The Power of Social Referrals

THE POWER OF SOCIAL REFERRALS

Trevor Legwinski, Director of Product Marketing, Extole Michele Farley, Affiliate Marketing Mgr, Vistaprint

@Extoleinc @Vistaprint

January 24, 2012

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CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IS CHANGING

“90% of consumers trust recommendations from their friends

– 3x more than online ads” - Nielsen, 2009

“74% of consumers rely on social networks to help them make

purchase decisions” - Gartner, 2010

“75-90% of the top 10 search results on any SERP have at least 1

Facebook like or Twitter tweet” - BrightEdge, 2011

Bing now delivers personalized search results based on what your

friends like - Bing, 2011

Users share 4B things a day on Facebook. Every year, people will

share 2x as much as the year before - Mark Zuckerberg, 2011

Content recommended by friends is often more relevant than content

from strangers. - Google, 2011

2 © 2012 Extole, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary/Confidential.

SOCIAL BY THE NUMBERS


•  Social networking sites reach 82% of the world’s online population; representing 1.2 billion users worldwide

•  Facebook ~800M estimated; 1 Billion users by Dec 2012

•  Google + currently ~62M users; on track to reach 400M in year

•  Twitter ~200M profiles

•  LinkedIn ~135M members

•  1 in 5 minutes spent online is social networking; 3 in 4 minutes on social networking on Facebook

SEARCH BY THE NUMBERS


• Google Searches – ~1 Billion per day; ~42M per

hour ; ~47K per second – ~15% all searches came from

mobile devices, Early 2011

• Google Revenue – $29B 2010 Digital $ – 97% from search

SEARCH IS BECOMING SOCIAL

5 5 © 2012 Extole, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary/Confidential.

THE MARKETING OPPORTUNITY

TRADITIONAL Brand Created One Directional – Push Marketing

NOW Customer Generated Two Directional – Social Marketing

Less Trusted, Becoming Less Effective

Trusted, More Effective, Wider Reach


C2C MARKETING GETS YOUR CUSTOMERS TO SHARE

Trusted Referrals from Friends

Social Advocates Promote Brand

Social Content Amplifies Awareness

Acquisition & Sales

Traffic & Awareness

Social ROI & Insight

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Measurable Social Results


Grow Acquisition & Sales

•  Increased volume of new leads

• Higher AOV (Average Order Value) & LTV

• 5x conversion over other channels

Increase Traffic & Awareness

• New referral traffic to brand.com

•  Increased shares in the social graph

•  Improved Social SEO rankings

Gain Social Insight & Measure ROI

• Understand your brand’s social graph

• Track advocates & influence across channels

C2C MARKETING BENEFITS


Extole is the leading Consumer to Consumer (C2C) Social Marketing Platform for brands and agencies to turn customers into social advocates, tapping into a powerful new marketing channel

•  Powering 200+ leading brands & agencies •  Founded in 2009 •  Based in San Francisco with over 60 employees

ABOUT EXTOLE


ABOUT VISTAPRINT

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•  Leading online provider of professional marketing products and services to micro businesses and the home

•  Micro business = business with 1-10 employees •  Founded in 1995 •  Operate 24 localized websites and ship to over 120

countries •  Serve over 11M customers annually •  3,100 employees globally

© 2012 Extole, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary/Confidential.

VISTAPRINT ACQUISITON + SOCIAL STRATEGY

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•  Vistaprint customer acquisition centered around traditional media

•  Looking for social media conversational platform to interact with customers

•  Interested in building WOM referral program •  Extole’s strength was in peer-to-peer referrals


SOCIAL REFERRAL PROGRAM

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Challenge: •  Vistaprint has always had a

loyal base of users that love the brand

•  Needed a way to easily let users share and provide incentives for doing so

•  Didn’t want to spend valuable internal resources building an entire system to track and fulfill

Goals: •  Drive measurable social activity

and significant incremental new user sales by offering a referral incentive that entices users to share


OPTIMIZATION

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Optimized to make sharing process one step, seamless


PROMOTING THE REFERRAL PROGRAM

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•  Messaging to repeat customers •  Unique message to program participants


CROSS CHANNEL PROMOTION OF THE PROGRAM


Post-‐purchase environment

Holiday email drop Site-‐wide footer

Dedicated Facebook Tab

SOCIAL REFERRAL RESULTS


10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

80,000

90,000

Shares by Month

Shares by Month

Results-to-date: •  Program has grown 60% from 2010 – 2011 •  Cost of acquiring customer ¾ of traditional media •  Over 200k participating advocates •  On average, every advocate shares over 4 times per session •  Every share receives an average of 2 ‘Friend Clicks’ across sharing

channels •  Higher conversion rates than any other channel

New Advocates by Month

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

New Advocates

SOCIAL CONTENT CREATED


SOCIAL PROMOTIONS – POLLS & GROUP BUYING


 Value in WOM marketing, using current customers as sales force

 Deliver messaging at positive, post-transactional touch points

 Re-market the program to keep users engaged and encourage sharing (ongoing)

 Strategize on how referrals can tie into existing and new social efforts

TAKE AWAY POINTS VISTAPRINT KEY TAKEAWAYS

TAKE AWAY POINTS CONCLUSION


 Consumer behavior has drastically changed, consumers trust content from friends and peers

 Social is becoming an integral part of search and your SEO strategy

 Consumer-generated content is a critical part of your marketing strategy

 Your customer advocates can become one of your best marketing channels

 Social referral programs encourage the creation and sharing of consumer-generated content

Contact Us:

[email protected]

San Francisco 625 2nd Street, Suite #101 San Francisco, CA 94107

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The Power of Social Referrals

Technology

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