GROUNDBREAKING DIRECT MARKETING MEETS SOCIAL MEDIA
As we all know, there is an explosion of media and contact methodologies today. Social media can no longer be ignored. But how do we understand the interaction of all consumer touch points and each one’s role in delivering the final sale. And, more importantly, how do we know what is working? There are blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), media sharing sites (YouTube, Picasa), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn), virtual worlds (Second Life), social bookmarking (StumbleUpon), social news (Digg, Reddit), and many more. However, every social medium is not appropriate for every product or company; each should be explored for its relevance. And each should be tested and measured for its success in achieving defined marketing objectives. Without measuring results it is impossible to know if marketing dollars are delivering an acceptable return on their investment.
In assessing the value of social media, we have broken new ground by taking a mainstay of direct marketing analysis and translating it into a method of measuring the effect of using Facebook as part of the marketing strategy. Recently we worked with a retail client that created a Facebook Brand/Organization page. The Brand page allows for pulling insights on “fans” such as age, gender, geography, the growth of the fan base, and the quality of interactions with fans.
We wanted to find out both how interested customers were in becoming fans and how effective the page was as a store driver. So we set up a two tier test. We used an email campaign to send recipients to the Facebook page. Our client then offered promotions on Facebook. We continued to email the customer list as well.
Of the customers who received the email invitation to Facebook, 32% signed up as fans.
Using these matches, we hit these names against our system to see if they had purchased within the specific time frame of the Facebook promotions, in order to determine if the Facebook page has enticed them into stores to buy. These names were layered into our matchback for the dates of the promotions offered on Facebook, as a separate keycode. In the three month period, the Facebook names performed at a 50% higher rate than the email alone names.
The combination of a tried and true direct marketing analytical methodology with a new marketing channel underscores the need to evaluate all marketing programs, gathering quantifiable results, to be able to create and execute a marketing strategy with the optimal mix of customer contacts and touch points.
For help in establishing and/or evaluating a social media marketing program at your company, please contact Tom Peterson, our Chief Brand Strategist, at tpeterson@marketsmithinc.com.
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