Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Today, I’m talking to Cassandra Jeyaram, PhD, who is Social Marketing Manager, Global Consumer Marketing at IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group). Cassandra and I both spoke on Social Media Marketing at the FTMA (Frequent Travel Marketing Association) held in conjunction with the Freddie Awards two weeks ago.  I think what she is doing is an excellent example of how corporate America can engage customers on social media for the sake of positive branding and also realize a significant ROI.

In her talk at the FTMA, Cassandra discussed the importance of understanding what social media your customers are using and developing a strategic plan on how to engage them.

Tom:  Social Media Manager is a position I think a lot of people would die for. I don’t know of many companies having created this title yet, though I suspect many soon will. Can you tell me a little about how the position was created and how you ended up getting there?

Cassandra: The position was created to engage and build relationships with our customers…it has been evolving since its inception . We’re committed to building long term relationships with our customers through social marketing technologies.

Tom: Does the position roll up into loyalty marketing?

Cassandra: It sits on our Multibrand and Relationship Marketing Team - Loyalty Marketing. Which is different, because we’ve had conversations with Forrester and most [SNS positions] are either in PR or purely a marketing function.

Tom: That’s great, I think PR so often gets it wrong. Usually just monitoring blog buzz in hopes of getting the brand mentioned a few more times somewhere…  Can you tell me a little how you set up the position/department?

Cassandra: My first three months I spent doing a lot of research and understanding what the corporate objectives were, what key stake holder objectives were, who our customer targets were, and their use of social marketing technologies. Based on a lot of research, I ultimately created a strategy that maps back up to our objectives. For us, at the end of the day, the biggest objective is “putting heads into beds”, i.e. how do we make money… then the methodology… what is the strategy we want to take and what are the tactics to get there. There are things I’d love to do but it just doesn’t make sense for us at this point based on our corporate objectives.

You need to be smart about what you are doing. People always get excited about social marketing which is great but the challenge is how do you keep focused because as you know, if you do 500 things you’re not going to do them well. You need to pick a few that you can do well.

Tom:  What struck me about your talk at the FTMA was that you are engaging in social media not so much because of positive PR experiment but real ROI. Can you tell me a little more about this? Can you give me some examples on how companies can actually make money by engaging in SNS? I believe you said you made a quarter of a million dollars in just a social media marketing test!

Cassandra: You’re right - Yes, in six weeks, a small test… we gave a unique code in one of our private online communities. We based the offer on something we knew would be of value to them. There was not only the value of the currency of points but there was also a social currency, and again it was based on the relationship we have with them and the research we have been doing with them and that’s one of the reasons why we think it was so successful.

What we’re doing is more than a PR or Marketing experiment. We’ve already demonstrated that we can make money through social marketing. The secret to making money in social marketing is to understand your objectives and understand your customers (who they are, what social marketing technologies they use, what’s important to them, etc.) and make sure they align.

Tom: So these are closed social communities (discussion boards etc.) you are talking about now?

Cassandra: We have three private online communities. All of our communities represent our customer mindsets. So we ask them questions like: what products or features would you like to see at certain brands, in the loyalty program, in hotel technology, etc. And so we get feedback that is incorporated back into our business strategies… so we’ve had conversations with them for about a year and a half. And that’s how we came up with the offer.  We also made sure that it was the best offer out in the market and it was something that was important to them.

Tom: So was the community built partly for market research initially?

Cassandra: It was partly… to me it’s the first step in social marketing strategy. Because a private online community is a safe, very safe place, to test out your social marketing ideas with your customers. You can learn what works for them, what are they are interested in, etc.

For example, we know based on our research that most of our customers don’t want Twitter. They’d rather get an email from us, so Twitter is not something that we necessarily want to focus on right now. Private online communities are our secret weapon in social marketing because it’s a safe place where you can get your executives comfortable with what you’re doing. You can not only test out your ideas but also get a lot of learnings by engaging with these customers in a safe environment.  For example, you learn how to deal with customer service questions or how to really create a meaningful dialogue and build relationships. Then you can extrapolate this to your other social marketing initiatives.

So if you think of concentric circles, the private communities are the core, and everything you do outside that from a social marketing perspective can come out of that.

Tom: So you’re crossing the line between marketing and market research here a bit, of course I believe that’s fine, and that’s what we need to do to leverage social media, create new approaches/methodologies… But I know some traditional market researchers have problems grasping this… selling to the “sample”.

Cassandra:  Right, well I think it’s all in the perspective, we protect the integrity of the communities by not allowing purely  marketing messages in there. So occasionally there will be a special offer like our viral marketing campaign but it was positioned as a thank you… if there is a specific marketing offer, I won’t put it in the community because it’s really designed to help get customer insights. However, you still can tap into it from a social marketing perspective.

[Giving sneak peaks of special offers and asking for feedback is one way to generate awareness or gauge the level of interest in a promotion from a marketing perspective.]

Tom: So have you expanded taking insights from these private communities and putting them to use in Facebook, MySpace, etc?

Cassandra: We’re actually expanding our private communities with a  public online community. For example, members from our private communities named and created the public online community Priority Club Connect [for IHG's 42 million Priority Club Rewards members]. Their pictures are on the site and they decided on the kind of content they wanted on there and they named the community. It’s extremely customer centric.

Tom:  How is that growing?

Cassandra: It’s good, we haven’t really promoted it that much as we’re still testing the functionality. When we sent out email invitations to a small group, we  had about 30% registration rate.  Not just visitors but actual registration. We have such a great database that we can tap into, 44 million customers. So I think setting up specific Twitter accounts for specific promotions is a mistake. Twitter was designed to engage and build  relationships. We already have existing channels that we can leverage to build and promote our public online community.

Tom:  What is your advice for companies wondering about whether or not to get involved in SNS marketing?

Cassandra: At minimum, it’s critical for companies to develop a social marketing strategy. We used Forrester’s POST methodology to develop our strategy. Some companies may find that social marketing is not a good fit for them based on their objectives - but there’s still a need to go through this exercise.

Tom:  Are there any SNS Marketing DON’TS companies should watch out for?

Cassandra: Be transparent and make a commitment. One of the biggest mistakes I see companies making is that they’ll set up a Facebook page or community and then ignore it. Social marketing tools are designed to build and foster relationships. They need nurturing and attention. Failure to connect and engage in a transparent way can lead to extremely disappointing results - not to mention wasted resources.

Another mistake I see is people hiring agencies to be their voice and it doesn’t sound authentic, like your voice, and customers will expose you.

For instance, agencies suggesting that you get your employees to try to “Digg” your media coverage - that flies in the face of transparency and the very essence of social marketing! There are also agencies out there  that are trying to position themselves as social media experts when they really don’t have much experience in the social marketing space. They essentially want to use you as the guinea pig.

Tom: I think that’s a great point! Have you leveraged Text Analytics at all to understand social media?

Cassandra: We have done some via our vendors, high level monitoring, then some qualitative analysis, but in terms of what your company is doing [in-depth natural language processing] we haven’t done a lot of that yet.

Tom:   How do you view the relative marketing opportunities on the various big SNS sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace?

Cassandra: Depending on a company’s objectives, there could be marketing opportunities on various big social network sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Companies looking to engage in this space must make a resource commitment to foster the relationships on these sites. Find out where your customers are.

You have to look at SNS as a long term commitment. You can’t expect to post something and have it become an overnight sensation.

Tom: Are you familiar with what happened with KFC this past week? Do you view that as a success?

Cassandra: I think it’s a huge success! You always have to prepare. It’s no different than other types of campaigns, contingency plans, crisis communication, etc.  I don’t think some companies understand the power of social media marketing yet. But I think for KFC it was a huge kill. Kudos to them! Fantastic! Great!  If you can afford to give away that much product free - that’s great.

Tom: That will be interesting to see. But yes, I think it must still be seen as a huge success.

Cassandra:  Yes, definitely. Trial of their new product and unbelievable media exposure. If awareness was what they were going for, they definitely achieved their objective.

Tom:  So getting back to your views on how to approach social media, it sounds like you are in favor of testing out ideas in smaller more controlled “walled garden” type of communities first?

Cassandra:  I think it depends on what your objectives are. I think that private online communities are a safe way to test things out. And secondly, being in the corporate environment, knowing how hesitant many organizations are to get into this very public space, I think private online communities are a safe way to go, and they can help you be strategic in not only your social marketing plans but other business decisions as well. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go into Facebook and MySpace, you should, as long as it aligns with your objectives and you have corporate support to go into that very public space.

Tom:  Are there any companies that you take inspiration from?

Cassandra:  I think initially Victoria’s secret did a very good job on Facebook with their Pink campaign.

Tom:  Are there any that are an example of what you don’t want to do?

Cassandra:  The list is endless… Wal-Mart, when it  hired an agency to travel all across the country in an RV, parked it in the parking lots and blogged about how great Wal-Mart is. It flies in the face…they got exposed and had a very negative backlash.

We did a lot of research before we launched ours, what works and what doesn’t.  I think Flyertalk.com is a great forum for a vibrant robust discussion. Very customer focused, you don’t have that corporate mouthpiece…

Tom: I agree, Flyertalk.com is a community which we have pointed our clients to as an example of what a community should look like… There’s a real desire among many customers for a sense of community

Cassandra: Absolutely, you have to fill a niche and give  them something they can’t get somewhere else.

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