webinar-posts Archives |

Demandware, Avenue And Zinrelo Unveils How To Enhance Your Conversions By 40% This Holiday Season

Marketers often look forward to holiday season as much as customers do. The onset of a festive season always sets the tone right for shopping and customers plan to spend more lavishly than they usually do. This undoubtedly creates an incredible opportunity for marketers to make more sales. Though it is a reason for marketers to beam with excitement, more traffic does not necessarily mean more sales. With the modern day online shopping trend, Merchants need to catch up and adopt modern-day marketing strategies and use Social to exploit every chance of making a sale.

That’s the reason why Avenue, Demandware and ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) joined hands to present a special three-way webinar to showcase how the right use of Social and referral marketing strategies can help marketers fetch up to 40% more revenue from their holiday traffic.

This blog post includes the recording and presentation used in the webinar and highlights the strategies that helped Avenue, a leader in plus size fashion clothing reap 11X more ROI.

Recording of the webinar:

Presentation of the webinar:

Demandware, Avenue and ShopSocially Webinar – How merchants can get up to 40% more conversions from their holiday traffic? from Shop Socially

Key highlights from the webinar:

Holiday season is a reason enough for marketers to be excited over the expected rush of more number of visitors on their sites. However more number of visitors does not necessarily mean high quality traffic. It is in fact most likely that due to SEO and SMO campaigns there is a rush of low quality traffic that mainly comprise of window shoppers. Another challenge during Christmas and Thanksgiving is that of a clutter of deals. These endless deals often urge customers to hop from site to site before their final purchase. Photo sharing is popular, however it often limits at friends and family pics sharing and does not happen enough in the direction of people sharing their purchase experiences or product stories. Lastly, the holiday email campaigns’ clutter swamps people’s inbox only to irritate them and dissuade them from looking at some genuine offers.

Advantage ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo):

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) Omni Channel Marketing Solutions platform comprises of a referral program that helps in new customer acquisition, modules which remove conversion barriers and provide social proof, and loyalty solutions which ensure that clients come back for more. Complementing these functions is a list of features including easy personalization, detailed reporting, A/B testing, and mobile friendliness. ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) offers seamlessly integrated apps plugin for major ecommerce platforms such as Demandware.

Avenue’s Journey:

Avenue® used ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) Social Connect app on its website to encourage users to share their love for the brand on Facebook. As users connected with the brand, they created a social post and endorsed Avenue® brand on Facebook. Each social post acted as a referral and brought in quality referral traffic to the website. Entire interaction happened on site and users did not leave the website. High quality referral traffic originating from these referrals converted at a high rate of 28.48%.

The second ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) app Avenue embedded was Share-a-Purchase app, which turns buyers into brand ambassadors by allowing them to share their purchases with friends in return for a small discount on their next purchase. The app has also helped acquire new customers via referrals, generate real-time social buzz, and increase repeat purchases by 26%.

Together with the Social Connect App, Share-a-Purchase App helped Avenue get thousands of word-of-mouth referrals on social media, improve their standing on search engine results pages through social sharing and backlinks, and enjoy a 11.5x ROI on their efforts. Individually, the first app converted visitors at a 28.48% rate while the latter converted at a 14.88% rate.

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) Strategies:

Sameer Palnitkar, Director of Zinrelo (f.k.a. ShopSocially) highlighted more strategies that can help marketers achieve up to 40% more conversions.

Customer Acquisition suite

Referral Program: ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) referral marketing program delivers 10-15% increase in high quality traffic. Referrals are the most trusted sources of traffic. When referred by a friend or relative, people are 4X times more likely to buy.

Conversion suite

Social Login: Usually registration acts as a hugebarrier making it one of the main culprits against conversions. Social Login eliminates the need to create a different login identity every time a user wants to use a website. This often brings in a pleasant experience makingonline shopping more successful in terms of conversions.

Visual commerce: Visual commerce is all about picking photos from Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and displaying it on the website. This shows how several customers are using certain brands, which in turn is helping create social proofs that initiate quick purchases.

Customer Q & A: The Customer Q & A App is interestingly can be tracked and fully moderated. This necessarily creates authentic user generated content that helps remove the conversion barriers, boosts SEO and also shows that other people are buying the products. This leads to an increased engagement rate and naturally leads to more conversions.

Loyalty Suite:Having existing customers comeback to you, is like having gold on one’s hands. Going beyond the traditional Loyalty Programs and rewards for social actions; a 360 degree social loyalty solution is a modern-day strategic app that is set up in tiers, has qualification points, redemption points etc. Having this loyalty program gives immense retention value, as 80% of any company’s future revenue is generated from just 20% of their existing customers.

Some excerpts from the question and answer section of the webinar:

Question: How Customer Q & A helps to boost SEO?

Answer: Customer Q & A helps you publish user generated content on your website. This is organic content by customers for customers which is considered highly useful and ranked high by Google and other search engines. This put together gives you better SEO.

Question: How to get ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) App on Demandware platform?

Answer: Demandware merchants can simply install the ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) plugin on Demandware Link Marketplace, with help of the installation guide and contact ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) to sign an agreement and get a partner _id. Within few hours you will be up and running with your chosen programs on your site.

For more details how to employ these referral marketing strategies for your brand, please write to us at [email protected] or click here to request a free demo.

Avenue® reveals secret of 11.05X ROI from referral marketing in ShopSocially webinar

Leader in plus-size fashion industry, Avenue® converted its brand into a word-of-mouth powerhouse using effective referral marketing strategies. Using ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) premium social, referral and retention platform, Avenue® drove high-quality referral traffic to its site and got an impressive ROI of 11.05X. In a webinar conducted by ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo), Kristen St. Peter, Director, E-Commerce at Avenue® shared how they achieved this referral marketing success story.

ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) platform helped Avenue® derive the following benefits-

1000s of customer referrals in form of viral social posts
Impressive sales conversion rate of 28.48% for users who connected with Avenue® brand through Facebook Connect
11.05X ROI for referral marketing efforts
88% high sales conversion rate for referral traffic generated through social sharing of purchases
Overall increase in customer engagement and brand engagement

This blog post includes the recording and presentation used in the webinar and highlights the strategies that converted Avenue’s brand into a word-of-mouth powerhouse.

Recording of the webinar:

Presentation of the webinar:

ShopSocially Webinar – How Customer Referrals are Transforming Avenue® into a Word-of-Mouth Powerhouse at a 11.05X ROI from Shop Socially

Key highlights from the webinar:

Avenue® witnessed amazing results from this strategy as below:

Viral and non-stop email acquisition via Facebook Connect
Acquisition of pre-verified email addresses used for Facebook login
Word-of-mouth spread of brand through social posts by real users
Uplift in SEO rank through social sharing and back links generated by Social Connect
Access to rich social profile data of users like email, birthday, gender, locations, friends, friends’ interests etc.

ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) Share-a-Purchase app encouraged Avenue’s customers to share their purchases on social media. Customers delight is at its highest when they complete a purchase. Using this app, Avenue® leveraged this customer delight and incentivized their customers to share their purchases with friends on social media. This created numerous social testimonials from real customers for Avenue® and drove high quality referral traffic to its website which converted at a high rate of 14.88%.

Referral marketing strategies brought in tremendous value for Avenue®. Socially shared customer referrals carried the good word for the brand far and wide and resulted in high yield word-of-mouth promotions for Avenue®.

Excerpts from the question and answer section of the webinar:

Question: How can marketers run targeted campaigns using the social profile data acquired through Social Connect app?
Answer: Social Connect enables marketers to acquire rich social profile data of users, which can be leveraged in 2 ways:

Aggregated Social Profile Data: By aggregating social profile data, marketers can get deep insights into social persona of its customer base. Marketers can understand age and gender distribution, location spread, brand’s social reach and most importantly preferences of customers. Aggregation of Facebook Likes of customers can help marketer design a customized marketing message, ad creative or campaign which will immediately connect with its customer base.
Discrete Social Profile Data of users: Marketers can offer individually customized offers to its customers based on information like birthdays, anniversary, etc. Marketers can offer differential rewards to individuals based on reach of her social circle (i.e. number of friends) and explicitly mentioned interests on Facebook. This makes campaigns highly targeted and extremely effective.

Question: Apart from having product reviews, is there a way these reviews can be showcased on the website?
Answer: Yes, ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) can pull in the reviews; comments shared by users on social media and showcase them as an internal element on the website. This data can be made available through an API channel, and can be embedded deeply with website interface. These reviews can also be showcased on Facebook page in form of trending products gallery. The product recommendations act as social proof that can go a long way in converting a tentative website visitor into a paying customer.

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) is a comprehensive platform for social, referral and loyalty solutions. 1000s of brands are using ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) platform to enable referral marketing, visual commerce, customer loyalty, social login, social gamification and other such programs on their site.

For more details how to employ these referral marketing strategies for your brand, please write to us at [email protected] or contact us here.

5 Must-Have Strategies for 10X Social ROI – Webinar

Social media features by default in all marketing plans of today’s marketers. But they are still often clueless on how to harness the true power of social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Email effectively to achieve maximum social ROI. To help marketers get maximum juice out of their social media efforts, Yahoo! and ShopSocially joined hands to present a joint webinar to showcase 5 must-have strategies to generate 10X social ROI. This blog post has recording and other details of this webinar.

Recording of the Webinar:

Presentation used in the Webinar:

5 Must-Have Strategies to Boost Conversion, Get Referrals, and Generate 10x ROI – Webinar by ShopSocially and Yahoo! from Shop Socially

5 Must-Have Strategies for 10X Social ROI:

1. Move to Viral Email Acquisition: Marketers should replace their traditional email marketing widgets with Facebook Connect. This will acquire not only email but complete social profile of user. Rich social profile data like birthday, gender, location, interests, friends, etc. can be collected via this method. ShopSocially’s Social Connect app helps you achieve this.

2. Drive Customer Acquisition via Referral Programs: All marketers know referral marketing but very few actually add the social flavour to it. To maximize social ROI, customer referrals should be made social in nature. Your customers recommending your site to their friends on social media becomes the most potent brand endorsement you can ever get. ShopSocially’s Refer-a-Friend app can enable this for your site.

3. Encourage Visual Commerce by Converting Selfies into Sales: Its a visual web today, and selfies are the best manifestation of it. Your customers are already sharing photos of your brand or products on channels like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Aggregating them via a hashtag into a nice visually attractive gallery can convert these selfies into a sales machine. Adding such gallery on your product page acts as social proof and increases conversions. ShopSocially’s Photomonials app is what you need to employ this strategy.

4. Use Social Login to Increase Conversions: In today’s socially connected world, enabling social login is an intuitive thing, but is often ignored by marketers. Social Login seamlessly extends users’ default social browsing behaviour onto your site and reduces “password fatigue” of remembering login details across multiple sites. Social Login reduces transaction/ cart abandonment rate, increases user engagement and drives sales conversion uplift. Use ShopSocially’s Social Login app to get this strategy for your site.

5. Increase Loyalty by Rewarding Customers for Social Actions: Loyalty program has been one of the surest ways of increasing customer loyalty and driving sales from existing customers. But in today’s social media dominated world, these loyalty programs now need to incorporate social into it. Reward your customers with loyalty points for their social actions on your site. This will increase social actions on your site and enhance customer loyalty, driving multiple repeat purchases. ShopSocially’s Social Loyalty Program is the go-to app for this.

Excerpt from the Question and Answers Section of Webinar

Question: How does social couponing help in referral marketing?
Answer: By using social couponing in referral marketing, we get customers to invest their social capital in availing the offer. As users put an effort to refer the site to their friends, they feel they have “earned” the coupon. This makes them value the coupon more than other giveaway coupons, leading to a higher conversion of coupon and an uplift in sales conversion rate.

Question: How can we use A/B testing for social media campaign? Can you share some test scenarios?
Answer: A/B testing can be used to test various scenarios and evaluate the impact of social campaign in clear business terms. Some sample scenarios are to test campaign creative, placement of app on site, campaign incentive strategy and so on.

ShopSocially is a comprehensive platform for social, referral and retention needs of marketers. 1000s of marketers are using ShopSocially platform to enable referral marketing, visual commerce, customer loyalty, social login and social gamification programs on their site.

For more details how to employ these social SEO strategies for your brand, please write to us at [email protected] or contact us here.

Boost SEO Rank Using Social Signals – ShopSocially and Americaneagle.com Webinar Tells You How

Social signals are influencing SEO Rank. 7 out of top 8 SEO Ranking factors today are social in nature. Marketers using back-links and keyword optimization to drive SEO are still not aware of the full potential of social for their SEO needs. To help marketers unlock this latent power of social, ShopSocially and Americaneagle.com conducted a webinar to showcase proven strategies to boost SEO Rank using social signals. Below is the recording of the webinar and the presentation used.

Recording of the webinar:

Presentation used in the webinar:

Strategies to Boost SEO Rank Using Social Signals – Webinar by ShopSocially and Americaneagle.com from Shop Socially

Strategies to Boost SEO Rank Using Social:

1. Increase content sharability via onsite social apps:
Google’s official blog now says that sites can rank better if their content is shared often by users. To increase sharing, marketers should embed social apps on their site. Marketers can also incentivize sharing so that customers do social SEO for them. This results in C2C spread of brand on social. By encouraging social sharing of purchases on their e-commerce stores, retailers can convert customer delight on order completion into SEO boost for their sites.

2. Optimize shared content for maximum SEO benefit:
Marketers should ensure that the content snippet shared on social media is optimized to derive maximum SEO benefit. Besides optimizing the title, description and image for SEO purposes, marketers can also influence the share blurb by asking a leading question in the sharing interface. Leveraging Google Authorship is an important tool for content marketers. It shows the author’s Google Plus profile in the search results, increasing the credibility and click-through rate. See the recording/ presentation to find out how to set up Google Authorship.

3. Channel social UGC for SEO benefit:
Customers are already sharing a lot of content about brands on social media. From simple Facebook status updates to rich visual testimonials on Instagram, this social UGC can be used for SEO benefit by getting users to add brand hashtag to it. Hashtag in social SEO is equivalent of keyword in content SEO. It defines the intent of user and increases the searchability of brand on social media. Search engines show more social results when users search for a hashtag.

4. Show social UGC as social proof on site:
Social UGC acts as excellent social proof on website. This is social buzz by real people with their true social profiles, and hence increase the user engagement on site. Also by embedding this social UGC natively on site using Product Stories app of ShopSocially, marketers can have a fresh content on their page regularly, further boosting the SEO Rank.

Excerpt from the Question & Answer Section of Webinar

Question: How do different search engines treat hashtags? Do they show different results?

Answer: All search engines have already integrated hashtags in their index. If user start typing a keyword with hashtag (#) symbol, you will get a different auto-complete suggestions as compared to normal keywords. For example, if user searches on Google for “Social SEO” and “#SocialSEO”, different results are shown. Hashtags as search keywords brings up more social media results. This clearly shows that hashtags are being treated differently and search engines.

Question: What are some of the key considerations to use social signals for enhancing SEO rank of an e-commerce site?

Answer: To ensure that your sharable content is being optimized for SEO, e-commerce sites can do following:

Make sure that product details are included properly in OG tags; product images are indexed and relevant
Link social sharing posts to relevant product URL on your website
Product videos can significantly add to the virality. In fact, YouTube has now become 2nd most popular search engines
Monitor your social community to ensure positive reviews on social network

Question: Are all users created equal or are there some users that may have a bigger impact on SEO?

Answer: Users with a larger and/or more active social network have bigger impact on SEO. For Social brand UGC like Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook visuals, getting a user with an active social network gets more clicks and drives more sharing. With more number of social signals, it has higher SEO impact.

For more details how to employ these social SEO strategies for your brand, please write to us at [email protected] or contact us here

HubSpot and ShopSocially Present Strategies for Profitable E-Commerce with Facebook

Marketers stung by the declining organic reach of brands’ content on Facebook are vehemently voicing their displeasure with Facebook. Marketers have spent top marketing dollars to build Facebook fanbase and are now being asked to pay more to promote their content to this fanbase. Accumulation of fake Likes have further hampered their engagement rate. Result is Facebook being accused of failing marketers.

In reality, its not Facebook, but marketers who are failing to leverage Facebook. Designed primarily for peer-to-peer communication among users, Facebook works best when marketers employ C2C strategies for social promotion on Facebook. Marketers are using it as another promotional medium on which they can showcase their branded content. Instead they should revisit social in new light of C2C strategies as suggested in the webinar jointly presented by HubSpot and ShopSocially (a.k.a.Zinrelo).

Recording of the webinar:

Presentation used in the webinar:

Is Facebook Failing Marketers or Are Markerters Failing to Leverage Facebook – HubSpot and ShopSocially Webinar from Shop Socially

Strategies for generating positive ROI from Facebook:

1. Facebook outreach through genuine fans:
True fans genuinely interact with your brand. To find such true fans for your brand, best option is to tap users on your website. These users are already interacting with you online. Custom canvas printing site Fabness USA used this strategy to acquire 15,000+ ‘real’ Facebook fans who converted at a high rate of 33.28% on their site.

2. Acquire rich social profile of users:
Users have evolved from email being their primary touch point. They are more connected through social channels today. Marketers should also move on from email acquisition to social profile acquisition. This not only gives you a pre-verified email address of user but also generates deep insights into customers social persona. Beauty retailer Carol’s Daughter used this strategy to identify social influencers among their customer-base. Users who connected with Carol’s Daughter through this method demonstrated a sales conversion rate of 29.79%

3. Use social login:
Social profile is the new identity for your customers today. Using social login eases the fatigue of registering anew on every site and remembering passwords. It increases engagement and drives higher sales.

4. Drive SEO through Facebook:
7 out of top 8 factors driving SEO rank are social in nature. Of this, 4 are from Facebook. Google search index now weigh social signals with higher significance, resulting in higher SEO Rank for sites which are shared more on social. Encouraging social sharing of your site content on Facebook will drive your SEO Rank.

5. Create social brand ambassadors:
Marketers should not stop at converting website visitors into customers, but should extend their efforts to convert customers into social brand ambassadors. Encouraging social sharing of purchases will result in your shoppers promoting your brand on Facebook through C2C methods. This drives quality friend referral traffic back to website. Popular firearms manufacturer Beretta used this strategy to earn average revenue of $19 from each socially shared purchase.

6. Acquire customers through social demand generation:
Aggregating your customers social comments on your product creates a gallery of positive social reviews for your brand. Your customers’ friends are most likely to have similar preferences as your customers, and hence the friend traffic on such social gallery leads to impulse purchases. This social demand generation enables marketers to acquire customers at significantly lower cost than their routine channels.

7. Show social proof:
With abundant information and unlimited options available at effort of few clicks or taps, customers today are more tentative than ever. Social reviews act as significant influence during customers purchase cycle. Showcasing social buzz from real people on product pages creates influential social proof driving user engagement and sales.

Here’s a quick snapshot of these strategies:

For more details how to employ these social commerce strategies for your brand, please write to us at [email protected] or request a demo to get a complete overview of Zinrelo platform.

Generate Measurable Social ROI | 5 SProven trategies by Demandware and Zinrelo

Retailers are using social media as mainstream marketing channel but are still often unsure when it comes to determining true ROI of their social commerce efforts. Retailers have generated user-engagement and increased brand awareness using social, but haven’t been able to measure the precise business impact in terms of revenue uplift. Demandware and ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) conducted a webinar to help retailers with 5 proven strategies to generate measurable social ROI. ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) customer Totally Promotional co-presented the webinar. CEO of Totally Promotional Tom Casad and Social Media Coordinator Erin Siefring added insights from their successful social commerce strategies using ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) platform which have yielded them 16% increase in sales conversion rate.

Recording of the webinar:

Presentation used in the webinar:

5 Proven Strategies to Generate Measurable Social ROI – Demandware and ShopSocially Webinar from Shop Socially

5 Strategies to Generate Measurable Social ROI:

1. Bring Social to Commerce:

Adding onsite social commerce modules on e-commerce site capitalizes on existing purchase intent of website user and converts them into ‘real’ Facebook fans. Custom canvas printing site Fabness USA used this strategy to acquire 15,000+ ‘real’ Facebook fans who converted at a high rate of 33.28% on their site.

2. Use Social in Right Context:

Identifying the points of customer delight and using social media influence at these points in right context results in maximizing the social impact. Totally Promotional used this strategy for their customized table covers products site Totally Tablecovers to capture customer delight when they received their custom-printed table covers. Customers shared their delight in form of picture testimonials shared on Facebook through mobile. These customer reviews resulted in an increase of 16% in their sales conversion rate.

3. Encourage Social Sharing of Purchases:

Retailers can turn their shoppers into brand ambassadors over social media through social sharing of purchases.Popular firearms manufacturer Beretta used this strategy to encourage their customers to share their purchases on Facebook. This generated word-of-mouth reviews and brought back quality social referral traffic. Beretta earned an average revenue of $19 from each socially shared purchase.

4. Show Social Proof on Product Pages:

Retailers can influence the customer’s purchase psychology through social proof by showcasing reviews from real customers on their product pages. Leading private-sales site for wine invino used this strategy to present real product reviews complete with users Facebook profile. This led to an increase in user engagement and an uplift of 22.22% in sales conversion rate.

5. Generate Deep Insights into Social Persona of Users:

Instead of using the now-obsolete methods of email-acquisition pop-up, retailers can encourage website visitors to connect with their brands using Facebook connect. This allows acquisition of rich social profile along with pre-verified email address and generates deep insights into customers social persona. Beauty retailer Carol’s Daughter used this strategy to identify social influencers among their customer-base. Users who connected with Carol’s Daughter through this method demonstrated a sales conversion rate of 29.79%.

Excerpts from the Question and Answer section of the Webinar:

Question: How does Facebook ads compare to word-of-mouth promotions driven by onsite social commerce apps?
Answer: Users’ comments on Facebook about retailer’s brand generally has a higher CTR as compared to brands driving their message through promoted posts on Facebook. Also, buying Likes through legitimate methods on Facebook has resulted in accumulating fake Likes for brands. This dilutes the engagement rate for retailer, further decreasing the organic reach of brands’ content on Facebook. Please check this viral video titled Facebook Fraud which highlights this effect in detail.

Question:How does social impact SEO rank of a website?
Answer: Social signals are a key driver for SEO Rank. Facebook Likes, Google Plus shares, tweets are impact SEO Rank. In fact, 7 out of top 8 SEO Ranking factors are social in nature. User reviews shared on social network generates backlinks for website further adding to SEO impact of social. For more details on this topic, please check this article titled “Want SEO, Get Social” from Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo).

For more details how to employ these social commerce strategies for your brand, please write to us at [email protected] or visit Zinrelo.com

Zinrelo Webinar Reveals How Wine Retailer invino Increased its Sales Conversion Rate by 133% using Social Media

Based in the heart of Sonoma’s Wine Country, popular wine retailer invino partnered with ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) and increased its sales conversion rate by 133%. Invino embedded social commerce apps into its website and makes its site more social.

invino used the Refer-a-Friend and Share-a-purchase social apps to promote their daily offers. Refer-a-Friend app increased user-engagement causing a viral loop of referral friend traffic.

ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) Share-a-Purchase app induced shoppers to unlock the promotion by sharing purchases on various social networks. An incentive well earned has 5-7X higher conversion rate as opposed to an incentive provided as a freebie. Share-a-Purchase helped invino gather rich social profile data. These social insights helped invino to run targeted social campaigns.

Powerful social app Shopping Community increased visitor’s engagement and improved SEO rank. invino embedded the Shopping Community app on its website to reinforce social proof and visitor’s trust in the invino brand.

ShopSocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) social media strategies resulted in impressive gains for invino:

3% of invino’s site visitors referred invino to its friends using Refer-a-Friend.
15.67% sales conversion rate for traffic originating from social referrals.
20.93% sales conversion rate for traffic originating from social sharing of purchases.

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) conducted a Webinar to unravel the social media strategies used by the wine retailer, invino. Tony Westfall, CEO at invino, presented the Webinar along with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo). Wine lovers attending the Webinar actively interacted with questions and comments.

Recorded video of the Webinar:

Presentation used in the Webinar:

ShopSocially Webinar – How Wine Retailer invino Increased its Sales Conversion Rate by 133% using Social Media from Shop Socially

Key Highlights from the Webinar:

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) enables brands to convert its visitors and shoppers into brand ambassadors. Social testimonials are the biggest influencers in the user’s decision making. The social testimonials act as a ‘social proof’ and give significant boost to SEO rank of e-commerce website.
Shopsocially’s (a.k.a. Zinrelo) social apps engage website visitors and convert them into rich customer profiles.
Each social action creates a post on social media leading to referral traffic and viral spread of the brand.

Excerpts from the Question and Answer section of the Webinar:

Question: How to get traffic to website on consistent basis for daily sales targets; instead of being lost in the internet.

Answer: The key strategies to get traffic are SEO which gets organic traffic and social media which amplifies existing traffic to get referrals. ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) helps retailers gather social proof which helps with SEO rank as well as referral traffic.

Question: How did invino best utilize ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) tools to boost its sales conversion rates?

Answer: Three specific strategies:

Increased Conversion: Users clicked on the Refer-a-Friend app to “earn” a coupon. Such earned coupons convert at 5-7X better rates. This increases the overall conversion on the website.

Repeat Traffic: Shoppers were given an incentive to share their purchases with friends. That incentive was an opportunity to bring shoppers back to the invino site.

Referral Traffic: Each share by shoppers and users resulted in a post on Facebook and Twitter. When friends discovered it and clicked on it, it created referral traffic.

Question: How social action drives SEO rank?
Answer: According to Google’s latest algorithm, sharing of a website is important than back links. Each social action increases sharing, thus driving up the SEO rank.
Additionally, testimonials generated from ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) can be displayed on product pages as fresh, user-generated content. This is critical for SEO. It bumps up the organic SEO rank of webpage’s.

Zinrelo Webinar Unravels How Plum District is Getting 35% Sales Conversion Rate using Social Media

Plum District is a popular mom-focused daily offers and ecommerce site. It was ranked among the top 100 sites for women by Forbes in 2012 and 2013.

Plum District is using Zinrelo platform to add social commerce modules to their site and make it more social. This is resulting into stellar success as follows:

5.57% website users converting into quality Facebook fans
20.5% of newly acquired Facebook fans also becoming email subscribers
11.06% shoppers sharing their purchases on social networks
High sales conversion rate of 34.9% seen for traffic originating out of social sharing of purchases

Zinrelo conducted a Webinar in which Jennifer Nuckles – CMO of Plum District – unraveled the social commerce strategy they have adopted to achieve this success. This blog post has the recording and presentation used in the Webinar and highlights of the winning social commerce strategy of Plum District.

Recording of the Webinar:

Presentation of the Webinar:

Zinrelo Webinar – How Plum District is getting 35% sales conversion rate using social media from Zinrelo

Winning Social Commerce Strategy of Plum District:

Off-site Strategy: Plum District is different social media channels to achieve the following:

Facebook: Non-paid activity for engagement, paid advertisement for customer acquisition
Twitter: Engagement and Awareness
Pinterest: Engagement and Awareness
Partner blogs: Awareness and Acquisition

Plum District uses email marketing and off-site social media channels like Facebook to promote their daily offers. While these channels are good to increase exposure and reach, when it comes to sales conversion, they haven’t been effective enough.

On-Site Strategy: Plum District has embedded social commerce modules from Zinrelo to achieve the following:

Acquisition of quality Facebook fans
Sales conversion and Revenue uplift
Driving word-of-mouth recommendations
Generating deep social insights into their customer base
Increasing user-engagement on site

Specific social commerce modules from Zinrelo that Plum District adopted to achieve the above objectives are:

Get-a-Fan app is converting 5.71% of website visitors in quality Facebook fans. 20.61% of these newly acquired fans are also becoming email subscribers
Share-a-Purchase app has resulted in 11.08% shoppers sharing their purchases on social networks. Traffic originating out of this social sharing of purchases is converting at a high rate of 36.08%
Product Stories app is aggregating the valuable social testimonials created by Plum District customers and showing them as “Trending Deals” on their Facebook page. These testimonials are also displayed on website as social proofs, increasing the user-engagement and driving conversions
Social Connect app is gathering rich social profiles with data like users’ interests, birthdays, information about friends and similar data. Deep social insights can be generated using this data

Besides this, Share-on-Mobile (which captures the customer delight when she receives the product shipment and generates mobile social testimonials) and Viral Flash Sale (one-page interaction that makes a flash sale go viral) are another two apps in consideration.

Excerpts from the Question and Answer section of the Webinar:

Question: How does photos and comments of real users appear on Plum District website? What is the impact of this?
Answer: Yes, these are real users whose comments and photos are gathered using Product Stories app. When users share their purchases using their Facebook account, their profile picture and comment (Facebook post) is captured by this app. Plum District is using the data API provided by Zinrelo to showcase these photos and comments in real time on the product page as social testimonials. This keeps the page fresh with auto-generated new testimonials.

Question: We are a smaller store with limited technical resources. What is the effort required to get these apps on the e-commerce site?
Answer: Embedding these apps on site is quite easy as it requires adding a couple of javascript to the site. The nice part is that once the integration is done, the rest is controlled by their dashboard. Retailers can play, pause, auto-schedule, target and A/B test the campaigns without any IT support. Any new apps they launch become automatically available as well.

Question:Can you please give more details on Share-on-Mobile? Is that an app one has to download?
Answer: Share-on-Mobile does not require any tech integration or an app download. Internet retailers can share a unique URL with their new and existing customers and ask them to share their product usage or product unboxing photos. App also supports QR codes. Through this, valuable mobile social testimonials are created which can be collated and displayed on website/ Facebook using Product Stories app.

For more details about the social commerce success story of Plum District, please write to us at [email protected] or visit Zinrelo.com

How Carol’s Daughter is Generating 8% Revenue Uplift via Social Media

Carol’s Daughter is generating an impressive 8% revenue uplift by using ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) social commerce platform. By embedding social media modules on their e-commerce site, Carol’s Daughter is achieving social commerce success as indicated by business metrics below:

8% increase in revenue
33% sales conversion rate for visitors interacting with social modules
ROI of 670%
2.58X higher conversion rate for social referral traffic
15% increase in Facebook fan count
Identifying loyal and socially influential customers

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) conducted a Webinar to reveal the innovative social media strategies that Carol’s Daughter is adopting to achieve above numbers. Jessica Klein, Director of E-Commerce at Carol’s Daughter, presented the Webinar along with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo). This blog post has the recording and presentation used in the Webinar and highlights of the social media strategies used by Carol’s Daughter.

Recording of the Webinar:

Presentation of the Webinar:

Webinar: How Carol’s Daughter is Generating 8% Revenue Uplift via Social Media from Shop Socially

Social Media Strategies Adopted by Carol’s Daughter:

Off-Site Strategy: Primary objectives for off-site social media engagement are:

Engagement
Feedback
Customer Service
Branding and PR
TV (Home Shopping Network) and Events

On Facebook, Carol’s Daughter has 930,000+ fans who are very engaged. However turning them into quality traffic to website which converts into purchase is a challenge. Carol’s Daughter have also tried re-targeting and look-a-like profiling for Facebook advertisement.

On Instagram, Carol’s Daughter has grown rapidly to around 24,000 followers in less than 6 months. Cross channel promotion in which Instagram exclusive coupons are promoted via Facebook and $100 gift card sweepstakes promoted via email are showing good results.

On-Site Strategy: Primary objectives for on-site social media engagement are:

Engagement
Conversion Rate/ Revenue uplift
Word-of-Mouth Amplification
Rich Social Profile Acquisition
Deep Social Insights (social influencers, trending products, etc.)

Using ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) apps, Carol’s Daughter is integrating social media engagement methods in the e-commerce flow to drive conversions, revenue uplift and boost word-of-mouth endorsements by their customers. Specific ShopSocially apps used by Carol’s Daughter are:

Get-a-Fan: To acquire quality Facebook fans and email subscribers, increase sales and improve SEO rank
Social Connect: To acquire email + rich social profiles, enhance customer acquisition rate, increase sales and improve SEO rank
Share-a-Purchase: To convert shoppers into brand ambassadors, promote social sharing of purchases, create SEO friendly back-links, identify loyal customers and influencers
Product Stories: To add social proof, boost social discovery of products, increase sales conversion rate

Using this strategic approach, Carol’s Daughter is achieving a ROI of 670% and increase in revenue of 8%.

Excerpts from the Question and Answer section of the Webinar:

Question: For Social Connect, does asking access to rich profile data like birthday, friend’s data, etc. result in higher abandonment rate for the app?
Answer: We have found that asking for rich social profile data does not have a major impact on the abandonment rate. The abandonment rate for Social Connect app (relatively high-effort, multiple click activity of allowing access to profile data and sharing on Facebook) is higher than Get-a-Fan (low-effort, single-click activity of becoming Facebook fan) because of extra steps that user has to perform to engage, and not because of additional information asked for.

Question: How does these tools increase SEO Rank?
Answer: Social commerce modules makes an e-commerce site more shareable. Through social sharing of products and purchases, valuable back-links are created which enhances SEO Rank. Recently, Google officially stated on their blog post that webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and “share”

Question: Besides these apps, what are the other social commerce offerings from ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo)?
Answer: ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) has recently launched Share-on-Mobile to drive off-site social commerce for retailer in the upcoming Holiday season. This app captures the point of delight when a shopper receives a purchased product. Using their mobile phone, shoppers can share a photo and a comment about that product on social networks, driving word-of-mouth advertising for the brand. This app can also be implemented to run a popularity contest via mobile using social voting.

For more details about the social commerce success story of Carol’s Daughter, please write to us at [email protected] or visit Zinrelo.com

Zinrelo Webinar Showcases 5 Strategies to Boost SEO Rank using Social Signals

Social signals are now the #1 drivers for SEO rank today. According to the SearchMetrics SEO Ranking Factors study of 2013, search engines are increasingly putting more weight on the Facebook Likes, Tweets, Google Plus +1s, Pinterest pins and more. These social actions are generating a lot of “SEO Love” from Google and Bing; and have now become the top 5 factors in determining the SEO rank of your website.

ShopSocially (a.k.a. Zinrelo) conducted a Webinar to highlight how social signals can be used to boost SEO rank. Webinar highlighted the importance of Social SEO in today’s world of social networks and presented 5 strategies to boost SEO rank using social signals. This blog post showcases the key highlights of this Webinar along with the recording and presentation used in the Webinar. Attendees were intrigued with the social SEO concept and asked a lot of interesting questions (check the questions and answers section towards the end of this blog post).

Recording of the Webinar:

Presentation used in the Webinar:

5 Tips to Boost SEO Rank of Your Website Using Social Signals from Shop Socially

Key highlights of the Webinar:

Social signals are important for SEO ranking because:

Google has personalized search (for a user logged in with a Google account) and shows different search results to logged in users based on their social profile and actions
7 out of top 8 SEO ranking factors are social in nature (source)
Google now suggests that “webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share”. This clearly demonstrates the importance Google places on social actions

5 strategies to boost SEO rank using social signals:

Google Plus Authorship: Validating Google Plus profile and verifying Google Plus Authorship increases the authenticity of content you produce. Google Plus authorship is closely tied to content authority
Create Shareable Content: Over the time, publishers have become more focused on creating content which pleases search engines. However, search engines are now putting more importance on quality content which users will like to share with their friends and community
Maximize Sharing Opportunities: Passive sharing buttons generates very low engagement. Instead tactics like explicit call to share, in-context rewarding increases engagement and increases the sharing rate by 50-100x
Optimize Shared Content: Ensure that all elements of the snippet that gets shared on social networks are optimized for maximum SEO benefit. While elements like title, description, image and URL can be controlled and set as desired, you can influence the ‘share blurb” also by providing a sample text which users can refer to for sharing
Bringing Back Fresh and Authentic UGC on Your Website: Shared content becomes the authentic UGC for your website which can be collated and published back on your website. This increases the freshness of content, reduces bounce rate and increase the time spent on the site. For e-commerce sites, it acts as on-site social referrals and drives higher conversions

Selected Questions and Answers from the Webinar:

Question: Does Facebook allow providing incentive to user to Like a particular page? Is it legal as per Facebook rules?
Answer: Facebook rules allows providing incentive to user to Like a page as long as this incentive is also available to users who have already Liked the page. Facebook does not allow restricting such an incentive to only new fans and excluding the existing fans.

Question: Is sharing a purchase predominant in a particular age group or demographic?
Answer: No. We haven’t seen any particular age-group to be more prone for sharing (as against the popular belief that teenagers and youth are more likely to share stuff online). Instead our data has shown that females more likely to share their purchases online, though it is not a huge skew.

Question: Do you recommend a brand create a persona for Authorship on Google Plus?
Answer: Yes, brands can also benefit from verifying their identity and validating the content they are producing. It will have a positive impact on the SEO rank of their website.

Question: Do you recommend ‘gamification’ to promote social sharing?
Answer: ‘Gamification’ works great for driving social sharing. However it is important to note that gamification will not convert a user who was not willing to share but instead will nudge a user who is tentative and ensure that she shares to participate in the contest. Thus, it is a great tool to identify right set of users who are most likely to share your content online, and not necessarily to convert users who were not earlier willing to share the content.