First, it is imperative to determine what lies in the “social silo” that will impact other channels. For example, data-driven profiles, plus segmentation and models of highly engaged high value Facebook fans, can be used in all channels. We know that all fans are not high value, but high value customers are often fans — and socially active. So it’s important to be able to leverage social intelligence in customer marketing strategy and plans, thereby making the intelligence actionable for improved program results.

So what’s the best way to do this?

Let’s look at a Facebook roadmap for social intelligence:

Leverage Open Graph in Facebook with offers to encourage fans and customers to connect, not just to increase the number of fans, but to gather opt-in data. Make a compelling offer in customer emails, on your website or on your Facebook page. (Make sure the privacy policy and the permissions you display cover as much data as possible.)

Once you collect this valuable information don’t just file it somewhere. Treat it as a valuable feed of customer information. Using email or other collected data, link the Facebook information to your customer, compiled demographics, attitudinal, and behavioral data.

• Flag this insight within your customer database so that you have a more complete view of your customers.
• Understand which social connectors are prospects, leads or existing customers.

Create profiles and add to models and segmentation frameworks.

This roadmap allows you to use social intelligence anywhere in your marketing programs across all channels for activities like:

• Developing marketing tactics for prospects, leads and customers.
• Targeting high-value social customers with tailored offers and messaging.
• Creating campaigns in the social space targeted to higher value fans.
• Adjusting campaign messaging in all channels.

Since social activity is very dynamic, you’ll want to manage the Open Graph opportunity on an ongoing basis, rotating offers and placement. And remember you can offer a discount, for example, but a sweepstakes or other offer aligned with your brand can also be extremely effective. The data you gather gives you a dynamic portrait of your most engaged customers. You can use it for more refined and effective marketing investments. You might also want to leverage a marketing services partner with linkage, quality data and analytic expertise to get started.

The payoff…

For the social team:

• A clear, data-driven picture of your brand’s most engaged fans, leading to smarter social display ads and campaigns.
• A way to communicate clearly to marketing colleagues about the social customer ¾ beyond likes, posts and sentiments.

For the CMO:

• An understanding of the types of customers invested in social media helps calibrate marketing spend.
• A sound way to evaluate social media investment.
• A more complete picture of customer behavior.

For other marketing teams:

• A valuable customer attribute that can be used to help refine segmentation and targeting strategies.
• Clear understanding of how to target customer segments and which channels are likely to be most effective.

Knocking down the “social silo” is necessary to gather compelling data that’s useful in every marketing channel AND to be able to improve the customer experience. Building social intelligence is a key activity to keep in step with today’s dynamic customer, and to make sure your marketing is relevant and timely.

Customers are the lifeblood of any business, yet businesses lose anywhere from 10-30% of them per year.

Today’s “always on” shopper makes decisions in every channel – direct, online and in-store. In looking for better ways to sell more products to current and new customers, marketers seek out ways to expand their prospect universe to improve customer acquisition levels. Why? Customers are the lifeblood of any business, yet businesses lose anywhere from 10-30% of them per year. This makes new customer acquisition extremely important to both protect and grow business year over year.

The acquisition challenge is that traditional prospect universe expansion is becoming increasingly difficult. Many marketers have exhausted list and co-op rental names, and optimization strategies. They’ve been using the same predictive prospecting models against compiled prospect data or co-ops for a long time. But these tools, which are based on traditional demographics, are increasingly leading to a decline in good prospect identification and acquisition. We know that in prospecting, there is no customer behavioral data to drive higher performing analytics – no plastic surgery or proverbial fountain of youth.

In today’s multi-channel shopping world, the fresh face of online behavior can’t be overlooked. While direct marketers in self-preservation mode have leveraged traditional acquisition models for years, the reality is that if they do not consider fresh new data and modeling solutions, they will be looking for their next, new job.

So, what can marketers do to overcome prospect universe expansion hurdles with online insight to increase acquisition and ROI?

Meet direct marketing’s fresh new face: online behavioral data and modeling.

Online behavioral data addresses a key challenge of traditional direct marketers: profitable prospect universe expansion. By incorporating online behavioral data (website traffic and behavior, search, demographics, lifestyle data) into offline marketing strategies, marketers can:

• Identify previously untapped prospect universes
• Suppress likely non-responders
• Enhance offline prospecting

Where else do consumers so actively demonstrate their purchase interest and behavior? Where else do we go when we want to learn about something? Anything? We go online. But most direct marketers have not enhanced their offline marketing efforts with online data, missing the opportunity to incorporate online behavior into targeting efforts.

With this fresh new data source, direct marketers are able to:

• Better understand customer behavior across channels
• Refresh their current models
• Develop better models, built from true, multi-channel data

Ultimately, direct marketers will be able to identify new pockets of high-value prospects that traditional response models miss, resulting in an increase in revenues and profit.

Fashion models and trends change, and sometimes that’s for the best, otherwise we might still be wearing parachute pants and slap bracelets. Luckily, you now know what the new face of marketing is and can begin integrating online behavior into your existing customer data today to leverage new marketing opportunities. Discover the new fresh face of direct marketing; learn more about online behavioral profiling and modeling.