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Retail TouchPoints: Making 'Socialytics' an Integral Part of Retail Operations

Written by Guest contributor

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.

IDC Retail Insights' 2012 U.S. Social Media Trends by Vertical study revealed that 60.3 percent of retailers' social media budgets are focused on social networking through sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But to glean greater insight on the wants and needs of loyal and prospective shoppers, retailers are increasingly leveraging social media analytics, or "socialytics," a term coined by IDC.

"Retailers need to have a deep understanding of how socialytics can help them make a broad range of decisions that extend well beyond brand management, traditional and digital marketing, and personalized communication," Greg Girard, Program Director of Merchandising Strategies and Retail Analytics for IDC Retail Insights, told Retail TouchPoints. "A process must be implemented which allows them to harvest data and understand customer concerns by tuning themselves into relevant sites. From there, they can apply social feedback to relevant business decisions that need to be made."

To optimize socialytics, IDC Retail Insights offered a typology of socialytics methodologies, including:

  1. Text Analytics to determine what is being said across social sites, and how often.
  2. Social Data Analytics, which allows retailers to quantify how often individuals are visiting retailers' social sites, the traffic source, what is being said, and the data or resources being accessed.
  3. Social Relationship Analytics, offering information about how much revenue is generated from interactions taking place via social sites.
  4. Social Collaboration Analytics to reveal how information flows within specific networks and to pinpoint influential groups and individuals.

The process involves increasingly sophisticated insights into concerns such as tone and intensity of sentiments, topic trending, individuals' influence and the strength of communities.

The concept of socialytics still is fairly new. In fact, most retailers are still developing their social strategies around outbound tactics, such as developing optimal messaging and engagement strategies for specific consumers and their peers. However, "retailers must understand that there's an inbound side of social media, such as unaided consumer feedback," Mr. Girard explained.

Best-in-class retailers are already harvesting, organizing and analyzing content across internal sources, including social networks, e-mails, call logs, online chat transcripts and Voice of the Customer programs. Implementing socialytics arms retailers with the granular information to make better decisions in the following areas:

  • Brand management and marketing;
  • Merchandising;
  • Fulfillment; and
  • Commerce strategies.

However, the key to optimizing socialytics is determining the best personalization strategies that don't hit on the "creepiness factor," Mr. Girard advised. "Retailers have to exercise caution yet remain relevant and helpful to consumers."

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