• by Jess Nelson , August 11, 2016

Marketing automation company Act-On Software premiered its Advanced Social Media Module on Wednesday, a new social engagement analytics platform that helps marketers tie social activity to revenue.

Act-On’s Social Media Module includes publishing, listening and reporting capabilities, connecting the dots between social media campaigns and overall marketing goals such as brand awareness, demand generation or customer retention.

The company ties social activity to other buying behaviors, allowing marketers to create more personalized experiences for their customers. 

“There has definitely been a shift over the past 5 to 10 years on how consumers buy,” says Adam Mertz, senior director of product marketing at Act-On. He says many consumers reach out to their friends or colleagues for their opinions on potential products and services before they even look at a company’s Web site. 

“Social is so critical because that’s the forum where they learn about the products they are interested in,” says Mertz.                                  
Act-On’s Social Media Module is currently compatible with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+, which Act-On says were specifically chosen for its B2B customers. Marketers can listen to social activity, publish posts and engage with consumers all within a single user-interface, similar to social media platforms such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck.

What makes Act-On unique, however, is its centralized database of previous campaigns that each customer has conducted on its platform. Marketers can easily repurpose old campaigns, including email marketing content, into new social media posts. 

Social campaigns are integrated directly with email campaigns or automated programs, and a response to a social post can automatically trigger an email follow-up with recommended assets to continue the conversation.

Additional product features include customizable nature and score leads for better segmentation and personalization as well as analytical reports that include clicks, leads, opportunities and total revenue generated.

Act-On also powers what the company calls an “advocacy board,” a tracking and engagement solution for high-power customers and company evangelists. 

“Marketers have focused much of their social media efforts in the Buy cycle, but they can create greater benefit by optimizing social media throughout the entire customer journey to capture loyal customers and activate advocates,” states Augie Ray, principal analyst at Gartner. “No single social media metric can encompass the many ways social media contributes to a business’s top line and bottom lines. To measure the impact of social media, marketers need to identify their brand's opportunities in the Buy, Own, and Advocate cycles, and select the measures that best fit those opportunities to fulfill attribution requirement.”

The platform is currently available as a paid add-on feature to Act-On subscriptions, and Mertz says that Act-On plans to continue working on product development to offer a seamless and integrated experience in the future.