Coupons.com has released an automated platform dubbed Brandcaster Social that allows marketers to implement digital coupon campaigns on Facebook Fan pages in 48 hours or less. Saving money has become a bit of a game for many consumers. The more that is saved at the point-of-sale register, the bigger the smile on their face. Serge Traylor, brand manager of communications for the battery maker Energizer, knows this well. Traylor said the company ran a two-day campaign on Facebook over a month ago. The Energizer Bunny Facebook Fan page gained 60,000 fans during the promotion, with a bit more than 75,000 downloaded coupons that enabled consumers to save $3 on an eight-pack of batteries. Facebook members had to Like the page and fill out information to receive a coupon in the mail. Traylor plans to run a similar promotion again, tying it to the social-media strategy for the upcoming fiscal year. One of the biggest benefits of the promotion comes with tying the code on the coupon back to physical sales. Prior to the self-serve model in Facebook, brands had to work with Web developers to program within the social network, and marketing agencies had to implement the workflow and design -- a time-intensive and cumbersome process, especially when it comes to having the ability to message to consumers about the status of a coupon. Americans are clipping more coupons. Sales driven by coupon use on RetailMeNot.com rose 82% year-over-year in the three months prior to the November start of the holiday shopping season. The site aggregates coupons from Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble and other top retailers and consumer product goods companies. When a coupon has reached its predetermined print limit on Facebook through the Brandcaster Social platform, the offer is automatically removed. Consumers receive an alert that the coupon has reached its print limit and that they should check back later. However, the inability to stop issuing coupons in the middle of the night when the platform reaches its quota could cause marketers to see a full wall of negative comments in the morning -- a benefit to the platform, said Steven Boal, Coupons.com CEO. An earlier version of Brandcaster serves coupons from about 600,000 Web pages. The new version for Facebook keeps the brand Fan on the page. Boal said the platform also supports reports -- not just about the market and the demographics, but the types of Fans and friends of friends resulting in printed coupons. Last year, $26 billion was spent in online advertising -- but packaged goods only comprised a fraction, he said, because they had no way to measure sales resulting from online or Facebook coupons.
Coupons.com has released an automated platform dubbed Brandcaster Social that allows marketers to implement digital coupon campaigns on Facebook Fan pages in 48 hours or less. Saving money has become a bit of a game for many consumers. The more that is saved at the point-of-sale register, the bigger the smile on their face. Serge Traylor, brand manager of communications for the battery maker Energizer, knows this well. Traylor said the company ran a two-day campaign on Facebook over a month ago. The Energizer Bunny Facebook Fan page gained 60,000 fans during the promotion, with a bit more than 75,000 downloaded coupons that enabled consumers to save $3 on an eight-pack of batteries. Facebook members had to Like the page and fill out information to receive a coupon in the mail. Traylor plans to run a similar promotion again, tying it to the social-media strategy for the upcoming fiscal year. One of the biggest benefits of the promotion comes with tying the code on the coupon back to physical sales. Prior to the self-serve model in Facebook, brands had to work with Web developers to program within the social network, and marketing agencies had to implement the workflow and design -- a time-intensive and cumbersome process, especially when it comes to having the ability to message to consumers about the status of a coupon. Americans are clipping more coupons. Sales driven by coupon use on RetailMeNot.com rose 82% year-over-year in the three months prior to the November start of the holiday shopping season. The site aggregates coupons from Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble and other top retailers and consumer product goods companies. When a coupon has reached its predetermined print limit on Facebook through the Brandcaster Social platform, the offer is automatically removed. Consumers receive an alert that the coupon has reached its print limit and that they should check back later. However, the inability to stop issuing coupons in the middle of the night when the platform reaches its quota could cause marketers to see a full wall of negative comments in the morning -- a benefit to the platform, said Steven Boal, Coupons.com CEO. An earlier version of Brandcaster serves coupons from about 600,000 Web pages. The new version for Facebook keeps the brand Fan on the page. Boal said the platform also supports reports -- not just about the market and the demographics, but the types of Fans and friends of friends resulting in printed coupons. Last year, $26 billion was spent in online advertising -- but packaged goods only comprised a fraction, he said, because they had no way to measure sales resulting from online or Facebook coupons.
With Halloween behind us and Thanksgiving on its way, the holiday season is finally upon us. Every marketer knows that this is the busiest shopping time of the year, and with new seasonal products come new ways to promote during this critical time for retailers. It should come as no surprise that with DVR technology and online viewing, teens don’t pay as much attention to television commercials as they used to. As a matter of fact, according to Natalie Wood, assistant director of Saint Joseph University’s Center for Consumer Research, 30% of teen Millennials (ages 15-17) spend time visiting a social networking site between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. versus less than 20% that watch television during that same time. This little tidbit should serve as just the tip of the iceberg for marketers, who should already be aware that social media advertising is one of the more efficient ways to reach teens. But what can marketers do with social media during the holidays that is different from the rest of the year? Here are a few tips: Change the picture on your fan or group page to match the season: Showing that you are excited about the season will get page visitors excited and a new photo is a good way to catch their eye. And you don’t have to stop at just a profile picture. Create a whole album featuring holiday photos associated with your company. You can post statuses consistent with the season to go along with the photos, too. However, it is enormously important to remember that just because you may celebrate a certain holiday doesn’t mean the entire planet does, too. Be respectful of your core audience and the people you are targeting. Partner with a charity: Charity donation is huge during the holiday season, with many teens getting involved in non-profit events during the holiday season such as a pancake breakfast or a spaghetti dinner. Linking your fan page with a charity will show your audience how much you are willing to give back during the “season of giving.” Examples include partnering with a non-profit such as Toys4Tots (donating a certain amount of money or even toys for every new follower), or encouraging followers to donate something of their own (like unused clothing), to a charity such as Goodwill in the name of your company. Take advantage of Black Friday/Cyber Monday: Every holiday shopper is already well aware of the madness that ensues during the days following Thanksgiving. Sales at retail locations across the country are absolutely crazy. So how can you stand out among the crowd? Engage your audience by making your sales even crazier. Holiday promotion codes given to social media followers specifically tailored for Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a good way to keep your customers loyal to your brand while other brand messages are bombarding them from every which way. Also, give early sale advantages and time-sensitive deals. This will have people paying more attention to your brand. Use countdown themes associated with the holidays: From the 12 days of Christmas to the 8 nights of Hanukkah, there are many different ways to take advantage of this theme. What if every day brought a new discount or a new giveaway? Or, encourage fans to give something up for a specific amount of time. Either way, using a countdown will force fans to come back every day if they want to take advantage of the unique opportunities you are offering. Remember that using a social networking site is like holding a digital focus group session for a fraction of the cost. As the economy continues to falter and unemployment and costs keep rising, marketers will need to implement new and innovative methods to reach consumers this holiday shopping season. Here, during the 2011 holiday season, social networking is where teens are, and using these platforms will ensure your message is getting to as many teens as possible.
Something tells me I’m not alone in this: but, lately, I haven’t been thinking about Twitter all that much, even though I use it every day. Maybe it’s the constant buzz about the advertising potential of Facebook, drowning out everything else. Or maybe it’s that Twitter, even though it is building an advertising-based revenue model, continues to do so at such a slow pace that it’s like watching paint dry. It’s been a long time since brands being on Twitter -- and using it as a customer-service platform, or as a promotional one -- was news. But the most likely reason I haven’t been thinking about Twitter that much lately probably has to do with something I’ve written about in this space before: that virtually no one from my personal life is using it, a huge contrast to the mass adoption of people from all walks of life to Facebook. If the non-geeks in my life haven’t flocked to Twitter yet, I’ve begun to doubt that they ever will. Which is why I found Bill Gurley’s analysis this week of what Twitter is -- and what it is not -- such a cogent, thought-provoking read. Gurley admits, straight from the top, that as a general partner in major investor Benchmark Capital, he’s not exactly impartial. Still, he struck straight at the heart of the Facebook vs. Twitter debate -- by pointing out how inaccurate it is to talk about the two in the same breath. He said: “The only way magic happens on Facebook is through reciprocity: I friend you and you friend me back – then information flows. But on Twitter, I can get something out of following Shaquile O’Neil [sic] who has no social obligation to follow me back., when they both are vastly different from one another.” OK, you knew that already. But he gets airborne with what he views as the second misperception of Twitter, which is really a corollary to the first: “ … that you need to tweet, to have something to say and broadcast, for the service to be meaningful to you. “ As he points out, this misperception scares off just about anyone -- and that’s most of us -- who thinks that the act of joining Twitter is a one-way ticket to cringe-worthy oversharing of the “Boy that hotdog tasted funny. Might throw up” variety. OK, you knew that too. But when you think about this a little harder, therein lies Twitter’s long-term growth strategy, -- if not in revenue, then in users, but probably in both. If you run around thinking that Twitter is what Gurley calls a “symmetric” social network like Facebook, only where the sharing is in a much more public domain, well, yecch. For all of the adoption of Facebook, at least most of us can write banal status updates all day long without ever really worrying about whether they will make it into the broader sphere. It’s one thing to say really boring things to your friends; it’s entirely another to say it to a broadcast universe that also includes Lady Gaga and John Hodgman. (You can guess which one I think is wittier.) However, if you look at Twitter as a news resource – yes, Gurley did refer to it as a “broadcast network” – it becomes more useful and less intimidating. Sure, it’s a more passive experience to follow various Twitter play-ahs then to be an active tweeter, but there are enough prolific, high-profile tweeters to let most of us take on a less active role. To date, however, that way of thinking about Twitter is lost on most people. As Gurley says, they look at it almost entirely from the perspective of whether they would have anything to tweet, as opposed to whether it would be useful to follow their local Congressman, or their favorite musician, or their favorite actor. Interestingly, as I was gathering links for this column, I noticed that the description of Twitter that comes up when you Google it is: “Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information. It's easy to stay updated on an incredibly wide variety of topics.” I don’t know when that change was made, but it’s certainly not how Twitter was describing itself a few months ago. Gurley’s post also made me start to rethink whether the people in my personal life really are using Twitter -- and I just don’t know about it. If the Twitter-as-news-resource model holds, than maybe they are there somewhere, but don’t find anything I tweet about particularly newsworthy. Guess I’ll have to work on that.