Center stage in this staggering growth is the power of social referrals between peers, one of the top drivers of sales via social media. Nielsen reports that 92% of consumers around the world say they trust their friends and family far and away above all other forms of advertising.

Consider this situation: a group of women, a favorite retail store, and a sharable offer that includes a discount. This recipe, put together, will result in sure-shot sales!

Or, think about a 30-year-old skier and loyal customer of an online ski retailer. She would happily share any compelling offer with her like-minded friends and ski partners. Our customer acquisition and retention platform makes this simple, measurable, and effective.

With some $14 billion of U.S. sales expected to be accountable to social media by 2015, perhaps it’s time to take a second look at marketing programs and assess if they are truly social, measurable, and clearly tied back to sales!

Purva Maitra

Connect with me at purva@socialtwist.com

Well, moms do take notice.

A mother appreciates a brand that helps keep her children safe as much as she does a neighbor who watches the kids once in a while. They are the opposite of cynical; they have this sort of love and faith that goes beyond understanding. It‘s the kind that makes them your best customer. What is surprisingly less recognized is that it also makes them your best advocates EVER.

There is no holding back a Mom when it comes to sharing a valuable piece of information. Family, friends, neighbors….just about everyone that touches her social circle will find out about that thing or moment that helped her improve something in her life. Research has quantified this. A look at the infographic from Nielsen and you know Moms rule Social Media and quite possibly all other sharing platforms.

Moms are essentially teaching brands to stop treating them in isolation …”my experience, especially a good one, is not complete without my social circle being part of it”.

Personal care company Kimberly-Clark’s social marketing campaign with SocialTwist resulted in the company’s highest digital engagement rates ever. The program focused on moms, presenting them with offers on the Huggies website, Facebook, email, and elsewhere (see sample). The offers had a click through rate of 56 percent and an email open rate of 55 percent. They drove 630,000 visitors to the Huggies website and resulted in increased awareness among an estimated 3.5 million consumers.

The numbers speak for themselves. Social Referral Marketing is made for Moms. Everything from their choice of diapers to where to bank to when the next sibling should arrive – are open forum discussion where Moms are either influencing the peer group or taking notes from them.

If you’re not in that social circle it, you’re out.

Nandita Verma

Connect with me at nandita@socialtwist.com

Customers don’t make referrals to help a business, or for coupons or freebies; they make it because they want to bring value to their friends and be useful to their social connections. The “$10 off” is nothing more than a token of gratitude they graciously accept for the benefit they brought you in this entire process.

If your social marketing program centers around the $ value of your coupon and how many are sold, think again? At SocialTwist we’ve enabled social referral marketing campaigns for hundreds of leading brands including Kimberly Clark, Truvia, Windex, Barnes & Noble, Metlife, Sara Lee, Western Union, Capital One and Walmart.

The most successful referral marketing campaigns were about sustained engagement with customers where the brand took the focus away from just “incentivizing” to “enabling” the customer to share what is already a good experience.

For many marketers it meant a resetting of expectations and tactics. Consider these basic tips and some effective approaches.

Engage, Don’t Sell. The way you word and present your request is critical. A food and beverages company was smart enough to touch base with their customers and ask why they were not referring friends. They conducted a simple multiple choice survey and the response was clear – the customers felt the referral campaign was a marketing gimmick and felt odd about sharing something for a coupon. The company re-launched the campaign showcasing their product as recognized by a leading pediatric association for meeting the 10 top nutritional requirements for growing children. Tell a friend about it! The campaign was a raging success and the company thanked each customer with an incentive against a future purchase. They spread the word and they established loyalty.

Seed, Seed, Seed. They’re not sharing if you’re not asking. Request the referral via email, Facebook, Twitter, your website, all other channels where your customers interact with you. Make it easy to spot the offer and send polite reminders when needed. With over 300 campaigns reaching millions of consumers, we never undermine the value of a simple nudge or a cleverly placed offer.

There is no such thing as too much thanks. A mom juggling two kids does not have the time to make five clicks and spend 10 minutes thinking how to make the referral. If it is anything more than a few minutes, she won’t make that referral, no matter how much she likes that brand of diapers. Make sure you have the tools that make her user experience as easy as possible, recognize her effort, and more importantly, let her know when a friend takes up the offer. Some of our best campaigns focus on sustained outreach …thanking, motivating and getting repeat referrals.

Find out your influencers. Given your customers can be your advocates, you want find out who pulls you the most business, and why. Nothing tells you more about your customers than their actions. Every click is a decision with underlying intent. With the help of SocialTwist analytics tools, a client found out that their most influential customers on Facebook ignored the “Refer” button on their offer and instead used the Facebook share button to post. The customers never realized they could have also emailed their friends, which they often prefer and often is more effective in driving conversions.

Generating referrals is as much art as it is science but the key is to enable yourself and your customers to spread the value. Referrals are money, use them wisely.

Nandita Verma. Connect with me at nandita@socialtwist.com

MetLife Spread the Love

MetLife recognized that their most important brand advocates were already customers. Therefore, MetLife wanted to reward their loyal customers for their business as well as ask them to refer people who may be interested in Life Insurance. Centering the campaign around love, the campaign was launched on Valentine’s Day and encourages people to spread the love!

Please contact us for any questions about Member-get-Member campaigns like this one.

Matt Ochsner

Director of Sales

matt@socialtwist.com

SocialTwist has created a social referral model that can be used by brands and businesses to drive customer acquisition through the referrals of their existing customers. One application of this technology has consumer product companies tie coupons to customer referrals, thereby driving awareness, engagement, and conversion.

We describe an approach to measure the impact of a social coupon program (numbers are averages and will vary across programs). Please click the following link:

Calculating ROI for Social Referral Campaigns

Matt Ochsner

Director of Sales

matt@socialtwist.com

“A lack of standard metrics for measuring ROI remains a major stumbling block. Less than one-third of both advertisers and agencies said social advertising is effective and produces measurable ROI.”

“The study noted that many marketers are using things such as “likes,” “pins” and click-throughs to evaluate campaign results, but prefer to apply more traditional metrics.”

“As part of cross-platform campaigns, marketers want to use the same metrics for social ads that they use for online and traditional media.”

SocialTwist addresses these issues head on. Our social referral campaigns are ROI and outcome driven. We do not invent metrics that are good only for social media outreach. Our campaigns are measured and analyzed using traditional marketing metrics and outcomes – like reach (impressions), response (clicks), and conversion (purchase). Nowhere will you see mention of Likes or Pins, even though most of our referrals are made using social media.

Huggies results were anything but typical. The program generated 631 thousand visitors, of which thirty-five percent made referrals using either email, Facebook and Twitter to contact their friends. Open rates on email referrals – the most directly measurable channel – were fifty-six percent! Dan Kersten from Kimberly-Clark summed up the results thus: “We connected spectacularly with moms! Every metric, from referral open and click-through rates, to coupon print and redemption rates, was higher than anything we have seen in our other digital marketing programs.”

As an employee of SocialTwist I am biased of course, but today social referrals are changing the way digital engagement works. The advent of search engine marketing – almost ten years go – triggered similar change, in consumer behavior and marketing effectiveness. Google’s AdWords directly and effectively tapped into consumer purchase intent and helped facilitate the buying process. Some brands were slow to adopt this new medium, while others blazed a trail and reaped the early benefits. Search remains an integral part of digital marketing mix today. Meanwhile, social referral marketing has appeared as a new social vehicle. The tape rewinds as some brands are emerging as early adopters, while others are waiting and observing.

Feel free to reach out to me with your comments and enquiries (matt@socialtwist.com).

Why Email Should Be Integrated Into Social Marketing Strategies

Vijay Sundaram

In most marketing organizations, email and social occupy distinct silos – different marketing goals, responsibilities, and enabling platforms. Each group develops its own strategy and runs its own programs. This is a huge lost opportunity.

The goal of social marketing programs is to gain new reach using social connections, and to uncover consumers who can influence others. A well-constructed marketing program should provide multiple ways (or channels) for consumers to connect – like Facebook, Twitter, blogs – and most certainly, email. Marketers must remain channel agnostic to leverage all performing marketing assets. The best choice is to leave the choice to the consumer.

SocialTwist has implemented hundreds of social referral programs across a number of industries, including consumer products, financial institutions, and member and service organizations. Our platform enables multiple communication channels, from a single user interface. Email has always served as an essential component and has proven to be very effective.

SocialTwist Observations

• On average, more than 50% of consumers explicitly choose email to refer products and offers to their friends. In most cases, each consumer connects with 3 or more friends.
• Email open rates average 54%, with several programs seeing even higher numbers.
• Email click-through rates average more than 28%.

So, why do we see these spectacular results? Here are some possible explanations.

• Email is seen as more personal vehicle since it comes directly from a known, often trusted, party.
• It is seen as more appropriate for products that reveal personal choices (eg, beauty products). One such program on SocialTwist saw 90% of referrals made through email, despite options to use any social network.
• Email is tested and well understood. Email programs can be set up to be CAN-SPAM compliant (a Bureau of Advertising regulation). Recipients can opt-out. Spam control is automatically triggered. There are clear penalties for misuse.
• It offers more flexibility for distinctive messaging, posing fewer limitations on space and creative expression.

Recommendations

• Social marketing must leave the choice of communication vehicles to individual consumers.
• There is no doubt that Facebook, Twitter and other social channels provide broad reach, immediacy, and quick response. But even these programs work better, when they’re augmented with email.
• Email is a complementary channel that should be integrated into social marketing programs, where it actually performs better than when used in isolation.
• Use of email leverages prior investments and assets in mailing lists and affiliated audiences.

There is an alternative model for customer acquisition. We expect small and medium businesses will also adopt (and adapt) the social referral marketing model to bring in new customers. Rather than unsustainable volume that breaks the bank, they will opt for incentive-driven referrals that will drive new and enduring customers.