Weight Watchers for business: SumAll tracks social activity to revenue
What is more interesting that solving the Facebook problem of "What's a 'Like' worth"? How about this: There's a new feature that is being referred to as "Weight Watchers for Business."
The initial problem was this: How do you accurately track social advocacy to daily, weekly and monthly revenue numbers? How do you accurately tie your social marketing strategy to your revenue?
SumAll allows its customers to do this by providing “an analytics tool that links a company’s Facebook fan page and Twitter account to track social activity against your web traffic and revenue, revealing the return on social marketing.”
For organizations that are struggling to get their arms around their data, SumAll provides a way for data to be pulled in, consolidated and visualized in a single dashboard. It is akin to being able to visualize and track a company's stock price over a specific time horizon.
What is the natural next step?
A feature that SumAll calls "Weight Watchers for business" allows businesses to predict their successes on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.
It allows you to set goals -- including certain revenue, units sold, site visits, fans/followers -- and shows you how to reach them in the allotted time frame and based on your own business data. You can track your progress at any time to ensure you are on-pace.
I spoke to founder and CEO Dane Atkinson about this new functionality.
What are the characteristics of good goals based on what you have seen?
Atkinson: A few characteristics are key. Have only a few goals. Each additional goal divides from the focus needed to succeed. Teams can have a few and the company as a whole a few but strive to keep that list short. Set them within the cycle of your business trying to keep them near but with enough time to effect change. Start with goals that are only slight stretches and as you succeed raise the bar. Be holistic in setting and explaining your goals and review tobe sure they aren't bringing harm elsewhere.
Advocacy, as measured in the graph, is composed of what Facebook activity? Just likes?
Atkinson: Facebook and a combination of activity. Advocacy Activity is the total number of stories created about your Page by someone other than a Page admin. These stories include liking your Page, posting to your Page's Wall, liking, commenting on, or sharing one of your Page posts, answering a Question you posted, RSVPing to one of your events, mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page or checking in at your Place. You can filter this line to see the breakdown.
Visits, in the graph above, is simply the number of Google visits, correct?
Atkinson: Yes, just traffic visits. The number of times your visitors have been to your site (unique sessions initiated by all your visitors). If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.
Sales, here, is gross receipts - seems simple enough.
Atkinson: Yes. Close to Gross: Sales is calculated as gross receipts less discounts, taxes and shipping. It is an aggregation of 'Subtotal' on individual transactions.
Who are the early adopters, and what are their characteristics?
Atkinson: For goals, it seems to tend to companies that are performing better then the average, so upward momentum worth tracking. All of our customers are still early adopters so I suspect that's a common trait. Of course their are companies across the spectrum.
Why do you think that SumAll has been so successful thus far?
Atkinson: The pain point is acute! Giving business visibility to their data and a way to see it all connected together brings folks to tears. I think our philosophy of design and simplicity has worked well, letting folks setup with just their site credentials and not needing an engineer has created quick adoption.
What's next? Stay tuned.
Related articles:
How SumAll solves the Facebook 'Like' problem.