Around these parts, the topic of social media strategy for loyalty and CRM has been getting a lot of attention. And why not? For all the talk around marketing via social media, isn't maintaining a connection with the people who are already using your products important?
To me, this may be what social media does best for a brand. Though it's important not to forget email and your traditional direct channels, here are a few ideas I've been considering:
Closed Social Networks
Especially for destinations, hospitality, and service-based companies. Give people a reason to extend the experience and share ideas with groups larger than one other person, but smaller than your whole friend group. All those photos and good time you really want to keep talking about, without being indexed by google, spied by your potential employer, or your mom.
Semi-closed Relationships
Working with a beer brand, I've found that it can be a tough but interesting dynamic to enable certain people to join a private group on Facebook, while allowing them to broadcast types of activities back to their stream. So you'd have age or account validation and exclusivity, while allowing things like upgrades or recaps to go out to everyone and gain impressions.
Lower Barriers to Database Entry
One of the tough parts about getting involvement in CRM is the cumbersome form filling. By bringing APIs into the mix, brands can auto-fill the social network profile information, and speed the process. By the same token, you can now keep in touch with those people on the social network of their choice, and bring the activity that happens in those social networks back to your CRM home as social proof and introducing people who have your brand in common to each other.
If you're looking for more strategic insight on Social and CRM loyalty integration, I'm happy to help.
What do you think? Curious on your take as this seems to be nascent but building. Leave a comment below or talk to me on Twitter @mleis
Related posts:
- Integrating Earned Media in the Purchase Path Through a
- Social Media Use: Not For Everyone For this g
- FTW 2009: Small, Closed Social Networks If 2007 wa