Measuring Social Media ROI

Justin Ramers

Director of Social Media

Agenda

• Social ROI Overview

• Getting Smart About ROI

• Identifying Key Metrics

• Determining Value

• Building Business Cases

• Q & A

Skittles: 3,648,850 FB fans =

109,465,500 monthly impressions =

$547,327.50 monthly value created

Why are they doing it?

• Creating value by communicating

with customers

• Saving money over traditional

communication channels

• Able to demonstrate results

Social ROI

If you don’t measure results, how can you know if

you are successful?

Blind Faith

• 84% of organizations do not

measure social media ROI

• Easiest to measure compared to

TV, newspaper, radio, etc.

• More than 40% of respondents

said they didn’t even know

whether they could track ROI

from their social tools

• Peer pressure: adopting

technology without knowing how it

will impact your business and

what value it will add

Why it’s Rare

• Marketers believe that measuring true

ROI for social media is difficult

• There are so many metrics available

that it is difficult to choose which ones

are the most important

• Marketers do not start with clear

objectives for using social media

• Emerging technology adds to confusion

and complexity

“Our @DellOutlet (account) is now close to

1.5 million followers on Twitter... and (has) earned

$3 million in revenue. In total, Dell’s global reach on Twitter has

resulted in more than $6.5 million in revenue. In fact our

Brazilian and Canadian accounts are growing rapidly too – and it

was Canadian tweeters who asked to make sure Dell Canada

came online to Twitter. Dell Canada responded because the team

heard our customers. In less than a year, @DellnoBrasil has

already generated nearly $800,000 in product revenues.

Similarly, @DellHomeSalesCA has surpassed $150,000 and is

increasing at notable pace.”

Case Study – Dell Outlet

Lionel Menchaca

Chief Blogger, Dell

Social Media is a communications vehicle

Getting Smart About ROI

Getting Smart About ROI

• You have many tools available to

communicate with users:

• Phone

• Direct Mail

• Direct Email

• Newsletters

• Social Media

It’s important to measure the ROI of

campaigns, not tools

The S.M.A.R.T. approach to Social ROICredit: Garry Przyklenk

Getting Smart About ROI

Get SMART

Engage & interact with your customers through

social media channels. Create conversations

around your programs or services.Credit: Garry Przyklenk

• Socialize

• M

• A

• R

• T

Get SMART

Listen to multiple sources & monitor the

conversations around your brand. Understand

the customer sentiment.Credit: Garry Przyklenk

• Socialize

• Monitor

• A

• R

• T

Get SMART

Analyze your social traffic using free or paid

tools. Quantify the impact of your efforts and

identify key trends.Credit: Garry Przyklenk

• Socialize

• Monitor

• Analyze

• R

• T

Get SMART

Report on real metrics like revenue,

registrations, referrals and calculate ROI.Credit: Garry Przyklenk

• Socialize

• Monitor

• Analyze

• Report

• T

Get SMART

• Socialize

• Monitor

• Analyze

• Report

• Target

Continually refocus your efforts based on the

data and insights from the previous steps.Credit: Garry Przyklenk

Get SMART

• Socialize – Post regularly through FB, blogs & newsletters

• Monitor – Use Twitter search to listen to the conversation

• Analyze – Check number of clicks with Google Analytics

• Report – Crunch numbers to see how results are paying off

• Target – Try a new content strategy, or more of what’s working

Rinse and repeat

Credit: Garry Przyklenk

Identifying Key Metrics

Figure out the things that provide real value to

your business.

Sample Metrics

• Total network size/subscriber base

• Website visits

• Orders/transactions

• # Registrations for an activity/program

• # Memberships (new, renewals)

• # Facility rentals

• Growth in newsletter list

• Customer support resolutions

• Fundraising goals

engagement - sentiment – reputation – differentiation –

interaction - risk reduction – client retention – branding –

perception shifting – exposure – customer satisfaction – trust

building – social impressions – viral coefficient

Social Metric Confusion

• Grow total network size

• Drive incremental visits

• Drive incremental conversions

Active’s Key Metrics

Focus on what’s most

Important to your business

Active’s Challenges

• Aggressively leverage social media

without any proven results or

case studies

• Get buy-in from upper management

• Quickly illustrate value

• Prove that model is scalable

• Make case for budget that doesn’t exist

• Understand what resonates with our

audience and what doesn’t

• Demonstrate actual value, not theoretical

Measuring Results

http://www.active.com/fitness/Articles/The_Best_and_Worst_

Exercises_for_Bad_Knees.htm?cmp=16-5195

• Unique tracking code appended

to every social media post

• Facebook provides impression

counts for each post

• We can then track number of

views & number of clicks for each

post

• Clicks/impressions = CTR (click

through rate)

Measuring Results

• Facebook tells us how many times a message was viewed

• Analytics package tells us how many times a message was

clicked

• You can track any online actions through campaign codes

• Registrations, Email signups, form submits, new accounts

• Some development work is required for conversion tracking

User Clicks on Link

Visit Registered in Analytics

Subsequent Actions are

Tracked

124 (# Registrations) * $5 (avg Registration Value) =

$620 in registration value created

• Assign values to each key metric

• Use real money values; estimate if need be

• Start at the end & work backwards

• Determine value independently for each

channel

• Roll up channel data to see the global picture

Determining Value

Calculate Value per Unit (Advanced)

(Value created) / (# Subscribers) = Value/Subscriber

$18,429 / 160,787 = $0.11

• Calculate total value created for each

channel based on values assigned to each

key metric

• Calculate the total subscriber count for each

channel

• Divide value created by subscriber count to

determine value/subscriber

• Calculate each month and compare data

Key Metrics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Network Size 53,325 62,688 96,054 111,840 123,381 137,907

Visits 71,134 81,249 155,748 130,137 160,028 162,001

Visits/Fan 1.33 1.30 1.62 1.16 1.30 1.17

Revenue/Fan $0.10 $0.14 $0.09 $0.05 $0.10 $0.09

Active.com267,907 Fans (as of Jul 1, 2010)

Active.com is the leading online community for people who want to discover, learn about,share, register for and ultimately participate in activities about which they are passionate.

Social Media Channel Profile

• Provide market insight & relevant

case studies

• Project short & long term impact with

trending data

• Use real data to validate hypotheses

• Illustrate impact to the bottom line

• Justify increased development efforts

Building Business Cases

• Facebook product changes (red arrows)

can greatly impact results:

– Introduction of Places (8/15) added

greater prominence of Likes

– Introduction of Groups (9/21)

reduced prominence of Likes

• Seasonality may also be reducing

number of Likes into October

Social Sharing Transactions per Day

Averages Jul Aug 1-15 Aug 16-31 Sep 1-21 Sep 22-30

Likes/day 844 1,045 1,153 1,296 1,187

Visits/day 1,822 2,056 2,718 2,774 1,997

Transactions/day 44 78 321 450 188

Value/Like $0.29 $0.44 $1.62 $2.03 $0.92

Social Sharing Analysis

What Active Has Been Able to Accomplish

• Illustrate the positive impact of efforts

• Get approval for more budget to increase scale

• Evaluate the value of each marketing

channel individually and succinctly

• Understand what resonates with our audience

• Know where to allocate resources

• Try virtually anything as long as results are

measured

Resources

• Link shortening/tracking: http://www.bit.ly

• Post scheduling: HootSuite (http://www.hootsuite.com)

• Social monitoring:

• Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts)

• Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com)

• Analytics packages: Google Analytics

(http://www.google.com/analytics)

• Engagement: Facebook Insights

Questions

If you have additional questions, please Email them to:

Marketing.Global@ActiveNetwork.com

@activenetwork

Thank You for Attending!

Marketing.Global@ActiveNetwork.com