SocialTwist made Gartner’s 2012 Cool Vendor Report for Consumer Goods!

“Consumers’ ability to share consumer goods (CG) offers and content via their social networks, and get rewarded for doing so, is becoming a way for CG companies to extend marketing campaigns and better measure the impact of social media.” This was one of the key findings of the report.

You can find the press release here. The full report is available only to paying subscribers at the Gartner website (www.gartner.com).

The Opinion piece is reproduced below:

9 Cases for Customer Acquisition Through Social Referrals

Vijay Sundaram

This month we look at 9 businesses cases where customer acquisition, through social referrals, adds startling value. In each, SocialTwist customer examples are in […].

1. When Referrals Amplify Distribution. Social referrals greatly amplify coupon distribution since they are very effective in reaching the right people. We’ve done this for a number of brands and consumer product companies. [Sara Lee, Coca-Cola]
2. When Customer Acquisition Costs Are High.  Finance companies like brokerages and insurance are natural candidates. They also benefit from high customer lifetime value which increases the return from social referrals. [ING]
3. When You Suffer High Attrition. Businesses with low switching costs and low differentiation, like mobile operators and auto service companies, have high churn. Loyalty programs prevent switching and social referrals can anchor loyalty and retention programs (you tend not to switch if you refer). [Jiffy Lube]
4. When Your Business is Referral-Driven. Realtors, brokers, and businesses that serve small businesses rely primarily on existing customers to gain new ones. An institutionalized referral system is a godsend. [Intuit]
5. When Your Consumers Are Socially Active. Apparel and entertainment companies target young adults. Child product and food companies target mothers. Both groups are prolific on social media, making social referrals highly impactful. [Lacoste, GAP, Huggies]
6. When Your Offers Are Seasonal & Time-Bound. Vacations and hotel stays are examples of time-bound offers where the underlying asset expires when not sold. Using social referrals to improve utilization is a blessing without disguise.
7. When You Offer Subscription Services. Service companies like cable TV and pest control providers already reward customers for referring others. Institutionalizing this process is just what the doctor ordered. [Terminix, Orkin]
8. When You Are An Etailer. These companies run everything online – from lead generation to fulfillment. Social referrals fit like a glove into the online consumer engagement model. [Kodak Gallery]
9. When Your Customers Are Connoisseurs. Gourmet foods and wineries benefit from social referrals because their customers are buffs whose referrals carry clout. [Peet’s Coffee]

We tried hard to think of products where social referrals won’t work and came up with a couple – aircraft engines and hemorrhoid treatments. Let us know if you find others.

Our March newsletter went out today. The Opinion piece is reproduced below:

Social Referral Marketing

Vijay Sundaram

Through our work at SocialTwist, we see a new emerging category – Social Referral Marketing (SRM).

What is it? It is the process of acquiring and retaining customers by asking your existing customers and influencers to refer others, through their social connections.

Where’s the opportunity? Businesses sit atop “social assets” – customers, fans and followers, email subscribers, website and store visitors – who have demonstrated affiliation to the business already. Each is connected to hundreds of others who they influence through peer relationships. Asking for a referral is the first step and institutionalizing this process is a gigantic growth opportunity.

Is it big? The Fortune 400^th company is a pet store with 827K Facebook fans, 37K Twitter followers, and 2.7 million unique website visitors. They also have 1,145 retail stores where customers walk in every day, and an email subscriber list that’s likely in the millions. Even after accounting for massive overlaps, their social assets must number at least several million consumers, who in turn can reach over 120 million others – an amazingly large set of prospects, all within reach. Compare this with the largest web property in the world – google.com – with 173 million unique visitors. [Update: The last number was obtained from a publicly available source for the largest single Google website, but appears to be understated when compared with Google's published numbers.]

Can it be effective? Every piece of research shows that consumers trust peer opinions far more than anything else. Referrals also tend to implicitly target the right people. Personal referrals that come from trusted parties thus result in dramatically higher engagement, as measured through referral open rates, CTRs, and purchases.

But, can you measure it? The big conundrum around social media strategies is how to measure their results. Not so for social referral marketing. Influencers drive referrals. Referrals drive actions. Actions have value. Most businesses know the value of these desired actions, from clicks to customer acquisition costs. SRM can be measured and expressed in terms of value creation and ROI.

Will SRM become a core strategy for businesses in 5 years? I think so. You may ponder longer – but remember, you heard it here first!

SocialTwist partners with Adversitement, a leading online analytics and optimization provider based in Amsterdam, to bring social referral marketing to Europe.

In a stagnating economy, it becomes even more important for businesses to add new customers, keep their existing ones and focus on the top-line, since all the cost cutting has already been done. SocialTwist programs are focused on generating new and repeat customers. The social referral programs are integrated into existing marketing programs like membership drives, promotions, new product launches, event and brand marketing.

The partnership introduces to Europe successful programs tried and tested in the US with major brands, across a number of industries including consumer product goods, financial services, membership organizations, entertainment and hospitality.

Business Insider published this commentary we wrote.  We explore how word-of-mouth is dramatically changing the marketing landscape and how massively it can now scale. Social referral marketing presents huge opportunities here for businesses, but they must start to rethink their marketing strategies.

Our February newsletter went out yesterday. The Opinion piece is reproduced below:

What It Takes To Run A Social Referral Program

Vijay Sundaram

I was briefing an analyst this week when she popped the astute question: Why can’t businesses run their own social referral programs in-house?

Let’s first level set. Social referrals are referrals generated by consumers, through their social connections, on behalf of the products and services they use. This makes unprecedented sense today, given the coevolution of two factors: first, the instant ability to seek and offer opinions through online social networks; second, a dramatic change in consumer behavior whereby most people seek advice from others before making purchase decisions.

Making social referral programs an institutional competence, results in a superior customer acquisition and retention strategy for a business, directly lifting its topline.

Here’s what it takes.

Strategy: Social referrals must be tied and integrated into existing marketing campaigns like product launches, promotions, and membership drives. Programs must be constructed so consumers are motivated to refer others, yet be seen as authentic and credible. Programs must clearly tie into corporate objectives and be measurable.

Platform: At its core you need a system that manages campaign traffic, sets up referrals across multiple social channels (Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs, etc.), sets up and tracks incentives, and runs the analytics to measure and assess performance. The platform must ensure security, privacy and regulatory compliance, while quickly identifying abuse. All is lost if the user experience is anything but blindingly simple.

Ecosystem: Businesses undertaking digital marketing programs need to work with existing partners like agencies, rewards sites, redemption sites, and email service providers. No program gets executed in isolation. A social referral platform must come integrated and connected with these partners, absolving you of the grunt work.

Work with a platform partner who’s seen the whole process end-to-end. One who has worked across industries and diverse programs and made a fair share of mistakes, so you can skirt them.

Coke Zero, a Coca-Cola low calorie brand specifically marketed to adult males, uses SocialTwist to launch their social referral program on Facebook. You can see the campaign here.

Social referrals don’t just improve and amplify product awareness; they also result in superior targeting. Referring parties (in this case, young males) tend to know and refer others who are similar to them, thus improving the targeting and effectiveness of the underlying campaign.

Our January newsletter went out this week. The Opinion piece is reproduced below:

Online Strategies for Offline Retailers

Vijay Sundaram

The biggest challenge for retailers, in an increasingly online world, is to get consumers to visit the store. Retailers use several in-store strategies to encourage visits. Store-perimeter traffic magnets like banks, cafes and bakeries, self-service checkouts and in-store kiosks are all ways to drive traffic, by increasing consumer utility. Retailers are even changing time-proven product-centric displays to occasion-centric or demand-centric displays.

But an overwhelming part of in-store activity starts online. 97% of consumers research online before they visit a store. 74% rely on social networks to guide their purchase decisions. All retailers have an online presence. Most already have pages on Facebook. Some like Walmart – with more than 3,600 store-specific pages – use social to get local.

How can marketing strategies leverage all these retailer online investments? Website and Facebook pages must be used to engage consumers, and to present and promote offers. Every strategy should seek to authentically get customers to refer others through their social networks. Local offers must focus on driving in-store traffic and building loyalty within communities.

SocialTwist is running an online campaign for H-E-B, a large Texas supermarket chain, in partnership with Kimberly-Clark. The campaign offers valuable coupons to customers, gets them to refer others, and makes coupon redemption the lead to in-store sales. It uses online social connections to drive offline sales, from new customers.

H-E-B, a Texas-based supermarket chain, partners with Kimberly-Clark, a leading consumer products company, to drive social referral programs on the SocialTwist platform. Participating brands include instantly recognizable leaders like Huggies, Scott, Kotex, and Cottonelle.

The campaign marks a partnership between a leading consumer products company and its retail partner to get new business using the social networks of their customers. The campaign sets up online promotions that drive offline retail visits and sales.  It is increasingly important for the retail industry to drive in-store visits and purchase, even as online purchases continue to grow.

Kimberly-Clark is a global consumer products leader with revenues of almost $20 billion from leading brands sold in more than 150 countries, many of them in the 1 or 2 market share position. H-E-B is a privately-owned supermarket chain with revenues of almost $15 billion, from 315 stores. The company was named Retailer of the Year in 2010.

Dollar General launches social referral programs for multiple brands on the SocialTwist platform. Participating brands include market leaders Degree, Huggies, Airwick, and All - from leading consumer products companies Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, Reckitt Benckiser, and The Sun Products Corporation.

You can see the campaign here.

Dollar General is the nation’s largest small-box retailer with more than 9,500 stores and an annual revenue in excess of $13 billion. Dollar General ranks among the largest retailers of top-quality brands made by America’s most-trusted manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble, Kimberly Clark, Unilever, Kellogg’s, General Mills and Nabisco.