Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

I just returned from the FTMA (Frequent Travel Marketing Association) and Freddie Awards ceremony in Ft. Lauderdale FL. Congratulations to all the winners this year!

It’s a great conference for anyone involved in loyalty marketing. I was asked down by Randy Petersen of the Freddie Awards and Webflyer.com to speak about Social Media and more specifically how text analytics can be leveraged to gain consumer insights from more traditional methods such as guest satisfaction surveys as well as from social and consumer generated media.

A few of my takeaways from the conference in relation to web insights and social media included:

Acxiom subject matter expert, Kyle Morehouse stating that “Data is the New Black”, and a 360 degree view is needed for optimization. So while silos may be good for grain, they’re bad for channels. The nerds of marketing are now cool!

Kyle pointed out how simple technology like IP lookup could be used to segment website visitors using technographic and geographic information, something I’ve often wondered about using more. Apparently, in their research, easily identifiable variables like browser settings may actually be very good predictors of segment membership. So website conversions can be optimized using this data.

In regard to social media Shashank Nigam, of Simplifying, argued that ROE (Return On Engagement) is a more reasonable measure of success than ROI. He indicated that at anytime, a customer can become your defacto CMO by driving thousands of eyeballs to a picture/video depicting your brand when utilizing SNS like Twitter or Facebook via a mobile device. He gave an example of a video “Brawl from the Tarmac” which I wasn’t able to locate, but I’ve posted one of several customer shot flight videos from YouTube at the bottom of this post.

Meanwhile Cassandra Jeyaram, Social Marketing Manager of IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) advocated a much more organized approach to building a social media programs, and had embraced Forrester’s POST Method:

People: Assess your customers’ social activities (which SNS do they use)

Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish

Strategy: Plan for how relationships with customers will change

Technology: Decide which social technologies to use

Cassandra gave examples of how IHG carefully measures ROI on social media. For instance, in just one early test IHG generated $250K from one text message sent via an SNS!

I think it’s great to see companies like IHG starting to embrace social media. However, I would argue that the benefits of embracing social media as quickly as possible as a complimentary component of your marketing greatly outweighs any risks.

It’s better to learn as you go as opposed to spending too much time planning the perfect SNS Strategy. I realize this sounds strange coming from a Anderson Analytics, a company that conducts in-depth studies on SNS/WOM. But my beliefs in this area are based on careful observation of several client attempts to leverage Social media and create communities, as well as from our own marketing efforts.

I plan to post more on this in the near future.

Interesting WordCloud showing top domains by loyalty program members/frequent travelers: