AddShoppers & Lighting New York Collaborate on Successful Social Referral Contest
by Jon West on April 17, 2013 3:18 pm
Recently, Lighting New York ran a March Madness contest to build their email list and increase social sharing. They turned to AddShoppers to power their contest and allow people to enter by sharing their website.
How did AddShoppers help you run your contest?
We had two goals when we started this contest: to add emails our customer email list and to increase product sharing/promote our new product sharing capabilities. We needed a way to track unique product shares and to link those influencers that shared to the contest.
We came to AddShoppers for advice and they ended up providing us with an end-to-end solution. They gave us the code for a custom “sign-in” module and code which would allow us to adjust our display as users signed in and out of the competition. This allowed us to prevent users from sharing without already being tracked via Twitter or Facebook.
AddShoppers also provided us with a unique API call which allowed us to pull all shares and influencers within a time frame in one call. They made a lot of small adjustments to their systems so that this project would be possible such as extending out API call limit.
They also educated us on services, such as Social Rewards, that we weren’t entirely sure how to use. All-in-all the service was far beyond what you would expect from a company for only $99/month! We were made raving fans through this experience.
What were your results from this contest?
The contest was a success. We have not attempted to create social goals before so we were unsure what numbers we were looking for. We received zero complaints from our customers and the contest ran smoothly without any technical glitches on the front end.
To advertise our contest, we placed ad banners throughout our site: in the header and on the brand pages related to the day of the contest. We sent out a daily email to our current email list. We posted on Facebook once a day (which automatically updated Twitter). We also created a Pin Board on Pinterest which added a new pin each day for the brand advertised.
The Results:
The contest yielded a 167% growth in social sharing on our web site. In that share growth we saw a 213% growth in clicks and about a 214% growth in influencers. In the time of the contest we also saw our orders increase 100%. We consider this a victory and now have numbers to compare to and set goals against in our next contest.
Which social networks performed best?
We received entries via 9 different social networks. Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest were the 3 most popular networks at 34%, 32%, and 18% of all entries, respectively.
We were surprised to see Twitter at the top because before this project we had not received a single Twitter share. The rest of the outcome fell in line with our usual trends: Facebook, Pinterest, and Email seem to be out strongest social platforms.
What was the increase in traffic as a result?
Our social traffic exploded as you could see above, but our overall site traffic was actually slightly down in comparison to the prior 10 days. This could have been a result of the holiday, but at either rate we were satisfied because if we received about the same amount of traffic with over double the social interaction then we received a more qualified traffic.
How are you planning on using AddShoppers in the future? Any other innovative plans using our platform?
We have attempted multiple contests over the last two years, all of which mainly involved entering an email address. We were very pleased with the result of adding AddShoppers into the mix and fully intend on using them in our next contest.
We would like to work more with the AddShoppers team to come up with cleaner/simpler techniques to get users into the “share mode”. We have many ideas that we believe if implemented into the AddShoppers environment will improve the customer experience. All of these ideas are posted in the AddShoppers eCommerce forum.
We also want to implement more of AddShoppers tools into our site as our social initiatives improve. The Discovery Wall and Floating Share Buttons are both great tools to get the customer in the mood to share. We also are looking into the Purchase Sharing plug-in that goes on the Thank You page. We are confident in AddShoppers’ product and are looking forward to a long and rewarding relationship.
How 3 Hyper-growth Retailers Mastered Social Commerce
by Jon West on September 13, 2012 3:03 pm
Understand the funnel and master social commerce.
(Credit: http://getsocialbrevard.org)
Awareness -> Engagement -> Conversion -> Loyalty & Advocacy
Let’s look at how 3 popular online retailers leveraged social media to generate explosive growth over the past few years, and what you can learn from their success. All of these retailers have mastered social commerce and they have record-setting sales and user base growth (Fab.com fastest ever to 1 million members). We’ll exclude conversion data because there are millions of articles about that.
* Full Disclosure – the retailers mentioned aren’t currently using the AddShoppers platform but we admire what they’ve accomplished. Our goal is to create a social tool that removes huge barriers to entry so any retailer can match their success. *
Fab.com – Started 2011 – $100M+ 2012. Fastest growing eCommerce site ever.
- Basic idea: Curate great products that appeal to design oriented customers.
- Awareness: Integrate with social networks to make interactions frictionless.
- Engagement: Create an elegant user experience to match the products being sold.
- Loyalty & Advocacy: $10 sharing rewards for any friends who purchase & well timed e-mail blasts.
- Measure / Rinse / Repeat
Rue La La – Started 2008 – $100M+ 2012
- Basic idea: Source high-end brands at “low” prices that require exclusive “access” to purchase.
- Awareness: Grant priority “access” for customers who share.
- Engagement: Engage customers through e-mail.
- Loyalty & Advocacy: Targeted e-mail campaigns & social media messages.
- Measure / Rinse / Repeat
Threadless – Started 2000 – $50M+ 2012
- Basic idea: Crowdsourced designs printed on t-shirts.
- Awareness: Threadless Street Team – share shirts you like and get store credit.
- Engagement: Tell a story about each design, thus making each design unique.
- Loyalty & Advocacy: Build community around designers and “voters” who decide what shirts they’ll buy.
- Measure / Rinse / Repeat
So what do these companies have in common? Great products, solid pricing, and reasons (read: rewards) to spread the word.
Now, let’s take a look at the next big social commerce success story:
You!
- Basic idea: What’s your value proposition?
- Awareness: How are your customers spreading the word about your business? We can answer this for you.
- Engagement: How are you communicating with your target audience?
- Loyalty & Advocacy: Help your customers share your products and brand with friends by making it frictionless and rewarding. We can help you identify your top influencers and make the most out of your efforts.
- Measure / Rinse / Repeat
Pinterest ROI: How to Measure the Value of Pins
by Jon West on July 17, 2012 9:39 am
What’s the value of a Pin? What really happens when customers click that logo?
Pinterest’s rapid rise to become the 3rd most popular social network in the U.S (behind only Facebook and Twitter) has this question on the minds of everyone in the eCommerce industry. With anecdotal reports claiming that Pins drive traffic and sales from high-value demographics, the Pin needs some hard data to prove its effectiveness.
If you install AddShoppers on your eCommerce site and use our Pinterest button, we’ll make it easy for you to find out exactly what Pins are worth to your store.
With our free reports you can easily see:
- your most pinned products
- which pins are driving sales
- identify influencers
- more social insights
Here’s how to start tracking the value of your Pins:
- If you don’t have your free AddShoppers account yet, sign up now.
- Install our Social Analytics and ROI Tracking apps on your site.
- Grab an AddShoppers Pinterest button (try it right here:
- That’s it! Now you’ll be able to see the value of Pinterest per product.
How much revenue are you getting per Pin?
What percentage of your sales are driven by Pinterest?
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is an online pinboard that lets you share and organize all the interesting things you find on the web. People use pinboards for everything from planning their weddings to decorating their homes with crafts, and organizing their favorite recipes.
Why give away margin to coupon affiliates?
by Jon West on January 25, 2012 10:59 pm
You hate when it happens but this scenario is all too familiar:
A customer is ready to check out, spies the enticing “enter coupon code” box, then scurries off to Google only to return through an affiliate website with coupon in tow. It’s a double-whammy. You’re giving up margin for a coupon that wasn’t earned and to the affiliate who is basically a middle man not offering much value. The equation just doesn’t make sense.
What does make sense is rewarding customers with a coupon for a social action — a share, a tweet, or a Like, etc.. These actions build your brand, drive new traffic, and ultimately sales. You also cut out the pointless affiliate pass-throughs.
We’ve made it simple to add promotions per sharing source (maybe tweets are worth more than emails for you, or a Like even).
After you’ve added a promotion, you can toggle on/off the promo callout (currently seeking patent protection) that’s displayed next to the sharing button. This preempts customers who see the button to share for a coupon rather than leave on your cart page to search for one. We’d suggest leaving the promo callout on as it really does entice customers to click through.
We think you’ll agree that rewarding customers for referals makes more sense than rewarding coupon aggregators for nothing.
Why should your shop use Product Schema?
by Jon West on January 25, 2012 10:59 pm
Standards are good. In eCommerce land there’s a standard that I see a ton of shops not using. It’s called Product Schema. All you do is add simple tags to different elements on your product pages like the Title, Description, Price, and Reviews. This lets websites that support Product Schema know what’s what.
OK, so let’s say you spent 10 minutes today to integrate this. What would it do for you? How about Rich Snippets in Google Search Results:
Which do you think a customer is more likely to click on? We’re big believers in more free traffic. Every little bit helps in online retail.
AddShoppers uses it to pull the right product data for our widgets:
If Product Schema isn’t present, we default to the page title for the product name and cry a little inside.
Here are the Product Schema tags you should be using:
- name
- description
- image
- productID
- price
- stock status
- reviews
- availability
- brand
Moral of the blog post? Get your developers to spend a few minutes updating your product pages today. You can test everything with Google’s Rich Snippets Tool.
