Online Service Makes Social Media Marketing a Snap
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Social media have been around long enough now to have become a mandatory part of the marketing tool kit for small retailers. But there’s no getting around the fact that it can be an incredible time suck and, if not done well, do more harm than good. SnapRetail has a solution for retailers that the company says will help drive store traffic and sales.
SnapRetail's TrafficBuilder solution is an easy-to-use digital system that sends customers targeted messages and offers via email, Facebook and Twitter using a retailer's own email lists, Facebook friends and Twitter followers. What sets SnapRetail's service apart from other template-based e-marketing providers is its relationship with product vendors in the gifts, home decor and collegiate markets, which enables it to add content aggregation to the marketing mix.
TrafficBuilder offers its subscribers both an e-marketing vehicle and marketing content, including sample offers, text and images provided by the vendors themselves. To maintain quality control, retailers have to partner with vendors to gain access to the content. It eliminates the need for the retailer to deal with vendors or scrape the Web for content.
All marketing messages are double-branded to highlight both the retailer and the product brand, a strategy that has improved open and response rates.
By leveraging the best of email and social media marketing with content of leading vendors, TrafficBuilder allows retailers to easily and affordably communicate with consumers to bring them into their stores.
Two levels of subscription are offered. Bronze, which costs $49 a month with a three-month pre-payment requirement, features access to vendor libraries, templates , unlimited social media posts and up to 1,000 email addresses. The silver package, which costs $99 a month with a similar pre-payment requirement, adds the ability to have online photo albums and ups the email list limit to 10,000
Like many other innovations, TrafficBuilder was started to satisfy the founder's own needs. Before forming SnapRetail in 2010, Ted Teele was the CEO of One Coast, the largest sales rep agency in the gift, home and collegiate industries. He had insider knowledge.
"We have a huge advantage because we came from this industry," Teele told BusinessNewsDaily. "Our industry has traditionally done a strong job with selling products to retailers. However, it has done less well in helping independent retailers sell through these products to consumers. We decided to create the industry solution to social media marketing."
Traditional media, he said, doesn't drive store traffic. And store traffic is the lifeblood of independent retailers.
The next enhancement to SnapRetail's offering will be SnapFind, Teele said.
"SnapFind is our answer to Groupon," he said. "Groupon is not designed for products."
Snapfind will enable retailers to promote, sell and complete all customer transactions online, but will require buyers to pick up merchandise at the retailer. This helps generate additional store traffic and provides the retailer the opportunity to up sell or offer additional products. Currently in testing with a limited number of retailers, the technology powering SnapFind will have scaled sufficiently to be offered to all SnapRetail subscribers on Nov. 1.
The company plans to expand SnapRetail to industry verticals beyond gift, home decor and collegiate in the near future.
"It's all about helping small retailers sell through to consumers," Teele said.
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Reach BusinessNewsDaily senior writer Ned Smith at nsmith@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @nedbsmith.