New Social Suite ties social activity to sales numbers

Social commerce network PowerReviews has launched a new program aimed at directly measuring how social activity impacts sales. The Essential Social Suite, announced on Feb. 27, enables marketers to "gamify" customer engagement and content creation, measuring which individuals and what social interactions are leading directly to sales, site traffic, or other business objectives.

“A big part of it is using established gamification techniques and bringing them into the online world for selling consumer and business projects,” said Nadim Hossain, vice president of marketing for PowerReview. “Consumers really value hearing from other consumers—we're taking that and putting a megaphone to it.”

Brands that integrate the Suite into their company website can enable customers to collect points when they review products, ask questions of other customers, or share a product with their friends. It also includes a public leaderboard for visitors to track their points and compare them to other visitors and follow their favorite reviewers.

The Essential Social Suite is composed of a handful of individual tools, such as Social Answers, which rewards customers for answering other customers' questions, and Social Loyalty, which encourages users to create and share content.

Marketers can track the performance of all the Suite's components via the Social Measurement tool and assess which individuals or activities are driving traffic, boosting engagement and increasing sales.

“[Facebook] ‘likes' don't equal sales,” said Hossain. “We're trying to get the impact where it makes a difference and today that's definitely on your website, not on your Facebook fan page.”

According to Hossain, the rewards from Social Answers has led to an average response time of three hours. Social Loyalty has led to a three-fold increase in content creation.