Teaching a new dog old tricks

Remember the days when we asked ourselves, “What is the value of a like? A tweet?”  The debate is over. A social media strategy is a requirement for any business.  However, Social Media Specialists can apply best practices used regularly in other marketing channels to enhance the effectiveness and ROI of their campaigns.

Targeting. It is important that you identify the best targets for a promotion using a data driven approach.  You can leverage your CRM system and use customer insights to target your customers online who are are most likely to respond to your social media campaign.  Alternatively, you can use customer data to identify the conquests on-line who look like your best customers.

Post campaign measurement. Just because it is social media, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider control groups and incremental lift. Here’s your chance to demonstrate the value of social media as a channel using the same rigorous methods as email and direct mail.

Combining data and insights across channels. Why not append your customer’s social media interactions to their off-line attributes and all the other customer data you have?  One client found that some of their best brand advocates on-line shopped mostly in stores.  Without linking off-line and on-line behavior, you don’t have a complete view of your customer.  For example, you might be tempted to remove these best customers from your online communications because they don’t shop online; however, in this case, email was driving them to the store!
Are you taking advantage of the analysis tools and approaches that work in traditional direct marketing to enhance your social campaigns?

How to benefit from text analytics

The artist, Anne Truitt, believed that ideas floated in the air, available to anyone for the taking.  I thought of this today when I read a recent Forbes article on text analytics.  It combined ideas from two of my recent posts.  First, in order to at least break even on text analytics, you need a plan.  The author is preaching to the choir.  See my post titled “Plan your dive.  Dive your plan”.

Second, in order to create a plan, you have to consider the benefits that text analytics will provide as well as the costs.  Not all text needs to be analyzed.  However, it can help you spot high-priority issues or customer defection.   In the example of preventing churn, you need to know how much a customer is worth.  As I mentioned in a post on text analytics, overlaying customer data to customer feedback will help you determine what action you take.  For example, you may choose not to retain some customers who threaten to leave because they are unprofitable.

In summary, text analytics can be a powerful tool when used in the right situation.  But first you have to determine if its worth applying text analytics.