Play.com is very happy with its Facebook fans. The online entertainment retailer says those fans are worth 24% more in direct sales than non-Facebook fans — and that direct sales through Facebook have increased 80% in the last year.
Customers that purchased on Play.com via a Facebook referral spent 30% more than the average customer, reports Marketing Week. And the retailer claims that £2 million pounds worth of sales in 2011 can be directly attributed to their Facebook fans.
The basic social media numbers for Play.com:
- social media follows have increased 370% in the last year
- over 357,000 Facebook fans
- over 47,000 Twitter followers
- “top tweets” can reach more than 1 million impressions
Play.com examined the shopping behavior of its Facebook fans through social marketing platform EngageSciences, which allows the retailer to create “holistic profiles” of its fans. These profiles show how fans engage and share content, and enable the retailer to design more “compelling” content that will reward the brand’s social advocates.
The retailer says it is looking to engage and reward fans, not just to increase sales. Play.com believes its social efforts have increased the number of “actively engaged” six-fold — from 2,000 to an average of 12,000 a day, rising to 40,000 for some activity.
According to Play.com’s marketing director, Adam Stewart: “We know that there is a lot of discussion at the moment about how to quantify the value of social fans. Our results show that through intelligent engagement, social fans, particularly on Facebook, are massively valuable to online retailers. In fact, Facebook fans can be more valuable to online retailers than those gained through paid-for channels.”
What do you think – can Facebook fans be more valuable than those from paid-for advertising? Can this strategy be as effective for other (non-online retail) businesses?
