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You’ve persuaded someone to sign up for your email database. That’s a major step—especially today when people are generally overloaded with emails and are increasingly selective about their opt-ins.

It’s increasingly difficult to keep subscribers in your email databases. It’s a relationship. A relationship between you, the company, and the client or customer. One key to beginning this email marketing relationship successfully is a welcome email that wows the new subscriber. Here are 10 ways to make the newest members of your email database feel special.

1. Use the subscriber’s name. Start with the subject line: ‘Welcome Scott’ or ‘Welcome Sara’ goes a long way. And in the body copy, start with a personalized salutation. Thank you, Scott, for joining us. Thank you, Sara, for joining us.
2. Say ‘thank you’ and include the method of subscription. It can be useful to remind the new subscriber how and why they signed up for your email database; this buttresses their decision.
3. INCLUDE A THANK YOU OFFER…persuade the new subscriber to start buying right away by giving them an irresistible offer.
4. Frequency. Let the subscriber know how often they will receive emails. One proven tactic is to offer the subscriber the opportunity to change frequency.
5. Gather more data. To encourage opt ins, you may have asked for just the first name and email address. That’s fine, but it can be extremely valuable to start gathering some additional demographic and psychographic information in the welcome email. You may need to provide an additional incentive to gather this additional valuable information. It’s worth it: by segmenting your database, you gain additional marketing horsepower.
6. Make it easy to leave the list. “Are you serious?” you may ask. “Yes. Absolutely.” Make it clear that you’re completely fair and ethical when it comes to your email marketing.
7. Safe sending. Include an easy way for new subscribers to ‘white list’ your emails. This helps to ensure delivery of emails and also helps to make sure that images get through.
8. Please tell your friends. New subscribers will encourage friends and family to subscribe—especially if you provide them with an incentive.
9. Take your time. It’s better to send several shorter thank you emails than one behemoth welcome email.
10. Make it timely. If it’s the holiday season, then make sure the content is for the holiday season. If it’s summer, then make the content complement the season. You can also build welcome email marketing content around events.

All email marketing is important. The welcome emails provide an opportunity to make a great first impression. Use the proven methods above and you’ll be more likely to keep those all-important new subscribers engaged with your email marketing. And when subscribers are engaged, they’re more likely to buy your products and services.

A recent TechCrunch article titled "Pinvolve Converts Facebook Pages Into Pinterest Pinboards, Increases Repins By 150%+" looks at how a new Facebook app called 'Pinvolve' allows users and brands to add a Pinterest-style page to their Facebook presence. The app essentially pulls in all photo posts, along with any Comments or Likes. And the crazy thing is that the company that designed it, Bazaart, has been able to increase Repins on its Facebook page by 150% - and so have many of the 1,000 users who have downloaded it.
 
Typically, when Facebook sees a new social platform as a viable threat to the amount of time people spend on their platform, they do one of two things: buy the startup, or quickly recreate the experience within Facebook before the challenger grows too big. 
 
One fairly successful example of this two-pronged strategy is Facebook's response to Foursquare, where they quickly launched Facebook Places to try and derail Foursquare's rapid growth. Next they bought another competitor Gowalla to further squash any competition.
 
One example where Facebook was too late to the game was when they tried to cut into the Twitter experience by allowing @mentioning in Facebook status updates. This did little to impact Twitter's growth. They should have bought them when they had the chance!
 
By supporting the Pinvolve app, it's clear that Facebook recognizes the threat Pinterest poses for stealing audience time away from their platform, which it will if their users cannot get the same experience within Facebook. Interestingly, Google+ also seems to recognize this shortcoming in Facebook's default experience, as they have they have been recently positioning themselves in the media as a social platform for sharing images.

Email has been part of daily life for almost 20 years. And it’s been an effective way for companies to communicate, plus market their products and services. For all its elasticity and scope, email has suffered from one major drawback: its lack of interactivity.

Forms often fail to make it through filters. Design elements don’t work in certain email programs. The world is patiently waiting for HTML5. Email marketing has been a one-way conversation. Thankfully, the technology has advanced enough to provide many marketers with the ability to start a conversation directly through emails without having to link to a landing page, squeeze page, or website. Many companies have found a way around the current technological limitations.

Why interact with customers through email? Perhaps the most important reason is to gather additional data. Many of the tactics below can help marketers learn more about their databases and then segment their databases to improve conversion.

For many companies the worst time to gather significant amounts of information is during the initial opt in. With interactive communication through email, a company can slowly build broader customer knowledge. It’s often easier to gather data once the customer has built a sense of trust with your emails and message. Here are three ways that companies are starting two-way conversations through email.

ONE - A Survey Measuring Customer Satisfaction

A customer satisfaction survey can work extremely well when it’s embedded in the body of an email. It’s important that the email be totally and completely focused on the survey and not have to compete with other content. The results of the survey can be used to segment the database. With the information from a survey, the company can also make key changes to its service and product options and discover problems it needs to address.

TWO - Trivia and Quizzes

In this tactic, ask the recipient some simple questions about the product. Trivia can be fun, entertaining, and educational. There’s no need for advanced coding/technology and the goal is to get the reader to click through to a landing page. The trivia question can be related to the company’s product or service.

THREE – The Poll

With this tactic, you can ask clients and customers what they like the most about your product or service. In many cases, marketing decision makers will believe that one feature or benefit is especially important to customers; from the email survey, they may discover that another feature or benefit is the one that gets people excited. There’s no need for advanced email technology: simply include a separate hyperlink for each response. The link leads to a specific landing page, thus eliminating an extra click.

Email marketing continues to be an extremely effective way for companies to sell products and services—and communicate. Making emails interactive can increase the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign.

What does it take to get you pinterested in a new social media platform?  Is it a mention from a friend? An article tweeted to you from a trusted social media pinsider?  Or maybe it’s just some clever prose that draws you in.

Whatever it is, all of the big players in the space had that moment when their platform crossed over from "I’m going to create an account and check it every once in a while" to "this needs to be part of my daily communications routine" – Is Pinterest there?

It just might be.

A quick update for those of you who still may be a tad late to the party on this one: Pinterest is a network currently in invitation-only beta. Users are provided an easy-to-use platform that enables them to take images from around the web, or their own, and "pin" them to their "board" as a way of visually telling their community what they are eating, watching, reading, listening to, thinking about… "Interested In."  Users can then follow the activity of their friends and comment on it, Like it, Tweet it, etc. across the social web.  The company describes its purpose as "Connecting everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting."

What I find particularly encouraging about Pinterest right now is that it seems to be answering the call for curation.  Avid social media users are now receiving information faster than they know what to do with, or maybe more importantly, tell others about. Pinterest provides a visual snapshot to your friends of everything you "like" all in one place.

But what about Pinterest for business? 

 As we see the gradual disappearance of more and more Facebook stores, and brands still struggle with figuring out how to tie engagement to purchase, that has to be the next logical question, right?  In a recent survey of businesses that described themselves as "active" in the social space, when asked: Is your business using Pinterest? They responded in the following manner:

• No, and we’re not considering it - 40.38%
• Yes  - 30.77%
• No, but we’re considering it  - 28.85%

Currently, Pinterest claims over 13MM users, and having attained them in 10 months, makes them the fastest social media platform to surpass the 10MM mark.  Of those, domestically 83% are women and 3% report an income above 100K. Specifically, Pinterest’s sweet spot appears to be women aged 18 to 34 living in households with incomes between $25,000 and $75,000 per year.

The site has a very feminine look and feel about it. The opening page is predominantly wallpapered with images of women's outfits, DIY craft projects, recipes and wedding dresses. But while this may be where they are best at driving engagement and sharing, they recently got beat to the e-commerce punch by Fancy.  Fancy allows users to participate in many of the same activities as Pinterest, but they also enable users to make purchases of these same products and services that that enjoy "pinning"…. directly on the platform.  This is major step towards fusing curating and commerce

It should come as no surprise then that two of the brands on Pinterest that caught my eye immediately were Bergdorf Goodman and HGTV. Pins from the former are a mixture of products from bergdorfgoodman.com as well as web images chosen to appeal to their customers. Images for the latter subscribe to HGTV's self-described Pinning strategy of "creating a team atmosphere and being inspirational."

It looks like both brands, like so many others right now, understand the importance of a coordinated cross-channel approach for retail within social and also understand that building brand affinity leads to intent to purchase.  But, also like so many others in the space, they have not solved the final piece of the puzzle: "Why should I buy what I Pin?"

So Pinterest is definitely picking up speed like a locomotive. Most insiders have already signed up.  Probably because they are afraid to miss the next big thing (see Google+).  Those who have not, are probably afraid to ask the "what is Pinterest?" question aloud. 

Initially, I think Pinterest has a chance to own two niches:

1) It could be the social media platform of choice for foodies. Pinterest seems to lend it itself to easily posting food pics, sharing recipes and giving recommendations.

2) It could establish itself as the de facto "scrapbooking" platform. With Pinterest, you can easily display all of the National Parks, Baseball Stadiums, or Bruce Springsteen concerts you’ve been to or are interested in.

Additionally, businesses that have multiple destinations (hotels, chain restaurants, amusement parks) or that have a visually distinct/appealing product should at this point consider setting up an account and participating at an entry level.  But they should do so in a unique manner without over-committing resources…yet. 

Using Pinterest to mirror your Facebook or Twitter activity will just segment your audience and show the early adopters that you’re not in for the long haul.  Show value, earn trust, and then refine your strategy.

For more information on integrating Pinterest into your marketing programs, be sure to register for StrongMail’s April 11 live webinar: "Put a Pin in It! Leveraging Pinterest to Drive Email and Business Results."

Every day, consumers are posting information to the social web that can be leveraged by marketers to refine the targeting of their campaigns, whether that be generating reviews, recommendations or comments in forums.  They are also voluntarily sharing public information about their lifestyle preferences and interests that can be tapped for significantly better targeting across channels. In order to take advantage of this data, email marketers need to actively source and append their customer and prospect email databases with the wide array of social data that is available from a variety of sources.

Facebook has access to lifestyle and demographic information on over 800 million people worldwide. That’s more than most traditional data providers will ever have. When you combine this information with data sourced from listening platforms and social data providers like Fliptop and Rapleaf, you can start to build rich subscriber profiles based on this high-value, self-reported information. StrongMail offers a proprietary tool that enables you to append and then query off of this data, which is currently returning a 70% match rate simply using name and location. The match rate is even higher if you’re appending off an email address as the primary key.

In addition to these tools and services, brands can also be direct and ask their customers for assistance in pairing the data. This can be accomplished with campaigns sent out from email and social media. Email subscribers can be asked to connect with your brand on Twitter, Facebook and other networks. Similarly, members of a brand’s social networks can be encouraged to opt-in to their email communications.  Enabling Facebook Connect and Twitter Sign-on capabilities, as well as promoting Facebook applications can be another way to access this data. Chances are your social media team is investing in building Facebook apps to drive brand engagement. Are you getting access to the data that they receive through that process?

Instead of leaving social media marketing to the brand marketers, email marketers need to collaborate with their brand counterparts and look for opportunities to leverage the massive amounts of data on the social web to learn more about their email subscribers.  By collecting social data, appending it to your database and leveraging it to increase the relevancy of your messaging, you can exponentially improve the performance of your campaigns across every channel.

Earlier this month, StrongMail sponsored and spoke at MediaPost's Social Media Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe, NV. The conference producers put together another fantastic program, featuring innovations from great social brands like Coca-Cola, Dell and American Express. Over the course of three days, there were a number of great presentations, panels and roundtables that provided valuable insight for any brand looking to advance their use of social media as a marketing channel.  Following are just some of our key social media marketing takeaways from the event:

1. The Economy is in Bad Shape… but Social Media Continues to Grow. According to Jordan Rohan, Managing Director of the Internet and Digital Media practice for Stifel Nicolaus, most of the world is still digesting the fact that the US GDP is growing around 1% and Europe is flat. China’s growth is also slowing because it is so dependent on US consumers, whose spending has dipped dramatically. We are entering a bear economy, but social media is one of the few sectors that will continue to grow in the coming years. In fact, Forrester Research predicts that social media will rev at a 26% CAGR over the next five years to become a $4.4 billion industry by 2016. (Source: US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 To 2016)

2. Facebook Rules Social Media. Facebook currently has 50% of the U.S. population as active members, and the average Facebook user visits Facebook 38 times per day. These are astounding metrics, and yet many brands are still struggling with their monetization strategies on Facebook. Most experts agree that you need to build a strategy around the fact that engagement takes place in the news stream – not on the brand fan page. In fact, Starbucks is currently generating 156 impressions in the news feed for every 1 visit to their brand page.

3. Twitter is One to Watch. 92% of US Consumers have heard of Twitter, but only 8% use it. There is huge growth potential for Twitter and marketers should keep an eye on them as they begin to monetize their traffic. Some analysts think that a Google acquisition of Twitter could pose a significant challenge to Facebook’s market dominance. As for your marketing strategy, keep in mind that Twitter is all about breaking news. Therefore it’s important to keep your content strategy fresh. The #1 reason that people stop following a brand on Twitter is because the content became repetitive over time.

4. Google+ Has Built It… But Will They Come? Google+ is suffering from a chicken-and-the-egg syndrome. While they’re adding new members at the rate of 1 million a day, many of those people aren’t actively using it. Meanwhile brands are taking a “wait and see” approach because they’re concerned that Google+ might go the way of Google Wave. Part of the problem lies in the fact that Google launched its viral go-to-market strategy with a fickle group of technologists, whereas Facebook spread virally via college students at Harvard. If Google wants to drive adoption as quickly as possible, they need to go straight to the consumer. One way to do this would be to give brands the ability to send Google+ invites to their email lists and enable consumers to easily connect with the corresponding brand pages (when available).

5. Build Facebook Apps to Grow Your Database. Facebook currently has 50% of all social market share, according to Justin Kistner of WebTrends. That is a massive amount of data that is waiting to be tapped. American Express built an application called “Link, Like, Love” that delivers deals, access and experiences based on card member “Likes” and interests on Facebook. Users of the app can get rebates at checkout, access location based offers via mobile check-ins, and share offers with other friends. The app has been so popular, that the site crashed on July 19 from too much traffic. But the real genius of this program is that, as the creators of the app, American Express gets access to Facebook’s rich social data profiles for anyone who uses the app, which they can append to their cardholder database.

6. Use Facebook’s Self-Service Ad Marketplace. If you’re going to buy Facebook Ads, here’s a tip… don’t call their ad sales department. You will pay a $10 CPM if you buy directly from Facebook’s Ad Sales and only a $.70 CPM if you buy ads through their self-service marketplace. And when creating your ad targeting strategy, don’t forget to target your fans. You'll see a .35% CTR instead of a .1% CTR.

7. Tap Social Media for Customer Acquisition. Only 18% of people believe paid advertising; however, 80% of people believe word-of-mouth. Harnessing word-of-mouth for new customer acquisition can be an extremely powerful tactic. Discover Card presented a great case study on how they’ve integrated social referrals into their transactional process for registering new cardholders. Each card member is offered $50 for referring a friend who is approved for a new card, and the new applicant also receives $50. The program has been so successful that Discover is looking to expand its multi-channel acquisition program into additional channels such as mobile.

8. Humanity is More Important than Being Perfect. Authenticity is the key to a successful social media marketing strategy. Keep it human and get your message out on time before getting it perfect. When you’re crafting your creative, you should also keep in mind that people are 5X more likely to click on an image if it has a human face on it.

9. Social Media Marketing is Taking a Page from Email Marketing’s Playbook. Many of the social media marketing best practices shared during the summit could have easily been plucked from an email marketing conference. The many guidelines and tips about how to reach the right influencer with the right message at the right time, communication frequency and the best day to post sounded all too familiar. The good news is that responsibility for social media appears to be moving out of the house of PR and into the hands of marketers where it can be monetized.

10. Old School Marketers Still Have the Best Advice. There were many great sound bites floated during this conference, but the best had to be a timeless quote from David Ogilvy: “The consumer is not a moron… she’s your wife.” If you can effectively grasp that, you’ll go far in any marketing field. 

For a detailed recap of what transpired at the event, check out the #mpsmis Twitter Stream or follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kristinhersant.

And tune into our blog to stay up to speed on the newest social media marketing trends.

By partnering with StrongMail and using its Influencer referral marketing solution, Discover has been able to generate quality new accounts and a ton of social media buzz.  The details and results are detailed in the following award submission for Forrester Research's annual Groundswell Awards.  You can check out and rate our official entry under the B2C Energizing category.

Discover Financial Services & StrongMail Entry for Forrester Groundswell Awards

Company: Discover Financial Services
Type: B2C
Category: Energizing

The Objective

Discover Card's New Cardmember Acquisition department was tasked with launching a simple, cost-efficient, effective refer-a-friend marketing program that would facilitate cardmember brand advocacy to enhance its brand and drive new cardmember acquisition.  In order to achieve this objective, Discover partnered with StrongMail to leverage its Influencer word-of-mouth acquisition solution. Working together, they identified the goals, designed the campaign and proceeded with a soft launch in May 2011.

The highly effective social-media powered referral marketing campaign offered cardmembers $50 Cashback Bonus for each friend that they could entice to become a cardmember via a reciprocal $50 Cashback Bonus. The offer is introduced via an online ad to cardmembers logged into the Account Center or recently redeemed.  Once they click, the Influencer experience enables them to share the offer via email, Twitter, Facebook and other social channels. Since launch, they have realized a 25% click rate with 3X and 10X sharing multiple through social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter respectively. Through this program Cardmembers have referred those within their social graph.

The Challenge

Discover Financial Services was looking to drive new cardmember acquisition in a way that attracted quality applicants as well as strengthened its brand. While traditional refer-a-friend programs are fairly common within the financial services industry, Discover Card wanted take a more innovative approach that allowed them to carefully target who would receive the offer and then leverage the power of social media to facilitate the referral. Equally important, Discover wanted to generate this brand advocacy with a cost-efficient and effective program that could be launched in a relatively short time-frame. It also wanted a way to identify their biggest social influencers and brand advocates, so they could leverage and nurture this community more effectively.

The Solution

In order to achieve its objectives, Discover turned to StrongMail's Influencer word-of-mouth acquisition solution and its accompanying social media marketing services.  Working together, Discover and StrongMail developed a compelling, social-media-powered refer-a-friend program that carefully targeted cardmembers during relevant online experiences. 

By offering a Cashback bonus to both the cardmember and the referred cardmember, Discover was able to effectively tap two powerful motivators: self-benefit and altruism. While rewards are important, Discover understood that ease-of-participation was also essential for success.  Using Influencer, Discover made it possible for the account holder to easily refer friends via a range of social channels, including Facebook, Twitter and email.  Without leaving the Discover Account Center, they could share to social networks or access email addresses via their webmail accounts to send personalized invites.

Further motivating participants, Influencer sends participants regular updates on the success of their sharing activity, including who has signed up for accounts, who has only clicked, and who has yet to respond.  By providing this information, the account holder is able to remind individuals to participate, or invite more friends to increase their reward potential.

Discover also benefits from being able to identify their biggest brand advocates by volume of sharing activity and the number of new accounts that activity generated. Using Influencer, Discover can drill down on the sharing activity of each referrer, including the reach achieved through multi-generation sharing, as those referred turned into brand advocates. With this data, Discover is able to gauge the influence of its customer base to drive new accounts, as well as develop programs to nurture relationships with its brand advocates.

The Results

Discover was able to successfully energize its best customers to share the referral offer with their friends, and the results have been impressive. The program been successful in generating new accounts and has become very popular, generating a 25% click rate among the targeted users who see the online offer.  The program has also succeeded in generating social media activity around their brand, as Discover has seen a 3X and 10X sharing increase on Facebook and Twitter since its launch.  Finally, the program met their budget and timing goals, moving from concept to reality within 3 months.

StrongMail has played (and continues to play) an instrumental role in the success of Castrol's social CRM program, which led to the development of its Liquid Engineering Crew loyalty website and other supporting and complementary social communities.  The details and results are detailed in the following award submission for Forrester Research's annual Groundswell Awards.  You can check out and rate our official entry under the B2C Energizing category. 

Castrol & StrongMail Entry for Forrester Groundswell Awards

Company: StrongMail
Type: B2C
Category: Energizing

Strategy

Taking care of automobiles and maximizing car performance is what Castrol knows and does exceptionally well with leading-edge technology and a careful attention to quality. 

But what Castrol really wanted to know was to how to build an ongoing conversation and ultimately loyalty with key influencers – car and racing enthusiasts. 

Our strategy was put together with the following in mind:

• Create a unique brand experience that drives participation across multiple social and user communities
• Develop unique personas with social technographics overlay
• Building a targeted email communications program that encourages sharing, engagement and purchasing

StrongMail helped Castrol not only learn more about their customers’ needs, interests and behaviors but also developed an innovative communications and community strategy that rewarded participation and drove loyalty, sales and brand advocacy.

Castrol’s “Liquid Engineering Crew” (LEC) loyalty website (www.castrolcrew.com) was developed to ignite conversations, cultivate relationships and drive commerce across the social internet. 

Execution and Use of Media

Working closely with Castrol’s research team, StrongMail surveyed existing subscribers and customers to better understand their interests, needs and behaviors including what they do online – their social media profiles

StrongMail built a robust content and communications program that included the development of several unique social communities (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr) and an innovative loyalty website that integrated these communities to create a unique experience for key influencers.  The free membership loyalty website encourages users to participate by accumulating “Castrol Credits," which can be redeemed for Castrol merchandise, racing memorabilia and tickets to racing and sporting events.  Credits are accrued through participating in forum discussions, signing up for racing alerts and LEC newsletter emails and signing up for Castrol’s Engine Warranty Program.

The aim of the integrated marketing program is to nudge customers beyond discussions about “motor oil” and toward a conversation around their true passion – cars and racing. 

With more than 2.1 million auto-related conversations taking place online each month, a twenty-five year relationship with John Force Racing and a recently announced partnership with Major League Soccer and the NFL, Castrol has quickly expanded their presence beyond traditional car and racing enthusiasts.

Through our joint efforts, the program was not only able to align to corporate objectives and consumer needs, but has also been successful in driving participation, sharing, advocacy and sales.

Results ROI

LEC users’ engagement is evaluated through quarterly reviews, focused on increased performance in targeted criteria including:

• Number of registered users and fans across social media profiles.
• Number of forum posts and comments.
• Number of monthly Castrol blog views and comments.
• Overall increase in delivery, open and click rates of monthly LEC newsletter email.

Through this program, Castrol has seen large increases in activity across all areas of the LEC, including membership, traffic engagement and participation.  As the most active user areas, discussion forums and Castrol blogs each saw an increase of 400% between Q2 and Q4 2010, with activity continuing to increase daily. Castrol sweepstakes and product promotions have seen an increase as well, with LEC banners and buttons typically contributing anywhere from between 8% to 21% of the total clicks and entries to a typical promotion.

In addition, Castrol’s social communities grew an astonishing 2,000% in just nine months and received 5 out of 5 stars for post quality from Facebook.  The Facebook rating compares engagement across similar fan pages of similar size.  Perhaps most significantly, Castrol’s email and social media effort now leads all other media in conversation and represents one of its most successful channels for driving rebate conversations and, ultimately, purchases.

Since implementing the LEC, Castrol has taken over discussions.  Our monthly reports have shown that Castrol has since gone from being on par with competitors in terms of discussion mentions, to consistently leading all competitors in discussion mentions in mainstream media, online forums, Facebook and Twitter.

In conclusion, with StrongMail’s help, Castrol took the time to understand its customers, built a strategy that supported corporate objectives and leveraged the right tools, technologies and techniques to facilitate participation and purchasing. This concentrated effort has resulted in steady increases across all of Castrol’s social profiles as well as increases in participation and activity on Castrol’s LEC website.

Creative Samples

Liquid Engineering Crew loyalty website
http://www.castrolcrew.com

Castrol USA Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/castrolusa

Castrol USA Twitter
http://twitter.com/castrolusa

Castrol USA Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/castrolusa

Castrol USA YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/castrolusa

With the success of StrongMail's online customer community, Spark, we have submitted the following case study for Forrester Research's annual Groundswell Awards.  You can check out and rate our official entry under the B2B Supporting category.  And now, on with our award submission case study...

StrongMail Forrester Groundswell Awards Entry

Company: StrongMail
Type: B2B
Category: Supporting

The Challenge

In 2010, business was booming, but StrongMail began to feel the limits of its existing support infrastructure, which wasn’t effectively scaling with its growth. 

Part of the problem was that customers had only a couple of paths to talk to StrongMail – technical support and their account manager. While customers had additional access to forums and a self-service portal to open support cases, customers preferred to pick up the phone. To most of StrongMail’s customers, a call to its customer support number seemed the easier path for just about any question they had, technical or otherwise. Often, the questions revolved around best practices and strategy, which then needed to be routed to StrongMail's account management team.

Additionally, like most companies, the size of the staff needed to provide customer service at StrongMail was driven by a formula: as you grew your customer base by “x” you needed to add "y" headcount, which has a significant impact on the cost of providing service.  This was exacerbated by StrongMail's rapid growth. In order to overcome these challenges, StrongMail began looking for an effective social business solution to power an online customer community. 

Customer Community Goals

StrongMail had five goals it wanted to achieve with its customer community:

• Cost-effectively scale its existing customer support model
• Improve customer satisfaction
• Improve quality of support information
• Improve communication with customers on an ongoing basis
• Receive feedback on desired features and product direction

After reviewing available solutions, StrongMail selected Jive Software to power its new customer community. StrongMail also opted to take a social CRM approach and integrate Spark with their support case logging process in salesforce.com, providing customers with a single, centralized resource to meet all of their support needs.

Implementing a Social CRM-Powered Customer Community

Working with Jive, StrongMail deployed "Spark" in April 2010. This external, customer-facing online community integrated directly with StrongMail's formal case management processes, enabling collaboration with other customers, promoting self-service, and giving StrongMail a platform for engaging more broadly and more frequently with its customers.

The Right Approach Fuels Rapid Customer Adoption

Three months after implementing Spark, the interactive community had already attracted 78% of StrongMail customer's base.  A year later, that number is now at an impressive 95%, with over a thousand users. Of all Spark members, 56% log-in on a regular basis to find answers to their questions and 50% report using technical support less as a result of having Spark available to find answers.

StrongMail achieved these engagement levels by investing in the right technology and implementing an effective strategy developed in conjunction with Jive experts. They also formed a cross-departmental steering committee that was led by Marketing and included representation from Support, Services, Account Management, Product Management and Sales. Working together, StrongMail was able to structure the community in a way that provided quick access to information and that encouraged collaboration with other customers and internal StrongMail experts.

The cross-functional team enabled StrongMail to successfully integrate Spark into every customer touch point – from the customer onboarding process through to monthly account management meetings, support interactions and the StrongMail product suite. The marketing team also used an effective combination of email marketing, Twitter, Facebook, an evangelist program and offline events called “Spark Ups” to foster and drive ongoing engagement with the customer community.

Qualitative Results

Spark has had a huge impact on increasing customer satisfaction and interaction with their customer base.  

• Customers are quick to answer questions from other customers.
• Educational materials are being viewed and discussed widely on a regular basis, which has a direct impact on reducing support calls.
• Internal StrongMail experts outside the official Support team are interacting with customers, which plays a role in strengthening connections with the company’s customer base.
• Product management has received valuable feedback for enhancing future product versions.

Quantitative Results

Spark has exceeded company goals with the following quantitative metrics:

• 95% adoption rate amongst StrongMail’s active support customers
• 56% of those users log into Spark regularly to find answers
• 97% of Spark users find it to be a helpful resource
• 57% of Spark users report that they first visit the community to find answers to their questions
• Only 6% of customers visit Spark to log a Support case *only*
• 50% of customers report that they have reduced their use of technical support by using Spark to find answers

In summary, StrongMail’s Spark community has been a great company success that has increased the quality of service delivered to its customers, fostered a sense of community between StrongMail customers and employees company-wide, and enabled the company to scale its high-quality support in a more cost-effective manner.

Ever since people started flocking to Facebook and Twitter, marketers have been trying to find ways to leverage social media channels to acquire new customers and convince existing ones to buy more. The charge was led by giants in the retail space like Best Buy, Dell and Starbucks, offering up exclusive coupons on Twitter and Facebook.  Soon, every major company had a Facebook page and Twitter feed, and email marketers began adding share links to their emails.

It has become common place for consumers to Like and Follow popular brands in search of offers and other information to tighten the consumer-brand relationship. And now brands are looking at ways to tap the social networks of their biggest fans to acquire new customers.  This has played out most obviously in the daily deal sector, with companies like Groupon, LivingSocial and HauteLook offering to reward their members for successful attempts at converting friends in their social networks into fellow customers. As a result, the member base for these companies has grown like wildfire.  However, convincing a friend to join a company that can get them 70% off their favorite brand doesn't seem like such a difficult proposition.  The real question is how this strategy plays out with more traditional companies without a sexy business model or the promise of deep discounts.

When asked to describe their favorite brands, it's not very often that consumers offer up their bank, credit card company or broker – and even less so after the financial bailout.  So, how successful could an established financial institution be at leveraging its customers to acquire new customers? The answer, it turns out, is "very."  Last month, Discover Card launched a social-media powered referral marketing campaign that offered card holders $50 for each friend that they could entice to become a card member via a reciprocal $50 incentive.  The targeted online ad is introduced to cardholders when they are redeeming their points.  The friend can deliver the offer via email, as well as their Twitter and Facebook pages.  Discover seems to have gotten Refer-A-Friend right.  They are introducing the offer within the positive context of getting value from using the credit card, and they are allowing the customer a choice in sharing methods.

In case you're thinking that one successful example doesn't validate the power of referral marketing for financial services (and other vertical markets in general), how about two case studies?  Zecco Trading, a popular online investing site, also sought to motivate its members to recruit new ones. They were smart and realized that their most passionate and loyal customers were likely hanging out in the customer community that they set up for members to ask questions and exchange information with each.  After testing a number of incentives, they standardized their offer on $75 cash back for every friend who opened and funded a new Zecco Trading account.  As a result, they saw a 14% increase in new account acquisition. Even better, 9% of those who reviewed the campaign became influencers, resulting in 1 new member for every 2.2 referrers.

The point is that if Financial Services firms can be successful with word-of-mouth customer acquisition, then nearly any company with a subset up of passionate customers can take advantage of this powerful tactic. The trick is to target the right audience and offer the right incentive.  When done right, customers will respond.  And while social media channels like Twitter and Facebook are important for getting the word out to your customers – and for empowering them to share – email also plays a critical role.

Email should not be overlooked when executing a word-of-mouth referral marketing campaign.  While announcing your new referral program on banners or a purchase or form confirmation page is a good way to get the attention of an engaged user, welcome emails can also be an effective way to target new customers and clearly explain the benefits of your program. It should also be noted that when people do reach out to their friends, they choose to share the offer via email 80% of the time. 

Social is not killing email. They are not natural foes, but rather complimentary channels with their own strengths.  Email allows marketers to more specifically target loyal customers at the right time, including those not currently active on social networks.  Giving targeted recipients the opportunity to share via email also allows them to be more targeted, rather than extending a referral marketing offer to every one of their friends on Facebook.  Social media has made us all more connected, and with the right incentive, you can motivate your brand advocates to tap their social networks to acquire new customers in a way that makes both parties look good – regardless of what business you're in.