Chapter 6 Data-driven relationship marketing using digital platforms 275
Activity 4. Increase sales to existing customers
Applying social media to increase sales to existing customers focuses on developing your
customer communications strategy to encourage more social interactions on your site, lead-
ing to more social shares to gain the amplification effect.
Activity 5. Enhance customer service through social media marketing
Improving customer service or ‘social customer care’ through social media is not a major
focus of this chapter since we focus more on communications that directly increase sales
through reaching or converting more of an audience.
However, to find out more about how customer service can be delivered through social
media, we recommend reading the advice of consultant Guy Stephens of Foviance (Chaffey,
2010). He talks about how specific customer service activities should be managed, including:
• social listening to identify customers requiring service;
• outreach to answer customer questions or resolve problems;
• using service to improve product and service offerings;
• management of a company’s own service forums or other service platforms such as Get
Satisfaction.
To conclude this chapter, the case study reviews how data-driven digital marketing has
been used to support the growth of a startup business that offers a service for social media
scheduling and tracking.
Case study 6 Buffer: from idea to paying business customers in seven weeks
This case study features a B2B service used for man- I wanted to take the scheduling feature of many
aging and tracking social media updates. It illustrates Twitter clients and apps and make that single feature
success factors for an agile startup business developing awesome. I believed that single feature was wor-
into a profitable mature business that adopted a data- thy of its own application. The aim was to create
driven mindset to drive growth. The founder believes in something genuinely useful with a delightful experi-
‘radical transparency’ to openly share tests and insights, ence. The fundamental idea was to create a way
and this makes it a useful case study to learn from since to queue up tweets without scheduling each tweet
interesting details are often not revealed in other cases. individually.
Joel Gascoigne formed Buffer in Birmingham in the
After the initial landing page test was validated, a further
United Kingdom. The initiation of the company was
test was run to assess how much people would be pre-
data driven. From his ‘lightbulb’ moment of a service
pared to pay. A freemium revenue model was devised
to improve social sharing and scheduling, his minimum
where there was a free service that businesses could
viable product (MVP) was a landing page to assess inter-
subscribe to, with more advanced scheduling available
est in the service. Initial registrations and feedback via
for subscribers to paid plans. Gascoigne found that suf-
Twitter were sufficient for him to commit to launch the
ficient people were clicking on the details of the $5 and
project and he personally designed and built the first
$10 per month plans to suggest some people were pre-
version of the Buffer application for using with Twitter
pared to pay. Today, payment plans vary from $15 to
over seven weeks, as described by Buffer (Gascoigne,
$99 per month.
2011). Today it supports Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest
After reaching a critical mass of registrations,
and LinkedIn also.
Gascoigne built and designed the first version of the
application software during evenings and over weekends
Buffer’s value proposition over a span of seven weeks. This again used the MVP
Gascoigne describes his vision for the product like this: concept to minimise features, but show a clear benefit
276 Part 2 Digital marketing strategy development
Figure 6.17 Buffer’s value proposition
Source: Buffer.com
for the paid plan. Initially, Gascoigne was bootstrapping Launch and marketing to achieve growth
the company by working on web development contracts On launch, Buffer found that, with the initial pricing, there
at the same time. was a 4 per cent conversion rate from the free plan to
In 2016, Buffer would extend the proposition to social the paid plan. The first paying customer was achieved
media customer service by launching a ‘Reply’ feature after four days of launch and within a few weeks users
based on an acquisition of another company. Ultimately reached 100, and then increased to 100,000 users within
that was not successful and in 2020 Buffer retired that the next nine months!
feature. As new customers subscribed, Gascoigne resisted
Today, Buffer’s value proposition communication the temptation to simply build more features; rather he
(Figure 6.17) centres on the marketer’s ‘use-case’ of assessed the business model, including marketing and
managing social media as part of marketing campaigns. customer development. Gascoigne notes:
It offers to ‘Plan and analyse your campaigns’ by sched-
uling, tagging content by initiative and reviewing work After the first paying customer, I took a step back,
in detailed reports. It also offers ‘auto-scheduling’ and acknowledged that as a major milestone and decided
recommendations on when, what and how often to post a slight shift in focus was required. As a developer, it
to maximise audience engagement. is easy to pile in more features at that point. I knew
The company has also somewhat reduced the func- it was time to focus on marketing and further cus-
tionality of the free plan and in 2018 it highlighted some tomer development. It was time to keep the balance
of the limitations of the freemium model, which incurs of development, marketing and customer develop-
costs for supporting free users and providing the ser- ment with a product which had proved it was ‘good
vice to them. At this time, according to Buffer (2020) it enough’.
had: By early 2011 the company reached what Gascoigne
• 30,000 people signing up for a free Buffer account (2020) describes as ramen profitability, i.e. where you’re
making just enough to pay your living expenses. For him,
every week;
• 1,000 requests for help every week from Free users; that first goal was £1,200 per month.
• 80,000 paying customers and over 300,000 active In July 2011, the co-founders decided to move
the startup venture from the United Kingdom to San
Free users.
Chapter 6 Data-driven relationship marketing using digital platforms 277
Francisco in the United States, and Buffer was converted and they can also potentially attract visits from organic
into an incorporated business and received investment search and backlinks from other sites:
funding to grow further.
How to Use Facebook to Market Your Business. Arti-
By October 2012, it was reported on Buffer’s blog
cle in the guides category covering best practice,
that ‘1.5–2% of users are on the paid plan, predicting
repeated for other social networks.
$800,000 in annual revenue’.
Why We Have Our Best Ideas in the Shower: The Sci-
Soon after, Buffer intentionally made its salary calcula-
ence of Creativity. From the self-improvement cat-
tion algorithm public, which it still does today now it has
egory, offering to teach and inspire.
reached 90 employees.
We Analyzed 43 Million Facebook Posts From the Top
Buffer does not employ most of its 90 employees
20,000 Brands. From the trends category, which
locally. It has had a remote workforce since 2012 when
shares the latest data and approaches, including
the decision was made to run Buffer as a virtual busi-
sharing learning from its own anonymised cus-
ness, predating the approach that was later enforced on
tomer data.
many businesses by the global pandemic. One technique
Nike’s Secret to Success on Instagram: Building
used to develop a feeling of belonging in the remote team
an Engaged Community. From the case studies
was to develop 10 shared values:
category.
1 Choose positivity.
2 Default to transparency.
Marketing automation to support customer
3 Focus on self-improvement.
development and retention
4 Be a no-ego doer.
5 Listen first, then listen more. Since new prospects and customers sign up to Buffer via
6 Have a bias toward clarity. their email, automated emails are a key technique to wel-
7 Make time to reflect. come prospects and develop its customers. The email
8 Live smarter, not harder. sequence from Buffer for people using the free platform
9 Show gratitude. or trial has included:
10 Do the right thing.
• A welcome email from a team member recommending
initial usage to schedule a post.
Buffer’s social media and content • A second email offering to ‘Use Buffer to grow your
marketing strategy reach, engagement and sales’.
As might be expected from a company offering a ser- • A third email featuring customer testimonials linking
vice for social media marketing, social media has to the Analytics reports.
been important to the growth of Buffer. Its success in • A fourth email offering to teach: ‘3 things top social
social media for a B2B service is suggested by over media marketers do’. . . naturally Buffer facilitates
1 million Twitter followers, 200,000 followers on Face- these.
book and Instagram, and a further 40,000 page follow- • Other emails include practical actions of downloading
ers on LinkedIn. Ultimately, its success in social media the browser extension to make scheduling of curated
has been based on its content strategy. Since launch content easier and downloading the mobile app.
it has had an active blog telling the company story, • Monthly reports.
but also providing guidance for marketers about how • Feedback on customer successes, highlighting social
to improve their social media marketing and marketing shares that performed well, and encouraging people
more broadly. As well as blog posts covering best prac- to learn more.
tices for digital marketing it has also created a ‘Library’
section to educate on marketing techniques, including Conclusion
templates to help marketers manage their social media At the end of 2020, Joel Gascoigne wrote a retrospective
marketing and campaigns. blog article: ‘Reflecting on 10 years of building Buffer’
Listed are some examples of resources published by (Buffer, 2020). This illustrates the opportunities and chal-
Buffer that are indicative of the content editorial sched- lenges faced by an online startup business and the need
ule it has developed to support increases in awareness. to adopt an agile mindset to respond to changes in the
These types of content offering value evidenced by a marketplace, most recently caused by the pandemic.
‘clickbait’ B2B title can help attract visits at low cost Gascoigne also talks about some of the rewards and
by social media amplification as they are shared online, pressures of running an online business:
278 Part 2 Digital marketing strategy development
In the early days, it’s easy to treat a startup as a sprint, to be successful long-term, you have to take time to
but it’s really a marathon. It’s vital to pace yourself and reflect and rediscover your passion, and sometimes
take care of yourself. Regular rest is a necessity, and make some bold changes to get back on track.
I’m going to continue to work towards incorporating
rest and true vacations into my annual cycle. Addi-
tionally, as with life, there are seasons to a company. Questions
There have been stages of growth, market changes, 1 Explain the data-driven customer acquisition and
and role evolutions. There are always periods with dif- retention techniques that Buffer used to grow the
ferent focuses, and it is a continual journey towards company.
ideal equilibrium. 2 How has Buffer used social media and content
I’ve learned that it’s hard to grow without compro- marketing to grow the business?
mising, and after doing so, you might have to work to
find your purpose again. This is an example of the hard
work it takes to create something enduring. If you are Source: Gascoigne (2011, 2018, 2020)
Summary
1 Marketing automation and CRM enable ‘sense-and-respond’ communications, where
personalised emails or web-based messages can be delivered based on disclosed or
inferred customers’ preferences stored as customer profiles.
2 CRM also involves management of online services to deliver customer service that is
aimed at improving brand loyalty.
3 The classic model for permission marketing supported by marketing automation is:
• Attract customers to website, partner microsite or social presence such as Facebook.
• Incentivise in order to gain contact and profile information.
• Capture customer information to maintain the relationship and profile the
customer.
• Maintain dialogue through using online communications to achieve repeat site
visits.
• Maintain dialogue consistent with customer’s profile using email, social media mes-
saging or, where cost-effective, direct mail or outbound phone contact.
4 Personalisation technologies enable customised emails (or direct mails) to be sent to each
individual (or related groups) and customised web content to be displayed or distributed
using push technology. Increasingly, machine learning artificial intelligence is used to
deliver more relevant messages compared to rules-based approaches.
5 CRM also involves review of customer advocacy through techniques such as Net
Promoter Score (NPS) and development of programmes to encourage customer
advocacy.
6 The development of online communities through social networks, particularly Facebook
company pages and LinkedIn groups or independent communities linked to the company
site, is a key part of social CRM.
7 Development of an independent customer community may give additional benefits
since the community will be more aligned with company goals and customer brand
experience.
8 Management of customer value through customer lifetime value and recency–frequency–
monetary (RFM) analysis is a core technique for targeting marketing programmes at
customers who will generate the most future value for an organisation.
