Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a buzzword that has been around for a decade or more. Most businesses have invested heavily in CRM but have your thought about your Social program in terms of CRM?
In fact, social commerce is all about managing customer relationships and a more broadly defined consumer relationship. Why consumer relationships? Well, the opportunity to speak to consumers through a “Trusted Referral” network is what Social and Mobile Commerce is all about.
Over my career, I have looked at more site analytics than I would care to disclose (it shows my age) and these analytics are continuing to wobble.
- We know that home page site defectioncontinue to be at an all time high. But unfortunately for many merchants legacy website architecture precludes fast changes and therefore appropriate defenses for these consumer defections are necessary.
- Email opens and clickthrough rates continue to go south; however increasing your email’s send frequency is not the answer. For instance my wife signed up for LivingSocial and she used to get one email deal a day. Now LivingSocial is sending her 4 emails with deals per day. How has your email cadence changed over the last 2 years?
Back to my wife… she is just ignoring all LivingSocial emails now. So are opt-outs the behavioral analytic metric to look at anymore? … she said, I am just not opening LivingSocial emails anymore. So what is your open rate vs. opt-out rate? Have you been looking at this and tying it back to email cadence? Perhaps like above you should now look at these metrics from a CRM perspective and determine what message does your email cadence send to your consumer about your brand? Is it a sustaining social message?
- And now merchants are rushing to the Wild, Wild West of f-commerce (Facebook commerce) and soon m-commerce (mobile commerce). How will these marketing platforms drive new revenue channels for your business? What lessons should we marketers not bring to f-commerce and m-commerce from our years of experience in CRM?
I will tick off just a few and see how many stick.
- Are you putting up a barrage of self-congrats wall posts and ads on your Facebook page?
- Are you putting up full stores on Facebook (like JC Penny/ASOS) and asking your Facebook consumers to wade through 1400 products just like you do on your website? How are you protecting your consumer’s credit card and behavioral data on Facebook from leaks?
- Are you truly gaining marketing permission from your consumer and letting them decide what they offers/content they would like to see from you?
- Are you forcing a consumer to “Like” you before you let them enter your brand page/store on Facebook?
ShoppeSafe can enhance your social marketing programs and help you get up and running with a new Sustainable Social CRM program which will drive incremental social and mobile commerce revenue.
- ShoppeSafe can assist by helping you build a truly unique and fun shopping experience for your consumer that is not only highly relevant (CRM) but is permissioned by your consumer everyday, 365 days a year. We call this Sustainable Social CRM. Now through ShoppeSafe your business will deliver relevant and highly targeted offers by category directly to your consumers on Facebook through our ShoppeFans program and to a multitude of other online communities where your consumers want to review your offers and content including their smart phones. We enable your message to go to wherever your consumer is online and on mobile. And we enable you to do it with just a simple one-click.
- We do not recommend that you follow the traditional marketing model of dumping your product catalog on Facebook or on mobile. This is simply Push-N-Pray marketing. And it is dying. But instead through ShoppeSafe you now can provide the opportunity for your consumer to self-select the relevant offers and/or category of offers they would like and have then add it to their profile pages on Facebook or to the mobile smart phones using our ShoppeFans Facebook program. Then since these offers are highly targeted your customer will increase their frequency of purchasing, raise their Average Order Value and have more brand exposures. This has already been proven time and again with our current clients. Plus the sales gains are incremental not channel shift.
Additionally since your consumers are interested in your offers, ShoppeSafe enables them to engage in “Trusted Referrals” with their friends and families causing your offers to go VIRAL. What that means is new customers drive new revenue coming to your business through “Trusted Referrals”.
- Would you ask a customer on your website for their email address before they are allowed to shop? I see this as a stop sign to effective Facebook brand marketing.
- I hope you wouldn’t but everyday I visit brand Facebook pages that require me to “Like” the brand before entering. I get that building a “Like” database is important but not as important than having a trusted conversation and sharing your offers with others who would be interested in what you are selling. It is somewhat like putting the cart before the horse.
Instead why not focus on creating a unique and private offer channel on Facebook/Twitter or mobile and turn your Likes and Followers into true fans that will spread your offers virally. Then since you are providing unique value to them, they will organically and holistically want to Like/Follow or text others about your offers.
For those of you who were around the net when we began marketing through email this is exactly how email marketing took hold. The circle of web marketing repeats itself.
Now you may be thinking Social is different or our CEO sees this so differently then for you and your CEO there is an interesting Whitepaper recently published by IBM, which may spin your head around. “From social media to Social CRM: What Customers Want” The study, by Carolyn Heller Baird and Gautam Parasnis, conducted on the back of the finding that customer closeness is new the top priority for CEOs, shows a complete perception gap between businesses and why think people connect with them on social media, and why people actually do connect with them on social media. The study shows that, Businesses think people least connect for deals and to purchase, whereas people most connect for deals and purchase.
Perception versus reality
“Sixty-five percent of businesses view social media as a new source for revenue but, at the same time, many believe receiving discounts or coupons and purchasing products or services are among the least likely reasons a customer would seek them out on social sites. Ironically, though, consumers say getting tangible value is the top reason they interact with a company, which is good news for those organizations hoping to monetize social media”
To this point, this week I attended and spoke at a meeting for CEO’s and truth be told their understanding around social was surprisingly lacking. In fact, not a person in this group has yet to crack the code on making money in social not that they said they haven’t tried. In fact comments like it is too complicated was more the norm than I need to figure out how this will work for us and how it will make us money.
So my talk looked something like this… ShoppeSafe integrates and enhances with your social marketing by leveraging existing assets of traditional marketing with powerful new Sustaining Social CRM tools, which we have developed that are adapted for your specific business.
We call these marketing tools Sustainable Social CRM.
We don’t just create social and mobile widgets.
We don’t just build Facebook shopping pages.
We guide you in maintaining control of your message at the same time it is being talked about by your customers.
Then these customer views are considered to be honest, trustworthy and credible. They are not self-serving corporate brand messages. They are not spam or slapping stuff on a Facebook wall. It is all about and around Sustainable Social CRM where consumers help define your brand. They help you spread your brand virally because a brand is more of a perception than a logo or a product.
Customers connecting with you on social and mobile media should be about shopping AND deals. Just throwing up a Facebook store with tons of products we have found through our A/B split test analytics simply won’t maximize the selling opportunity for your business – we believe you need to offer what your consumers want and then deliver it to wherever they are online or on mobile.
You should also use special Facebook Fan pricing too. Offering special fan pricing provides a unique incentive for your fans (promoters) of your business. In fact those that are should be qualified to be your viral Facebook/Twitter and mobile Sales Force. We also think Facebook ShoppeFans stores, offering fan-first offers (get it before others) and fan-exclusive offers (fan only merchandise) are obvious and major ways to grow a platform that is the largest selling opportunity on the planet.
This is why we have developed a Sustainable Social CRM marketing program to target consumer and deliver your product content/offers through our ShoppeSafe program wherever they are online or on mobile smartphones.
Why not take a ½ hour to learn about the ShoppeSafe program in a personal presentation. Or you start to learn more about ShoppeSafe.com at ShoppeSimplenetwork.com Check out the webinars and online tutorials.
Please give us a call 612-349-2740 or email sales@shoppesimplenetwork.com to schedule a presentation. We would welcome the opportunity to share what we are doing and you can see us in action on shoppesafe.com our consumer direct portal.
Best,
Jeffery
PS. You can be up and running with the ShoppeSafe Sustainable Social CRM program in less than 10 days and without any implementation costs. Plus the cost is affordable and is based on a simple monthly subscription model and fits all sizes of business from small-mid-to even very large businesses.