[written by Dave Copeland, courtesy of readwriteweb.com]

Facebook posts by brands live longer on Timeline than they did prior to the social network’s massive overhaul, according to a study released Monday.

While the analysis by London-based social media analytics firm Sotrender is limited in scope, covering just 130 brands headquartered in the U.K. and 5,000 posts, it is the first such empirical review since Timeline became mandatory for all Facebook brand pages at the end of March.

This is a great article. To us it raises the core question – why segment at all. There are now solutions, such as those being delivered by FICO, which empower organizations to bypass the exercise and expense of creating, supporting and executing through segmentation.

“Our segmentations don’t really mean anything.” This is a common condition.

So using the same source data, if you had the choice to use segmentation or to target directly to the individual customer, what would you choose? Exactly!

A new study has revealed that while an alarming nine out of ten Americans (93 percent) say that companies fail to exceed their customer service expectations, those that use social media for support, while far more vocal, wield greater influence and are likely to spend substantially more.

In their third Global Customer Service Barometer, American Express explored customer attitudes and preferences towards consumer service in the U.S. and ten other countries, and noted that almost one in five customers (17 percent) had used social media at least once in the past 12 months to obtain a service response. While a minority, this group of consumers is actively engaged and vocal about the brands they choose and the service that they receive, but are loyal to businesses that exceed their expectations – social media users are willing to pay a 21 percent premium on brands that deliver great service, compared to just 11 percent for those who do not use social media.

Perhaps more importantly for marketers, social media users who receive great service have a significantly better reach than others, telling an average of 42 people about their positive experience, compared to just 9 people for social absentees.

It does, however, work both ways – 83 percent of social media users have not completed an intended purchase because of poor customer service, and go on to inform an average of 53 people, compared to just 49 percent of those who are not active on these networks (who tell 17 people).

The survey also revealed the top five reasons why customers use social media for support.

1. Seeking a response from the company about a service issue (50 percent)
2. Praising a company for great service (48 percent)
3. Sharing information about a service experience with your audience (47 percent)
4. Venting about a poor customer service experience (46 percent)
5. Liaising with other users about how to receive a better customer experience (43 percent)

“Companies must keep their eyes on the prize when it comes to customer service,” said Jim Bush, Executive Vice President, World Service, American Express. “Consumers who have used social media for service in the last year are willing to pay a 21% premium at companies that provide great service.  They also tell three times as many people about positive service experiences compared to the general population.  Ultimately, getting service right with these social media savvy consumers can help a business grow.”

We’re totally stoked to announce that we’ve got one of our own moderating an afternoon conference panel on The Social Web: What it is for retailers… and what should it be.
idig president, Jeffery McBain, will lead an all-star panel of industry experts—including Chris Hodgson from Google Canada, Brent Bernie from comScore and Louise Clemens from MacLaren McCann (& former country manager for Facebook)—through the current challenges, trends and opportunities facing retailers in the social space.  Questions and comments will be taken from the audience and can also be submitted via Twitter.   Be sure to use hashtag #SocialWebRAC as we’ll be monitoring the back channels!
Today’s con­sumer is shop­ping dif­fer­ently and access­ing infor­ma­tion in new ways—meaning you no longer have the same control over the message.  Marketing is now more about sociology than psychology and the strategies of the past are not enough.  Retail­ers must think dif­fer­ently in order to inte­grate, inno­vate and engage with their consumers and evolve beyond a transactional relationship.  Don’t miss out on this oppor­tu­nity at the RAC to find out how Social technologies are fundamentally transforming retail!

Register here and join us for The Social Web.

[written by Josh Bernoff, courtesy of adage.com]

The debate about the value of Facebook fans continues to rage on. I hate raging arguments in the absence of solid evidence. So I was delighted to see that analyst Gina Sverdlov of Forrester Research had applied actual statistical modeling to address the question, in a new report called “The Facebook Factor.”

Gina’s technique is simple to understand. Using a statistical technique called logistical regression, she examined a large number of factors that potentially contribute to whether a consumer will purchase, consider, or recommend a brand. The technique could work for any brand; the report specifically analyzes Best Buy, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Blackberry.

The results are very suggestive. Here are some facts from the report.

• For all four brands, being a Facebook fan of the brand boosts purchase, consideration, and recommendation. For example, 79% of Best Buy Facebook fans bought there in the last 12 months vs. 41% of non-fans. And 74% of them recommend Best Buy vs. 38% of non-fans.
• Of all the questions we asked (and there were many), being a Facebook fan had more influence over these behaviors than any other factor. Being a Facebook fan of Best Buy increases the odds that a customer will purchase by 5.3 times; the next closest influence factor is having researched consumer electronics, which only increases the odds of purchase by 1.4 times.

The pattern is repeated for every single behavior and every single brand. For example, having a Walmart nearby doubles the odds that you’ll consider buying there, but being a Facebook fan of Walmart increases those odds by more than a factor of four.

Does this mean you should pour your budget into building fans for your brand? No! While there is a strong correlation between these positive behaviors for your brand and being a fan, there’s no proof that being a fan causes people to buy, consider, or recommend your brand. If you boost your fan base artificially, those fans will be less avid on average.

What this analysis does show is that fandom is worth something. Your Facebook fans are more likely to buy from you, consider you, and of course, recommend you.

This means that cultivating them with content and interaction on your Facebook brand page is well worth it, because this is where your most enthusiastic customers are. You have the opportunity to supercharge them, not just to buy, but to spread your message. For companies that don’t provide these fans what they want — interaction, content, things to share — this is a wakeup call. And if your brand doesn’t have a Facebook page, this report is proof you’re stuck in marketing thinking from the previous century. Use this analysis to justify putting your marketing budget and effort into a Facebook page and the staff to keep it lively.

Mark Zuckerberg, pictured at Harvard University Darren McCollester/Getty Images

Ahead of its blockbuster initial public offering, Facebook Inc. bolstered its photo-sharing features Monday by acquiring photo-sharing mobile app Instagram in a US$1-billion cash and stock deal.

By far the largest acquisition in the 8-year history of Palo Alto-based Facebook, the purchase comes just weeks in advance of when the world’s largest social network is expected to launch a US$5-billion IPO, which would be among the largest public stock offerings in the history of the United States. Instagram had previously raised about US$47-million in venture capital funding, suggesting a massive windfall for the startup’s early investors.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal-owned tech news site AllThingsDigital reported Instagram raised another US$50-million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital and valuing the San Francisco-based company at about US$500-million.

News of the acquisition sent shares of Shutterfly Inc., which offers a rival technology to Instagram, tumbling more than 8.5% to US$27 on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange shortly after 1:30 p.m. ET. Redwood City, Calif.-based Shutterfly went public in 2006 and currently boasts a market value of approximately US$1-billion.

Read the full story here.

Bored with your boards?

Pinterest, the visual-bookmarking site and social-network, introduced a new feature Thursday that allows for more self-expression. The site, where millions of people “pin” products to collections called “boards,” has introduced board covers.

“One of the most requested features was the ability to choose a pin to be the cover for each board,” Pinterest said in a blog post on the update. “Today, you’ll be able to do just that.”

Boards. Pins. Covers. Say what? If these things are foreign concepts to you, then you’ve missed out on the most mind-blowing social-networking craze to hit the web in years. Pinterest, first launched in 2010, ballooned to 17.8 million unique visitors in February and could already be worth as much as $500 million. It’s particularly loved by arts, crafts, and food enthusiasts, with everyone from Reese Witherspoon to President Obama using it.

The new feature, live now, is as simple as they come. As members mouse over boards, they’re greeted with an “Edit board cover” button, which they click to highlight a favorite pin. The board-cover option also enables users to drag images around for optimal placement.

The board-cover feature, a relatively minor update to the overall Pinterest experience, replaces the former default look in which the most recent pin served as the board cover. It ties in nicely with the recently enhanced profile pages by adding a pinch more overall panache.

About a quarter of all Facebook users add location data to their posts each month, according to a presentation by Facebook product manager Josh Williams at the Where Conference in San Francisco.

Williams also says the social network will soon open its place editing API and geocoding service to third-party developers. The company is working with beta partners on Open Graph place objects so that stories shared at locations through applications will show up on Timeline map or as Open Graph actions. This news reinforces the importance of location to the Facebook platform. When the company announced it would phase out Facebook Places as a standalone mobile feature, many pundits misinterpreted this as the social network conceding to services like Foursquare. Instead, we’ve seen Facebook deepen its location integration and create a foundation for users to share more than they could with simple check-ins.

Williams, who was CEO at Gowalla until Facebook acquired the location-based service company in December 2011, says that there are 200 million monthly active users creating 2 billion actions tagged with location on Facebook. This means that, on average, users who check into places or add location to their posts do so about 10 times a month.

Read the full story here.

[written by Cotton Delo, courtesy of adage.com]

Pepsi Twitter brand page

Big changes are coming to Twitter’s “brand pages,” the landing pages it offers to some marketers that also spend ad dollars on the network.

Launched in December, the pages show the brand’s Twitter feed and images, but Twitter plans to add experiences, including e-commerce, contests and sweepstakes, according to three executives familiar with the matter.

The product will allow app developers to build experiences on Twitter, much the way they do on Facebook. The features will be contained within the brand’s tweet timeline, a departure from the 140-character limit of a tweet or images and videos that can now displayed. While no date has been set for the release of the product, Twitter has been telling clients to expect it this year.

When Twitter launched brand pages, the differentiators from a regular page were a large, customizable header and the ability to keep a particular tweet at the top of a timeline and have it auto-expand if it was a photo or video. At the time of the launch, Twitter Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain said features would eventually be added to brand pages.
Read the full story here.

Macy's CMO Martine Reardon

[written by Natalie Zmuda, courtesy of adage.com]

Data was once the domain of tech geeks and direct-marketing gurus, while chief marketing officers focused on loftier things like shaping brand perception. But those days are over. A study from tech-research firm Gartner projects that by 2017 the CMO will spend more money on information technology than the chief information officer.

Thanks to an explosion of data from social-media platforms, call centers, transactions, loyalty programs, registries and more, CMOs who want a seat at the table will have to harness customer data and leverage it — or risk being relegated to chief promotions officer.

“With economics and innovation, things that weren’t possible years ago are now possible, and that’s causing brands to stop and rethink the role of data and how it powers the enterprise,” said Tim Suther, CMO at Acxiom, a technology and marketing-services company.

Take Macy’s, for example. The retailer is mining customer data in partnership with customer-insights specialist Dunnhumby to better understand shopping preferences and behavior. That enables Macy’s to make informed marketing decisions by looking at the day or even the time consumers prefer to shop. It can also offer solutions; for example, a black handbag to complement the black shoes just purchased.

“Those are the kinds of things we’ve started to do with customer data so we’re not polluting her mailbox, so we’re not guiding her through a 98-page [catalog] when the first 50 pages aren’t relevant,” said Macy’s CMO Martine Reardon. “This fell to marketing, because we are the team of people that really have the customer on our minds 100% of the time.”

The challenge for CMOs, said Dave Frankland, an analyst with Forrester, is to integrate that data and mine insights to “distinguish signal from noise.” The payoff for marketers who accept that challenge will be data and insights that give them “credibility and validity to go alongside their hunch and expertise,” he said. “The best CMOs inherently understand customers at a macro level. This allows them to get in the customer’s head at a micro level.”

At business-communications company Avaya, CMO Dan Murphy is responsible for shepherding customer data, which he uses to identify sales trends and revenue opportunities. “I’m able to identify through the data we get where particular customers are in that sales life cycle, and I can target my marketing specifically to where they are,” said Mr. Murphy. “It’s very different from where marketing used to be, where you threw the net far and hoped you could capture some customers. Now, we have a laser focus.”

Companies that are already established in gathering and analyzing customer data include credit-card companies, as well as other direct marketers such as Geico and Dell , said David Williams, chairman-CEO of CRM agency Merkle. Retailers, consumer-packaged-goods and health-care companies are trailing. But there are few companies that won’t be headed down that road in the next three to five years, predicted Mr. Frankland. Forrester, for its part, has dubbed 2010 and beyond the “age of the customer.”

“The only sustainable competitive advantage is knowledge of and engagement with customers,” wrote Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff. “Brand, manufacturing, distribution and IT are all table stakes. The only source of competitive advantage is the one that can survive technology-fueled disruption, an obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting with and serving customers. In this age, companies that thrive … are those that tilt their budgets toward customer knowledge and relationships.”

In fact, industry watchers say today’s CMO must become the de-facto chief customer officer — or lose out. “CMOs have historically been the brand steward. This is an opportunity to be a customer steward,” Mr. Frankland said. “If they don’t do it, someone else will.”

The unanswered question is whether that person will be the CMO, the CIO or a newly elevated chief customer officer. Mr. Williams believes the ideal scenario would be a partnership between the CMO and CIO.

“Things that have historically been separate are fusing: Mad Men and math men, offline and online,” said Mr. Suther. “It’s a great time to be a CMO, if you want it to be. … The CMO, as the traditional voice of the customer, has an opportunity to redefine [his or her role] in a more robust way and earn a seat at the big table.”