What is the value of social media as it relates to retail ROI? Is there a point in putting sharing buttons on my e-commerce website if I don’t know how that translates to actionable data regarding revenue? Everyone is doing things with respect to social, but in e-commerce, what is the point? Can I even truly attribute social data to return on investment?
These are good and absolutely fair questions. AddShoppers** is one of the coolest technologies I have ever seen for the e-commerce space and is the only offering I have encountered that has such a breadth of data on social ROI in online retail environments.
The premise of the product is simple. Add tags to the footer of your site, and all systems go! It will learn about your social influencers to whom revenue can be attributed to. You can optionally include social profile data in your e-commerce system or CRM through a social login system. Reduce bounce rates or cart abandonment through more optional (but super helpful) incentives that reward the customer and establish a sense of urgency. Much of what is available takes all of two or three minutes to integrate onto your website (there’s likely no need to enlist in the help of your developer), and all of it is plug and play.
Want to know what kind of data AddShoppers is able to extrapolate from online purchases? A recent case study with a large home decor client determined that 15.2% of the company’s revenue could be attributed to social. The client saw a 7% increase in online sales and conversions using AddShoppers technology, and through AddShoppers technology, more than 30,000 emails were added to the company’s database.
Further, in their annual social retail report, which aggregated data from over 10,000 retailers representing 304 million unique shoppers and 1.69 billion pageviews, AddShoppers found amazingly interesting data. Among the more interesting findings:
- Users coming from a social network spent $126.12 on average. On the contrary, the average order value of a non-socially engaged person was $116.55.
- Email still reigns supreme, with shares of email worth $12.54 and a 9.39% conversion rate. Behind that, Google+ oddly drives the most revenue in social interactions, at $5.62 per share (but a 3.7% conversion rate). Pinterest? $0.67/share and a 0.45% conversion rate. Facebook? $0.80/share, though it has a 2.66% conversion rate. Even Tweets perform better than that, at $1.03, though it has a 0.62% conversion rate.
- Facebook still drives the most revenue among the social platforms. Among all AddShoppers data, Facebook was attributed to 69.1% of the revenue. Naturally, that’s because Facebook is the most popular (73.68%).
- You can get 105 directly referred users to your website for every 100 shares. Facebook gets 1.10 clicks per share. You can expect to see 0.21 clicks per G+ share, 0.97 clicks per tweet, and 0.87 clicks per Pin.
- Niche social networks aren’t great, except when they align closely with your product offering.
- Pinterest’s most popular category for shares is Home & Garden (need room decoration ideas, anyone?), followed by Apparel & Clothing. But Home & Garden pins drove an impressive $232.73 average order value.
- If you like something on Facebook, share it. It’s worth 3.4x more than a Like, and the conversion rate was 5.44x higher.
- Vice stores (adult/tobacco) actually see an impact from social! Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest drive revenue for them primarily (and the average clickthrough is 0.92 per share), but email converted best at 16.67%.
It is amazing what kind of insights you can glean just by having the right tools at your fingertips. Like this other tool, I consider it another indispensable product for your growth, especially if you do e-commerce.
(**I joined them too. Interested in using it for your platform or offering it to your customers via our partner program? Ping me directly.)
