Did you hear the one about measurable social ROI? From punchline to reality.
There’s an old joke about two marketing people. They’re talking about work and one says to the other, “I know 50% of my budget is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%.” For most marketing people, the joke is a little too close to home. Sure, almost any marketing person can measure the easy things; I spend X on a webinar, it generated 1000 leads so my cost per lead is $20, it should generate 50 meetings and 10 closed deals. Calculating the ROI on traditional marketing campaigns is relatively straightforward. But what about the tough things to measure? Especially … Continue reading
4 Must-Reads You Can’t Afford to Miss: Group-Gifting, Essential Social Strategy & more
Another two weeks have come and gone, and you know what that means, right? It means that this May Day, we’re bringing you the latest round-up of industry news from across the social/e-commerce universe that you might have missed when blinking. In this installment… 1. Social Gifting: The New Buzzword in E-commerce Daily deals, flash sales, f-commerce – every day, there’s some crazy new trend that mashes social and e-commerce together. The latest arrival to the party is the phenomenon of group-gifting. And the darling of group-gifting is Wrapp, a startup based out of Sweden that has some notable backers like … Continue reading
The Crowd in The Cloud: Marketo, Crowd Factory, and The Value of Social Integration
It was great to see our friends at Crowd Factory make the choice to join the excellent team at Marketo. Marketo continues its history of innovation in marketing automation by adding social marketing campaign capabilities; and Crowd Factory gets instant access to Marketo’s customer base to further bolster their growth. This acquisition also further legitimizes social’s important role with marketing automation and CRM. (Also see SalesForce.com’s acquisition of Radian6 and subsequent rebranding of the company as delivering the “social enterprise,” for another example.) Marketo’s customers now have a strong partner that will help them to answer the key social questions … Continue reading
Climbing the Ladder of Social Success: How Step2 Creates Advocates with Loyalty
One of the joys of my job is that I get to hear real feedback from our customers and more often than not, the feedback is glowingly positive. Last Wednesday we put on a webinar with Tena Crock, Online Marketing Director of Step2, the nation’s largest manufacturer of plastic toys. Tena spoke to an audience of 200 or so about the benefits Step2 has seen since implementing a loyalty program in February. Tena knew Step2’s customers were huge brand advocates and talking about their products on the Internet, especially on Facebook. As she put it, “Moms are so passionate about … Continue reading
3 Must-Reads You Might Have Missed: Facebook’s Mobile Takeover, Web Adoption Over the Years & more
Following a big couple weeks in the world of social commerce, we’re back again with our trusty roundup of the “need-to-know” industry news that you might have missed. In this week’s installment: 1. Facebook’s Mobile Takeover As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or a billion dollars, if Facebook’s recent acquisition of photo-sharing app Instagram is any indicator. The social networking giant has been on a bit of a mobile-app shopping spree of late. In addition to its much-ballyhooed Instagram acquisition, the company also snapped up Tagtile, a customer loyalty app geared towards local businesses. Not sure … Continue reading
Lessons from Facebook’s Instagram Acquisition: 3 Tips to Supercharge E-commerce Media with Social
Unless you’ve been living under a vintage-effect-filtered rock, you’ve probably caught yesterday’s Facebook news, announcing their acquisition of mobile photo-sharing network, Instagram. If they hadn’t before, the small San Francisco company definitely “knows what’s cool” now, with the deal totaling $1 billion in cash and stock. The amount of content being shared on Facebook is increasing at an exponential rate and, according to what many have dubbed “Zuckerberg’s law,” sharing on the world’s largest social network is now doubling every two years! It’s not surprising to find that much of that sharing is happening around user photos and videos, with … Continue reading
The End of An Era: Why The Days of Mad Men Advertising Are Over
If you are like me, you have been waiting impatiently for the new season of Mad Men. The inappropriate commentary, the design of executive offices, the inspired speeches of Don Draper that drive grown men to tears (“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again… it’s called the carousel“), and of course the belligerent drinking and smoking. Those were the days… But the world Don Draper lived in, and the influence that advertising had on customers is no more. With over one million pieces of social content being … Continue reading
4 Must-Reads You Might Have Missed: Facebook Brand Timelines, Flash Deals via Pinterest & more
There’s no such thing as a slow news day in the realm of e-commerce and social. In our fast-paced digital world, full of oversaturated RSS readers and a million tweets per minute, you can’t turn around for a second without missing some exciting announcement or happening. Fear not, my friends… in times like these, you can always count on PowerReviews to deliver our regular roundup of the “need-to-know” news from the past two weeks. In this week’s installment: 1. Facebook Timeline Rolls Out to All Brand Pages You were just getting the hang of having a page on Facebook – posting … Continue reading
The Way We Play: How Gamification Can Lead to Deeper Customer Engagement
Gamification is a hot new buzzword these days but what exactly does it mean and how does it apply to e-commerce? First of all, gamification and game mechanics is not about making a site more “entertaining”; it’s about taking the exciting, productive, addictive aspects of game play and applying them to your site experience to increase engagement, loyalty, and conversion. In an ideal world users would be self-motivated to engage with your site, generate content and contribute to your community. Tangible rewards (discounts, special offers, free shipping) would be the icing on the cake and not the main reason for … Continue reading
Introducing A New Era of Social Commerce
written by Ken Comée, CEO of PowerReviews. Today is my fourth day in the chair as CEO of PowerReviews, and I am honored to be leading this great company. PowerReviews has been a pioneer since 2005, and as I’ve had the opportunity as a member of the Board of Directors to work with the team over the last 18 months, I’ve become even more impressed with the vision, innovation and market opportunity. I thought I’d take a few minutes to let everyone know what I’m particularly excited about now that Pehr has passed the baton to me. First, PowerReviews has an … Continue reading
