Social Media Marketing

Most marketers in the fashion or retail space know how critical it is to tie social efforts to quantitative results. Yet many still develop initiatives around products, concepts or messages they're trying to promote, as opposed to needs their customers want to fulfill. Don't be fooled. Creativity may win industry awards, but marketers need to ask themselves how that translates to sales. Lilly Pulitzer, a household name in the resort-wear category, is the quintessential customer-centric brand, building a playbook filled not only with innovative ideas, but also insight to support them.

Facebook has courted businesses for years, urging them to join the platform and spend ad dollars on the social network. Now it wants to insert itself between businesses and their customers and stake its claim on the future of e-commerce. On Wednesday, Facebook announced it was launching "Businesses on Messenger," a set of new services that will allow companies to interact individually with customers through Facebook's messenger app. Part of a larger rollout of Facebook's new platform strategy, Businesses on Messenger will potentially allow for a consumer to receive order notifications via instant message or buy items directly through the messenger app.

Amazon.com and J.C. Penney are two of the top retailers that quickly responded to the worldwide social media buzz concerning a post about a dress that provoked a debate late last week over the color of the garment's stripes, underscoring how mobile moments can help brands connect with today's consumers. Late last week, Twitter and Facebook were barreled by posts from users trying to convince each other that the striped dress was black and blue or white and gold, prompting an intense debate that led to many memes, GIFs and jokes.

DrJays.com, the fast-growing urban street wear e-tailer, is gaining new customers and increasing sales and average order values thanks to an on-site social tool that encourages visitors to share products in their social circles and receive coupons for site merchandise in return.

For Krave Jerky, e-commerce represents a growth opportunity. While the company's primary business is in wholesale agreements with retail partners — e.g., Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, Vitamin Shoppe — selling its gourmet jerky flavors online has become a key initiative.
 For that to happen, however, Krave needed to upgrade from its "archaic" website — both in look and functionality — to a sleeker, easier-to-use platform. It needed a site that could match the coolness of the brand, which was growing at a meteoric rate.

As a marketer, I've put my best efforts into building not just likes, but deeply engaged communities on Facebook. And when you changed Facebook to a "pay for play" business, I had to pay to build my fan base, and then pay again to get my posts out (i.e., boosted) to the same fans, I accepted it for a while. But now I have to ask you this: Why the double whammy, Mark?

Asos, a U.K.-based online seller of fashion and beauty products, tweeted a photo of 14 of its interns that sparked public outcry on Wednesday. The photo, which went out on the Asos recruitment team's account @ASOS_Careers, is plain and tame — a group of smiling, eager workers cheerfully posing for the camera, with a note about how much their employer will miss them when they're gone. What's so controversial about it? They're all Caucasian. 

On its most important holiday of the year, 1-800-Flowers.com wilted. Significant others across the country purchased bouquets to be delivered this past weekend for Valentine's Day, but for another year in a row, more than a few failed to arrive on time — or turned up horrendously disfigured. Naturally, a pitchfork mob formed on Twitter, calling out the floral retailer for ruining their Valentine's Day and demanding full refunds. Over the past 12 hours, customer service reps have been responding to complaints, averaging about one reply every five minutes.

As Pinterest's monetization plans materialize, the social network is pulling the plug on affiliate networks. Pinterest warned select "power pinners" that it will now "automatically remove all affiliate links, redirects and trackers on Pins." According to an email forwarded to VentureBeat, Pinterest began removing these links last Thursday, and specifically targeted links from popular affiliate networks RewardStyle and Hello Society. This isn't the first time Pinterest has banned affiliate networks, but the company has never issued a total ban.

Cabela's social media response plan was a mess: Someone posts a complaint, the social media manager takes a screenshot, emails it to the customer care team, the customer care team tries to find the customer in its database (and most often they don't), then 72 hours later the social media manager responds. That social customer service system left two-thirds of Cabela's customers’ posts unanswered and a lot of people unhappy. Cabela's wasn't just dropping the ball on customer complaints, it was also missing big opportunities to build relationships.