Gleansight Social Media Marketing

ContentPart 1: Topic OverviewPart 2: Reasons to ImplementPart 3: Value DriversPart 4: ChallengesPart 5: Performance MetricsPart 6: Success StoryPart 7: Vendor Landscape

Sidebars:Survey StatsBenchmark KPIsCore TechnologiesGleanster Numbers

Entire content © 2010 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.

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November 2010

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.GleansightSocial Media Marketing With more than 500 million people on Facebook, and with media outlets reporting every day on the brief, sometimes bizarre messages that celebri-ties, politicians and corporations send out on Twitter, it’s clear that social media has entered the mainstream. Consumer product companies are paying their agencies big money to incorporate social media into their marketing campaigns. Retailers have moved beyond customer reviews, and are giving consumers a much larger role in social selling. And you can scarcely watch a commercial without seeing the iconic Facebook,

Twitter and YouTube icons as part of the message. But the ROI on this effort is still squishy at best. Brands are still trying to determine the value of a Facebook fan, and there continues to be no consistent barometer of success. Given the dearth of reliable data, it’s no wonder that companies are struggling to determine just how much social media marketing is right for them. And practitioners are left to talk as much about the cost of not participating in social media marketing as of the value of doing so. This Gleansight explores what top performing companies are doing – and measuring – as they make their initial forays into social media marketing and how they’re working to achieve their desired business objectives.

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Gleansight: Social Media Marketing 2



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Survey Stats

The research findings featured in this Gleansight benchmark report are derived from the Q3 2010 Gleanster “Voice of the Customer” survey.

• Total survey responses: 396

• Qualified survey responses: 284

• Company size: Very Small (18%); Small (31%); Medium (18%); Large (20%); Very Large (13%)

• Geography: North America (67%); Europe (15%); Asia/Pacific (17%); Other (3%)

• Industries: Consumer and Retail (19%); Technology and Media (25%); Financial services (15%); Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare (12%); Telecom-munication (4%); Other (25%)

• Job levels: C-level (4%); SVP/VP (13%) Director (20%); Manager (34%); Staff (19%); Other (10%)

Sample survey respondents:

• Director, Fujifilm Medical Systems

• General Manager, Genuine Health

• CEO, HobbyTown USA

• Marketing Director, Siemens

• Manager, Fidelity

• Manager, Chevron

• Marketing Manager, Kohler

• CEO, Intercontinental Systems

• Director, Unilever

• Vice President, Retail, StonehamBank

Part 1: Topic OverviewWith the phenomenal growth of Facebook and the staggering amount of attention paid to Twitter and YouTube, it’s clear that social media marketing is on a rapid growth trajectory. Every day, established brands gain footholds on Facebook, lured by the giant audience and the opportunity to communicate with its users. A few particularly aggressive companies have begun creating large-scale viral campaigns—asking for customer photos of their products, for example, or launching cause-based initiatives that purport to have a larger sense of purpose.

Others have begun transacting commerce through Facebook applications and “tabs” on their fan pages. Merchants and hospital-ity companies have begun jumping on the location-based mobile marketing platforms. And some brands have found that they can drive sales by coddling bloggers or by directing special codes or promotions to customers who follow them on Twitter. Yet, despite the flurry of activity, social media marketing remains experi-mental in nature, and marketers are making up the rules as they go. To date there is still no consistent toolkit or industry standard to help marketers figure out how to brand, staff, deploy and measure their social media efforts.

In truth, social media is hardly a new phenom-enon. Companies like MySpace, Friendster and SecondLife were born, raised cash and faded from glory long before Twitter became a media darling. While indie bands, in particular, may have recognized the power of MySpace, building digital fan bases by giving away their work, launching albums, and sharing the experience with online listeners, most marketers stayed away from early social media efforts, which were used after all by young consumers who looked askance at brands that appeared to be trying to encroach on their space. Even Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla in social networking, began with modest ambitions. It wasn’t until 2006, when it opened the door to everyone – and then, more recently, made it easier for companies to market there – that brands started paying attention.

These days, brands are looking to social media marketing to increase customer acquisi-tion, advocacy and engagement, as well as increase return on marketing investment (i.e., get consumers to buy more). Think of it as word-of-mouth marketing writ large because

the conversations play out in the electronic town square. Marketers have long known that consumers trust the opinion of people they know – and even consumers they don’t know –far more than they trust the opinion of the marketer hawking their goods or services.

Suddenly, marketers can participate in the conversation and affect the way consumers interact with one another and with their brands. Today’s social media tools allow marketers to engage with customers who are active online and on mobile devices, in the hope not only of securing their business, but also, impor-tantly, of spurring them to recommend the brand to others in their network. This form of social selling is truly revolutionary in that it’s enabling marketers to reach consumers they never would have been able to reach through traditional push marketing, including email.

Five years ago, a tech-savvy, digitally focused company could find satisfied and particu-larly unsatisfied customers venting on any number of electronic forums, including online bulletin boards, chat rooms and blogs, but the conversations were more isolated and therefore harder to find. It’s the interconnected nature of today’s social networks and the way they broadcast messages, creating permanent search-friendly records, that make them so powerful—and, also, potentially dangerous.

“Despite the flurry of activity, social media marketing remains experi-

mental in nature.”







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Part 2: Reasons to ImplementBrands have plenty of obvious and some not-so-obvious reasons to add social media marketing to their overall communications and marketing strategy. The prevalence of Facebook and Twitter in their competitors’ campaigns, the success of some high-profile efforts, and the idea that you should fish where the fish are, clearly are having an impact on marketing budgets. But, according to Gleanster research findings, the largest differ-entiator between Top Performers and Everyone Else lies in the area of increasing customer engagement: Top Performers place a higher emphasis on increasing customer engagement, a nod perhaps to the lingering inability to put classic ROI metrics on the marketing spend.

Increase customer acquisition. The basic business premise behind social media marketing is that organizations can extend their customer base by leveraging the networks of people who have already “friended” (or “fanned” or “liked” or “followed”) them. Most social media platforms are set up to automatically push their participants’ ideas, thoughts and comments out to the people that are connected to them – and sometimes to the people who are another step removed. Marketers have long known that consumers trust the recommenda-tions of people they know (and even other customers they don’t know) more than brand messages. Authentic recommendations or referrals from friends/fans can heavily influence the purchase decisions of others.

Increase return on marketing investment. Companies and brands have some fairly well-established formulas for determining the impact or effectiveness of traditional marketing efforts. They have long histories of measuring the open rate, click-through rate and the financial success of an email campaign. But the tools for measuring ROI in social media marketing largely remain a work in progress. While it’s fairly easy to track the redemption rate of an online coupon, most social media actions

are far removed from business transactions. No doubt, brands will improve measurement in terms of dollars-and-cents outcomes.

Increase customer advocacy. Brands are well aware of the inherent value of word of mouth marketing and the importance of having satisfied customers share their brand experi-ences with others who are or might become customers. And since social media platforms are built around the idea of sharing, it stands to reason that marketers would utilize these tools as a vehicle for spreading positive word of mouth. The fact that social media content is indexed by search engines makes it of particular value over the long-term.

Increase customer engagement. Enticing consumers to interact with the brand through new contact methods provided by social media platforms is seen as an important reason for engaging in a social media marketing campaign. Increasing customer engagement goes hand in hand with increasing customer advocacy in that it stresses the importance of getting customers to interact with the business in a new and visible way. Customers who make a brand a larger part of their life are likely to spend more, become stronger advocates and have longer connections to the brand.

Benchmark KPIs

Gleanster uses 2-3 key performance indicators (KPIs) to distinguish “Top Performers” from all other companies (“Everyone Else”) within a given data set, thereby establishing a basis for benchmarking best practices. By definition, Top Performers are comprised of the top quartile of qualified survey respondents (QSRs).

The KPIs used for distinguish-ing Top Performers focus on performance metrics that speak to year-over-year improvement in relevant, measurable areas. Not all KPIs are weighted equally.

The KPIs used for this Gleansight are:

• Improved customer-support effectiveness

• Improved market research effectiveness

• Increased customer advocacy

To learn more about Gleanster’s research methodology, please click here or email [email protected].

* According to Top Performers, based on 284 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q3 2010 Gleanster Voice of the Customer survey

93%90%87%MostCompellingReasons toImplement*

Increase customeradvocacy

Increase return onmarketing investment

Increase customer acquisition




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“Social media humanizes the brand and makes it more real and tangible.”Scott Wilder, ex-General Manager, Online Communities, Intuit

Increase store and/or website traffic. The connection between a Facebook post and store traffic is pretty slim, except that it strengthens the relationship with the customer and might make them more inclined to shop with a company in the future. That said, some marketers are finding success with delivering traffic-boosting messages inside their social media channels, using sales or other promotions – particularly messages that are identified as “exclusives” – within those messages. Group coupon or shopping networks have proven to be good customer acquisition tools, and location-based apps can be used to target shoppers in the proximity of a physical store location.

Increase market exposure/brand awareness. It used to be said that any publicity is good publicity. Now it might be said that any social media mentions are good mentions. It’s not entirely true, of course. There is a lot that can go wrong in social media. But brands have learned that good social media participation by employees, customers and other advocates can, in fact, build stronger brand awareness. The visible and indexed nature of social media means that any customer interaction with a brand is a public interaction, and the visibility of that interaction, through the networks and through search, can have a lasting impact.

Change brand perception. Social media is hot now, but that doesn’t make social media

practitioners (or the brands they work for) hip. It’s true that social media events can have a negative impact on a brand’s reputation. But the way a company deals with a crisis can exacerbate or defuse the situation.

Increase membership in branded online customer communities. Branded online communities have had a head start in the customer engagement game. Successful communities often drive themselves. Members recruit others and the search-friendly nature of the user- generated content tends to be visible. But customer communities take a lot of work, and seeing this as a reason to implement social media marketing campaigns is an indicator of how brands struggle with community growth.

Increase customer loyalty. It’s surpris-ing that, among Top Performers, customer loyalty netted out to be the lowest primary factor in a brand’s decision to move into social media marketing. Brands used to talk about improvement in customer loyalty as a big motivator. There are likely many reasons for this shift, not the least of which is an improved understanding of what’s possible. It’s also true that the customers who are most drawn to a company’s social media presence – those that tend to become the biggest advocates – are loyal to begin with.

* According to Top Performers, based on 284 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q3 2010 Gleanster Voice of the Customer survey** According to Everyone Else, shown only when a notable disparity occurs relative to Top Performers

79%77%74% Compelling

Reasons toImplement*

Increase market

exposure/brand awarenessIncrease store

and/or website trafficIncrease customer

engagement

66%**


68%66%62%LessCompellingReasons toImplement*

Increase customerloyalty

Increase membership in branded online customer communities

Change brandperception







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Part 3: Value Drivers In the rush to Facebook, marketers are discovering that different kinds of content drive different kinds of results – and different social networks respond in different ways. It was not that long ago that the experts warned that brands could not “sell” in social media, that the audience would rebel, and the social media efforts would fail. We have learned, however, that, when done correctly, it absolutely is possible to promote goods and services to online fans and friends. As shown in to the FLASH charts in this section, Top Performers are focused most heavily on taking advantage of the “social” aspect of social media marketing, indicating a begrudging acceptance of the current state of ROI measurement.

Give consumers a good reason to want to share brand-related content. Good community managers have learned over time that one of the keys to a successful engage-ment campaign is to provide quality content that is relevant to the brand but which does not necessarily promote consumption of the brand. Marketers who run social media efforts for companies large and small need to remember that customers want to take the lead in advocating for the brand. Brands might point them in the right direction, but consumers will be most inclined to interact with the content if it provides value, solves a problem, or is just plain interesting.

Identify and engage top influencers. The influencers and brand advocates that gravitate to a company’s online communities and social media sites are the Holy Grail for marketers. These are the people who will tell the brand story, rally others to the brand’s side, and speak up when the need occurs. With the right social media monitoring tools, brands can identify these people without engaging in social media marketing themselves, but they’ll generally be at a loss to do anything about it without joining the social media universe, even

on a small scale. Influencers are a funny breed. Brands should foster a positive relationship with them, but should be careful not to “buy” their influence. Just showing them respect and attention, and giving them early information, should be enough to keep them involved.

Leverage the reach and multiplier effect of social networks. Social media platforms work by allowing people to connect and communicate with circles of friends, each with their own circle of friends. These overlapping and interconnected circles allow users to broadcast their stories to their networks, and also allow the information to creep into the larger networks. Marketers who create interest-ing offers, content or apps for these networks can find that the social capital pays off by sparking a “me too” connection to the brand.

Adjust promotional tactics as needed, based on campaign performance. Top Performers are outdistancing others by paying closer attention to the effectiveness of their social media marketing, and changing course when necessary. Done right, social media campaigns can be pretty flexible in scope and design, allowing marketers to shift gears to reflect facts on the ground. In

Core Technologies A successful social media marketing effort requires multiple disciplines and applications to fully realize the power of social connections. Following are some of the key technology enablers.Social media monitoring tools. A successful social media marketing campaign should be backed by a consistent, objective and ongoing set of monitoring metrics. Most monitor-ing vendors classify posts based on whether their tone is positive or negative, giving some insight into the general response or perception of the company. They also measure the volume of relevant conversation and sometimes the level of consumer engagement or brand advocacy. These factors can help brands adjust their social strategy and start to determine whether their social media efforts are affecting the overall brand promise.

Specialized social media apps. Many brands get started with simple interaction-based campaigns that are built around content or links. But, increasingly, brands are investing in larger apps or self-contained social marketing vehicles or websites that can stand on their own or can be embedded into sites, blogs or social networks. Generally more expensive, these apps give the brand more creative control over the social media experience and can form the basis for longer-term or repeat engage-ments. Choose a vendor with a track record, who can demonstrate that they can work in the social environ-ments you are interested in, and who will use metrics to quantify success.


94%86%85%MostImportantValue Drivers*

Leverage the reach and multiplier effect of social networks

Identify and engagetop influencers

Give consumers a good reason to want to share brand-related content







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fact, because of the two-way nature of most social media, brands can get laurels for adjusting their efforts in the face of criticism or a lack of response. Either way, the ability to modify a campaign to make it more effective or to draw a larger response has clear benefits that are not as readily available in more traditional marketing campaigns.

Generate new content and conversation on campaign landing pages. Content costs money, and marketing content can sometimes come across as, well, marketing content. User-generated content, on the other hand, is generally authentic and is perceived by the audience as trustworthy. This user content can also make static pages seem alive, offering a constant stream of changes. Brands need to be willing to take their lumps, though, because these unvarnished and sometimes impolitic comments can be off-putting.

Host one or more branded online customer communities. Branded customer communi-ties can be an effective way to gain customer insights, marshal enthusiasm and develop advocates. Communities generally have strong value in natural search. But they are

no slam dunk. They require a lot of TLC, and are something of a slow build. The challenge, frequently, is in keeping the focus on building the community long enough to actually build the community. Done correctly, branded communities can pay off in spades.

Integrate social media with other media buys and campaigns. Social media marketing is seductive because there’s the perception that you can do it on the fly – that you don’t need the kind of planning and back-end support as you do for email marketing campaigns or traditional marketing efforts. More and more marketers are adding Facebook and Twitter mentions to their ads and marketing collateral. The callouts frequently are mere invitations to join or follow the brand on those sites. But aggressive marketers are finding ways to bring value to the fan for taking the action. They are offering exclusive content, special deals or early information. The comingling of social media marketing with other campaigns can have the effect of making the entire brand seem more in line with the sensibilities of today’s consumer.

Core Technologies (Continued)

Online community platforms. A component of the overall social media marketing effort, branded online communities can provide continued access and personalized connec-tions that may be harder to maintain on external networks. Vendors in this space should be able to integrate with a brand’s existing registration system, provide tools or moderation services to help build the community and maintain order, and allow users to syndicate their content/participation into and out of other social media channels.

Content/promotion management tools. Social media tools are, by and large, built to respond to our need to post and share our thoughts now. They are not typically content manage-ment systems, meaning they lack the ability to pre-post or re-use content in a database format. An effective social media strategy will have to have a system to calendarize the campaign, to repurpose content across multiple platforms, and to gauge the effective-ness of any particular message.

CRM integration. Mapping social media activity to CRM systems will let brands understand the extent to which that activity is resulting in incremental sales lift and affecting the customer purchase behavior. Simple sharing of content or branding exposure is unlikely in the near term to provide CRM integration. But coupon codes that lead to sales will allow brands to do some mapping of social handles to their CRM system.


79%74%

ImportantValue

Drivers Generate new content

and conversation on campaign landing pages

Adjust promotional tactics as needed based on

campaign performance

68%**

*


71%70%LessImportant ValueDrivers*

Integrate social media with othermedia buys and campaigns

Host one or more brandedonline customer communities







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Part 4: Challenges Creating a positive and productive social media marketing experience takes ingenuity, work and a bit of luck. Many companies are taking a leap of faith that, by subjecting their brands to the uncontrolled flow of social conversations, they will earn the respect and admiration of their customers. But they are learning that even well-intentioned social media campaigns are fraught with danger, that it’s possible to fail, and to fail publicly. They have also learned that while some of the biggest campaigns look easy, they are anything but. As the FLASH charts in this section indicate, most brands are still struggling with campaign creation as well as with promotion and tracking.

Creating “viral worthy” content. Ever since the first Mentos-meets-Coke video popped up on YouTube, social media marketers have been focused on developing the perfect viral video or YouTube moment. Problem is, it’s virtually impossible to predict what content will take off in the social sphere. The online audience is not easily taken in by brand messages, so marketers are well advised to create authentic, shareable content (video or otherwise), and open themselves up for customer review and commentary. With luck, they’ll find something that works. But more often than not, customer or third-party content stands a better chance of going viral.

Effectively promoting social media marketing campaigns. As with any new tool, marketers are finding that they have to learn how to build and market their campaigns effectively. The language of social media – from the words we use to the way we describe ourselves and our customers – are different than in traditional media, which makes it hard to fit into the cookie-cutter approaches often used for old-school marketing. The good news is that, when done right, social

media campaigns can sell themselves.

Tracking and measuring success. The explosive growth of social media opportunities has not brought along an equally explosive ability to measure the effectiveness of those campaigns. And because brands are using a variety of platforms and tools to broadcast their messages, they are finding that they do not have one clear and consistent dashboard to monitor success. There is progress being made, however, and some prominent vendors are introducing increasingly sophisticated monitoring engines that will help to further quantify and qualify social media success.

Securing executive level buy-in. Senior executives tend to focus on core business objectives and programs that can bring measureable results. And many tradi-tional companies are very protective of brand image, making them leery of the free-wheeling nature of the social Internet. All of this puts social media marketing at a disadvantage. The tools are changing fast, the analytics are in their infancy, and there’s no controlling what someone might say. Wise marketers will seek executive buy-in

“Social media marketing is going to blow the shingles off the roof once people really figure out how to use it.”Megan O’Connor, Director, Social Media Marketing, Levi Straus & Co.

* According to All Companies, based on 284 Qualified Survey Responses to the Q3 2010 Gleanster Voice of the Customer survey

94%92%MostChallengingAspects*

Effectively promoting social media marketing campaigns

Creating “viral worthy” content







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using metrics that are available. And they will focus on other tangibles, like customer interaction, in their attempt to secure executive buy-in. They might also stress the risk of inaction, of not being a part of the conversation should something go wrong.

Making the business case in terms of ROI. As discussed above, the metrics available for assessing social media marketing are not as robust as marketers have been accustomed to for email or other marketing activities. There is significant debate over the value of a Facebook fan or the ROI benefit of a customer engage-ment community that is not big or tied directly to sales. Add to that the fact that most social media activity is not mapped into a company’s CRM system, and it becomes virtually impos-sible to measure effectively. This is starting to change, but it will likely be some time before we have access to the kinds of metrics that can provide a reliable assessment of social efforts.

Integrating social media into the overall marketing mix. Gleanster survey respondents point to marketing integration as both a value driver and a challenge to their social media marketing efforts, in pretty even numbers. This suggests that while marketers see the

value of integrating their campaigns, they are finding it hard to incorporate the somewhat uncontrolled nature of social interactions into their structured marketing plans. It is no surprise that companies are struggling with how to adapt to social media marketing because they have spent generations plotting, refining and pushing their own narrative.

Securing the right organizational resources. Figuring out the right organizational structure for a social media marketing effort is no easy task, in part because it’s impossible to compartmentalize social media as a pure disci-pline. It’s part marketing, part PR, part product development and part customer service (among others). In 2010, companies are trying to consolidate their social media marketing efforts into small SWAT teams or centers of excellence. But within a few years, they will be expected to make social media a part of every-one’s job. In any event, the people running the social media efforts need to be empowered to be vocal, persistent and proud. They need to have access to those with information, and they need the company to be in their corner.


83%78%76% Challenging

Aspects*

Making the business case in terms of ROI

Securing executivelevel buy-in

Tracking and measuring results


71%63%LessChallengingAspects*

Securing the right

organizational resourcesIntegrating social media into

the overall marketing mix







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Gleanster Numbers

7,000,000Number of “fan votes” that were cast for an M&M’s social media marketing campaign in 2009

94Percentage of companies that regard “creating ‘viral-worthy’ content” as the biggest challenge with social media marketing

81Percentage of Top Performers (compared to 70% of Everyone Else) who use “consumer engage-ment rate” to track social media marketing campaigns

79Percentage of Top Performers (compared to 66% of Everyone Else) who view “increase customer engage-ment” as a reason to implement a social media marketing campaign

79Percentage of Top Performers (compared to 68% of Everyone Else) who view “adjust promotional tactics as needed based on campaign performance” as an important value driver for social media marketing

Part 5: Performance MetricsThe science of measuring social media marketing is still a work in progress. As noted earlier, the social media landscape changes every day, and the shifting ground makes it that much harder to determine whether the social media efforts are meeting the company’s overall business goals. Social media monitoring tools can measure the ratio of positive-to-negative sentiment and the volume of relevant conversation. But, as the FLASH charts in this section show, the top metrics employed by companies do not necessarily correlate to the top reasons they launched their campaigns in the first place. In fact, Top Performers indicate that their primary reasons for implementing a social media marketing campaign are customer acqui-sition, return on marketing investment and customer advocacy – none of which surface as one of the most commonly used metrics. This will change as companies demand better metrics from solution providers and as social media activity becomes more closely mapped to their CRM systems.

Audience growth rate. The most visible metric in almost any social campaign, audience growth is easily charted over time and can be seen in the number of people who follow a brand, “like” a brand, take a poll, submit a picture or share content. A handful of brands have built enormous fan pages on Facebook, sometimes through contests, coupons or classic marketing efforts.

Customer engagement rate. Another metric that carries over from email marketing, customer engagement rates can be fairly simple to see. How many people are clicking through a link, completing a registration process, rating a video or responding to some other call-to-action? Top Performers are monitoring this to a much greater extent than Everyone Else, indicating that they are going to the numbers they have in the absence of the numbers they want. Customer engage-ment speaks to how many people have been

inspired to participate and can be compared to earlier time periods. But it does not yet compare that number with the overall reach of the campaign, meaning that there’s no knowing how many people chose not to participate.

Volume of relevant comments/posts. Top Performers are more likely to measure the volume of relevant content than Everyone Else, a sign perhaps of the work involved in determining relevance of user content. In most cases, it’s much easier to see how much content is produced overall than it is to narrow down into positive or negative or relevant or not. Measuring customer sentiment of social media posts can be a tricky task and is an art that is being perfected every day.

Customer acquisition rate. Customer acquisition was the number one reason to implement a social media marketing campaign, yet it fell in the middle of the pack of the top


86%81%Most Commonly UsedMetrics*

Consumer engagement rate - e.g., # of click-thrus,

registrations, etc., per week Audience growth rate - e.g., # of Facebook fans, Twitter

followers, etc., per week

70%**







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metrics used. This goes in large part to the disparate tools and platforms that are used to conduct social media marketing efforts, making it difficult to determine which partici-pants are customers, become customers, or change their purchase behavior.

Customer advocacy score. The Net Promoter Score, popularized in the last decade, delivers a single number used to measure how likely a consumer is to recommend a product or service. While it can be tracked over time, it can be difficult to make a correlation between changes to the score and a specific social media marketing activity, as a consumer’s propensity to recommend a brand can be influenced by any number of factors.

Return on marketing investment. The number two reason brands begin a social media marketing campaign is that return on marketing investment lags as a metric used to measure the effectiveness of those campaigns. This is true because a lot of money can be spent on social media oppor-tunities that do not tie back directly to the company’s CRM systems, their point-of-sale systems and their core business goals. This

will change over time as companies become more adept at creating social programs that are more closely tied to business goals and as they improve their data integration.

Customer acquisition cost. Increasing customer acquisition was cited as the top reason that Top Performers implement social media marketing campaigns, yet customer acquisition costs are measured by only 59% of these companies. The oft-stated discon-nect between social efforts and company CRM systems is a likely barrier to successful measurement of customer acquisition cost.

Brand awareness/exposure measure. Social media campaigns work for the most part by facilitating the viral or organic spread of a company’s message through the social graphs of the customers who buy into the message. It’s a generally accepted principle that this organic distribution of the message will ultimately result in increased brand visibility, which can be readily measured through aided and unaided brand awareness studies.


77%73%69% Commonly

UsedMetrics*

Customer advocacy

score - e.g., NPSCustomer acquisition

rateVolume of relevant

comments/posts

61%**


62%59%52%LessCommonly UsedMetrics*

Brand awareness/exposure measure

Customer acquisitioncost

Return on marketing investment

“Integration with the brand strat-egy and offline media is key. If social media is siloed, it will be a one-hit won-der. A TV spot should point to a Facebook page and vice versa. Every touchpoint should link and point to other touchpoints.”Bert DuMars, VP, eBusiness and Inter-active Marketing, Newell-Rubbermaid






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Part 6: Success Story Major consumer brands spend millions of dollars every year on sponsor-ship deals as a way of grabbing consumer mindshare during activities that would otherwise seem far-removed from their core go-to-market message and brand promise. Mars Chocolate North America, no stranger to such deals, has a longstanding relationship with NASCAR, which has been supported in recent years by an innovative social media marketing campaign looking to identify the M&M’s Most Colorful Fans of NASCAR. The campaign, now in its third year, has been sweet for the brand, which says it is seeing a higher level of engagement and activity through its integrated marketing approach.

The Challenge NASCAR has one of the most brand-loyal fan bases in all of sports and is second only to the NFL in TV viewership. M&M’s, which has had a NASCAR relationship for 20 years, entered the 2008 season looking for a fan-friendly way to boost customer engagement while employing the social media tactics that were beginning to hold sway.

Mars wanted to leverage the NASCAR fans’ legendary enthusiasm with a campaign that would connect racing fans to the M&M brand and to one another. The company understood that it needed to have an integrated approach to the campaign, one that involved digital creative, public relations, media and the promotions team. And officials knew they would need to measure reach, engagement and sentiment – and gain a clear understanding of how the campaign would address business goals.

The Solution The M&M’s Most Colorful Fans of NASCAR contest is a deceptively simple campaign that takes advantage of NASCAR fans’ passion for the sport and the most basic social media sharing tools. Participants are encouraged to upload colorful photos depicting their enthusi-asm for all things NASCAR, and winners are

selected through voting of registered users at NASCAR.com/mostcolorfulfans. The campaign is supported by Facebook and Twitter feeds and was expanded this year to allow partici-pants to upload their photos through Sprint

smart phones.

Winners in early rounds get gift cards, while the ultimate winner gets a $10,000 prize and is showcased for a year in a display at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The Results The simplicity of the contest matched with the natural enthusiasm of the fan base was

a hit for Mars, which found that the sharing and engagement on social media properties drove entries, buzz and word of mouth. The company reports that it saw exponential growth in engagement (measured in votes), submis-sions and media impressions in 2009 over 2008. Some 5,700 photos were submitted in 2009, up from about 2,000 photos the first year. About 7 million votes were cast in 2009, up an astounding 1400% from 2008.

“M&M’s Most Colorful Fans of NASCAR contest is unique because it’s 100 percent fan generated,” noted Suzanne Beaudoin, vice president of sponsor-ships and sports marketing.

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“Mars wanted to leverage the NASCAR fans’ legendary enthu-siasm with a campaign

that would connect racing fans to the M&M brand and to one another.”




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Agencies & ConsultanciesAnt’s Eye Viewwww.antseyeview.com

“Ant’s Eye View guides organizations through the process of transform-ing customer experience and brand engagement by activating and embedding customer voice in every aspect of their business. The Ant’s Eye View team comprises experienced practitioners delivering proven expertise in internal collaboration, social media, community building and management, and influencer strategy development.”

Gleanster Skinny (GS): Co-founder Sean O’Driscoll knows his stuff, having previously led Micro-soft’s global MVP program. He’s assembled a world-class “colony” of social media strate-gists as well as a client list that includes such companies as LEGO, Dell, Intuit, Apple, and IBM.

Banyan Branchwww.banyanbranch.com

“Banyan Branch is a new-media marketing consulting group based in Seattle, WA. Banyan Branch is a hands-on practice, meaning that we not only make recommendations for best practice, we execute against the

Part 7: Vendor Landscape The competitive arena for social media marketing is comprised of solution providers with a wide range of specialized tools, platforms, capabilities and approaches, many of them still somewhat experimental in nature, making it difficult to create a basis for comparison. Given the newness of the disci-pline, few vendors have a track record that spans more than a few years. Existing solution providers, particular those in the email marketing space, are adding social media marketing functionality while new vendors are cropping up on an ongoing basis. Yet, as the frontier on what’s possible continues to advance, some trends are emerging – the focus on integrating social media campaigns with Facebook and Twitter, for instance, and lever-aging the ubiquity of mobile devices. This vendor landscape aims to shine a light on solution providers that have a strong technology component as part of their offering. Advertising and PR agencies with a dedicated social media marketing practice, as well as related boutique consultancies, are listed in the sidebar.

Affinitivewww.beaffinitive.com

“Affinitive is a Word of Mouth (WOM) and social media marketing and technology solutions pioneer. Since 2002 we have been helping companies to democratize their brands through a consumer-centric approach focused on the core values of community and social networking, research, viral and buzz, education, and loyalty and CRM, coupled with our best-of-breed suite of fully managed Web 2.0 social media engagement platforms.”

Gleanster Skinny (GS): Affinitive is a relatively small vendor with an ambitious range of solutions related to social media. Its customer engagement platform, called Enclave, enables everything from customer communities and brand ambassador programs to online consumer advisory panels and social media apps. Clients include E.&J. Gallo Winery, Novartis, Random House, Sports Authority, Travelocity, and Electronic Arts.

Awareness Networks www.awarenessnetworks.com

“Awareness builds on demand social marketing software for serious marketers who leverage multiple social channels to engage with their customers, build their brand, and increase revenues. The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is built upon Awareness’ expertise deploying more than 200 communities and social media projects for some of the world’s biggest brands including Sony, Kodak and Best Buy.”

GS: Awareness recently enhanced The Hub, an application designed to help marketers publish, manage and measure marketing campaigns across social media channels. Now, in addition to integrating with such social networks as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YoutTube, marketers can publish content to blog publishing platform WordPress as well as location-based social networking website Foursquare.

Bazaarvoicewww.bazaarvoice.com

“Bazaarvoice’s SaaS social commerce solutions have served over 125 billion pieces of customer-generated content on over 850 brand web sites like Best Buy, Dell, Costco, and P&G in 36 countries. Bazaarvoice connects organi-zations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing.”

GS: A dominant player (along with rival Power-Reviews) in the customer ratings and reviews space, Bazaarvoice recently introduced Social-Connect Suite, which allows companies to incorporate features and content from various social media sites into their own website to enhance the fan experience. Included are such capabilities as social sharing, social syndication, social applications, and social networking. The company is likely to see continued growth – despite the just-announced departure of CMO Sam Decker, a leading voice in the word of mouth marketing sphere.

Note: While Gleanster strives to include all of the most relevant and noteworthy solution providers in the Vendor Landscape section, the list is by no means comprehensive in nature. Omissions may occur due to lack of sufficient market presence, as judged by the Gleanster research analyst team. Space constraints may necessitate some amount of paring of even those vendors that do have sufficient market presence. Simple oversights may also happen on occasion. To submit information about a solution provider, please complete the Solution Provider Informa-tion Form. To schedule a vendor briefing, please email [email protected]. Vendor descriptions are taken verbatim from company websites or from vendor-submitted profile information. Gleanster Skinny (GS) commentaries are based on vendor briefings, customer interviews and Gleansight research findings as well as on company press releases and various other information sources.









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developed plan for our clients, providing end-to-end service, working closely with clients to help them better listen and engage across the social web.”

GS: Banyan Branch, which has attracted such high-profile brands as Disney, Fox, Viacom, and MTV, seems to have a knack for develop-ing quirky campaigns that resonate especially well with today’s media-savvy and “always connected” youth. An example is the viral campaign for Parallels, a virtual-ization and automation solutions provider, which featured a parody of a popular SNL clip that instantly became as much of a pop-culture sensation as the original. In October, the firm announced that Blake Cahill, former CMO at Visible Technologies and a leading industry voice, joined as a principle.

Big Fuelwww.bigfuel.com

“Big Fuel is a full-service marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from Content To Commerce. A unique approach that bridges “people stories” to “product stories” through social media and branded content. Big Fuel is one part marketing agency, building brands through consumer insight; one part entertainment company, creating content that people love; and one part distribution company, driving guaran-teed results by delivering content to targeted audiences. We work with major brands, leading agencies, publish-ers and platforms to help marketers achieve true consumer engagement.”

Founder Avi Satar began his career on the creative side of TV progam-ming and his perpective on the convergence of marketing and entertainment continues to guide the company’s strategic direction. Launched in 2004, Big Fuel has established a strong presence in the social media marketing space, with clients that include Colgate-Palmolive, Fox Interactive Media, NBC and Johnson & Johnson.

Buddy Media www.buddymedia.com

“In today’s social media world, every brand needs a Buddy. The Buddy Media Platform is web-based marketing software that provides companies global scale, secure architecture and straightforward administrative tools to connect with their current and future customers using the power of Facebook’s 550-million strong and growing social network. Seven of the top 10 largest global advertisers have selected the Buddy Media Platform as their preferred Facebook management system.”

GS: It’s been a good year so far for Buddy Media, which recently secured $23 million in Series C funding and has amassed an impres-sive client roster. The Buddy Media Platform features real-time analytics, geo-targeting, a library of more than 30 social applications or “applets,” Facebook Open Graph integra-

tion, and a number of social applications designed to drive user engagement. Also new is Buddy Media Platform +GLOBAL, the first page management system that enables supports content in any language.

Buedawww.bueda.com

“Founded in January 2009, Bueda is a Pittsburgh-based, CMU spin-off company headed by semantic expert Dr. Vasco Pedro. Bueda has already begun to pursue its goal of ‘understanding all the world’s infor-mation’ by the release of its first product: the semantic matching platform that lies at the core of Five. Leveraging research from Carnegie Mellon University, Bueda’s semantic matching engine enables the creation of smarter applications in markets where information overload creates signifi-cant barriers to communication efficiency.”

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Dachis Groupwww.dachisgroup.com

“Founded in 2008, Dachis Group is a social business design firm that helps companies capture value from shifts in technology, society, and work. Our work focuses on three practice areas: customer participation, workforce collaboration, and business partner optimization. We deliver assistance via research, strategy, implementa-tion, and managed services.”

GS: Dachis Group was started by Razorfish founder and company namesake Jeff Dachis along with two former Forrester analysts, Brian Havenblog and much-“followed” social business blogger Peter Kim, whose thinking on all things Web 2.0 has always been cutting edge. Dachis Group has grown significant in the past year, in part due to its acquisition of three companies in April. Clients include Coca-Cola, BBC, Intuit, and Phillips. Digitaswww.digitas.com

“Digitas is a leading digital marketing agency, helping the world’s biggest brands develop, engage and profit from building profitable relationships with their customers. The agency pairs media, marketing, technology, creativ-ity, imagination and analytics to ignite emotional bonds between people and brands. Digitas is a member of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi—a global digital knowledge and resource center. Clients include Comcast, P&G, Samsung, American Express, and Kraft.”

GS: Digitas’s website, which manages to strike a nice balance between order and chaos, loudly proclaims that this isn’t your father’s ad agency. The company recently racked up a number of awards, including three Effies, a BtoB Social Media Marketing Award and a Webby People’s Choice Award, suggesting it must be doing a lot of things right.

GS: Bueda’s semantic matching platform, called Five, is designed to extract meaning from unstructured data, including Tweets and profile status updates, helping marketers better understand customer preferences. The platform, which just completed beta testing, may prove to be a valuable tool in the context of social media marketing.

Buzzlogicwww.buzzlogic.com

“BuzzLogic is a digital media company with a data-driven ad platform built to optimize advertising across the largest pool of trusted blog content on the web. We combine proprietary conversational analytics with industry-leading audience targeting data to maximize performance - and provide contextual insight to boost results.”

GS: BuzzLogic began life as a social media monitoring vendor and later morphed into a social media ad agency with strong technol-ogy capabilities. In July, the vendor hit a home run, securing $8.8 million in series B funding. It just introduced BuzzRoll, a social media ad unit designed to encourage sharing amongst blog readers. Clients include HP, Starbucks, Walmart, HBO, Microsoft, and American Express.

Bzzagent www.bzzagent.com

“BzzAgent creates a deep connection between consumers and brands to activate word of mouth across social and offline media. Through the engagement of our network of passionate, vocal and connected consumers, we provide companies the ability activate large-scale discussions, uncover hidden value, and drive measurable results.”

GS: Over the past decade, BzzAgent has built an extensive network of participants (themselves called BzzAgents) in its word of mouth marketing network, running hundreds of programs for such brands as Kraft Foods and Unilever. The company has tried to replicate some of its offline success with the introduction of BzzScapes, which aims to build a network of online brand communi-ties by leveraging product reviews, as well as Frogpond, a digital listing service.

Context Optionalwww.contextoptional.com

“Context Optional is the leading provider of social marketing software and services to global brands and advertising agencies. The company provides marketers with comprehen-sive solutions to build, manage, monitor and

measure brand presence across the social web to meet their acquisition, engagement and retention goals. By combining industry expertise, a leading technology platform, and comprehensive analytics into an integrated approach, Context Optional delivers the most effective social CRM and marketing solutions to Fortune 500 brands and agencies.”

GS: Context Optional has made a splash with its Social Marketing Suite, which is used for managing, monitoring and measuring brand presence on Facebook. In June, the vendor acquired Buzzeo, a platform for Facebook application creation, manage-ment and deployment, further enhancing its capabilities. The vendor is the first to provide a product for Facebook Places, called Facebook Places Check-In Leaderboard, allowing brands to conduct geo-targeted marketing campaigns in which they publish coupons, videos, polls, etc., directly into the news feeds of their Facebook fans.

Converseonwww.converseon.com

“Converseon is a leading social media consultancy that has been helping brands to ‘join the conversation’ to meet business goals since 2001. We provide innovative technolo-gies, operational consulting and engagement services designed to create social media strat-egies from the inside out. Converseon has won awards from Digiday, WOMMA, and more.”

GS: Perhaps better known as a leading technology provider in the social media monitoring arena, Converseon also has extensive experience in designing and imple-menting social media marketing campaigns. The vendor’s work has won many awards and for “engagement and activation excel-lence.” Converseon is currently expanding into Europe and in October announced a partner-ship with Twitter to infuse Firehose data into its Conversation Miner technology, the next version of which is set for release next month.

Crowd Factory www.crowdfactory.com

“Crowd Factory is the first company to deliver a customer acquisition solution that actually monetizes social activity by connecting it to conversion data. The focus on person-level data and ROI tracking gives marketers the ability to send their campaigns viral through the social channels and then track the social activity back to purchases and conversions. As pioneers of Social ROI our applications enable companies of all







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Digital Influence Groupwww.digitalinfluencegroup.com

“Digital Influence Group is a full service digital agency, located outside of Boston, focusing on social media strategies to help clients build deeper relationships with their key constitu-encies. Digital Influence Group is a part of W2 Group, Inc., a next-generation marketing services company founded by Larry Weber in 2004.”

GS: Digital Influence Group was an early leader in developing and executing integrated social media marketing programs. The consultancy has won several prestigiuous awards for its work, for clients that include Sony, P&G and Visa. In July, it named former Digitas exec Glenn Engler as CEO.

Draftfcbwww.draftfcb.com

“Draftfcb is the first holistic, global marketing communications agency to operate against a single P&L, with a network that spans 92 countries and employs over 9,200 people. Draftfcb is driven by The 6.5 Seconds That Matter, an operating system that recognizes the brief period of time marketers have to capture consumers’ attention and motivate them to act.”

GS: Recent campaigns include Sharpie’s “Uncap What’s Inside” and Taco Bell’s “Super Delicious Ingredient Force,” in which a team of animated superheroes were designed to engage and interact with fans on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Other clients include Nike, Dockers, Honda, and Yum! Brands.

Edelman Digitalwww.edelmandigital.com

“Edelman Digital is the digital and social marketing division of Edelman PR Worldwide, the world’s largest independent PR firm. Edelman Digital specializes in helping customers leverage digital and social media to engage their markets, through web, video, flash and mobile content

sizes to run and optimize social marketing campaigns that dramatically increase new customer acquisition, drive loyalty and engagement, and amplify brand awareness.”

GS: Crowd Factory has gained recognition as a provider of flexible social marketing solutions. Its CrowdWorks Social Marketing Suite comes with a number of applications that can be deployed and scaled based on a brand’s objec-tives. Its newest app, called Social Campaign, is designed to enable marketers to not only deliver personalized, targeted messages across multiple social channels but to enable them to harness the “power of the crowd” to drive new users back to “conversion events” that the marketer cares about. It also aims to track click-level, individual-level, and campaign level data to provide a more accurate read on ROI. Sanjay Dholakia, who helped Lithium Software grow by 10X as CMO, joined as CEO

in April and may well be on track to do a repeat performance. Clients include HBO, Universal, Billboard, The Golf Channel, Sony and McAfee.

ExactTargetwww.exacttarget.com

“More than a decade ago, three businessmen recognized that organizations needed a way to communicate with their customers using a “new” medium called email. ExactTarget was the result—a company committed to helping marketers create targeted customer commu-nications. The same entrepreneurial spirit, innovative technology, and commitment to client success define us today as they did back then. And we’re already revolutionizing the next generation of online interactive marketing by pairing the strength of email with social media, mobile marketing, and websites.”

GS: A behemoth in the email marketing space, having generated $114 million in revenue last

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development, social marketing programs, and community outreach and engagement campaigns.”

GS: With well-known blogger and columnist Steve Rubel among those running the show, it’s no surprise that Edelman Digital has the scoop on the latest social tools, with lots of helpful advice on its website. Recent campaigns include an online competition for the next MTV social media correspondent that uses a tool, called TweetLevel, to determine the most influential candidates.

iCrossingwww.icrossing.com

“iCrossing is a global digital marketing agency that combines talent and technology to help world-class brands find and connect with their customers. The company blends best-in-class digital marketing services — including paid search, search engine optimization, Web develop-ment, social media, mobile, research and analytics — to create integrated digital marketing programs that engage consumers and drive ROI.”

GS: The company, which provides a broad range of solutions, just signed an agreement to be acquired by the Hearst Corporation. Clients include Toyota, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Office Depot, Nokia, and Mastercard.

Ignite Social Mediawww.ignitesocialmedia.com

“Ignite Social Media keeps up with trends, filters the noise, and helps companies put social media to work. We’ve helped some of the world’s top brands develop effective social media marketing campaigns and programs, including Microsoft (Windows 7, Office, MSN, Bing), Intel, Nature Made, Disney Interactive, Ad Council, and The Body Shop.”

GS: Marketers new to the world of social media marketing can look to Ignite for advice on how to get their feet wet. The company provides good insights into social media marketing and, in

year, ExactTarget also secured $75 million in venture funding last December. Then, in March, it acquired CoTweet, which had made a name for itself as one of the first players in the Twitter enterprise tools cottage industry. Social media marketing has since emerged as a big focus area for ExactTarget, which also introduced Social Forward. The latter gives a brand’s customers the ability to share content via 20-plus social networks.

Infosyswww.infosys.com

“Infosys defines, designs and delivers technolo-gy-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a Flat World. Infosys also provides a complete range of services by leveraging our domain and business expertise and strategic alliances with leading technol-ogy providers. Infosys service offerings span business and technology consulting, applica-tion services, systems integration, product engineering, custom software development, maintenance, re-engineering, independent testing and validation services, IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing.”

GS: Through partnerships with Jive Software, a leading player in the online customer communities space, and ATG, a provider of commerce software, Infosys has developed feature-rich social media marketing solutions. Its platform, called iEngage, enables marketers to participate in relevant online conversations with community members, aggregate and distribute content across social channels, and integrate e-commerce and customer care functionality into their social media network.

Involverwww.involver.com

“Involver is the web’s most trusted social marketing platform supporting 80,000 brands and agencies and interacting with more than 200,000,000 fans. Involver’s platform powers over 30 applications built specifically for marketers engaging their audiences through Facebook, the iPhone, Twitter, and other social media channels. Clients include Best Buy, General Mills, Sony/RCA Records, P&G, Levi’s, and Dockers.”

GS: Involver just launched its Audience Management Platform, an integrated social media marketing dashboard that allows marketers to monitor and manage their brand online as well as engage with consumers. The vendor’s suite has over 30 apps, including polls, coupons, quizzes, sweepstakes and email signup. Also included are tools designed

to quantify the value of dollars spent on brand development across the social web. Involver won acclaim for creating the leaderboard for its FIFA World Cup page on Facebook Sports and has even built large-scale appli-cations for the White House. In October, Involver announced an $8 million Series C round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Jitter Jam www.jitterjam.com

“JitterJam helps your business capture relevant conversations on the real time web and turn them into lasting and trusted customer relationships. Its web-based social marketing software that combines social media, email and mobile engagement with an intelligent contact database and the tools you need to turn social interaction into new opportunities for revenue growth.”

GS: The new version of its social rating engine, called Jitterater 2.0, aims to help companies identify and engage with top influencers online and to further their offline marketing initia-tives, as well. Features include enhanced analytics for measuring buzz, the ability to deliver customized opt-in forms, and a “Hot List,” which is designed to highlight the most important issues for marketers to address regarding their social media marketing efforts.

KickApps www.kickapps.com

“KickApps is an award-winning social publish-ing platform that helps the world’s most recognizable brands (including NBC Universal, American Express, Scripps Network, Hearst , HBO, and Cox Television) connect with their customers and fans. As a leading SaaS solution, the KickApps platform enables companies and brands to build social sites, socially enable existing sites and publish shared content to the mobile and social web.”

GS: KickApps in June launched the Drag-and-Drop Facebook App Development Suite, enabling brands to not only publish content from a community out as a Facebook fan page but to also collect customer comments, blog posts and user generated media (including photos, videos) directly on Facebook. In August, the vendor launched a new social media strategy division as well as version 5.0 of its platform. It recently received IBM’s 2010 ISV Innovation Award, SAMMY Awards for Best Social CRM and Best Social Platform, and was ranked in the Business Insider’s Digital 100 and On Hollywood’s 100 Most Valuable Private Companies lists.







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fact, just released a book, called Social Media Is a Cocktail Party.

Mr Youth www.mryouth.com

“Mr Youth has worked with some of the world’s leading brands including Pepsi, Nike, T-Mobile, Crayola, and Microsoft to help them connect with the rapidly evolving and highly elusive consumer. Mr Youth develops strategies and campaigns centered around the modern media mix of word-of-mouth, social interactive and experiential marketing, with a strong focus on creating integrated campaigns that fully engage the audience.”

GS: Mr Youth’s high-energy website reflects the hip sensibility that’s embodied in the company’s marketing campaigns. It was voted Mashable’s 2009 Social Media Agency of the Year and recently landed a coveted spot on Fast Company’s list of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies.

Ogilvy & Mather www.ogilvy.com

“Ogilvy & Mather is an international advertising, marketing, and PR agency that is owned by the WPP Group. Ogilvy has six divisions, including Ogilvy PR, which has a social marketing unit called 360 Degree Digital Influence. 360 Degree Digital Influence has developed digital programs for such clients as Unilever, Intel, Lenovo, Nestle, Ford, Louis Vuitton and more. ”

GS: The 360 Degree Digital Influence team has an especially good head on its shoulders: John Bell, who currently serves as president of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. The unit benefits from a strong market reputation and partnerships with BzzAgent, Radian6, and NetVibes. Considering the brand equity it has established, it’s odd it would continue to brand itself under the Ogilvy umbrella.

Pandemic Labswww.pandemiclabs.com

“Pandemic Labs is a social media marketing agency dedicated to

Mzingawww.mzinga.com

“Mzinga is the leading provider of social software, services, and analytics that improve business performance. Through a combina-tion of enterprise-class technology, strategy and value-added services, Mzinga software solutions enable businesses to increase revenue and lower costs by improving brand visibility, employee performance and satisfac-tion, and customer loyalty. Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Mzinga supports more than 14,000 communities and 2.5 billion monthly social interactions from 40 million unique visitors in 160 countries worldwide.”

GS: Mzinga went through a tough period early last year and came back swinging for the fences. Led by Barry Libert, a bestselling business author (Live Nation is his latest effort) and Web 2.0 visionary, the vendor recently

launched an enhanced version of its enterprise social software suite, called OmniSocial, which is designed to enable everything from social networking to enterprise learning manage-ment. New features include cloud computing, multiple mobile apps, and advanced analytics.

Omniture (Adobe Systems)www.omniture.com

“Omniture, a business unit of Adobe Systems Incorporated, is a leading provider of online business optimization software for managing and enhancing online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives. Hosted and delivered via on-demand subscription service and on-premise solution, Omniture software enables customers to capture, store and analyze information generated by their Web sites and other sources.”

GS: A dominant player in the web analytics space, Omniture got into the social media game

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helping brands navigate the ever-changing world of new media to create marketing success. The theme at the core of all of our services is the belief that, in our increas-ingly on-demand world, marketing is a dialogue not a monologue.”

GS: Pandemic Labs is currently promoting an eight-month, user-generated HD video contest sponsored by Canon and hosted on Vimeo.com. Recent clients include Dunkin’ Donuts, Puma, Daily Grommet, and Viacord.

Razorfishwww.razorfish.com

“As one of the largest interactive marketing and technology companies in the world, Razorfish helps its clients build better brands by delivering business results through customer experiences. Razorfish combines the best thought leadership of the consult-ing world with the leading capabilities of the marketing services industry to support our clients’ business needs.”

GS: Having rebranded several times, Razorfish was acquired last year by Publicis Groupe. While the agency has made good traction with its Social Influence Marketing (SIM) score, which recognizes the role of social influencers and the participatory nature of branding, Shiv Singh, one of the brains behind the score (and author of Social Media Marketing for Dummies), just departed for PepsiCo.

Tribal DDBwww.tribalddb.com

Tribal DDB Worldwide, an Advertising Age A-List Agency, is headquartered in New York and includes 56 offices spanning 36 countries throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific region. Tribal DDB Worldwide is part of Omnicom Group’s DDB Worldwide.

GS: TribalDDB, which in February rolled out a “center of excellence” around social media, dubbed Tribal Radar, has won acclaim for

earlier this year with the launch of Omniture SearchCenter+, now a key component of the Adobe Online Marketing Suite. SearchCen-ter+ features analytics designed to optimize the performance of Facebook ad campaigns along with a host of other social media marketing capabilities. Clients include Ford, Microsoft, HP, Pepsi, Siemens, and Forbes.

Pluckwww.pluck.com

““Pluck powers the social media experience on the world’s leading digital destinations. Pluck combines a comprehensive technology platform; a curated, professionally produced content library; and full lifecycle services. Pluck’s enterprise customers offer uncommonly rich and engaging social experiences, deliver-ing measurable improvements in site traffic, consumer engagement and customer loyalty.”

GS: Pluck would seem to have a winning combination: a widely-acclaimed platform and a professional services arm that, according to the vendor, has logged “more than 50,000 hours planning, enabling, delivering and optimiz-ing social media for 400+ premium digital destinations.” Pluck 4 enhancements include deeper connectivity with Facebook and other social networks and customized user profiles that feature private messaging and “shared activity comments”. In October, the vendor announced the release of a broad Modera-tion Services suite. Parent company Demand Media filed an S-1 in August, thereby signaling its intention to take the company public.

Powered www.powered.com

“Powered is a focused social media agency that helps brands fully capitalize on their social initiatives, make them more relevant in an increasingly digital, connected and social world. Now with 70+ employees in its offices, Powered brings its clients “best-in-class” expertise across the social spectrum by offering a combination of strategy, planning, activation and management for social presence and programs including those centered on Facebook, location based/LBS, mobile applications, influencer activation and community building, content marketing and earned media, and experiential marketing.”

GS: Powered has solid technology capabilities and also partners with others to help brands with strategy, development, management and execution of campaigns and programs across the entire spectrum of social media. Focus areas include online communities, experiential

marketing and influencer activation. Earlier this year, Powered acquired three social media agencies—StepChange, Drillteam and crayon—to lay the foundation for its own agency growth. The vendor has a lot going for it, not the least of which is its stable of thought leaders, which includes CMO Aaron Strout, Greg Verdino (author of microMARKET-ING) and, following the crayon acquisition, blogger Joseph Jaffe of Jaffe Juice fame.

PowerReviews www.powerreviews.com

“PowerReviews is the leading provider of customer reviews and social commerce solutions to retailers and brands. The company’s innovative tag-based approach to collecting, organizing, structuring and analyzing user-generated content signifi-cantly boosts product sales and customer engagement. PowerReviews works with over 850 retailers and brands on over 2700 websites, including Staples and Jockey.”

GS: A pioneer (along with Bazaarvoice) in the e-commerce ratings and reviews space, PowerReviews offers a social commerce suite (which now includes Facebook’s “like” functionality) and various stand-alone solutions designed to enrich a retailer’s relationship with its consumers and influence the purchas-ing decisions of friends. The vendor, which operates the popular Buzzillions product review site, has a lot going for it, not the least of which is Cathy Halligan, former CMO of Walmart.com, who just joined as SVP of sales and marketing.

RightNow Technologies www.rightnow.com

“Founded in 1997, RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one consumer interaction at a time, seven million times a day. RightNow CX, the customer experi-ence suite, helps organizations deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centers, all delivered via the cloud.”

GS: A leading provider of CRM solutions, RightNow in September announced the release of RightNow CX for Facebook. The platform is designed to provide companies with a single view of consumer interactions from Facebook and other channels, and to provide consumers with consistent experi-ences as they traverse interaction channels.

SalesFusionwww.salesfusion.com

“SalesFUSION 360 provides software that







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accelerates revenue by connecting sales and marketing with prospects at the moment they are ready to buy. This is made possible through the SalesFusion 360™ suite, which complements Sales Force Automa-tion applications by adding an on-demand enterprise lead management service.”

GS: The SalesFUSION 360 platform includes standard sharing commands for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites. Particularly noteworthy is its IttyBitty app, which makes it possible to create social site-specific links (tracking URLs) back to the homepage or “edialogs” with detailed reporting capabilities.

Shoutletwww.shoutlet.com

“Shoutlet is a social media communica-tion and content distribution platform. With Shoutlet’s time-saving interface, companies create, distribute, and track e-mail, video,

RSS, text messaging, podcasts, widgets, social bookmarking pass-along, and more. Clients include Solo, Perry Ellis, Fiskars, MasterCraft, American Family Insurance, Sub-Zero, Tippman, Rayovak, and Remington.”

GS: Shoutlet offers a variety of tools for creating, managing and analyzing social media marketing campaigns. Widgets for sharing content can be dragged and dropped into a custom Facebook tab. An e-commerce tool called Shop & Share is designed to enable companies to integrate an online store with their Facebook page. Shoutlet, which raised $2M in Series A funding earlier this year, also offers tools to help with content management and for analyzing consumer activity on a brand’s Facebook page. In October, the vendor announced the release of an expanded CRM component for engaging with users on social networks.

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several recent campaigns. Notably, it launched a Hasbro campaign in which city streets around the globe were transformed into a virtual, highly-interactive monopoly game. Other clients include Subaru, McDonald’s, and PepsiCo.

We Are Socialwww.wearesocial.net

“We are a conversation agency with offices in London, Paris, Milan and Sydney that combines an innate understanding of social media with digital, PR, and marketing skills. We are entirely focused on innovative, creative and effective social media marketing and communications and we like to think we are getting rather good at it.”

GS: As the name suggests, We Are Social has significant experience leveraging social media networks and branded online communities to help companies raise brand awareness. Clients include Coca-Cola, Ford, Unilever, Microsoft and Absolut.

Wieden + Kennedywww.wk.com

“Wieden+Kennedy is an independently owned advertising agency headquar-tered in Portland, Oregon. W+K was founded in 1982 and currently has 1000 employees working in Portland, New York, Amsterdam, Tokyo, London, Delhi and Shanghai. Our client list includes some of the most recognized and well-respected brands in the world.”

GS: The firm has recently won widespread kudos, and for good reason. The viral videos it created to revitalize Old Spice’s brand image have become a pop culture sensation.







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SilverPopwww.silverpop.com

“Silverpop’s on-demand digital marketing platform helps marketers succeed in turning prospects into customers—and customers into fans—through the creation, automa-tion and delivery of relevant, multichannel messaging. Companies rely on the Silverpop Engage platform to create and manage sophisticated email marketing campaigns that engage prospective customers and enhance lifetime customer value and brand loyalty.”

GS: Long a dominant player in the email marketing space under the leadership of Bill Nussey, a well-known Internet visionary, SilverPop entered the social media marketing arena with the introduction of several innovative solutions, including a drag-and-drop Web forms builder as part of its Landing Pages offering. The new feature is designed to enable marketers to create and manage their own customized, branded landing pages and online forms.

Social Twistwww.socialtwist.com

“SocialTwist develops solutions that turn social media into social marketing. Its solutions harness the power of trust and referrals - a key driver in consumer purchase decisions - to create successful, measurable campaigns for today’s smartest marketers. Tell-a-Friend, SocialTwist’s flagship product suite, promotes highly viral, word-of-mouth marketing campaigns online by combining consistent marketing messages, the power of referrals and the social platforms customers use most. Clients include Jamba Juice, Barnes & Noble, Greenpeace, Intel, Monster, and ING Direct.”

GS: Social Twist’s core solutions – Tell-A-Friend for Brands, Tell-A-Friend for Agencies, and Tell-A-Friend for Rewards – enable the sharing of customized promo-tions, content and offerings across multiple social channels, including email, IM and social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as well as bookmarking services like Digg and Delicious. Tell-A-Friend relies on human filtering; consumers designate the like-minded individuals who make the cut in receiving their referrals.

SocialFlowwww.socialflow.com

“SocialFlow helps publishers, brand marketers and online retailers increase click-throughs, ReTweets, mentions, sharing and organic follower growth, on Twitter, Facebook and

Google Buzz. Our software listens to what your audience is interested in and talking about in real time. We pair your potential Tweets and posts with your audience’s interests in real time, and release the message that is most likely to earn the most attention and action from your audience.”

GS: Although still in beta testing, SocialFlow looks to have some significant backers, impressive talent (including Michael Chin, formerly of KickApps) and lots of promise as an emerging player in this space.

StrongMailwww.strongmail.com

“StrongMail’s online marketing solutions for email and social media enable businesses to reach, engage and influence their target audience using the most powerful channels available to marketers today. StrongMail helps email marketers improve campaign performance, boost deliverability and lower costs, while also leveraging the power of social media.”

GS: A major provider of email marketing solutions, StrongMail recently acquired two interactive marketing agencies to boaster its social media capabilities: Conversa Marketing and Magnetik. The result is a new agency, called ThreadMarketing, which should help advance StrongMail’s efforts to integrate email marketing and social media marketing. Clients include Macy’s, Sony Online Entertainment, Inuit and Tesco.

Syncapsewww.syncapse.com

“Syncapse is a full service social technol-ogy partner. Our mission is to help companies build, manage and measure customer relationships through the use of cutting-edge social media technology.”

GS: Syncapse’s platform, called SocialTALK, aims to make it easy for brands to create and publish content to multiple social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and WordPress, and also analyze the results. Another solution, called SocialSYNC, provides a means for consumers from different communities to participate in a single discussion thread. In May, the vendor announced that it had secured $3.3 million in private equity funding.

Vitruewww.vitrue.com

“Vitrue is a social media management company providing technology solutions to help brands harness the vast marketing potential







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of social networks. Vitrue’s social marketing solutions combine a fan management platform designed to help you build and scale your social media initiatives. Through our industry expertise, technology platform and integrated approach, we provide the most comprehen-sive social media marketing solutions built exclusively for Fortune 1,000 global brands.”

GS: Vitrue just enhanced its social media platform, called Vitrue Publisher 2.0, to include support for Facebook’s Open Graph API. Using the platform, marketers can now send news on discounts or updates to consumers who “like” a certain product on their company’s Facebook page or website and create actions around “like” buttons or other social objects to better segment their Facebook messaging. The vendor reportedly manages over 680 Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts for various clients, which translates into 276 million fans/followers. New clients include Harley Davidson, Mentos, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Eddie Bauer, Maybelline and Purina.

Wildfire Interactivewww.wildfireapp.com

“Wildfire Interactive, Inc. is a technol-ogy company that specializes in developing simple tools that enable organizations to engage the hundreds of millions of users of social network sites. Our patent-pending technology allows corporations, small businesses, marketing agencies, bloggers and non-profits to easily create their own attractive, branded interactive campaigns and to simultaneously publish them in multiple social networks and on their website.”

GS: Wildfire has gained visibility over the past year helping brands develop social marketing campaigns that include contests, coupons, quizzes and virtual gifts, primarily on Facebook. The popularity of the vendor’s applications helped it secure $4 million in Series A funding in April. Its newest app, called Group Deals, is designed to allow marketers to integrate Groupon-like deal functionality into their brand’s Facebook page or website. Clients include PepsiCo, The Gap, Unilever, Red Bull and Universal.

YesMail www.yesmail.com

“Yesmail is an industry-leading provider of online emarketing solutions. Built on a solid core of innovative technology and strategic services, Yesmail boasts a complete portfolio in emarketing solutions and tools, including direct marketing applications, multi-channel campaign management, data management, business intelligence, lead generation and email lists, interactive appli-cations and best practices consulting.”

GS: An email marketing pioneer, and now a subsidiary of infoGROUP, Yesmail recently introduced its Enterprise 7 platform, designed to enable companies to execute and manage their marketing campaigns across multiple platforms. It also offers a number of interactive applications. One aims to help companies build branded social media sites, another to deliver event invitations across social media channels. Clients include Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, HP, Kodak, Ticketmaster.com and Panasonic.

Zuberancewww.zuberance.com

“Our mission at Zuberance is to enable marketers to harness the power of social media to drive qualified leads, traffic, and sales. We do this by providing marketers with a powerful technology platform that makes it easy to engage and energize brand advocates on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon, Yelp, brand websites, mobile devices, and more.”

GS: Backed by premier venture capital firms, and with a terrific name to boot, Zuberance made a big splash last year with the introduc-tion of an on-demand platform for propagating product and service recommendations across the Internet in a highly-targeted and contex-tualized fashion, with the goal of helping companies increase brand advocacy. Clients include Symantec, Chili’s, Jamba Juice, Sears, TiVo, 24 Hour Fitness, Accor Hotels and CDW. In October, Zuberance secured $8 million in Series B funding, to be used for fueling product development and business growth.







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Related ResearchOther recently published Gleansight benchmark reports that may be of interest to senior marketing practitioners include:

Social Media Monitoring

Customer Feedback Management

Lead Nurturing

Mobile Marketing

Online Customer Communities

Customer Intelligence

The Gleanster website also features Deep Dive analyst perspectives on these and other topics as well as Success Stories that bring the research to life with real-world case studies. To download Gleanster content, or to view the future research agenda, please visit www.gleanster.com.

About Gleanster Gleanster benchmarks best practices in technology-enabled business initiatives, delivering actionable insights that allow companies to make smart business decisions and match their needs with vendor solutions.

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For customer support, please contact [email protected] or +1 877.762.9727

Lead AuthorsKevin S. RyanPrincipal Analyst

Kevin S. Ryan previously served as Vice President of Social Media at Barnes & Noble. He can be reached at [email protected].

Jeff ZabinResearch Director

Jeff Zabin previously served as Research Fellow at Aberdeen Group and in product marketing at FICO. He can be reached at [email protected].

Note: Research and analysis for the Vendor Landscape section was conducted by Gleanster research support staff.


