In Part I of this blog post series on holiday social media marketing, we discussed some basic benefits of utilizing social apps and how they work.  Once an internet retailer has successfully attracted and converted its customers through an enticing value proposition and closed out the sales process, the next step entails retaining engaged and delighted customers for the long-term. By providing a product or service that is of high value, delivering unparalleled customer service, and engaging their most loyal audience, retailers can create ambassadors for their brand with high retention rates. In this blog post, we will be focusing on the latter component – loyalty-building applications in the realm of social commerce – with two prime examples.

Example 1: Get-a-Fan App

Through social apps like Get-a-Fan, retailers can convert website visitors into Facebook fans by offering a coupon in exchange for a social action. With suitable incentives, holiday shoppers can choose to engage with particular brands; thus increasing their level of awareness and loyalty towards the brand. Visitors who “earn” the incentive are 5-7X more likely to convert. This improves the overall conversion rate of the website.

Through this app, e-commerce stores are not only able to acquire new customers, but are also able to encourage visitors to become email subscribers – a significant benefit that can further enhance a brand’s reach.

And the beauty of this is that it all happens directly on the e-commerce site; therefore, visitors do not need to leave the site to gain or redeem coupons, effectually protecting the fragile purchase intent that we mentioned in the previous blog post. Another valuable perk is that this app is offered on a flexible payment basis – retailers can choose the payment package that works best for them, making it an ideal module to start with for any business looking to give social commerce a try!

Example 2: Social Connect App

Creating deeper customer connections via profound social insights is another method to better serve one’s targeted audience and thus enhance customer loyalty and retention. The Social Connect App is the next-gen email acquisition app. By connecting with a retail brand on Facebook, customers share not only their email addresses, but also rich social profile data like photos, birthdays, locations, genders, friends graph, interests and much more.

This capability, unique to Social Connect, allows e-tailers to use insightful social profile data outside the Facebook advertising platform and on their own site. Visitors are rewarded in turn with an attractive discount offer. Typically, retailers have seen a 35% sales conversion rate for users who unlock offers through Social Connect. Besides the sales conversion uplift, Social Connect provides deep social insights into retailers’ target audience. Check out the sample implementation of the Social Connect app below:

The following charts illuminate the division of a retailer’s website users by number of Facebook friends, age, and also a tag-cloud of interests that users have specifically mentioned on Facebook.

This app also creates brand evangelists through the use of social referrals, which can create word-of-mouth virality. Retailers can locate social influencers among their user-base and incentivize them to promote the website within their social network. This can transform e-commerce websites into a word-of-mouth branding engine!

Tying it All Together

With the help of onsite social modules like the two described above, e-tailers are able to easily identify their most loyal audience, cultivate and engage them, and discover what makes them tick. By elucidating demographic and interest analytics belonging to a brand’s loyalists, e-tailers can provide better service and more value, which contributes to happier customers and heightened retention. Delighted customers, especially powerful ones with extensive networks, can develop into social brand ambassadors. Deep insights gathered on social personas can also enable retailers to form more targeted campaigns with high ROI potentials. Now I’d say that’s a win-win all around!

Stay tuned for our next discussion on techniques to leverage users and their social networks and the associated impacts on social SEO.