Check it Out: Cash for Social Sharing?

As a kid, I would have been a lot more willing to share toys and treats with my siblings, friends, etc., if there was a reward for doing so. My reward for sharing? Avoiding a punishment from my mother. Retailers are taking a slightly different tact to persuade customers to share their purchases with family and friends: they're paying them — or at least giving them cash back for their purchases.

Startup company Social Rebate helps retailers incentivize customers to share their purchases via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and/or LinkedIn with cash-back rebates. Here's how it works: Retailers integrate their online checkout with the Social Rebate application, then set up the terms of their rebate offer. After that, it's completely automated. A customer places an order and is presented with the rebate offer. If they redeem the rebate, Social Rebate tracks how much they earn based upon their sharing on social networks and the clicks generated from those shared links. At the end of the process, Social Rebate sends the payment directly to the customer.

Retailers that have partnered with Social Rebate are tapping into a social commerce trend: consumers want to hear from other consumers, not brands, when making purchase decisions. While word-of-mouth is the most popular way for consumers to promote a business or product, sharing via social media is gaining ground.

Metal Pressions, an online retailer of personalized jewelry, has partnered with Social Rebate to leverage the power of social commerce.

"We're well aware of the power of social media, and specifically the social power bloggers generate via posts on their blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts," says Andreas Argentinis, founder and president of Metal Pressions. "Bloggers would host product reviews and giveaways that required users to enter by liking, sharing, tweeting, etc."

"Instead of giving things away, however, we wanted to see if we could incent prospects with discounts earned by social interaction. I came across Social Rebate and it was exactly what I was looking for: a pay-for-performance service that rewards customers for social actions after they purchase."

Metal Pressions now offers customers a percentage of their order as a rebate after they like, share and generate clicks for the promotion. The first 25 percent of the rebate is earned when a customer likes Metal Pressions’ Facebook page; the next 25 percent is earned when a customer shares a promotion; and the last 50 percent is earned on a per-click basis of the shared promotion. Metal Pressions’ current rebate allows customers to earn up to 10 percent of their order back when they like, share and get five clicks back to its site via the shared promotion.

Social Shares Lead to Sales, Improved Search Rankings
Metal Pressions first tested Social Rebate via its Etsy account. Although Etsy's Social Rebate integration is different than other e-commerce sites — Etsy's rebate offer is emailed to the customer rather than shown at the point of purchase, leading to lower redemption rates — Metal Pressions’ sales on the online marketplace increased in May, its first month using the application.

"The rebate shares are generating clicks and sales, and the shares and clicks give other traffic generators like internal and external search some extra oomph," notes Argentinis. "We've seen improvement in Google results for our Etsy shop as well as our internal Etsy search results."

Following its positive experience using Social Rebate on Etsy, Metal Pressions integrated the application onto its own e-commerce site in June. Following a custom integration process, Metal Pressions is already seeing higher rebate redemption rates than it did on Etsy. That redemption rate only figures to rise as the retailer gets into the busy holiday shopping season.