BzzAgent eBook Provides Framework for Developing Successful Social Shopper Marketing Programs

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - Oct 4, 2011) - BzzAgent, the social marketing arm of dunnhumby, today announced the release of its latest eBook, "From Loyalty to Advocacy: Driving Sales with Social Shoppers." The guide offers advice to marketers on how to use data and insights from customer loyalty programs to make their social media marketing campaigns more targeted and effective at generating sales.

Determining which loyal customers have the ability to be influential advocates in social media may be the biggest opportunity for brand marketers today. Social shoppers have a deep connection to brands and rely heavily on social media to discuss products and provide recommendations to a big audience of followers. Social shopper marketing utilizes the insights from shopper marketing programs and connects it to customer activity in social media. By connecting the dots from an individual's retail purchase history to their actions in social media, marketers can follow the path back to the retail store to track the purchases they influenced in others.

"Social shoppers can really make a difference for a business," said Dave Balter, CEO and Founder of BzzAgent. "These social shopper marketing practices give marketers the confidence to scale social media marketing to more accurately represent the sales and ROI it can generate for their business."

"From Loyalty to Advocacy: Driving Sales with Social Shoppers" provides a framework for connecting social media to shopper marketing. Some of the key steps for creating a successful social shopper marketing campaign include:

• Advocate Targeting: The success of a program starts with identifying the right people. Marketers should start with demographic attributes like gender, age and income. They should add to that an analysis of people in loyalty marketing programs who have a proven history of purchases with their products or in their product categories. An ideal time to invite consumers to join an advocacy program is just after they purchase a product, when their enthusiasm is greatest.
  
  
• Product Immersion: Marketers should personally connect the consumer with products through free or discounted samples. The only way to build authentic and meaningful discussions about a product is if people experience it themselves, at home, with their families.
  
  
• Guided Activities: Advocates are always looking for new and interesting things to share with their followers -- whether it's a product that makes cleaning the house easier, a dinner that makes the kids smile or a cosmetic that makes them look better than ever. Marketers should encourage them to share what they want wherever relevant conversations are occurring across the social web.
  
  
• Measure Activity: Marketers should use a scoring system to identify and rank customers on an advocacy scale, measuring things like frequency of posts, and sentiment and quality of conversations they spark. The system should also penalize those who oversell.
  
  
• Analyze Impact/ROI: It's critical for marketers to measure sales and ROI of social shopper marketing programs in financial metrics. This can be done through tactics such as Loyalty Card Matched Panel Tests, Matched Market Analysis, and Mixed Market Modeling.

The complete eBook is available for free download at http://u.bzz.com/advocacy.

About BzzAgent
BzzAgent, a dunnhumby company, is a social marketing company that accelerates word of mouth to drive sales. Powered by an addressable network of over 400 million shoppers around the world, BzzAgent creates measurable business results for marketers through an influential advocate network, a powerful engagement platform, and a proven analytics approach. BzzAgent has been at the vanguard of word of mouth marketing since 2001, running more than 2,000 programs for global companies including Unilever, Wrigley, L'Oreal, and Michelin. For more information visit: http://about.bzzagent.com.