Meetings Tech
New Tool Helps Planners Measure Social Media Marketing Success
By Matt Alderton
December 27, 2011
Email marketing company Constant Contact has launched a new tool for small businesses and nonprofits — including meeting planners and association professionals — that's designed to help them assess and measure the return on investment (ROI) of their social media marketing activities, it announced this month.
Called Social Campaigns, the new tool lets users create professional landing pages on Facebook for the purpose of running "Liked-gated" campaigns and offers — content that's limited to people who "Like" their Facebook page — such as coupons, weekly specials, fundraisers, product showcases, videos, etc.
Users can publish and promote their campaigns to Facebook fans, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections and email subscribers from within the Constant Contact platform, then access reports on campaign metrics, including fan growth, email list growth, visits, clicks, downloads and participant sharing.
"The true value of social media is not just about how many fans and followers you have — it's about what you do with them," said Mark Schmulen, general manager, social media, Constant Contact. "With Social Campaigns, [meeting planners] can go beyond just getting 'Likes' by creating real engagement opportunities that keep businesses top of mind with their loyal customers and make it easy for them to share campaigns with their networks and friends. It's results-driven marketing with the metrics to back it up."
Currently available by private invitation to a select number of users, Social Campaigns will be available to the general public in early 2012, at which point anyone will be able to run their first campaign for free. For more information, visit
www.constantcontact.com.