Engaged Facebook fans spend 24% more on websites, Play.com finds
Customers who engaged with one or more Facebook campaign spent 24 per cent more on the website than those who did not engage with a Facebook campaign, research from Play.com has found, with £2m of gross merchandise sales being attributed to Facebook.
The Rakuten owned company also found that shoppers who were referred through Facebook to make their first purchase on Rakuten’s Play.com spent 30 per cent more than an average customer in their first year of using the website.
Adam Stewart, director of marketing at Rakuten’s Play.com, said: “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. Our approach has helped Rakuten’s Play.com attract over two million pounds of sales in 2011 that can be directly attributed to Facebook.
“It’s not just about increasing sales through our Facebook fans; we see social channels as being a huge part of engaging and rewarding our fans. Through the EngageSciences platform we can create holistic profiles of our fans – looking at how they engage with and share our content, we can create online campaigns that are more compelling and better reward our biggest social promoters and advocates.”