Idea Spark: Social Marketing Use Case #5—Sales Promotions

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

In our past discussions, we have talked about how individual initiatives are the genesis of the use of social media / social marketing within a business or a brand, and that these initiatives are usually driven by a single purpose—a use case. The fifth use case in our Creativity Coffee series, Sales Promotions, focuses on how businesses can derive direct revenue from their use of social marketing.

Recent studies have shown that almost 40% of people connect with brands over social channels because they want to receive offers and discounts. But another recent study stated that people DISCONNECT from brands because of over-posting or irrelevant content.

Brands want to see ROI in their social marketing efforts, and one of the core ways for them to directly associate revenue and profitability to social marketing is through sales promotions. Dell Outlet is one of the key success stories along that line; they have a Twitter account dedicated just to selling discounted merchandise. But how can the brand take advantage of engagement with consumers for Sales Promotions? What are the rules of engagement? How much is “just right?” What are the best practices? Here are the ideas sparked during our Creativity Coffee.

1. How much is too much?
• Example: An outdoor products retailer is sending out email marketing newsletters EVERY DAY or TWO. They are not segmenting the list by interest, they are not providing special promotions other than through email marketing, and their promotions are similar each time (usually 20% off). While people are more forgiving of promotional emails around the holiday season (they are LOOKING for deals), how long will it take the average consumer to disengage and unsubscribe? If this retailer were doing the same thing on social channels, how much LESS tolerance would a consumer have to this barrage of deals?
• Brand exclusivity often drives how contacts perceive a promotion. Designer brands may erode their brand status by offering discounts too often; but when they do, many people will probably jump at the chance of getting 20% off of current season items.
• Predictability may erode a brand’s revenue stream. If a retailer provides discounted offers too often, consumers may just wait for deals before purchasing rather than looking for every day value a retailer.
2. Unless the social account is JUST for deals/promotions, there should be a healthy mix of content and promotions.
• People come for community, stay for content!
• While people are looking for deals when they connect to a brand, great content that pertains to the brand’s target audience will help the consumer engage with the brand on levels higher than just “give me a coupon.”
• Brands that ONLY provide promotions through their social channels will miss the opportunity to learn more about their customers, engage them further and develop those customers into brand advocates.
• Social channels may be the lead to a consumer opt-in to sales promotions, but they may not be the PREFERRED channel for the delivery of those promotions. Savvy marketers will enable delivery of promotions on multiple channels and let the consumer drive their preferences and the rules of engagement.
3. Frequency of communication varies by social channel.
• Twitter updates can fly by, and a consumer may see an occasional Tweet. Multiple promotions may or may not be noticed and may or may not “annoy” followers.
• Frequent Facebook updates, however, may have a greater annoyance factor especially if a contact doesn’t have a huge volume of communications from their contacts. The brand’s status updates may stay on the consumer’s news feed, and too many promotions (or even too many updates) may cause the consumer to disconnect from the brand.
4. Should the brand offer “exclusive” deals through each channel (or to drive more people to a desired channel)?
• That depends on the brand’s goals for each channel.
• IF a brand decides to offer “exclusive” promotions on a particular channel, they better make sure that they follow through and make the deals worth the consumer’s engagement on that channel!
5. Value of social channels to brands = the database!
• Example: Pepsi Refresh campaign. Tons of people signed up to support different causes…and Pepsi built a huge database. What now? How are they going to use this information? Where’s the ROI?
• The database can lead to distinct, attributable ROI for social marketing. Deal distribution, tracking by channel and by person, offer redemption in the retail channel and direct ROI. This is happening today!
• The database can also provide media impression data. ROI for traditional marketing/advertising used to be about media impressions and ROI based upon sales volume for a period during/after a campaign. With social, there’s a greater ability to measure the direct and residual impressions (through social sharing) in a traditional light AND measure sales promotion redemption as well.

Intrigued? Would you like to join the discussion? Our next Creativity Coffee will be focused on The Use Case for Measuring Buzz and Brand Sentiment. We hope you’ll join us!