Going Social Webinar: Learn How To Create A Social Shopping Strategy That Boosts Sales & Connects With Your Customers

What is Strands Recommender? We are a personalized product recommendation company that helps over 65 retailers ranging in size from $1M a year to $150M+ display personalized and relevant products to new and returning customers throughout their shopping experience and in emails.

Example of Recommended Products in Product Detail Page

We Help Your Online Store by: Learning Each Customers Unique Behaviors Merchandising Your Site Based On Behavior Personalizing Your Email Marketing Helping Customers Find What They Want Helping Customers Discover New Products

Which Results In: Reduced Cart Abandonment Increased Conversions Increased Engagement Increased Sales Repeat Customers

Featured Moderator:

Trevor Legwinski

Sr. Director of Marketing

Quick Webinar Warm-Up:

- The webinar is fully hosted in your browser no need to dial in - You can view the webinar replay live at the URL below: - http://www.instantpresenter.com/strandsrecs/EE54D98585 - Webinar should last about 45 minutes

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Online Video Has Helped:

148M people discover and laugh to Charlie Bit a Finger…

and Lady GAGA share her Bad Romance to over 200M video viewers on YouTube…

Blogs, Facebook and Twitter Have Helped:

Threadless crowd source t-shirts and make millions…

and people save over $260M and counting by sharing coupons on Groupon…

Social Recommendations and Ratings & Reviews Have Helped:

Shoppers discover millions of products through their friends and other shoppers…

and ignite billions of conversations and reviews across retailers sites…

Social Is Here We’re here to help you piece together your Social Commerce Strategy

Featured Presenters:

Sucharita Mulpuru

Vice President, Principal Analyst

Suleika Bloom

Director of Social Media

A Social Strategy That Drives Sales Sucharita Mulpuru Principal Analyst Forrester Research May 19, 2010

A Social Strategy That Drives Sales Sucharita Mulpuru Principal Analyst Forrester Research

May 19, 2010

11 Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

There is no silver bullet in social commerce


vs. Q1 2007

13%

na

19%

15%

19%

33%

52%

While more people are more social than ever…


Hopes are high

~120MM uniques per month

2x UK’s population!

Hmmm…0.1% of that x 1% conversion for an

average ticket of…


Low costs are also tempting

Small Medium Large

Average budget $0.6MM $2.4MM $10.7MM

Paid search 37% 38% 39%

Email (house and prospecGng) 17% 14% 11%

Affiliate markeGng 11% 13% 13%

Comparison shopping engines and marketplaces

10% 10% 7%

SEO/natural search 8% 5% 3%

Behavioral targeGng/remarkeGng 3% 6% 7%

TradiGonal portal deals 1% 2% 7%

Social (blogs, social networks) 5% 2% 1%

Other 8% 10% 12% Allo

catio

n of

tota

l bud

get


The universe of social commerce options are confusing


Retailers want to do everything “Please indicate which social marketing strategies you have already implemented.” “Please indicate which social marketing strategies you plan to implement or enhance in 2010 or later.”


A framework to think about


The 8 “top ranked” social tactics 1. Ratings and reviews 2. Microblogs 3. Social recommendations 4. Company blogs 5. Customer generated outfitting 6. Product sharing on social network sites 7. Social shopping aggregator sites 8. Open APIs


1. Ratings and reviews

• Already used by most retailers

• Opportunity to reduce content creation costs

• Benefits to product development, returns and sell-through


Seven Key Elements Of Customer Reviews


2. Microblogs • Inexpensive to launch • Opportunity to quickly dispose of excess inventory • Customer service benefits


This also puts a face to a brand


3. Social recommendations • Opportunity to

leverage “wisdom of the crowds”

• Exposes customers to content deeper in the site

• Increases time on site and upsell opportunity


4. Company blogs • Provides the

biggest opportunity with SEO

• Not a huge traffic or sales driver but relatively low cost


5. Customer generated outfitting Coutourious.com

• Assists in merchandising support and cross-sells

• Engages shoppers in tactile purchases


6. Product sharing on social network sites

• Much more effective than company social network pages

• Opportunities to use your customers to evangelize your brand

• Needs to be relevant sharing (e.g. local events, sales vs. item level communication)

10%+ of traffic and revenue comes from social network sources, mainly Facebook

and Twitter


7. Social shopping aggregator sites • Opportunity to drive

incremental traffic • Often more engaged

and relevant shoppers than traditional CSEs

• Conversion is moderate because shoppers are usually earlier in the purchase funnel


8. Open APIs • Opportunity to crowdsource technology • Great for “shovel ready projects”


Thinking about next steps: Forrester’s POST methodology

P O S T

People Review the Mobile Technographics® Profile of your target audience.

Objectives Decide on your goals.

Strategy Determine your approach to meet your objectives.

Technology Choose the technologies that will enable you to implement your strategy.


Key takeaways

• Social ≠ explosive revenues • Social commerce is not passive; it requires resources • The most effective social tactics for retailers usually

engage your own shoppers on your site • Only a few lucky sites are able to rely on Facebook

and Twitter to drive traffic and sales • The biggest benefit of social is listening; don’t expect

huge, easily quantifiable ROI


Forrester’s Research Panel

• Gain insight, get data, and learn best practices from marketing professionals. Join our panel today: www.forrester.com/Panel

• Each quarter, Forrester surveys 1,500 marketing and strategy professionals about: » Interactive marketing » Direct marketing » Customer experience » eBusiness and channel

strategy » Marketing leadership » Consumer product strategy » Consumer market research


Thank you

Sucharita Mulpuru [email protected] www.forrester.com

THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING

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Top 10 Free Social Commerce Measurement Tools: Brand Visibility: 1.) HowSociable: www.howsocialble.com

Blog Search Tools: 2.) Technorati: www.technorati.com

Buzz Tracking: 3.) Google Trends: http://google.com/trends

Twitter Search Tools: 4.) TweetMeme: http://tweetmeme.com/

Social Bookmarking: 5.) StumbleUpon: www.stumbleupon.com

URL Cruncher: 6.) Bit.ly: http://bit.ly/

Inbound Marketing: 7.) Grader: www.grader.com

Online Video Search: 8.) Blinkx: www.blinkx.com

Forum Tracking: 9.) Forumreader: www.forumreader.com

Social Media Footprint: 10.) Social Mention: www.socialmention.com

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Going Social Webinar: Learn How To Create A Social Shopping Strategy That Boosts Sales & Connects With Your Customers