Yes, You Can Target Retail Customers Through Facebook & Get Great Results

When you combine your data with social media marketing in smart new ways, you can get incredible results – even if you're a high-ticket brick and mortar retailer. Here's a recent campaign where we did just that and got great results.

These days you can't turn around without running into a new communications tool or new sources of data. The trick is learning which ones work best in which combinations. At Yaffe, we're always evaluating new ways to do smarter direct marketing. We recently tested an idea with good potential and got good results. And as we refine the process, they should get even better.

Targeting existing customers through Facebook. We took the data we manage for our client and pulled out some of their best customers. Then we used the data to target them through Facebook. What's the big idea in that, you say? Think about it like a TV channel that only reaches your customers – the ones you want to reach. We had a specific message about a new program and an offer that was just for them, our customers.

Facebook gave us an additional, extremely targeted direct marketing touch point beyond email and direct mail. We wanted to get a good frequency of this message to our customers because we know that the more times we reach them, the higher the response we'll achieve. However, using direct mail for multiple messages can be cost prohibitive and too many emails within a short time tends to annoy people. This additional touch point allowed us to solve those problems and up our frequency of message to our existing customers.

Campaign goals: We wanted to create awareness of the new program, generate leads, drive store traffic and increase sales.

The results:

The campaign got a huge match rate of 46%
The.62% click through rate was in normal range
It was a low Cost Per Click (CPC) of $0.70
The response rate of 10.5% from those who confirmed email address to get a coupon was great
The average overall ticket price of purchase was huge – 40% higher
And in the process, we increased the client's Facebook Likes by 25%

So, overall the campaign was a great success. And we learned some things that will allow us to refine the effort and expect to see even better results the next time. It creates another tool in our tool belt to help clients use digital, social, CRM and direct marketing together to create better results. Have you experimented with data and social in your direct marketing? I'd love to hear about it!

Michael Morin, EVP & lover of all things data and direct marketing