HOW TWO MAJOR RETAILS ENGAGED THOUSANDS...

1The Retail Marketer’s Guide to Employee Advocacy

The Retail Marketer’s Guide to Employee Advocacy:

HOW TWO MAJOR RETAILS ENGAGED THOUSANDS

OF EMPLOYEES


When Target Corp. announced its partnership with

TOMS Shoes, the retailer didn’t turn to typical news

outlets or corporate social media accounts to share

the exciting scoop. The company enabled a much

more influential group to spread the word:

Target rolled out its Employee Advocacy platform, #TargetScoop, at the company’s corporate pep rally in September

2014. The event, which is usually kept under wraps, generated a huge amount of content because 20,000 corporate

employees were given first access to the TOMS news and were empowered to share it on their social networks.

ITS OWN EMPLOYEES.

Why did Target hand the mic over

to its team members?

According to SocialChorus research,

135 employee advocates are more

powerful than 1,000,000 social media

fans of corporate accounts.


Employee Engagement Drives Employee Advocacy

This power stems from the fact that employees are real

people whom existing and potential customers trust.

In fact, 77 percent of consumers are more likely to buy a product if they learn about it from someone they

trust, according to Nielsen. Why is this? Because employees who are engaged with their brand and passionate

about it will spread that enthusiasm when they share about it online.

At Target, employee advocates share a variety of content with their networks, from corporate news like the

TOMS announcement to deals and promotions. At Gap Inc., style-savvy employees post and tweet exclusive

shots from seasonal photo shoots to their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram followers.

New research from Yale shows the correlation between engaged employees and higher sales. The results

boil down to reach and retention. Employees have 10 times more followers than corporate accounts, and

90 percent of their audience is new to the brand. That extends the brand’s reach to a much wider — and

untapped — audience.

The key to employee advocacy

is marketing internally to employees by engaging them with

brand and industry content first.

But the benefits of socially engaged employees don’t stop there. Socially

engaged companies are 58 percent more likely to engage top talent,

and engaged employees are 20 percent more likely to stay at a company,

according to a study from Altimeter Group. These loyal employees help

build brand reputation and engage even more top talent.


For retailers, an employee advocacy program is a natural way to share company and product news to a fresh audi-

ence that was (until now) tough to reach organically. Team members are already sharing content about their em-

ployer brands without encouragement, so it’s an intuitive step for retailers to give these team members the tools to

spread brand-related and industry news in a thoughtful and safe way.

How Two Major Retailers Engaged Thousands of Employees

This e-book explores how two major retailers, Target

and Gap, successfully launched employee advocacy

programs to engage thousands of employees.

Their lessons are meaningful for any company considering an

employee advocacy platform.


As the second largest general merchandiser in the U.S., Target naturally

makes headlines and generates social media chatter.

WE WERE LOOKING FOR A WAY TO GIVE EMPLOYEES ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT WAS HAPPENING AT TARGET AND A WAY TO SHARE THAT NEWS EXTERNALLY IN A WAY THAT THEY KNEW WAS SAFE

“

says Nancy Brandt, senior communications specialist at Target.

How Target Scaled Employee Advocacy to Thousands

As the second largest general merchandiser in the U.S., Target naturally

makes headlines and generates social media chatter.

But for its thousands of employees, what information they could share about the company in their networks

remained ambiguous until recently. The retail brand also wanted to provide a one-stop shop where employees

could access brand and industry content.

In 2014, Target launched an employee advocacy program, #TargetScoop, to make company content easily con-

sumable and shareable.

Start with a Beta Test: Target rolled out a beta version to 300 hand-picked team members from different

departments at headquarters. During the four-week test program, these early users had valuable feedback for

Brandt and her team. “Initially we thought we’d only share Target-generated content: Facebook pages, content

from our online magazine, etc. We learned that team members thought it wasn’t authentic if we were exclud-

ing third-party content — news media stories — about Target,” Brandt says, adding that now close to half of

#TargetScoop content is external news about the company.

Garner Internal Support: For any company wide program to be sustainable, it needs internal champions.

Target quickly gathered support from its early adopters. Brandt’s team told pilot program participants that their

feedback would shape the future of #TargetScoop — a move that got tremendous buy-in and empowered

1

2

Brandt’s team learned five valuable lessons about how to scale #TargetScoop:


4

3

participants that their feedback would shape the future of #TargetScoop — a move that got tremendous buy-

in and empowered these individuals to become program advocates to their colleagues. “It was exciting to see

them preaching the gospel about #TargetScoop to the rest of the company,” she says.

Get Executives on Board: Target rolled out a beta version to 300 hand-picked team members from different

departments at headquarters. During the four-week test program, these early users had valuable feedback for

Brandt and her team. “Initially we thought we’d only share Target-generated content: Facebook pages, content

from our online magazine, etc. We learned that team members thought it wasn’t authentic if we were excluding

third-party content — news media stories — about Target,” Brandt says, adding that now close to half of

#TargetScoop content is external news about the company.

Have a Content Strategy: Some employees might love to share corporate news with their networks, while

others prefer to show friends relevant deals and promotions. Motivation for sharing depends on the person

and the type of content, Brandt says, adding how important it is to think about the different interests of the

#TargetScoop audience when she’s loading content into the system.

5 Recognize Your Employee Advocates: Recognition is a vital part of an employee advocacy program. In

addition to providing a leaderboard that shows top sharers, Target recognizes top advocates in weekly email

updates. Advocates are rewarded with exclusive access to company news and gifts like Starbucks gift cards and

#TargetScoop t-shirts. Brandt says she’s planning more “thank-yous” and rewards for future sharers.

I WANT TO MAKE SURE THE CONTENT IS THERE, that our team members want

to share and that it feels natural to them,” she says. “That means having a wide

variety of content — not just about the company or about special deals that are

happening at Target.

“


Target Employee Advocacy Key Stats

6,000 EMPLOYEES joined in the first 6 months

AT THE ANNUALCOMPANY CONFERENCE: 2,000 employee shares on social

14,000 audience engagements

1 million social impressions


IF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS ABOUT TRUST AND EMPOWERMENT, WHAT BETTER WAY TO DEMONSTRATE THAT YOU TRUST YOUR EMPLOYEES THAN TO ACTUALLY ENCOURAGE THEM TO SPEAK ON BEHALF OF YOUR COMPANY?

“

asks Sonia Fiorenza, former senior director of digital communications at Gap Inc.

Companies now have the ability and the tools to hand over the megaphone to

employees, but they must be thoughtful in how they engage their workforce.

When Fiorenza helped Gap launch its employee advocacy program, #WeAreGapInc, she

considered four key questions that are relevant to any brand investing in employee advocacy:

What do you want to accomplish? “Being clear about what your strategy is will help you explain to executives

what you’re trying to do with the program,” Fiorenza says. “It will also inform your training.”

Goals for employee advocacy vary widely: some companies want to increase social selling, while others are

looking to boost employee engagement or improve recruiting efforts. Gap wanted employees to help build

brand reputation, Fiorenza says.

What data do you have? Executives want to see any data related to ROI before they support a program. Employee

advocacy is no exception. Fiorenza and her team made the case for a program with several key data points. For

example, the Edelman Trust Barometer reports that regular employees are more credible than a CEO for informa-

tion about a company.

Fiorenza also cites a study from KRC Research that shows that globally, half of employees already post mes-

sages, pictures and photos about their company without any encouragement from their employer. She and her

team asked executives: “If [employees] are doing it anyway, why not help them out and harness their power?”

1

2

4 Questions Gap Answered to Gain Internal Buy-In and Launch Its Program


Who are your key stakeholders? Before Gap officially launched its program, it tested a pilot version among

socially savvy employees whom the company identified with help from its learning and development team.

Fiorenza says it’s important to include people from many different departments. “We made sure that we in-

cluded people at all levels throughout the company — administrative assistants, merchants, store managers,

executives — at multiple locations around the world and multiple brands, because we really wanted to show

that this concept could work company-wide,” she says.

How will you grow the program? When you’re considering whom to include in an Employee Advocacy program,

think beyond the usual suspects in marketing and communications. “Employees and functions that are not nor-

mally on the frontlines are thrilled that they can do something to directly help the company,” Fiorenza says.

She adds that employee training was critical to adoption and growth. “It shows that you’re investing in your em-

ployees’ development and skills and it’s going to increase employee engagement as much as the program itself is

going to help the company.” Gap shifted from in-person to digital training sessions to scale its program, Fiorenza adds.

3

4


Never Stop Learning

Both Target and Gap know that launching an employee advocacy

program is just the beginning.

Once program managers have buy-in from leadership, they must continue to prove results and keep em-

ployees engaged. Like any successful marketing effort, employee advocacy must be continually nurtured and

updated. Social media channels are always changing — and for good reason — so are the types of content that

people want to read and to share.

At the end of the day, employee advocacy programs

are about a retailer’s most valuable asset:ITS EMPLOYEES.

Listen to what your employees think about your program and the content that they find most interesting

and worth spending their time to consume and share. While employee advocacy helps retailers gain oppor-

tunities from its employees’ reach, programs are also a way to show these employees that the brand cares.

It wants team members to be in the know and even have access to exclusive news. It’s a two-way conversa-

tion, and for many brands, one that’s well worth beginning.


THE MODERN WORKFORCE NEEDS A MODERN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT SOLUTION.

Conclusion: What Your Employees Need to Know Today and Tomorrow

Which is why the majority of Fortune 1000 companies will implement an employee advocacy platform

within the next one to two years. Your organization needs a solution that combines the best practices

from the largest employee advocacy programs in the world to drive adoption and engagement.

89% of your employees’ time spent on mobile is spent using

mobile apps, you should have a place on their home screen.

Our employee advocacy app earns you the right to be there.

The SocialChorus platform is a proven solution for brands to

leverage employee advocacy within their organization.

CALL US: 415.780.8812

REQUEST A DEMO

HOW TWO MAJOR RETAILS ENGAGED THOUSANDS...

Documents

Transcript of HOW TWO MAJOR RETAILS ENGAGED THOUSANDS...