In an earlier post (Will Facebook “Fans” be Missed?) I touched upon the fact that having Facebook Fans, aka people that like your brand, is not an ultimate measure of success. Rather a relationship of value (for both the fan and the brand) is created by activating your Facebook community through content, messages, offers, and other interactions and applying metrics to evaluate these efforts over time. Recently Augie Ray of Forrester Research posed the question of whether a Facebook fan even has value unless a brand does something to create value with the fan. His post What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Zero! evoked such a lively discussion that he made a second post on the topic What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Part 2. I recommend reading both posts as you assess the value of your fans and your relationships with them, as well as the impact of your go-forward marketing programs.

This summer several brand marketers and retailers are testing cross-promotions to tap into social gaming for motivating their target consumers to buy their products, redeem, play, and repeat. 7-Eleven, typically known for running promotions with movie and TV studios, branched out with a 6-week promotion involving product codes that are redeemable for virtual gifts across several of Zynga’s games on Facebook (FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YoVille). Green Giant Fresh tested and is expanding their cross-promotion with FarmVille to drive retail sales through on-package offer codes for gifts of Free Farm Cash. And just this week Cascadian Farm announced that they will also be partnering with FarmVille on an in-game promotion next week involving their organic blueberries plus a traditional coupon for in-store purchase (NYTimes.com article).

These marketers are all bold to explore new territory in a test and learn environment using social gaming tie-ins and unique offers as active motivators. And how will success be measured? The brands cite various metrics for effectiveness including incremental lift in product sales, site visits, customer acquisition rates, blog posts, brand and product category awareness. But the one commonality is that these brands are all taking an initial step to determine the value of social gaming offers and no doubt capturing their own consumer data and preferences along the way for re-marketing.

In the end, probably not. As of this week, Facebook has done away with the act of Becoming a Fan of a business, brand, band, or celebrity and swapped in a more universally-used Like button (such as on Green Giant Fresh’s brand page below).

The change might seem trivial, but brand marketers are commenting on and evaluating whether the shift in vernacular will substantially affect their efforts to interact with people engaged with their brand on Facebook.

Facebook’s intent is that more of its 400 million users will like businesses or brands as it implies a lower level of commitment than actually becoming a fan. And in theory this should result in an increased number of users that a brand can directly speak with through a user’s news feed.

Although the effort to build a sizeable audience on Facebook has merit, the number of users that like your brand now or became a fan prior to this week is not an ultimate measure of success. Instead, brand marketers should be focusing on ways to determine whether their content and messages are resonating and adding value to their relationship with their Facebook community. Such metrics can be redemptions of product offers that you post on Facebook, the number of users that further engage with your brand by joining your loyalty program, or by the number of users that are sharing your content with friends. The key is to be moving towards a more complete view of your brand advocates by understanding their interactions on Facebook (and other social networks) and mapping that to their purchasing behaviors for your brand over time.

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Best Buy’s long-term investment in their mobile strategy can be seen in the multitude of ways consumers are now able to use their mobile phone to interact and transact with the brand. Consumers can access the mobile version of Best Buy’s Web site to locate their closest store, check their rewards program points, research information about a product while in-store, and easily make a purchase. They have also released several updates to their iPhone app that launched last year, as well as publishing an app for the Android platform this year.

Best Buy is working to connect the virtual and physical experiences with their brand so that consumers can shop, learn, and buy with their mobile phone. This video highlights their commitment to mobile and serves as an excellent benchmark for other retailers and brands:

Many marketers continue to ask themselves what role mobile marketing and commerce should play in their brand’s strategy. For Target, a new mobile coupon program that connects a customer’s mobile and in-store experience is one answer. Target customers can opt-in to the program on their phone at m.target.com, by texting COUPONS to 827438 (TARGET), or from their computer online at www.Target.com/mobile. After opt-in, customers receive a text message with a link to a mobile Web page that contains multiple offers, all accessible through a single barcode. Customers can then redeem the single-use offers by having their phone (with the coupon barcode) scanned at checkout.

In addition to using the new mobile coupons, Target customers can view online assortments, check product availability and store locations, access Mobile GiftCards, manage their gift registry, and be notified of deals on their mobile phones.

As smartphone adoption continues to grow at a steady clip, brands should be defining, testing, and rolling out mobile programs that work to add value to the overall customer experience. This program by Target is a great example of using mobile to provide deals and convenience in an easy to grasp way.

I’ve been following two trends that make me very excited to be a Loyalty marketer. Developing high-value, enduring relationships with loyal customers/guests/shoppers/members isn’t new. But what were starting to see on forefront of smart marketing is simply awesome.

Trend One – Farm Cash for Fans.

I used to work at a company called MyPoints. It’s an amazing marketing engine that could change the behavior of hundreds of thousands of members by offering points in exchange for purchases, registrations, surveys, etc. Problem was, points are expensive. Basically it costs about ten dollars to reward a member with a ten dollar Starbucks card. And we mailed a lot of Starbucks (and Target, and Red Lobster and Macy’s and Amazon, etc. ) cards.

Last week players of Zynga’s amazingly popular game Farmville were offered Farm Cash for fanning Bing. Twenty Four hours later, 400,000 virtual farmers had taken the bait and signed on. In a flash, Bing surpassed Google in the hyper-followed ranking of “how many fans do you have on Facebook” stat.

And guess how much Farm Cash costs Zynga? A lot less than a $10 Starbucks card I’d guess.

Trend Two – Check In and Earn Points.

I’ve been watching for this one for some time. The very cool fro-yo shop Tasti D-Lite is now offering loyalty points when its members check in on Foursquare. Cool on so many levels: drives engagement, posts to Facebook – and more interestingly begins the process of geo-based permissioning for offers.

I strongly believe that location is the next frontier for right offer at the right time to the right person. However, geo-based targeting really does bump up against the marketing creepy factor. Loyalty programs bridge that gap by establishing a fundamental permission level for members and rewarding that additional permission with some type of gift or reward.

More to come on this one and we’ll make sure that we’re driving what happens next.

by Joshua Tretakoff | EVP, Services

According to TechCrunch, Amazon is attempting to make a revolutionary counterattack to Steve Jobs. If you haven’t followed, Amazon introduced the most successful e-reader to date, the Kindle.  It’s been so successful, it’s been compared to do for books what the iPod did for music. Naturally, there’s a certain CEO in Cupertino who decided he wanted that segment, so he introduced his answer, the iPad, complete with iBooks.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Does Amazon simply lay down and surrender their leadership position to Apple? Not according to TechCrunch: they have decided to fight back by giving away a Kindle to every one of their current Amazon Prime subscribers.  Amazon Prime allows loyal Amazon customers to pay $80 a year for the privilege of getting all of their purchases shipped 2-day air, free of charge. That’s a profitable and loyal customer base; if you have paid for Prime, why would you ever shop anywhere else? Now, reward that loyalty with a Kindle, and you have an enormous customer base who can only buy content through you; if even a portion of those loyal customers buy a few books, you dominate the space, and the iPad plays catch up.

Will it work? Will they do it? Stay tuned, but one thing’s for sure: Loyalty will tell the tale.

Recent initiatives from P&G and General Mills signify a continued investment in e-commerce by CPG brands looking to build direct selling relationships, engage consumers, and garner insights. P&G is planning a full-scale launch of their eStore in the spring of this year despite the fact that e-commerce sales represent less than 1% of their total annual revenue. The site will primarily serve as a research lab to test search, coupons, store promotions, and social media integration. P&G intends to share consumer findings from their new site with their retail partners.

P&G currently sells direct through theEssentials.com, a site they inherited as a result of the Gillette acquisition in 2005, and through partner sites which include Target.com, Walmart.com, CVS.com, Drugstore.com, and Amazon. Overall, P&G is looking to aggressively move their annual e-commerce sales from $500 million to $4 billion.

General Mills is also making deeper inroads into e-commerce, as well as developing digital content for their brands. For example, their recipe site Tablespoon.com boasts 25,000 recipes with detailed nutritional information and at BettyCrocker.com you can download their Digital Kitchen Assistant app for interactive recipe building and sharing with friends.

Leadership at both P&G and General Mills are voicing their increased level of attention to e-commerce:

“The eventuality is a one-on-one relationship with every consumer, and obviously e-commerce needs to be a big part of that.”
P&G CEO Bob McDonald (AdAge.com)

“The beauty of digital is it’s very effective–great ROI and very efficient–to talk directly to consumers and to give them customized and more relevant information about what the brand can do for them.”
General Mills CMO Mark Addicks (Forbes.com)

There is no doubt that CPGs and other consumer brands will create innovative strategies and programs to connect with their most loyal consumers as the iron curtain for selling direct continues to come down.

Imagine you are a retailer. You want to know not just the purchases that your customers make, but when they visit your stores and don’t make a purchase.  Hard to do, right? What if you could make a benefit of  your loyalty program tied to just that?

That’s just what a maker of GPS software, Navizon, has done.  Instead of just charging their customers for their software, they actually are paying customers to install their application on their iPhone, so they can use their loyal customers to map cell towers and WiFi access points.  Now, the customer has an ongoing incentive to use the software, and the company gets rich, real-time geographical and behavioral data, all with the user’s permission.

Being able to make your customers more loyal, and your loyal customers your most valuable ones, is the name of the game. Knowing when your customer comes in and doesn’t buy, especially your most loyal ones, is often more valuable: where are they going after they leave you?

In his updated bestseller, CRM at the Speed of Light, Paul Greenberg digs into Social CRM with nearly 700 pages of lively guidance and practical examples of how brands can innovate to better engage their consumers. This book provides a comprehensive view of the Social CRM landscape and is bound to trigger ideas for your strategies, tools, and techniques as the title so claims. A recommended cover-to-cover read:
http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=471477