This is a guest post by Rakesh Soni, CEO and co-founder of LoginRadius – the fastest growing social platform offering social sign-on, social sharing, user data and social analytics.
Know your consumer base. The most basic of business rules we all live or die by.
And what do we need in order to know who our online users are?
Consumer data, consumer data and more consumer data, of course.
Marketing teams spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to understand their user base, what they want, how to reach them and how to keep them coming back.
The most common way marketers have collected online user data has been, until now, via sign-up forms. Yet we know that around 80%* of users dislike traditional registration forms and most of them will enter incorrect or false information.
As a result, marketers are well aware that asking users to fill out more than five data fields is really pushing their luck. So the question remains – how can I get more, reliable consumer data?
Social networks have finally found a solution for us, and it is simple: offer social sign-on – also known as social login – on your website.
Social login allows users to register on websites using their existing social network IDs – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. – giving them a hassle-free online experience by removing the need to complete another sign-up form or remember yet another set of passwords.
Offering social login on your sites gives you access to more than 200 data points, including verified email addresses, gender, age, relationship status and personal interests.
With verified information at your fingertips, businesses can truly revolutionize their marketing strategies. Let’s look at five ways how.
1. Understand who your users are
Consumer data is absolutely key to knowing exactly who your users are and being able to strategize and plan around that information.
But until recently, website owners had been faced with an uphill challenge when it came to collecting accurate and detailed data.
Even if you managed to persuade someone to fill out a registration form in the first place, there’s an 88% chance they’ll enter incomplete or falsified information.
But the arrival of Facebook Connect in 2008 completely changed the login and data game. With users able to carry their personal data with them around the web, website owners can now tap into far more useful and accurate data on a scale never thought possible before.
Social login gives you access to hundreds of data points straight from the user’s profile, including verified email address, personal interests, name, gender, age, location and language.
With access to quality, first-party data, marketing teams can develop better strategies and targeted campaigns.
2. Segment your user base
In a world with more niche markets, intense competition and more demanding consumers, market segmentation is both essential and increasingly complex.
With a wealth of social data, marketers are now able to constantly analyze their user base. They can segment them in multiple groups and conduct targeted strategies and campaigns.
For example, you can target even more defined groups – such as selecting female only users aged between 20 and 25 who live in a particular region and are interested in beauty products – giving you a competitive advantage.
This will in turn translate into a high return on investment (ROI) on your marketing campaigns and higher satisfaction among your users because the get relevant content.
User segmentation also empowers management to build business strategies.
3. Personalize the user experience
Social data gives you a direct connection with your user – instead of just selling to consumers you can now build a relationship with another human being whom you are growing to understand.
In today’s marketing landscape, there’s been a shift from old-fashioned B2C (business to consumer) selling models to H2H (human to human) relationships.
Businesses that personalize users’ web experiences around their interests and demographics record a 19 per cent increase in sales.
Social login allows you to map a user’s visits to your site, enabling you to better predict his or her online behaviours and intentions, and then build a personalized experience for that particular user.
4. Target email marketing campaigns
Forward-thinking brands are already delivering targeted emails based on the superior data received through social login.
Once you have segmented your user base and mapped their past activities on your site, you are now in a position to send out targeted email offers to drive up engagement and revenue.
Clearly it makes sense to not only follow up on a sale, but to also offer the user related items they may be interested in.
If you have sold someone a top of the range cell phone, why aren’t you recommending cases, headphones and other accessories by email?
People are quick to hit the unsubscribe button if you send them irrelevant emails too often, running informed and targeted email campaigns is essential if you are to retain your users.
5. Gather leads (prospect information) on landing pages
So at this stage, you’re pulling in stacks of data. You can segment your user base and personalize the user experience. Now, I want talk about how you can use social login to capture leads on a marketing landing page.
We all make beautiful landing pages with very effective messaging to attract prospects, but there’s one problem we all face: prospects don’t fill out the form or, even if they do, they enter incorrect information.
So we know nothing about the prospect, limiting our sales team’s ability to gather warm leads, nevermind close deals. That’s a significant impact on sales, isn’t it?
Well, social login can help you fix that by asking your prospects to connect with their social accounts before downloading content, participated in a webinar or taking part in any other ‘call to action’ you have on your landing page.
So now, instead of filling out a registration form, your prospects just connect to their social account in a couple of seconds.
Offering social login on landing pages will eliminate fake users and gather a wealth of correct data about your prospects.
Your sales team would love that, wouldn’t they?
To learn more about how social login can improve the user experience on your landing pages, check out this post.
If you weren’t addicted to users’ social data before, you should be now.