The Disruption Tour - Run To Survive A Social Media Revolution

Ten Reasons Not To Do Social...ideas from ShoppeSimple Network

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Minnesota Direct Marketing Association’s (MDMA) Annual Conference. Over this last weekend, I prepared another presentation which I would like to share an overview with you. This current presentation is the direct result of findings from the audience participation at the MDMA conference. It is titled “The Top Ten Reasons Why Your Business Is Not Ready for Social Media…”

10. Oh… we are already doing social sharing and we believe everything we are doing in social is right.  

ShoppeSimple Network (SSN) ideas: When you drill deeper into what a prospective client perceives they are doing in social and what they are actually doing you discover they are two completely different things. It gets worse when the client has such arrogance to believe they are doing everything in social correctly. Just last week several prospective clients indicated they were doing social sharing and they were doing what The ShoppeSimple Network was doing. To cut to the chase they were using AddThis, a 3^rd party plug-in for their sharing tool. But have you asked yourself why the AddThis widget is free? There are only a few business models which work on the net. Those that are: 1. Pay me now or 2. Pay me later. AddThis falls into the latter.

What do you think AddThis is doing with your data that they are collecting? Are you getting this sharing data from AddThis? What’s going on in the background of AddThis with your data?  Whatever they’re doing, it’s without the permission of your consumer. Consumers rely on your brand to protect them. By the way, I am not saying you didn’t agree to their terms of service, but did you fully understand their terms and the ramifications. In most cases, these sharing-tools companies and their widgets sell your sharing data to the highest bidder. Is this what you want your most trusted social consumers to know about your brand? To check out what I am saying, simply open up AddThis’s email-sharing tool and ask yourself what do you think they are doing with your consumer’s email addresses that they are capturing?

I would think that you would want to partner with a Social Management partner like The ShoppeSimple Network where we provide your business with our ShoppeSafe Social Management and Sharing tools and we fully protect your consumer’s data. Bottom line: we simply do not sell your social data or share with anyone. 

9. You ask your consumer to “Like” you before you give them access to your Facebook page. 

SSN ideas: Didn’t your website analytics tell you that not every first-time buyer wants to be forced to have an account with you? Not every customer wants their personal information including their credit card to be permanently stored on your server. Your analytics do show you that many consumers want to try you out first before storing personal data and then when they feel comfortable it will be their decision to move into a long-term buying relationship with you. Isn’t it appropriate for your consumers to be in control of the “when” and “where” they share their personal information with your business?  Shouldn’t this be their choice and not forced upon them? Shouldn’t you be thinking the same thing about Facebook? If you put up your “Like” stop sign on Facebook before the consumer can view your content, what message are you sending to a consumer who wants to engage with you for the first time on Facebook? Less orders and less Facebook Likes. 

8. Pushing a product catalog on Facebook follows the same traditional push marketing patterns of the last 25 years. But Push isn’t social, it’s anti-social.   

SSN ideas: Investing in social media requires a deep-rooted belief system and a knowledge that you must engage in relevant conversations with your consumers. Conversations come first and then commerce. For instance, you don’t date and jump into “the will you marry me?” on the first date question. So jumping right into selling with your social consumers is abusing your social consumer’s desire to want to have a social relationship with your brand. So, before you jump into pushing a product catalog in front of your consumers on Facebook think, or better yet ask what your consumers want. Do they want the same old marketing from your brand or do they want you to know who they are, what they want to buy from you and where they want their offers delivered?  

Now let your consumers self-select the Daily Deals they want, using ShoppeSafe’s Social Management services. For the first time your consumers are in charge of what they want to see from your brand and where they want to see it. Now for the first time your website goes wherever your consumer is.  

7. You are not staffed for social media. If social media requires your staff to interact with consumers on a conversational level, are you ready to participate? Engagement and conversation goes well beyond Tweeting or slapping up Facebook wall posts about your latest offer.

SSN ideas: Your brand must be willing to add dedicated and motivated additional staffing who can speak in the normal non-formal conversational voice. Stuffiness and formality is not for social. Also a social community demands moderation to stimulate discussions, respond to comments and create an open, genuine dialog with your consumers. Your brand must be willing to unlock the dialog and not be scared of it.

ShoppeSafe enables you to manage all of your Social voice with just one click of your mouse. Plus, through ShoppeSafe your consumer shares your content simply and easily.Content creation within branded networks, including Facebook and Twitter, requires production time and dollars…so if you don’t have the in-house staff you can easily outsource this work to The ShoppeSimple Network. 

6. Social Media cuts across verticals in your organization. In a recent sales meeting, I presented to a national financial institution. In discussing their approach to social, they mentioned that they put together a Facebook “Like” collection campaign. In order to do so, they created a direct mail and email campaign directed to a web-landing page, which then drove Facebook “Likes”. What was fascinating to hear was that it took a year to put this campaign together and over 52 approvals to accomplish. Yes, 52 approvals. How long would this campaign take to execute in your company? Can your company draw from resources across your entire company to respond to customer or PR needs? Are you set up to do this at a moment’s notice? Are you prepared to hear honest and sometimes not so nice comments about your business? And when you do, are you prepared to respond to them quickly? Can you do all of this everyday? That’s a lot of silos to work across. Would you win or lose in your organization?

SSN ideas:For real-time social initiatives to succeed, you need an advocate within your organization that is a key decision maker, a social stakeholder. He/she needs to drive the social programs through the organization. He/she needs to end the clutter over getting 52 approvals to move one social program into the market. In fact, social is all about frequency of contact and driving unique multiple content, 365 days a year to your social consumer. Can you do that? Do you want to do that?

5. Real-time means, like-NOW. Social media requires real-time responses that cannot be forecasted. Traditional marketers are used to classic marketing where programs are delivered and then results are tabulated. That just doesn’t work for social where programs are designed to be viral and spread in real time. So how does your business track a viral program? How do you use Google Analytics to do that? If you have a smashing success on your hands then congratulations; you now have an even worse situation. You’ll need people, more hardware, more analysis, more internal meetings, more funds. Well – do you think this can get any worse? Guess again. You’ll now need to do battle with. . .(see #4 below).

SSN ideas: You need trained moderators who can speak in a genuine voice on the brand. They need to feel comfortable, free from “Big Brother” concerns. They’ll need to come off as genuine, since they are speaking to a highly desirable segment of your brand consumer. And it’s okay to post, “I don’t know but I will find out.” Simply have a conversation with the customer.  

To help you further understand your social analytics use ShoppeStats where you can track your social interactions at a deep level. 

4. Procurement will freak. “You need extra funds approved for what social project by when?

Have you heard…”Aren’t Facebook and Twitter free?”

Chances are if you must expand scope to build on timely conversations your procurement department (tag teaming with legal) may not be in sync with you to accelerate this process. Plan accordingly, whatever that means. Watch out for legal and governance issues. Do you hear or fear that your social wheels are coming off your tracks?

SSN ideas: Pick up the phone and speak to the CEO for this one. Remember the Facebook and Twitter ad models are in their infancy. If you think they will be free 3 years from now, I have some swamp land to sell you. Do you really want to build your whole social model on these platforms without future knowledge of where the ROI will be?

3. Click to Purchase. Retailers are happiest when they are selling things. Have you had a hard time justifying all the social media budget requests and/or worse, cash outlays without any perceived or tracked success of social commerce revenue?

SSN ideas: Don’t get hooked into believing you need to create transactions at the social platform level. This is the lock-in Facebook and Twitter want you to believe their consumers want. At The ShoppeSimple Network we believe in just the opposite. And we have the years of experience being on the net to have seen what lock-in can do to a business. Using the ShoppeSafe social marketing services, your consumers are driven back to your website where they purchase. This way your consumers are your customers, not Facebook, Twitter or worse other major players that do behind the scenes deals with these players. Also we don’t believe that your customer should be leaving their credit card info on social media platforms today. Why? Because of its newness and the lack of consumer data protection. Your customers feel comfortable buying from you within your buying environs. It’s as simple as that.

2. Social Management. Would you say no to a social commerce program if you could increase your average order dollars, lift your conversion percentages, raise your frequency of ordering and greatly increase the exposure of your brand?

SSN ideas:Well, if you are hesitating contacting ShoppeSafe until now then perhaps for the above reasons you are not ready to move into social. But if you have been reading my blogs we have proven the above metrics for client after client. In fact, we have not lost a client since March 2010 and we are adding new clients weekly. So why are you waiting? Still hesitating to contact us? Why don’t you simply run a test with us to prove it to yourself? Check out The ShoppeSimpleNetwork to learn more about what we do and then give us call to set up a presentation.

1. Sustaining Social Customer Relationship Management. It costs you a ton of money to acquire a new customer. But what is your plan to put yourself in front of this customer in the future and how frequently?

SSN ideas:  At The ShoppeSimple Network we have built a powerful Daily Deal engine, which puts your Daily Deals in front of your consumers who have given you permission to engage with them, 365 days a year. You also get to set the pricing. We are not interested in taking a piece of your product margin like the other daily deal sites do. Plus, there are no implementation fees and you just pay an affordable monthly subscription fee.

Your consumers have requested your deals and then they socialize them to their trusted friends and family. This starts the viral social stream, which brings you more new business. It all starts by having your consumer “Push The Button”. Your branded Push The Button goes on every contact point (website, email, Facebook and mobile) …everywhere consumers turn, they Push The Button to get your great offers. The result: social commerce!

Here is what we know: with all the chatter across the digital spectrum your customers will come back to you if you’re truly helpful and your business is providing a social value exchange. So, what does 2011 hold for social media? Well, the great part is that the industry can pretend to know, but it really doesn’t because social is truly in the hands of the people – your consumers. Bottom line is you must listen carefully and respond quickly. Your consumers will appreciate it and your brand will reap the rewards.

At The ShoppeSimple Network we are here to lend you our expertise, marketing services and our ShoppeSafe Sustaining Social CRM and social management tools. All you have to do to learn more is set up a presentation with us on how to get into a trial program. We are also not here to replace your social media program but to simply enhance it with our plug-in tools. To learn how we can help your social commerce program grow email me at [email protected] or call 612-349-2740

Best,

Jeffery

CEO/Founder

Top Ten List For Not Doing Social…ideas from ShoppeSimple Network

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Minnesota Direct Marketing Association’s (MDMA) Annual Conference. Over this last weekend, I prepared another presentation which I would like to share an overview with you. This current presentation is the direct result of findings from the audience participation at the MDMA conference. It is titled “The Top Ten Reasons Why Your Business Is Not Ready for Social Media…”

10. Oh… we are already doing social sharing and we believe everything we are doing in social is right.

ShoppeSimple Network (SSN) ideas: When you drill deeper into what a prospective client perceives they are doing in social and what they are actually doing you discover they are two completely different things. It gets worse when the client has such arrogance to believe they are doing everything in social correctly. Just last week several prospective clients indicated they were doing social sharing and they were doing what The ShoppeSimple Network was doing. To cut to the chase they were using AddThis, a 3^rd party plug-in for their sharing tool. But have you asked yourself why the AddThis widget is free? There are only a few business models which work on the net. Those that are: 1. Pay me now or 2. Pay me later. AddThis falls into the latter.

What do you think AddThis is doing with your data that they are collecting? Are you getting this sharing data from AddThis? What’s going on in the background of AddThis with your data?  Whatever they’re doing, it’s without the permission of your consumer. Consumers rely on your brand to protect them. By the way, I am not saying you didn’t agree to their terms of service, but did you fully understand their terms and the ramifications. In most cases, these sharing-tools companies and their widgets sell your sharing data to the highest bidder. Is this what you want your most trusted social consumers to know about your brand? To check out what I am saying, simply open up AddThis’s email-sharing tool and ask yourself what do you think they are doing with your consumer’s email addresses that they are capturing?

I would think that you would want to partner with a Social Management partner like The ShoppeSimple Network where we provide your business with our ShoppeSafe Social Management and Sharing tools and we fully protect your consumer’s data. Bottom line: we simply do not sell your social data or share with anyone.

9. You ask your consumer to “Like” you before you give them access to your Facebook page.

SSN ideas: Didn’t your website analytics tell you that not every first-time buyer wants to be forced to have an account with you? Not every customer wants their personal information including their credit card to be permanently stored on your server. Your analytics do show you that many consumers want to try you out first before storing personal data and then when they feel comfortable it will be their decision to move into a long-term buying relationship with you. Isn’t it appropriate for your consumers to be in control of the “when” and “where” they share their personal information with your business?  Shouldn’t this be their choice and not forced upon them? Shouldn’t you be thinking the same thing about Facebook? If you put up your “Like” stop sign on Facebook before the consumer can view your content, what message are you sending to a consumer who wants to engage with you for the first time on Facebook? Less orders and less Facebook Likes.

8. Pushing a product catalog on Facebook follows the same traditional push marketing patterns of the last 25 years. But Push isn’t social, it’s anti-social. 

SSN ideas: Investing in social media requires a deep-rooted belief system and a knowledge that you must engage in relevant conversations with your consumers. Conversations come first and then commerce. For instance, you don’t date and jump into “the will you marry me?” on the first date question. So jumping right into selling with your social consumers is abusing your social consumer’s desire to want to have a social relationship with your brand. So, before you jump into pushing a product catalog in front of your consumers on Facebook think, or better yet ask what your consumers want. Do they want the same old marketing from your brand or do they want you to know who they are, what they want to buy from you and where they want their offers delivered?

Now let your consumers self-select the Daily Deals they want, using ShoppeSafe’s Social Management services. For the first time your consumers are in charge of what they want to see from your brand and where they want to see it. Now for the first time your website goes wherever your consumer is.

7. You are not staffed for social media. If social media requires your staff to interact with consumers on a conversational level, are you ready to participate? Engagement and conversation goes well beyond Tweeting or slapping up Facebook wall posts about your latest offer.

SSN ideas: Your brand must be willing to add dedicated and motivated additional staffing who can speak in the normal non-formal conversational voice. Stuffiness and formality is not for social. Also a social community demands moderation to stimulate discussions, respond to comments and create an open, genuine dialog with your consumers. Your brand must be willing to unlock the dialog and not be scared of it.

ShoppeSafe enables you to manage all of your Social voice with just one click of your mouse. Plus, through ShoppeSafe your consumer shares your content simply and easily. Content creation within branded networks, including Facebook and Twitter, requires production time and dollars…so if you don’t have the in-house staff you can easily outsource this work to The ShoppeSimple Network.

6. Social Media cuts across verticals in your organization. In a recent sales meeting, I presented to a national financial institution. In discussing their approach to social, they mentioned that they put together a Facebook “Like” collection campaign. In order to do so, they created a direct mail and email campaign directed to a web-landing page, which then drove Facebook “Likes”. What was fascinating to hear was that it took a year to put this campaign together and over 52 approvals to accomplish. Yes, 52 approvals. How long would this campaign take to execute in your company? Can your company draw from resources across your entire company to respond to customer or PR needs? Are you set up to do this at a moment’s notice? Are you prepared to hear honest and sometimes not so nice comments about your business? And when you do, are you prepared to respond to them quickly? Can you do all of this everyday? That’s a lot of silos to work across. Would you win or lose in your organization?

SSN ideas: For real-time social initiatives to succeed, you need an advocate within your organization that is a key decision maker, a social stakeholder. He/she needs to drive the social programs through the organization. He/she needs to end the clutter over getting 52 approvals to move one social program into the market. In fact, social is all about frequency of contact and driving unique multiple content, 365 days a year to your social consumer. Can you do that? Do you want to do that?

5. Real-time means, like–NOW. Social media requires real-time responses that cannot be forecasted. Traditional marketers are used to classic marketing where programs are delivered and then results are tabulated. That just doesn’t work for social where programs are designed to be viral and spread in real time. So how does your business track a viral program? How do you use Google Analytics to do that? If you have a smashing success on your hands then congratulations; you now have an even worse situation. You’ll need people, more hardware, more analysis, more internal meetings, more funds. Well – do you think this can get any worse? Guess again. You’ll now need to do battle with. . .(see #4 below).

SSN ideas: You need trained moderators who can speak in a genuine voice on the brand. They need to feel comfortable, free from “Big Brother” concerns. They’ll need to come off as genuine, since they are speaking to a highly desirable segment of your brand consumer. And it’s okay to post, “I don’t know but I will find out.” Simply have a conversation with the customer.

To help you further understand your social analytics use ShoppeStats where you can track your social interactions at a deep level.

4. Procurement will freak. “You need extra funds approved for what social project by when?”

Have you heard…“Aren’t Facebook and Twitter free?”

Chances are if you must expand scope to build on timely conversations your procurement department (tag teaming with legal) may not be in sync with you to accelerate this process. Plan accordingly, whatever that means. Watch out for legal and governance issues. Do you hear or fear that your social wheels are coming off your tracks?

SSN ideas: Pick up the phone and speak to the CEO for this one. Remember the Facebook and Twitter ad models are in their infancy. If you think they will be free 3 years from now, I have some swamp land to sell you. Do you really want to build your whole social model on these platforms without future knowledge of where the ROI will be?

3. Click to Purchase. Retailers are happiest when they are selling things. Have you had a hard time justifying all the social media budget requests and/or worse, cash outlays without any perceived or tracked success of social commerce revenue?

SSN ideas: Don’t get hooked into believing you need to create transactions at the social platform level. This is the lock-in Facebook and Twitter want you to believe their consumers want. At The ShoppeSimple Network we believe in just the opposite. And we have the years of experience being on the net to have seen what lock-in can do to a business. Using the ShoppeSafe social marketing services, your consumers are driven back to your website where they purchase. This way your consumers are your customers, not Facebook, Twitter or worse other major players that do behind the scenes deals with these players. Also we don’t believe that your customer should be leaving their credit card info on social media platforms today. Why? Because of its newness and the lack of consumer data protection. Your customers feel comfortable buying from you within your buying environs. It’s as simple as that.

2. Social Management. Would you say no to a social commerce program if you could increase your average order dollars, lift your conversion percentages, raise your frequency of ordering and greatly increase the exposure of your brand?

SSN ideas: Well, if you are hesitating contacting ShoppeSafe until now then perhaps for the above reasons you are not ready to move into social. But if you have been reading my blogs we have proven the above metrics for client after client. In fact, we have not lost a client since March 2010 and we are adding new clients weekly. So why are you waiting? Still hesitating to contact us? Why don’t you simply run a test with us to prove it to yourself? Check out the ShoppeSimpleNetwork.com to learn more about what we do and then give us call to set up a presentation.

1. Sustaining Social Customer Relationship Management. It costs you a ton of money to acquire a new customer. But what is your plan to put yourself in front of this customer in the future and how frequently?

SSN ideas:  At The ShoppeSimple Network we have built a powerful Daily Deal engine, which puts your Daily Deals in front of your consumers who have given you permission to engage with them, 365 days a year. You also get to set the pricing. We are not interested in taking a piece of your product margin like the other daily deal sites do. Plus, there are no implementation fees and you just pay an affordable monthly subscription fee.

Your consumers have requested your deals and then they socialize them to their trusted friends and family. This starts the viral social stream, which brings you more new business. It all starts by having your consumer “Push The Button”. Your branded Push The Button goes on every contact point (website, email, Facebook and mobile) …everywhere consumers turn, they Push The Button to get your great offers. The result: social commerce!

Here is what we know: with all the chatter across the digital spectrum your customers will come back to you if you’re truly helpful and your business is providing a social value exchange. So, what does 2011 hold for social media? Well, the great part is that the industry can pretend to know, but it really doesn’t because social is truly in the hands of the people — your consumers. Bottom line is you must listen carefully and respond quickly. Your consumers will appreciate it and your brand will reap the rewards.

At The ShoppeSimple Network we are here to lend you our expertise, marketing services and our ShoppeSafe Sustaining Social CRM and social management tools. All you have to do to learn more is set up a presentation with us on how to get into a trial program. We are also not here to replace your social media program but to simply enhance it with our plug-in tools. To learn how we can help your social commerce program grow email me at [email protected]work.com or call 612-349-2740

Best,

Jeffery

CEO/Founder

ShoppeSimpleNetwork

PS. Check out our June Webinar “Your Social Toast is Burning” at <Claire url here>

 

 

 

Is Your Business 70% N 7? Ideas from ShoppeSimple Network

A Bain research study found that 70% of CEOs believe their business delivers a superior customer experience, but only 7% of their customers agree.

A recent IBM study shows a complete perception gap between businesses and why they think people connect with them on social media, and why people actually do connect with them on social media. Businesses think people least connect for deals and to purchase, whereas people most connect for deals and purchase.

“Sixty-five percent of businesses view social media as a new source for revenue but, at the same time, many believe receiving discounts or coupons and purchasing products or services are among the least likely reasons a customer would seek them out on social sites.

Ironically, though, consumers say getting tangible value is the top reason they interact with a company, which is good news for those organizations hoping to monetize social media”

We have also found similar findings through our client cooperative, as customers connecting with you on social media should be about enjoyable shopping AND deals. These consumers want Daily Deals from your brand.

Social commerce is about managing customer relationships (we call it Sustaining Social CRM) – providing your customers with exclusive shopping opportunities and deals and not just pushing a barrage of self-congrats wall posts, tweets and ads.

At ShoppeSafe we do this not by filling up the Facebook Wall with deals but by respecting your consumer’s relationship with your brand on any and all of the social communities important to them. This includes mobile smart phone while also opening a special e-commerce channel on Facebook, Twitter, MyHome pages, specialized landing pages and our local, regional and national shopping portals. We call this enhancing your Social Management.

Our social commerce opportunity is also totally designed to move your best consumers to advocate status, those who want to do business with you and are happy to talk about your business.  The result totally avoids treating social and mobile marketing like a traditional sales channel.

While exclusive Deal-of-the-Day pricing and couponing is the obvious way to do this…there are also good reasons to offer your best customers (your promoters) your best prices because they are effectively your volunteer viral sales force.

• What if you could be easily guiding your consumers to buy more from you using Sustaining Social CRM marketing service which enables you to maintain complete control of your daily deal  while consumers share it with others.
• What if you could dynamically set the Daily Deals pricing, margin and frequency based on what makes sense for your business.
• What if you could have at your fingertips a social and mobile management engine that eliminates the need for redundant social management headcount.
• What if you could use a trusted social and mobile sharing engine that creates new conversations for your brand which leads to more business, more new customers, higher order values, higher order frequency and more daily brand impressions?
• What if all of this social behavior was tracked with a sophisticated social and mobile analytical package so you can see how your social and mobile program is generating orders in real time.

Well, what I just described is ShoppeSafe. A focused and targeted enhanced Daily Deal marketing service for your business coupled with a Sustaining Social CRM remarketing engine. The ShoppeSafe service is designed for your business to not only get new customers but also to maximize the value of these customer relationships while also help you convert your current web traffic and email broadcasts not only into new buyers but help you increase their frequency of purchasing and lift your average orders. This has all been proven out through our analytics and client renewals.

Currently, a Deal of the Day site (like Groupon/Living Social) just delivers new customer traffic at your doorstep. This could be good or bad depending what you are paying for each customer. However, the fact does remain that you have made an investment in each of these consumers. This could be as much as $5-20 per customer. Now, the challenge for anyone’s business is how do you bring these customers back for another purchase and at better order levels.  Bottom line: how do you generate a return on your customer investment while also building a lasting customer relationship so you are not just getting one order (your first) from this buyer group?

At ShoppeSafe we have cracked the code on how you can do all of this. And our clients are benefiting from turning on Daily Deals and Sustaining Social CRM engines all at the same time. Baked into our solutions is a seamless social management sharing tool your consumers will really enjoy using.

To learn more, simply give us a call 612-349-2740 or email us at [email protected] for a short presentation. I guarantee that you must be satisfied with the ShoppeSafe service or you won’t pay us a dime. Period End.

Looking forward to your call,

Jeffery

CEO and Founder

ShoppeSimpleNetwork.com

P.S. – Give us a call and ask about our June Try Us program.

61 percent of the 22 million wealthiest individuals in the United States own a smartphone

Approximately 61 percent of the 22 million wealthiest individuals in the United States own a smartphone, indicating a potentially untapped market for about 8 million smartphones, or 39 percent of the affluent, according to a recent study by American Affluence Research Center.

According to the data, 22 percent of those surveyed own a tablet, meaning that there is a probable untapped market 78 percent of the affluent. The study was able to dissect the ages and demographics of individuals, along with types of devices.

“There is so much talk about pervasiveness of mobile devices, but it’s important to understand who has these devices and how they are using them in order for people to market effectively through them,” said Ron Kurtz, principal of American Affluence Research Center, Atlanta. “It’s interesting that affluent have a smartphone or tablet, so clearly this is a medium in a way to reach people.

“It’s important to know what platform [marketers] need to be communicating through to be convenient and easy to access a brand’s information, and to receive or use an app,” he said.

Participants in the survey have an annual household income of $333,000 and an average primary residence value of $1.2 million. Their net worth is, on average, $3.1 million with investable assets of $1.8 million.

These are the top 10 percent of the wealthiest individuals in the U.S.

Opinions Matter...ideas from The ShoppeSimple Network

According to a recent LightSpeed Research study most consumers consult the Internet while researching products and services, with online reviews and referrals playing a vital role.

During the purchasing process price comparison may well be the most popular research activity online, with 75% of those surveyed by Lightspeed Research having compared prices online in the last six months, but the online opinions, referrals and experiences of other consumers play a vital role, too, for many (61%).

Consumers expect to find product reviews on shopping websites (72%) while around half (47%) seek them out on company websites (trusted referral pages) and 43% on price comparison sites. The majority use search engines to also find reviews and referrals.

So influential are the opinions of others that over two-thirds (67%) of consumers would be deterred from purchasing a product or service if they were to encounter two or three negative reviews, found Lightspeed's online survey.

In fact, a quarter (24%) said they had changed their mind about buying a product or service after reading two bad reviews while a further 39% said three negative reviews would deter them from making a purchase.

What are you doing to stimulate 'Trusted Referrals'?

At ShoppeSafe we know the incredible power of reviews and more importantly 'Trusted Referrals' as we've built our business around "Trusted Referrals". They are deeply integrated into every offer or content feed from our ShoppeHub merchant network pages and as such an integral part of our selling engine for both merchants and consumers. Why do we know how powerful 3rd-party 'Trusted Referrals' are? Because our ShoppeStats social and mobile analytic reporting metrics shares and supports our business model as each of our merchant shopping/content pages generate visitation from our website, email and Facebook merchant Power Buttons to their specific ShoppeHub pages which then generates higher order conversion, increased average order and enable new consumers to find merchants of their choosing.

How does all of this work so well? Well for the first time consumers are in total control of the offers and content that they want to receive and has given the merchant permission to reach them multiple times a day, 365 days a year wherever they are. They have opted-out of traditional Push-N-Pray marketing efforts and now opted-into the new world of Pull-Place-Buy-Share(tm) marketing.

Pull - consumers receive only the offers or content they want. They allow targeted and highly relevant offers of their choosing.

Place - your offers or content and in some cases your website goes where your consumers are. You only have to look at the growth of Facebook, Twitter, MyHome pages and mobile selling to know the world is no longer hanging out or exclusively coming back to your website.

Buy - through our ShoppeStats analytics we see consumers buying more from ShoppeSafe merchant posts and starting the program than they did and this has been confirmed by A/B split tests and at greater frequency of purchasing while also feeling better about your brand.

Share - Now with one click, consumers can easily move your offers and content to their friends/Likes on Facebook, Followers on Twitter, email their contact list, text their address book or print an offer and bring it into your store.

At ShoppeSafe all of these options are now easily and efficiently available to participating merchants and they provide new social and mobile sharing tools, which also immediately open up the opportunity for your business to engage in facilitating 'trusted referrals' with your consumers. Why wouldn't you want to further engage with consumers who are already stopping by your stores, sites, Facebook and email not to mention now also shopping with their smart phones. These are the next obvious waves of marketing opportunities for merchants.

And you know for yourself when you are in the market to buy, probably one of the first things you do is seek a "trusted referral".  So influential are the opinions of others that over two-thirds (67%) of consumers would be deterred from purchasing a product or service if they were to encounter two or three negative reviews, found Lightspeed's online survey.

With these ShoppeSafe "Trusted Referrals" tools from ShoppeSafe's ShoppeHub along with the consumer's understanding that their shopping experience is safe, private and anonymous your business through the ShoppeSafe network will engage and have new levels of social and mobile conversations with not only your consumers but their friends and family as well.  Imagine the exponential leverage of that marketing opportunity and its selling power.

So why not give The ShoppeSimple Network a try? Your ShoppeSafe business channel will be up and running on the ShoppeSimple Network including ShoppeSafe.com, your Facebook ShoppeFans Pages, your Twitter Store pages, new Personal MyHome pages on iGoogle, MyYahoo and MyMSN, email, mobile smart phones and your very own merchant ShoppeHub pages. You will get all of this up and running for your business in less then 10 days with zero implementation fees and at an affordable monthly rate based on your business size. Plus, we guarantee you must be successful or you don't pay us.

What could be more simple than that. Plus if you give me a call 612-249-2740 or email [email protected] by May 30th, we will also provide a FREE social and mobile consultation for your business.

Best,

Jeffery

Social Sharing..the next Big Thing...ideas from ShoppeSimple Network

Social Sharing according to Harvard Business Review is part of a new more macro trend called ubiquitous sharing: What are you doing? Where are you doing it? Who are you doing it with? What do you like? Who do you “Like”? Who are you “Following” and who are “Followers” of you? These used to be things we kept to ourselves or shared with only our friends and family. Now we're willing to broadcast them to whoever is willing to listen.

Social media has led to "social sharing," the broadcasting of our thoughts and activities. It's not a fad it’s growing and growing. Social networking is a social phenomenon.

For further proof, just take a look at Nielsen research. It says Americans spend nearly a quarter of the time they're on the Internet, or about six hours a month, on social-networking sites and blogs. That's a quantum leap from a year ago and underscores the growing power of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The research also reveals U.S. consumers spend the plurality of their time online, or 36% of it, communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal e-mail and instant messaging.

The rise of social networks has enhanced consumption of videos, movies and news and sports articles. "Friends and family are endorsing content to others," says Dave Martin, vice president of primary research at Nielsen.

And the face of that audience is getting older: Twice as many Americans over 50 visited social networks than kids under 18, Nielsen says.

It's a sociological phenomenon, accelerating at light speed. For even more data points you just have to look around the Social Coupons sites and the players who are deeply involved with them from Google to Amazon and now Facebook. One just wonders how long will Groupon be able to stand on its own?

All of this points to just how social sharing is and will continue to change the ecommerce landscape.

So let’s step back and ask the obvious questions what is your Social Sharing strategy? How much time and expense will it take before your Social Sharing strategy is online? How will measure your Social Sharing Success?

Struggling with those answers…hold the thought as ShoppeSafe has an offer for you and it is guaranteed…simply see below!

Social Currency. Sharing on the social web acts as a form of currency. Sharing useful information that might help someone within your network scores you points and builds equity. Sharing is also the new giving. Finding a deal and sharing that with others can put you in someone's favor, and maybe then they will find you a deal. It's important to recognize that all this sharing isn't some useless impulse. There are reasons why people are willing to share so much. Creative expression is part of it but also, there's often a benefit, value, to the individual who shares. Sharing is the new giving.

Social sharing according to the Harvard Business Review is a major behavioral shift, the most important so far of the 21st century. And the information we choose to share with friends, co-workers and even strangers, is re-defining the idea of what's private and public before our very eyes.

Charlie Brown ShoppeSimple Network’s – VP of Interactive and Creative Services weighs in with his blog post.

Social Sharing: Sharing is a part of our DNA.

We are hardwired to cooperate and to share. If someone has something you fancy…you offer to share it. Now, sharing isn’t like trading–you don’t have to give up something to get something else (unless it’s your money you are giving up to buy something).

Sharing is a way of getting along–we share a meal– we share a border with Canada and Mexico. It makes us feel good to share. Facebook didn’t invent sharing–they just exploited it.

Sometimes sharing is boasting or bragging. We take pride in the fact that we got a good deal. It’s one of the ways we make ourselves feel good and someone else at the same time.

If I don’t share I am keeping a secret–it’s difficult to keep a secret–it takes energy. It’s a relief when we can finally share it and release the burden of not being able to tell anyone. I can hardly wait to get home and share with my wife what I just heard–now don’t tell anyone (of course, I will).

As cavemen we sat around the fire at night (like sitting in front of our brightly lit monitor at home) and sharing hunting stories (shopping is like a hunt). Sometimes we embellish the hunting story–like making a comment on Facebook. We add our part (part of our personality) to the story. And then the story gets retold many times at it becomes a “legend” (a huge story that we love to listen to again and again).

Sometimes they become rumors and everyone loves a big fat juicy rumor. It’s like telling a joke. It’s entertaining, people laugh and we get accepted into the community of our friends.

But you may be thinking just how does ShoppeSafe help our site with Social Sharing and how do we get started?

Well it is really quite simple and it starts by placing a ShoppeSafe button on your website or your email or on your Facebook page. Then your consumer just pushes the button…

But wait a button on my website? Why would take the consumer away from my website. Why would I do that?

Another colleague Steve Neseth had a dialog with a prospective client on just this point this week so I am going to quote his response…I couldn’t have said it better myself…”This is a common concern we hear as traditional thinking says drive more traffic to your website and you will generate more sales.  The trend, however, is that website traffic for many merchants is a struggle to maintain let alone increase.   At least some of this is due to the growing amount of time consumers are spending on social media channels and on their mobile devices away from merchant websites.  The ShoppeSafe program is geared to complement everything you’re doing online already by linking your online store to these exciting, new marketing channels that consumers can access easily wherever they are.”

“One of our best practices, as we discussed, is to put a ShoppeSafe button on the merchant home page and on each product category page (Signals.com, for example, has placed a button on all of these pages).  This enables consumers to subscribe (or bookmark) to receive relevant product offers by category.  Consumers then receive products of interest multiple times a day/365 days a year that they buy and easily share on Facebook, Twitter, through email, or text.  They literally extend your marketing reach to their friends by creating “trusted referrals”.  Sales builds virally.  A recent survey by Lightspeed Research reported that 61% of the consumers they polled said opinions, referrals and experience of other consumers play a vital role when considering a purchase.  Our program can help a merchant create these trusted referrals that sell more merchandise.”

“Having said all that, placing a button on the website home page is not required to participate in our program.  We would not recommend it but that choice is yours.  Some merchants actually prefer to step into our program through email or Facebook to prove that we can drive sales before they put any links on their website.  So, a merchant has several options available in our program all of which will build online sales very cost effectively.

Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is!

I know that many of you have been reading my blog posts on a weekly or monthly basis. But what is also interesting is to watch are your behaviors. To understand why you have not kicked the ShoppeSafe program into gear or at least formulated a trial program with us to see for yourself the benefits of the ShoppeSafe program.

So in our internal meetings this week, I asked our Sales Team what do they think they needed to do to make a sales deal happen and the following is another real life example that went to a prospective client.

And from my point of view if this opportunity is good enough for a prospective client it is good enough for any of you who are reading this today. All you have to do is get in contact with me to start your test program.

“Mary, the forecasted amount of sales that I provided and that would come through the ShoppeSafe program you indicated was higher than you thought it could be.  You pointed out that our monthly minimum meant that you’d have to hit a monthly sales target that was higher than you thought you could attain given your other online program’s performance.

I told you that I’m so confident that the sales forecasted was reasonable based on what others are generating in the program. I also want to reiterate that these forecasts are not based on channel shift but on real incremental program increases from higher average order or more frequency of purchasing plus adding new customers and reactivating older buyers.  In our call, I was so confident that I actually told you on the spot that we’d cut the minimum in half because I don’t think it will even come into play.  But, I’ll do even better than that.  We won’t charge you a dime until the sales generated in the program covers the monthly minimum for an unlimited amount of time as long as this is a win/win for both our companies. I also feel strongly that a company of your size would easily build up to a level that exceeds this minimum very soon.  This assumes, of course, that we’re implementing some of the best practices we would recommend during the start up of the program so the program has a reasonable chance for success.  But you’ll have the final say on what we do.

We also talked about order attribution and how difficult it is to differentiate one ecommerce program’s impact from the next.  Here again, we’ve had success separating out the incremental gains we create through our program like I showed you in my initial forecast. The ShoppeSafe program produces higher average order values, higher frequency of ordering and improves conversion rates.  Improvements in any of these areas will easily cover any cost of the program many times over as my conservative forecast illustrated.”

So there you have it. And I will say it again…what is good for this prospective client is good for your business too. So this opportunity is available to you because we know and have proven time and again that we can help you drive incremental social commerce. We know this because we haven’t lost a client since March of 2010 and we are so confidant we also do this for your business we are putting our skin in the game to prove it to you and as such I hope you will give us a try.

What do you have to loose? And remember we are not recommending to replace what you are doing in social but we have found a successful way to enhance what you are doing.

So why not check out ShoppeSimplenetwork.com to learn more about what we do for you. To get started all you have to do is email at [email protected] or call me at 612-349-2740.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Best,

Jeffery

PS. Your ShoppeSafe Social Sharing program will be plugged into your business in less than 10 days and without any up front implementation fees

Social Paradox...ideas from ShoppeSimple Network

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a buzzword that has been around for a decade or more. Most businesses have invested heavily in CRM but have your thought about your Social program in terms of CRM?

In fact, social commerce is all about managing customer relationships and a more broadly defined consumer relationship. Why consumer relationships? Well, the opportunity to speak to consumers through a “Trusted Referral” network is what Social and Mobile Commerce is all about.

Over my career, I have looked at more site analytics than I would care to disclose (it shows my age) and these analytics are continuing to wobble.

• We know that home page site defectioncontinue to be at an all time high. But unfortunately for many merchants legacy website architecture precludes fast changes and therefore appropriate defenses for these consumer defections are necessary.

• Email opens and clickthrough rates continue to go south; however increasing your email’s send frequency is not the answer. For instance my wife signed up for LivingSocial and she used to get one email deal a day. Now LivingSocial is sending her 4 emails with deals per day. How has your email cadence changed over the last 2 years?

Back to my wife… she is just ignoring all LivingSocial emails now. So are  opt-outs the behavioral analytic metric to look at anymore? … she said, I am just not opening LivingSocial emails anymore. So what is your open rate vs. opt-out rate? Have you been looking at this and tying it back to email cadence? Perhaps like above you should now look at these metrics from a CRM perspective and determine what message does your email cadence send to your consumer about your brand? Is it a sustaining social message?

• And now merchants are rushing to the Wild, Wild West of f-commerce (Facebook commerce) and soon m-commerce (mobile commerce). How will these marketing platforms drive new revenue channels for your business? What lessons should we marketers not bring to f-commerce and m-commerce from our years of experience in CRM?

I will tick off just a few and see how many stick.

• Are you putting up a barrage of self-congrats wall posts and ads on your Facebook page?

• Are you putting up full stores on Facebook (like JC Penny/ASOS) and asking your Facebook consumers to wade through 1400 products just like you do on your website? How are you protecting your consumer’s credit card and behavioral data on Facebook from leaks?

• Are you truly gaining marketing permission from your consumer and letting them decide what they offers/content they would like to see from you?

• Are you forcing a consumer to “Like” you before you let them enter your brand page/store on Facebook?

ShoppeSafe can enhance your social marketing programs and help you get up and running with a new Sustainable Social CRM program which will drive incremental social and mobile commerce revenue.

• ShoppeSafe can assist by helping you build a truly unique and fun shopping experience for your consumer that is not only highly relevant (CRM) but is permissioned by your consumer everyday, 365 days a year. We call this Sustainable Social CRM. Now through ShoppeSafe your business will deliver relevant and highly targeted offers by category directly to your consumers on Facebook through our ShoppeFans program and to a multitude of other online communities where your consumers want to review your offers and content including their smart phones.  We enable your message to go to wherever your consumer is online and on mobile. And we enable you to do it with just a simple one-click.

• We do not recommend that you follow the traditional marketing model of dumping your product catalog on Facebook or on mobile. This is simply Push-N-Pray marketing. And it is dying. But instead through ShoppeSafe you now can provide the opportunity for your consumer to self-select the relevant offers and/or category of offers they would like and have then add it to their profile pages on Facebook or to the mobile smart phones using our ShoppeFans Facebook program. Then since these offers are highly targeted your customer will increase their frequency of purchasing, raise their Average Order Value and have more brand exposures. This has already been proven time and again with our current clients. Plus the sales gains are incremental not channel shift.

Additionally since your consumers are interested in your offers, ShoppeSafe enables them to engage in “Trusted Referrals” with their friends and families causing your offers to go VIRAL. What that means is new customers drive new revenue coming to your business through “Trusted Referrals”.

• Would you ask a customer on your website for their email address before they are allowed to shop? I see this as a stop sign to effective Facebook brand marketing.
• I hope you wouldn’t but everyday I visit brand Facebook pages that require me to “Like” the brand before entering. I get that building a “Like” database is important but not as important than having a trusted conversation and sharing your offers with others who would be interested in what you are selling. It is somewhat like putting the cart before the horse.

Instead why not focus on creating a unique and private offer channel on Facebook/Twitter or mobile and turn your Likes and Followers into true fans that will spread your offers virally. Then since you are providing unique value to them, they will organically and holistically want to Like/Follow or text others about your offers.

For those of you who were around the net when we began marketing through email this is exactly how email marketing took hold. The circle of web marketing repeats itself.

Now you may be thinking Social is different or our CEO sees this so differently then for you and your CEO there is an interesting Whitepaper recently published by IBM, which may spin your head around. “From social media to Social CRM: What Customers Want” The study, by Carolyn Heller Baird and Gautam Parasnis, conducted on the back of the finding that customer closeness is new the top priority for CEOs, shows a complete perception gap between businesses and why think people connect with them on social media, and why people actually do connect with them on social media.  The study shows that, Businesses think people least connect for deals and to purchase, whereas people most connect for deals and purchase.  

Perception versus reality

“Sixty-five percent of businesses view social media as a new source for revenue but, at the same time, many believe receiving discounts or coupons and purchasing products or services are among the least likely reasons a customer would seek them out on social sites. Ironically, though, consumers say getting tangible value is the top reason they interact with a company, which is good news for those organizations hoping to monetize social media”

To this point, this week I attended and spoke at a meeting for CEO’s and truth be told their understanding around social was surprisingly lacking. In fact, not a person in this group has yet to crack the code on making money in social not that they said they haven’t tried. In fact comments like it is too complicated was more the norm than I need to figure out how this will work for us and how it will make us money.

So my talk looked something like this… ShoppeSafe integrates and enhances with your social marketing by leveraging existing assets of traditional marketing with powerful new Sustaining Social CRM tools, which we have developed that are adapted for your specific business.

We call these marketing tools Sustainable Social CRM.

We don’t just create social and mobile widgets.

We don’t just build Facebook shopping pages.

We guide you in maintaining control of your message at the same time it is being talked about by your customers.

Then these customer views are considered to be honest, trustworthy and credible. They are not self-serving corporate brand messages. They are not spam or slapping stuff on a Facebook wall. It is all about and around Sustainable Social CRM where consumers help define your brand. They help you spread your brand virally because a brand is more of a perception than a logo or a product.

Customers connecting with you on social and mobile media should be about shopping AND deals.  Just throwing up a Facebook store with tons of products we have found through our A/B split test analytics simply won’t maximize the selling opportunity for your business – we believe you need to offer what your consumers want and then deliver it to wherever they are online or on mobile.

You should also use special Facebook Fan pricing too. Offering special fan pricing provides a unique incentive for your fans (promoters) of your business. In fact those that are should be qualified to be your viral Facebook/Twitter and mobile Sales Force. We also think Facebook ShoppeFans stores, offering fan-first offers (get it before others) and fan-exclusive offers (fan only merchandise) are obvious and major ways to grow a platform that is the largest selling opportunity on the planet.

This is why we have developed a Sustainable Social CRM marketing program to target consumer and deliver your product content/offers through our ShoppeSafe program wherever they are online or on mobile smartphones.

Why not take a ½ hour to learn about the ShoppeSafe program in a personal presentation. Or you start to learn more about ShoppeSafe.com at ShoppeSimplenetwork.com Check out the webinars and online tutorials.

Please give us a call 612-349-2740 or email [email protected] to schedule a presentation. We would welcome the opportunity to share what we are doing and you can see us in action on shoppesafe.com our consumer direct portal.

Best,

Jeffery

PS. You can be up and running with the ShoppeSafe Sustainable Social CRM program in less than 10 days and without any implementation costs. Plus the cost is affordable and is based on a simple monthly subscription model and fits all sizes of business from small-mid-to even very large businesses.

Sustaining Social CRM...ideas from ShoppeSimple Network

Dictionary.com lists the following definitions for the words:

"Sustaining"

1. to support, hold, or bear up from below; bear the weight of, as a structure.
2. to bear (a burden, charge, etc.).
3. to undergo, experience, endure without giving way or yielding.

"Social"

1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable: gregarious

"Customer Relationship Management (CRM)"

1. The practice of building a strong relationship between a business and its customers and potential customers.

Dear Erin,

I hope this question has a resounding positive answer: What if your business could get higher average orders values, higher frequency of ordering, higher conversion percentages, more new customers, reactivate of older buyers and have multiple brand impressions that are permissioned every day?

Would you test a program that could deliver to your business any one of these metrics or any combination of them? Of course you would under two conditions:

First, the program would generate an ROI your business could afford; and second, you are not just moving dollars from one channel marketing program to another.

So if it can be proven to you that both case 1 and 2 occurred. Should you test this program? Of course you should. This is what the exact nature of market testing is all about. I sense your business does this all the time. If you could get these returns would you make this market testing a priority?

Well, this is exactly what The ShoppeSimple Network program is providing our clients and what we would like to test with your business.

In fact, we are so convinced that this program will work for your business (like it has worked for every other client) we have a special and guaranteed offer for your business.

I will tell you about this guaranteed offer in a minute please read on...

Have you done a Groupon/LivingSocial offer?  Have you sent out a catalog or a direct mailing with a planned 60-70% list rental and 30-40% buyers?  How many of your do a PPC program?

In any of these cases, what do you do once you land a new customer? What do you do to capture another order from this first or repeat buyer? How much money are you willing to invest to get another order?

So let's look at the Social Coupon business model which is essentially a revenue share, new customer acquisition business and let's run some simple math

Let's say you have a product and you gave 50% off on this offer and you had a 50% product margin. So a product which sells at  $50 retail is now being sold to the consumer for $25. Now these Social Coupon businesses take another 50% so you are left with $12.50 to cover your new customer acquisition. Let's say you were very successful with your offer and landed 1,000 customers. That would mean you paid 12.50 times 1,000 customers or $12,500 for this offer. A revenue share deal.  But when you planned this offer did you consider you would be out $12,500?

But you are now also under water by $12,500 and what do these Social Coupon sites do to help you recoup your new customer investment. NOTHING...NADA... ZILCH!   The only thing that could make this scenario worse, is if your existing customers are also the ones redeeming the deal.

What do you do to maintain a Sustaining Social CRM program with these consumers?

For those in the catalog space or pure ecom space...I can hear you thinking, "I would never do a deal like that."

Well, let's take a look at a pure ecom company who uses Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. You manage 100 keywords and you pay .75 per click on average.  You spend $12,500 a month on PPC instead of social couponing and you get a 1% conversion. So what does this look like from an initial customer acquisition cost perspective?

Let's keep the same margins and spending level. $12,500 dollars is 16,666 clicks and the number of orders at 1% conversion is 166 orders.  At 166 orders you brought gross profit to the business at $25 per sale which is $4,125. So your out of pocket loss to do PPC per customer is $8,375 ($4125-$12,500)/166 orders = $50.45 (LOSS) Gulp. If your conversion is 2% just half this number.

Would you have guessed that PPC cost per order was $50.45/12.50 or 4X more expensive than Social Couponing for your business?

It's no wonder that in two years Social Couponing has exploded to a 3 Billion industry and is projected to be 6 billion in 2 years.

Pareto's Principle from Wikipedia...(also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. You can restate the 80/20 as it applies to CRM where your customers drive 80% of your revenue so why is there such a missing focus on retention marketing (CRM). Now, adding the Social layer, why are you not focusing energy, resources and budget on building lifetime value of your business?  They would argue that they are, just maybe not in the coupon space yet

Proof in point

The ShoppeSimple Network's Sustaining Social CRM

Now, for the first time you can manage  your consumers' Lifetime Value efficiently and effectively. We simply plug into your business and in less than 10 days you are driving Sustaining Social CRM eCommerce sales. We don't replace what you are doing in social and mobile commerce we enhance it.

Let me show you how...Let's follow what we are doing for Signals.com. Signals has loaded our "Push The Button" widget in their website header and in their email and Facebook Store. Because of this, they are also mobile enabled and their consumers can mobile order through The ShoppeSimple Network's digital properties directly to the Signals website shopping cart. It is important to note ShoppeSafe doesn't collect any personal identifiable consumer information/data.

Take a look at the top right of the Signals website. Consumers see this Push the Button everywhere they go on their website. By the way, you can manage the copy as you would like and you do not have to focus on deals. This is client dependent.

When Consumers Push the Button they are taken to a trusted 3rd party page we build for every client and it can match the look and feel of your branding. From Push The Button widget to your branded ShoppeHub page, consumers now can Pull-Place-Buy-N-Share relevant and targeted offers.  These offers can also be pulled by the consumer to appear on their ShoppeHub page which they bookmark or subscribe too.  Click here for an example.

On Facebook ShoppeFans Store.

The consumer can also place these offers on Shoppesafe.com, their personal home pages on iGoogle, MyYahoo and MyMSN. Plus from the merchants ShoppeHub page consumers can text, email, Like, Tweet offers to their "Trusted Referrals and print or enable digital coupons with barcodes.

You may be thinking, "why would I want to direct my valuable traffic away from my site and onto your ShoppeHub page?" The answer lies in our secret sauce. As I said at the beginning of this blog post, would you do this if you could increase average order values, conversions, order frequency, new customers, reactivations and brand exposures? Of course you would.So now is the time to provide your business with a "skin in the game" guarantee. You must be happy with the program results or you just don't pay us. Period End.

My hope is that you will contact me to start your Sustaining Social CRM program for your business. Please reach me by phone at 612-349-2740 or by email [email protected].

Best

Jeffery

PS. Please join me for our June Webinar "Is Your Social Toast Burning" on Wednesday June 22nd at 2 PM ET.

Feel free to forward this eNewsletter to colleagues who might find the topics covered here of interest or would be interested in learning more about working with The ShoppeSimple Network.

More than half of smartphone owners use mobile devices in retail stores: study

More than half of smartphone owners use mobile devices in retail stores: study

By Dan Butcher Mobile Commerce Daily

---

 

As smartphone adoption continues, more consumers will use mobile devices during shopping process

More than half of smartphone owners are using their devices to enhance their shopping experience by comparing prices, finding store locations and checking for discounts, including two-thirds of those under 35.

That is according to a report from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies, which found that smartphones are becoming an indispensable tool in the shopping experience. The study of 1,400-plus showed that iPhone owners top the list with more than 70 percent reporting they use applications or the phone’s Web browser to assist them while shopping in-store.

“Smartphones are a major part of the shopping experience for more than half of online Americans now, particularly Generation Y and even Gen Xers,” said Chris Neil, vice president of technology and telecom at Chadwick Martin Bailey, Boston. “They are using their smartphones to search for you before they even step in the store—that’s how they find you.

“Mobile can influence sales and drive foot traffic, whether consumers access a store locator, scan a bar code or run a price comparison,” he said. “People who actually click to buy is much lower than the number of consumers that use their smartphones for the research process, as some people still have concerns about making transactions.

Thegies says...

Now you can use The ShoppeSimple Network's ShoppeMobi tools to bring mobile commerce to your consumers at an affordable price. For more information email [email protected]

Smart phones outsell PCs for the first time

(AP) – 1 day ago

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time ever, smart phones such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone are outselling personal computers, according to a report by research group IDC that was released Monday.

Worldwide, consumer electronics makers shipped 100.9 million smart phones in the last three months of 2010, an 87 percent jump from a year earlier. PC shipments were weaker than expected, edging up just 3 percent to 92.1 million.

The two trends aren't necessarily related, said IDC analyst Ramon Llamas. Smart phones and PCs serve different purposes, and consumers generally need both. PCs remain important for writing papers, editing photos and creating other kinds of content.

PC sales are, however, have been hurt by competition from tablet computers — namely Apple's iPad.

Meanwhile, smart phones are getting a boost from falling prices. It's not uncommon to find brand-new models on sale for $100, a price Llamas says consumers are willing to pay. Some retailers, such as Amazon.com Inc., are willing to offer smart phones at steep discounts, sometimes for as little as a penny.

Smart phone sales are also getting a push from growing interest in Google Inc.'s Android software, which powers dozens of phones made by HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and others.

"Android continues to gain by leaps and bounds, helping to drive the smart phone market," Llamas said.

People also tend to replace their phones much more often than they do their computers. Consumers might wait three to five years to replace computers, some of which are protected under warranties that last several years. Meanwhile, cell phone subscribers often have the option of upgrading to a newer phone well before their two-year service contracts are up.

Such incentives are becoming less common, however. Last month, Verizon Wireless said it will phase out its early upgrade program, while Sprint Nextel Corp. said last week that it is making it more expensive for customers to upgrade ahead of schedule.