Have you tied Social to CRM?

Social is a culture and environment in which consumers are engaging about products. This engagement occurs with or without the brand’s influence, and the level and sophistication of the consumer’s engagement will increase over time. It should be comforting to know that marketers can influence the social culture and environment with measurably valuable results.

Social CRM will help you create a demonstrably positive culture and environment for your brand. If you don’t engage, you allow others to determine the social culture and environment for you.

Be prepared to expect results in social to grow over time. The starting point should be to listen to the environment and asses the culture. From there create goals for the future. With goals, the brand can step in. Before attempting exert influence, first prove that the brand is a valuable contributor to the environment and respectful to the culture. After this the brand will have the respect and authority to influence their social culture and environment.

In many areas of marketing focus, there are measurable actions that marketers can take in social. Here are some examples:

• Awareness and Consideration: Empower employees to participate with a bona fide persona in the social environment that is respectful to the culture. Supply trackable links to media assets to these employees. Train the employees to provide illumination with these trackable assets to their contributions.
• Acquisition / Win-Back: Reward customers in a member-get-member program. Provide an incentive for people to sign up for addressable communications. Provide a tiered incentive to existing customers to use the social environment to get others to respond to the first incentive. Seamlessly provide tracking links to the customers. Design the cookie to link both to the customer and the member signing up. Count the customer’s signups to determine the reward. Celebrate the awards within the environment.
• Retention: Organize a calendar of exclusive, culturally respectful events to the social customers. Measure participation. Curate content derived from these events and repurpose this content in other campaigns. Measure the response to the new content.
• Cross Sell / Product Launch: Recruit customers to participate in an exclusive pre-launch sample of a product and create content around their experience. Curate content derived from these experiences and repurpose this content during the launch. Measure the response to the new content.

In all cases, the trackable links need to share a common cookie in order to maintain a history of each customer’s interactions with the brand. Whenever possible, especially in addressable media campaigns and on conversion pages, tie the cookie to individuals in the CRM database to maximize insights and measure ROI.

“Don’t worry, be happy.” A voice in social is louder than on the street. It takes a brand’s participation to ensure the preponderance of voices are speaking positively. Using the measurement and participation guidelines above, brand marketers can ensure that their participation is positive for the culture, environment, and bottom line of their products.