Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Survey results released last week by Colloquy and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reveal that U.S. companies are using social media to deepen customer loyalty--more so than for any other core marketing purposes.

The study "Deploying Social Media to Cultivate Customer Loyalty," which was conducted in June and July and included responses from 369 marketers, shows that average social media spend for marketers whose objective is to promote customer loyalty was $88,000 last year, compared to $53,000 for brand awareness and $30,000 for customer acquisition. Additionally, social media budgets increased by 293 percent over the past year on average.

Despite the spending figures, other survey responses indicate that the use of social media is still in the experimental stage. Some findings include:

• When asked to identify the most important measure of social media success, nearly two-thirds of respondents selected "don't know."

• Of those who identified a measurement, the largest group, covering 20 percent, said engaging customers to respond and provide feedback.

• 65 percent of respondents said they're not using any listening tools to monitor what their customers are saying about their brand.

These findings support a feature that I wrote this week "The Evolution of Customer Loyalty," which points to the trend that social media is impacting customer loyalty. While many companies have yet to invest the time, resources, and budgets for social media efforts, some companies are already leveraging social channels as invaluable loyalty building tools.

Investing your marketing and brand-building resources in social media will only help to retain loyal customers. In the article, Oscar Alban, principal global market consultant for Verint, sums it up best when said that social media is the perfect vehicle to drive loyalty. "You might as well embrace [social media]. Rather than dig your head in a hole, hit it head on."