Alliance Blog Reviews

If you have spent any time around the social media circles discussing business success stories you have heard a lot about Dell. In fact, you have probably heard so much about Dell that you know that the have claimed to have generated around $3 million in sales through their Twitter efforts. Of course, this is of interest because measuring success in social media is one of the most important topics that the industry can take on. Well, now Dell has updated their data so it’s time to spruce up those decks touting Dell’s social media success. Bloomberg reports Dell Inc., relying on social- networking sites to drum up sales of personal computers, said its promotions on Twitter have helped generate more than $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories and software. The number of users signing up to get Dell’s tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell’s online unit. More than 100 employees send out the tweets — Twitter’s 140-character messages — over 35 different channels. The $6.5 million number is what has been generated since the inception of these efforts about 2 years ago. So let’s face it, this is not the kind of number that makes everyone say “Wow, this is a runaway success!” since Dell is a $61 billion company. Regardless of that, Dell is committed. “It’s a very vibrant channel for us and it’s growing aggressively,” Manish Mehta, VP of of Dell’s online unit said in an interview. “It’s not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it’s that it’s happening globally.” Dell reaches Twitter users in 12 countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, China and Japan. Brazil’s Twitter users spent $800,000 in the past eight months, Mehta said. Now, the industry will continue to show off Dell as an example of Twitter generating revenue and that’s fine. My question is to anyone at Dell: How much do these efforts that generates this revenue cost? What is your ROI based on the time investment of your staff etc? Once these numbers are revealed then there will really be something to talk about. UPDATE: Article written by Manish Mehta of Dell over at the Huffington Post .

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Social Media Darling Dell Updates Numbers

I’ve been a contributing analyst for the eConsultancy/ cScape Customer Engagement Survey over the past few years. The 2010 edition has just landed and I thought I would share with you the data that jumped out at me. Email Newsletters Fading? The 2nd Customer Engagement Survey saw businesses focusing their efforts on using email newsletters to improve customer engagement. An incredible 69% of companies stated that they had measured a tangible improvement through their e-newsletter campaigns so it was not a surprise that 59% planned to invest heavily in email marketing by the time we came to the third survey. By contrast, investment in social networks – such as Facebook – was down on the list of priorities with only 36% of companies planning to increase their investment in that area. Social Networks See Huge Investment So, what happened now we are on survey four and looking at 2010? Those that took a chance and invested in social networks saw a big return on investment. For companies, email newsletters still rated as the tactic offering the highest tangible improvement (67%) but a whopping 44% – almost double the percentage from 2009 – have discovered that social networks helped increase their online customer engagement. That return on investment has clearly caught the attention of both companies and their agencies. In 2010, the survey predicts that 61% of company executives will be increasing their focus on social networks , while agencies are even more bullish, expecting their clients to spend more on social networking (66%) than even email newsletters (41%). Twitter’s King of Engagement Perhaps the most stunning statistic is the percentage of companies that plan to invest in Twitter as a channel for customer engagement. In last year’s report, Twitter barely registered with survey participants with just 7% of companies realizing improved customer engagement from Twitter, hence only 13% planned to invest in Twitter in 2009. What a difference a year makes! Twitter has seen massive growth and companies are scrambling to make the micro-blogging channel a key part of their customer engagement efforts. In fact, with 35% of companies seeing an improvement in their customer engagement from Twitter in 2009, almost 44% of companies plan to increase their investment in Twitter in 2010. That’s a three-fold improvement over last year! Engagement = Conversations What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, it’s apparent that companies are realizing that customers expect engagement to be a two-way dialogue. Email newsletters are a great way to keep customers updated but they don’t really engage them. Instead, companies are seeing measurable benefits of actually having a conversation with their customers be it via Facebook, Twitter or whatever, making them willing to invest more of their marketing/PR budgets to reap the fruits of that engagement. Want to get your hands on all the data? Get your copy of the cScape/Econsultancy report!

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Customer Engagement Survey Shows Twitter is King of ROI