outcomes.

Organizations need to listen closely to customers to gain that better understanding of their prefer-

ences, needs, and behaviors—especially how customers engage on social networks.19 Companies

can then take actions that are aimed at delivering the communications and offers that will resonate

most—and inspire customers to take some action, such as purchasing, sharing, or recommending.

When companies are able to consistently demonstrate both their ability to listen to what cus-

tomers have to say in social media and that they’re acting on customer input, companies earn

customer trust. Customers who trust the companies they do business with are more likely to

remain loyal, recommend the company to others, and increase the amount of business they do

with that company, Rogers notes.

Earning and maintaining customer trust is crucial today given the transparent nature of

social media. Because of this, it’s essential that companies are upfront in public dialogues with

customers and don’t delete negative posts—especially considering the backlash that such an

action can generate.

The science of social mediaIt’s also important for business leaders to gain a comprehensive understanding of how social

networks and online communities operate and the appropriate ways to engage with consumers in

them. This includes knowing when it’s appropriate for a company to enter a conversation (e.g., a

customer tweets about a problem he’s having with a company’s product and a customer service

agent tweets back with an offer to help) and when it’s not (e.g., sending an unsolicited, irrelevant

marketing message via Twitter direct message).

By learning more about customer behavior (and the accepted rules of engagement) in spe-

cific social channels, business leaders can gain deeper insights about the types of applications

and forms of interaction that all their customers and prospects find most engaging and the top-

ics they’re most passionate about. Additionally, business leaders should determine which social

media channels their top customers and high-value prospects use most often—and how they use

them. This will allow an organization to interact with each group in unique and meaningful ways,

based on both their current and potential value.

A few proven techniques for engaging customers in social media include deploying apps

for sharing customer stories about positive experiences they’ve had with a company’s brands

and products, posting photos from recent events, and promoting a contest for which there’s an

incentive for participation (e.g., contest winners receive a gift certificate). These forms of social

engagement can be effective vehicles for eliciting fans’ involvement and making them feel con-

nected with other participants and the brand, notes Peppers & Rogers Group’s Chen.

By comparison, broadcasting offers to mass groups of fans or followers via Facebook or

Twitter can alienate customers who don’t want to be marketed to in social media.20 “You have

to question at some point how wise it is to broadcast an offer to every fan in a non-differenti-

ated way,” says ClickSquared’s Smith. “Such an approach fundamentally fails to acknowledge

the reality of marketing: Who are my most valuable customers? Who are my least valuable?

“How can I use social networking to sell more to my customers’ is the wrong question to be asking.”

—Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Founding Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group


Who responds to an offer and who doesn’t?”

Social marketing apps and other social engagement strategies can also be an effective

way for companies to attract the friends and associates of customers who have comparable

attributes to current high-value customers.21 “Social communities are a powerful platform

to leverage word of mouth and customer advocacy,” says Peppers & Rogers Group’s Chen.

An advocate is different from a loyal customer in that she supports and is loyal to the brand,

but also recommends and actively promotes the brand, signifying that she is emotionally

attached to the brand, Chen adds.

Consequently, one highly effectual social marketing strategy is to encourage or reward fans

to participate in games, contests, and the like. “Consumers have such a strong influence on one

another that the experience of one person with a company’s social site can have a multiplier effect

on others,” says ClickSquared’s Townsend. When a single fan’s game play is reflected on the fan’s

newsfeed (and optionally “pinned” to the top of the newsfeed as a sponsored story), it means that

he’s effectively recommended the game (and the brand) to his friends and family. Social games

and contests can quickly go viral when those friends and family—and their friends and family—

subsequently participate as well.22

It’s straightforward to measure the impact of these social media apps. When companies add

fans, and through game-play, add those fans to their marketing database, they can then determine

the business value that’s derived from doing so—for example, calculating the number of pros-

pects who participate in a contest on Facebook who are then converted into customers and the

revenue resulting from those conversions (see “The Most Meaningful Metrics”).

“You have to question at some point how wise it is to broadcast an offer to every fan in a non-differentiated way.”

—Dan Smith, Senior Vice President, Marketing, ClickSquared

FIGuRe 1: The Social Engagement Tree

There are multiple ways that companies can engage fans using social media and begin building one-to-one relationships. This chart from a Shop.org social commerce study illustrates different ways that consumers interact with retailers via social media, including the percentage of consumers who purchased a product or service using a Facebook link.23

Source: 2011 Social Commerce Study by Shop.org, 1,787 respondents, April 2011

How Shoppers Interact With Retailers Through Social Networks

■ Facebook ■ Twitter ■ Retail Blogs

Purchased productor service fromFacebook link

Posted commentsregarding customer

services

Posted commentsregarding products

or services

Browsed/researchedproduct or service

Clicked throughto website

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%


Building the One-to-One RelationshipBehavioral targeting can be highly influential in connecting companies with customers.24

Companies can use cookies to track consumers’ online behavior (e.g., monitoring websites they

visit) and send them ads they may be interested in receiving based on those behaviors. For exam-

ple, a home improvement retailer may present targeted ads for plumbing supplies to consumers

who visit websites regarding plumbing repairs and parts.

Still, behavioral targeting lacks the emotional and human connection that social relationships

can, and often do, deliver. Targeted ads are intended to reach a certain group of people based on

their demographic background (e.g., gender, age, location) and behaviors like frequently visited

websites and purchase history specifically to drive an action like a purchase or a request for fur-

ther information. Additionally, there’s typically a low level of consumer engagement with online

ads. They aim to drive one action at that moment. Social marketing and engagement activities, by

contrast, aim to build relationships that bear dividends over the long term, including purchases,

sharing, and recommendations. Social marketing is also more effective at creating buzz among

customers and encouraging participation by their friends.

“Social engagement is an effective way of getting customers and prospects involved,” says

Peppers & Rogers Group’s Rogers.

One company that’s extremely successful at engaging its fans in social media and generating

qualified leads as a result is ModCloth.25 The online fashion retailer offers a mix of activities for its

fans on Facebook and Twitter—for example, asking Facebook fans questions like, “What trends

do you think will be sizzlin’ hot this summer?” In addition, the company runs regular contests on

Twitter, including “I Spy Thursdays,” in which each Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time the company

posts a blurry or distorted picture of one of its products.26 The customer who’s the fifth person

Case Study:

The Boston Celtics’ Social Slam Dunk

The beauty of the evolving social marketing space is that it provides companies with rich oppor-

tunities to engage with large numbers of the right consumers. Companies can then nurture

that social audience, transitioning fans into their direct marketing programs and building trust

through a one-to-one dialogue.

“Engagement is where a consumer-to-brand relationship drives value, whether that engagement is in social

or facilitated by another channel,” says ClickSquared CEO Wayne Townsend.

The Boston Celtics is one organization that is actively engaging its fans in social—and scoring big as a result.

The NBA team created a Facebook game called 3-Point Play in which, prior to each live game, Celtics fans can

predict the statistics (points, rebounds, assists) that three separate players will achieve. Participants accrue

points based on the accuracy of each pick, the risks inherent in the picks they made, the collective accuracy of

their picks across all three players, and the number of challenges they’ve won against other Celtics fans.

Nothing but net (gain)

While Celtics fans have fun playing the game and earning the chance to win prizes, including coveted playoff

tickets, the team is able to connect with and gather rich marketing information about its 2-million-and-growing

Facebook fans. 3-Point Play has enabled the Celtics team to quadruple its Facebook fan base to 6.5 million

over three years. The game has also helped the team to add 85,000 Facebook fans to its marketing database,

enabling the Celtics to drive significant increases in ticket sales since the game’s launch.


to tweet the correct name of the product to @ModCloth wins a $25 gift certificate.

One of ModCloth’s initial campaigns with Offerpop, ClickSquared’s partner for its clickSO-

CIAL social marketing apps, generated 30,000 email addresses from its Facebook fans in just

six hours.27 The company has also conducted a few private sales with its Facebook and Twitter

fans that have resulted in some of the company’s best revenue and traffic months.

“ModCloth has put together some simple but engaging programs that are a lot of fun,” says

Mark Cooper, cofounder and CMO at Offerpop. “We find that apps with which people can

engage over a cup of coffee or in spare moments during the course of a day really work well.”

Of course, some social games and contests only last for a fixed period of time, so compa-

nies need to use effective techniques to keep fans engaged and coming back. For instance,

FarmVille, the popular farming simulation social game from Zynga, typically sends reminder

messages to reengage fans who haven’t visited the site in a while (“Come back and water your

plants before they wilt!”).28, 29 Many companies simply rotate and refresh their social apps so

that the content remains fresh (e.g., ClickSquared’s clients can choose from 16 ready-to-deploy

apps for both Facebook and Twitter).

The rules of engagementAs companies continue to engage fans through games, contests, or other activities, the next

step is to convert fans who are prospects into customers, and those who are already customers

into purchasers of additional products or services. A simple rule of thumb to begin transition-

ing prospects into customers is to request a single form of contact information, such as an

email or text address. This makes the opt-in process simple, while providing the company

with a means of direct follow up. From there, companies can begin a one-to-one dialogue that

allows them to gather additional information about their customers’ interests, preferences,

and other pertinent data, and then use this information to help make future interactions more

relevant and personalized.

“Connecting with consumers in social through games and contests is a very nonthreatening

way of starting a relationship,” says ClickSquared’s Smith.

Companies can engage fans in other ways—outside of games and contests—that can pro-

vide meaningful insights about their preferences and attitudes. Customer-facing employees

in marketing or customer service can post open-ended questions on a company’s Facebook

page asking fans how they use a company’s product. For example, a grocer might ask fans

what they like to serve at their Super Bowl party. This information can provide the grocer with

insight into what items to feature or promote prior to game day, and which customer groups

are most likely to purchase as a result.

Engagement is an ongoing process. Once social fans have provided initial contact informa-

tion and permission to contact them via email, mail, or phone/SMS, companies should strive

to deliver additional value to customers to help keep them engaged. This can include updates

on the game or contest, such as new features that have been added or winners who have been

announced and the types of prizes they’ve earned. Companies can also reengage social fans

by asking them to participate to try out their latest app, e.g., a photo contest where they can

submit and vote on pictures showing fans with their favorite product, or a poll where they

cast a vote to name the next new ice cream flavor. Doing so helps social participants feel

connected to the group, encourages ongoing participation, and invites the fan’s friends and

family to join in the fun.

As the fan-to-company social relationship transitions to one-to-one communications,

it’s critical for companies to make it easy for customers and prospects to set their interac-

tion preferences—how often they prefer to be contacted about what products or services,

via which channels, and at what time of day. Too often, companies ignore these preferences

“Social communities are a powerful platform to leverage word of mouth and customer advocacy.”

—Dietrich Chen, Director, Peppers & Rogers Group


and bombard prospects with unwelcome communications,

which is a sure path to destroying the relationship, notes

ClickSquared’s Townsend.

Companies that are able to explicitly gather customer

insight through the use of a preference center (and implicitly

by recording behaviors) can then engage in a relevant dia-

logues with customers going forward. “Building one-to-one

relationships is all about learning something about individual

customers and then remembering and using that insight to

make the next interaction with each customer more relevant

and timely,” says Peppers & Rogers Group’s Chen.

When customers feel as if the company knows them, includ-

ing their interests and preferences, then those customers will

be more willing to continue the discussion with the company,

notes Peppers & Rogers Group’s Rogers.

Once a social fan has provided contact information, it’s also

essential for decision-makers to have a strategy in place for

engaging that customer going forward so that the relation-

ship continues to flourish. “It’s important to plot out what you

want that customer lifecycle to look like so that you can plan

future programs for your customers and determine the level

of investment that should be made in those programs against

the customer value you hope to capture,” says ClickSquared’s

Townsend.

A Social Readiness Checklist

Peppers & Rogers Group offers the following advice for companies as they expand their social networking activities.

1. understand the social media landscape, including what other companies are doing in and outside your field.

2. Be clear about what you want to achieve with social media. Is it primarily for customer care or for acquiring new customers? Or is it to manage corporate communi-cation, crisis management, or brand awareness?

3. Have a listening program in place to determine which customers are talking about what topics and where they interact most. This is valuable insight that marketers or service teams can turn into action by triggering commu-nications based on customer comments or proactively addressing customers’ issues and concerns when possible.

4. experiment with pilot programs. Identify a few to test ideas and learn from the experiences.

5. ensure that social media initiatives are not conducted in isolation and that they are aligned with the larger cor-porate strategy. Too often, companies run a number of disparate social media initiatives with no cohesiveness to them.

Source: Peppers & Rogers Group

FIGuRe 2: Going Where Your Customers Are

The following chart from comScore illustrates where people spend the majority of their time on social net-working sites.30 Before making the assumption that Facebook is the logical place to invest in sharing content with customers, decision-makers should first ascertain which social networking sites their company’s high-value customers use the most and how they use the sites.

Average Minutes per Visitor for Selected Leading Social Network Sites

Facebook.com

Tumblr.com

Pinterest.com

Twitter.com

LinkedIn.com

Myspace

Google plus

423

151

80

25

15

13

5

Source: comScore Media Metrix, December 2011


The Most Meaningful MetricsAs companies gain experience with social marketing and engagement and with transitioning

anonymous fans and followers to one-to-one dialogues, they can also begin to measure the

results that these efforts are delivering. This includes determining the impact on open rates

and conversion rates, as well as changes in revenues and profits. However, for decision-mak-

ers to measure the results of social strategies in an effective and repeatable way, they need to

align the right measurements with the goals they’re looking to achieve (e.g., increasing repeat

sales by 10 percent over the next six to 12 months).

Many organizations struggle to measure the returns they’re seeing from social efforts.

According to Gartner, half of Fortune 1000 companies will not see ROI on their social CRM

initiatives by the end of 2012, largely because they’re either not applying the right measure-

ments or because they haven’t clearly identified the objectives they’re trying to accomplish.31

Additionally, among those companies that will not see a worthwhile return, just 20 percent

have the data necessary to determine where their social strategies are falling short.32

Part of the problem is that many companies fail to set clear business performance goals for

their social strategies. Measuring the number of Facebook fans or “likes” or the number of tweets

made about a company in a given week doesn’t speak to the business value that’s derived from

social business strategies (e.g., the number of social participants who made a purchase).

Decision-makers need to set explicit business goals, such as correlations between social

marketing programs and quarterly revenue growth, notes ClickSquared’s Smith. The key is

to start with a single metric, gain experience with that measurement, and then build on it.

For example, if a company starts by measuring the number of Facebook fans converted to its

marketing database per quarter, over time it should track the amount of revenue generated by

those converted fans.

Companies should also attempt to measure social engagement. This can include gauging the

number of active participants in a company’s online community or how often fans are participating

in a game, along with the amount of time spent doing so each day or week. By drilling down into this

kind of information, decision-makers can determine the level of engagement a company has with

its fans and then link that to the impact that social engagement is having on business performance

(e.g., the percentage of active community members who purchased products last quarter versus

the percentage of purchases made by non–active community members).

Assembling the puzzleTo adequately measure the impact of social strategies on business performance, companies need

to have the right technologies in place to capture and analyze data inputs.

Measuring the business impact of social strategies isn’t limited to gathering social data.

Customers use multiple channels to interact with companies, including websites, email, and

phone. Because customers often start an interaction in one channel, such as email, and then click

on a link that brings them to another channel, such as social, it’s critical for business leaders to

be able to measure campaigns across those channels to help them determine the strengths and

weaknesses of various cross-channel marketing approaches.

Consider HomeAway.com, an online marketplace for vacation rentals that offers customers and

visitors opportunities to share their experiences, photos, likes, and dislikes regarding rental prop-

erties at which they’ve stayed.33 One of the strengths of HomeAway’s Facebook strategy is how it

redirects fans who click on a Facebook photo of a featured vacation property to the HomeAway.

com website. “It’s a way of using social media to drive traffic to your website by virtue of a trav-

eler’s experience with a vacation property,” says ClickSquared’s Townsend.

Connecting social with other channels provides companies additional ways to strengthen the

“If you can’t track the re-sults of social engagement on business performance, this should be troubling to you as a business leader.”

—Dan Smith, Senior Vice President, Marketing, ClickSquared


customer/company relationship. By providing cus-

tomer-facing employees a window into the various

customer touch points, they’re able to gain a more

complete view of each customer. With this informa-

tion in hand, customer-facing employees are able

to have relevant, context-based interactions with

customers. This demonstrates that the company

understands its customers and is striving to better

address their needs and interests, notes Peppers &

Rogers Group’s Rogers.

Gaining this complete view of customers also

enables company decision-makers to track the full

engagement-to-conversion lifecycle. Let’s say a

company has 1,000 Facebook fans and 400 of those

fans have been transitioned to its marketing data-

base through game play. Of those 400, the company

is in an active dialogue with 250, and can track that 75

products were purchased last week.

“If you can’t track the results of social engagement

on business performance, this should be troubling to

you as a business leader,” says ClickSquared’s Smith.

“The good news is that the tools and techniques are

all available to do this.”

ConclusionSocial networking presents enormous opportunities for companies to engage and attract hun-

dreds—if not thousands—of new potential customers. Doing this successfully means creating

mechanisms by which consumers can engage with the brand beyond a one-time click of a “like”

or “follow” button. Providing engaging games, contests, and (fan-)gated communities that allow

customers to interact with the brand (and their fellow fans) to share their opinions, expertise, and

passion are critical ingredients to drive measurable business results with customers and pros-

pects in social channels, says ClickSquared’s Townsend.

“It’s vital to have program leaders who have a deep understanding of the social channels cus-

tomers use and the different ways that people engage with companies in social environments,

including the personal data they will or will not be willing to share,” says Peppers & Rogers

Group’s Rogers.

Social engagement is a two-way street. It provides companies a powerful opportunity to

develop more meaningful dialogues and stronger relationships with consumers that can lead to

potent business outcomes. It’s also a way for a company’s most fervent advocates to share their

passion for a company’s brands and products with other potential customers.

“A dialogue can only evolve and be engaging if both parties benefit from that interaction,” says

Peppers & Rogers Group’s Chen.

Unlike other online marketing strategies (e.g., behavioral targeting), social marketing pro-

vides companies with tremendous opportunities to connect with individual customers in a deep

and meaningful way, enhancing social engagement as a result. “Ultimately, it’s about moving

from broadcast to unicast, and making that one-to-one connection with the customer,” says

ClickSquared’s Smith. “Because once you’ve developed that one-to-one relationship, great

things can happen.” n

FIGuRe 3: Measuring Social Business Success

There are multiple ways for corporate leaders to measure the business impact of social strategies, including direct revenue impact and referral business. Unfortunately, too many companies continue to focus on the basics like track-ing the number of social networking “likes” generated by fans, according to a recent Peppers & Rogers Group and Temkin Group survey of organizational decision-makers.34

Source: 2011 Social Strategies Study, Peppers & Rogers Group and Temkin Group, December 2011

Benchmark: Social Strategy

10 Customer Strategist volume 3 • issue 4 www.customerstrategistjournal.com

Measuring Success

Before executives attempt to measure the impact of social media efforts on business performance,

they should first closely examine some of the underlying information about their social customers,

says Don Peppers, founding partner at Peppers & Rogers Group. For instance, are the people who are

sharing sentiments on sites like Facebook or Twitter part of the customer segment that your company

is trying to reach for specific products or campaigns? Are they influencers, whose social comments

can positively or negatively sway a significant percentage of a target audience?

Although there are ways companies can measure results from their social media efforts, it’s

Adjusting the DialIt’s clear that most companies are still in the early stages of creating and implementing their social media strategies. For example, few companies are able to measure the success of their social strategies in terms of business metrics. Nearly 50 percent of survey respondents say they measure social success in the number of fans, friends, or likes their organization’s social me-dia pages generate. “What this demonstrates is that many companies still need to transition from the use of social metrics to business metrics,” says Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group. As companies integrate social into their customer service strategies, for example, they should begin to measure business metrics such as changes in the cost to serve or the number of calls deflected from the contact center.

44%

54%

38%

19%

18%

46%

30%

41%

25%

13%

5%

Customer referrals

Revenue via social

Time on site

Friends/fans, likes

Forwarded links

Number/frequencyof comments

We don’t tracksocial metrics

I don’t know

Other

How do you measure success in social?

44%

35%

71%

54%

14%

6%

Post promotions and discount offers

Run contests and games

Provide links to relevant content (e.g., a food company providing links to recipes)

Integrate marketing via social withmarketing delivered via other channels

Our company doesn’t use socialnetworks for marketing

Other

Use links or widgets in social siteto make pur

pur

with sales ef

Crafting the MessageMany marketing organizations continue to use social media to provide customers with relevant links to products or company infor-mation (71 percent) or to post promotions and discount offers (44 percent). While that type of information can be informative and useful for customers, companies can strengthen customer relationships and benefit further by analyzing customer insights for target seg-ments to make sure they are sending out rel-evant promotions and offers that will resonate with customers and lead to higher conversion rates among the intended audience, says Peppers.

How is your organization using social for marketing?

CSvol3is4_benchmark.indd 10 12/15/11 4:26:51 PM


About ClickSquaredClickSquared is the only company offering SaaS cross-channel campaign management software,

enabling B2C marketers to design, manage and deliver data-driven marketing programs across

email, social, mobile, direct mail, survey, and web channels without the cost and complexity of “big

software” and multi-vendor integrations.

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For more information call +1.857.246.7800 or visit http://clicksquared.com/ or via the links below:

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About Peppers & Rogers Group

Peppers & Rogers Group is dedicated to helping its clients improve business performance by acquiring, retaining, and growing profitable customers. As products become commodities and glo-balization picks up speed, customers have become the scarcest resource in business. They hold the keys to higher profit today and stronger enterprise value tomorrow. We help clients achieve these goals by building the right relationships with the right customers over the right channels.

We earn our keep by solving the business problems of our clients. By delivering a superior 1to1 Strategy, we remove the operational and organizational barriers that stand in the way of profitable customer relationships. We show clients where to focus customer-facing resources to improve the performance of their marketing, sales, and service initiatives.

For more information please visit www.peppersandrogersgroup.com

About 1to1 Media

1to1® Media is dedicated to helping organizations across the globe realize the greatest value from their customer base. We provide resources that help senior executives to drive change and make customer-based initiatives the centerpiece of their growth strategy.

1to1 Media’s custom publications explore the best practices, trends, and developments from companies that are using customer initiatives to drive bottom-line impact. Backed by Peppers & Rogers Group, the globally recognized leader in customer strategy and relationship marketing, 1to1 Media combines thought leadership, field experience, and editorial expertise to deliver the content needed by our audience of more than 130,000 decision-makers.

For more information please visit www.1to1media.com


Endnotes1Darwell, Brittany (2012, March 26). “Facebook Expands Sponsored Stories in News Feed With Image, More SocialContext.” InsideFacebook.com.

2Whitney, Lance (2012, February 29). “Facebook launches Timeline for Pages.” CNET.com. 3Munro, Peter (2012, April 1). “Nothing Quite Like a Million New Friends.” Smh.com.au. 4Olson, Porter (2012, March 30). “Using Facebook Timeline for Your Business.” Business2Community.com. 5Souza, John (2012, March 30). “If Social Media Isn’t Profitable, What’s the Point?” FastCompany.com. 6March 9, 2012. “Gamification Examples in Business Are Growing—and Fun.” American Management Association.Amanet.org./shift/.

7D’Antonio, Mila (2012, March 26). “3 Ways That Social Engagement Breeds Customer Loyalty.” 1to1Media.com. 8Zaibak, Omar (2012, March 26). “20 Important Customer Experience Statistics for 2012.” Fonolo.com. 9Sverdlov, Gina (2012, April 9). “The Facebook Factor.” Forrester Research.10Parr, Ben (2011, September 30). “You Spend 8 Hours Per Month on Facebook [STATS]”. Mashable.com.11Ruggiano, Marc (2012, January 27). “What’s Your Social Readiness Score?” Peppersandrogersgroup.com.12The Boston Celtics 3-Point Play Facebook Page. https://apps.facebook.com/threepointplay/.13Boston Celtics 3-Point Play. Na.isobar.com.14ClickSquared “Customer Case Study: The Boston Celtics.” ClickSquared.15Chen, Dietrich; Williams, Cory (2011, October 11). “Empowering Customers to Become Evangelists.” CustomerStrategist. Peppersandrogersgroup.com.

16Peppers, Don; Rogers, Martha, Ph.D. (2012, April 26). “Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage.” Portfolio Penguin.

17Clark, Cynthia (2012, April 30). “The Most Actionable Social Media Metrics.” 1to1Media.com.18Rogers, Martha, Ph.D. (2012, January 25). “What’s the Right Question?” Peppersandrogersgroup.com.19Chen, Dietrich (2011, December 14). “5 Social Media Banking Efforts in Action.” Peppersandrogersgroup.com.20Hockenson, Lauren (2012, April 26). “Facebook Marketing: Why Less is More.” Mashable.com.21Oguz, Orkun; Chen, Dietrich; Akdemir, Alpay (2011, December 26). “Mining for Social Customer Gold.” Customer

Strategist. Peppersandrogersgroup.com.22Henion, Andy (2012, April 25). “Customer ‘Tribes’ Foster Brand Loyalty.” Futurity.org.23Petersen, Rob (2011, October 14). “In 2012, 1 Out of 2 Companies Will Have a Blog. 23 Reasons It Should Be In Your

Business Plan.” BarnRaisersllc.com.24 Kirkpatrick, David (2011, November 17). “Online Behavioral Advertising: How To Benefit From Targeted Ads in a

World Concerned with Privacy.” MarketingSherpa.com.25ModCloth.com.26April 23, 2009. “I Spy Thursdays on Twitter.” Blog.modcloth.com.27ModCloth Case Study. Offerpop.com.28FarmVille. Zynga.com.29 DiDonato, Joe (2011, April 28). “10 Engagement Tips from the Social Gaming & Networking World.”

2Elearning.com.30Tommytoy.typepad.com.31Smith, Tineka (2012, May 3). “Fortune 1000 Companies May Miss the Mark on Social CRM.” CBRonline.com.32 Marie-Petrou, Andrea (2012, May 3). “Only half of Fortune 1000 Companies Will See a Positive Social CRM

Return.” ChannelBiz.co.uk.33HomeAway.com website.34 Hoffman, Thomas (December 2011). “How Does Your Social Strategy Stack Up?” Customer Strategist.

Peppersandrogersgroup.com.

Creating a One to One Dialogue Through Social Interaction

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