Is social CRM the new social media?

• Drive engagement.

Similar to all social media efforts, the first step is to drive users to engagement through a number of techniques. Engagement can be driven by content, videos, promotions, polls and other like techniques. Ultimately content will be developed in the form of written articles, infographics and videos, as well as ebooks and white papers for business-to-business.
Consideration must be given during the strategic phase to whether the engagement strategies have more of a promotional focus, such as a contest or giveaway, or an educational strategy featuring polls, content or videos. It isn’t completely “build it and they will come.” Once the engagement devices are built, it is critical to tailor user-centric posts in a number of social outlets to drive engagement.

The goal of SCRM is to generate an interaction, whether it’s reading web content or blog articles, leaving comments, generating a review or downloading a white paper or ebook. The way to elevate social media efforts to the next level is to ensure current activities continue to inform communications going forward. Tracking what content is driving the highest level of engagement and which types of users are interacting with different content ensures the evolution to SCRM.

• Apply social behavior to deliver relevant communications.

Once users engage, leverage behavior to develop targeted relevant communications. This is the biggest differentiator that transforms social media to SCRM, and it’s the real magic. Applying behavioral information to personalize outbound and follow-up communications takes the entire customer experience to the next level.

Leverage this information to inform ongoing communications streams, including segmenting customers for follow-up post-engagement from social media activities. This distinction is the cornerstone of SCRM. Technology and analytics provide the ability to identify engagement on a user level and categorize users for future communications follow-up.

Meaningful, relevant messaging is then built into email, direct mail, landing pages, personalized URLs (PURLs) and other targeted tactics. If this sounds complex to execute, start with email. One of the quickest and easiest applications is to marry email efforts into social efforts. Marketing automation tools can create a holistic view of the customer experience and deliver triggered email. The triggered emails are based on social engagement content, behavior and other key behavioral touch points.

• Measure program activities on both a macro and micro level.

Today it’s all about ROI. And that’s a topic that many marketers are still wrestling with in relation to social media. SCRM demands an understanding of program impact on both a macro and micro level.

On a macro level, closely analyze the results of your social programs for business impacts and to gauge opportunities for program enhancements based on user behavior and engagement. This information enables you to quickly understand what content your prospects and customers are engaging with and ultimately the paths of leads to conversions. Leveraging this type of process for evaluating social investment ensures a clear understanding of social ROI. Used correctly, social data can also provide a platform of real-time learnings and feedback that will shape other communications tactics messaging.

On a micro level, it is critical to leverage social behavior to determine the value of social engagement against specific groups. This helps determine how to best enhance content going forward to generate leads that have positive business impacts. Analyze content that drives engagement, social sharing, comments and reviews, and information downloads. And do it all with a clear aim at marrying these metrics to transactional behavior.