Your business has accumulated an e-mail list, but you have no idea how to connect those e-mail subscribers to your Facebook page, your Twitter followers and other social networks. You’re looking for a relationship with those customers, maybe something more than responses to your marketing e-mails. Enter Flowtown.com.
Co-Founder Ethan Bloch started his first business at 13, using IRC (Internet Relay Chat – the grandfather of Twitter and Instant Messaging) to directly market the products from his electronics ecommerce site. Ethan offered Playstation and Dreamcast accessories during the summer of 1999, and was successful competing on price for 6 months. Then suddenly, he lost all his customers because someone had created a similar website with better prices. Bloch learned at that moment about the value of creating customer relationships.
Fast-forward 10 years, and Bloch, formerly the host of the Internet video show WSYK (What Should You Know) and his cofounder Dan Martel, a Canadian long-time entrepreneur, launched the company. Flowtown is simple tool that allows you to run a list of e-mails and obtain the connected accounts on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and more than 40 other networks. You can then communicate with the people from your list on those networks as well.
Additionally, you can learn your list’s demographics, geographic characteristics, and the subscribers’ influence ranking. “We reached out to these influencers directly via Facebook,” said Meaghan Edelstein, Social Media Director of Smashyn.com. “We said 'We see you’re a customer who has purchased before and we’d love to hear what you think, and we’d encourage you to like and link to our customer’s page on your own page.' Everyone that we reached out to did this - quickly.”
Another feature Flowtown enables is parsing your incoming e-mail subscribers, to see if they meet certain criteria, and flagging them. (Flowtown can be integrated with e-mail services iContact, MailChimp and Campaign Monitor as well as form creator Wufoo.). So if a person with a million Twitter followers joins your list, you will find out about it when it happens.
“We push these demographic stories into these mail tools – so they can help you create segmented lists based on gender, age, location and social network.”
How would you start such a communication without making your customers feel like you were spamming them on Social Networks? Edelstein told me that her firm used Flowtown for their client Natural Skin Shop.
“With our first outreach, the client increased the "Likes" on their Facebook Page by over 50%. Further, we sent out a campaign to all the customers who were on Facebook asking them to post on the Fan Page wall why they love Natural Skin Shop. In less than 24 hours around 200 posts from customers showed up on the wall. Twitter followers increased as well but not by as much. However, the number of people who purchase products from natural Skin Shop via Twitter has increased significantly.”
What kind of return on investment did they achieve? Flowtown can cost a few dollars a month plus about 4.5 cents to import each user. Bloch says “If you can get one influential person to blog about you, it should generate more marketing attention than the $450 you would spend on Flowtown for importing 10,000 users.”
Bloch emphasizes that “Connecting with customers on Social Networks shouldn’t replace your e-mail marketing efforts – rather it should compliment them. If you’re a bakery in the MidWest, you might send e-mail news once a month. What Flowtown will do is help you understand what you should be saying, and to whom, since now you know a lot more about your subscribers.”
Additionally, if you analyze your list and see you have a lot of Facebook users but few are on Twitter, you know where to concentrate your social outreach efforts.
The way small businesses connect to customers is changing, and Flowtown seems like a useful tool in a marketer’s up-to-date arsenal. What are you using to find and connect with customers? Share your tips below.
Top Stories of the Week
- Antivirus Product Testing is Changing, Whether Vendors Like it or Not
- Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks
- Facebook Snags the Guy Who Built Google's Chrome OS
- Google Me a "Facebook Killer"? Place Your Bets!
- Chrome Surpasses Safari in U.S.
More coverage and analysis from ReadWriteWeb
Real-Time Web
- Yahoo Search Suggestions Go Near Real-Time
- Web Apps With Push Notifications: W3C Begins Work to Make it Happen
- New Google News is More Personal and Spontaneous
More Real-Time Web coverage. Don't miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb's report, The Real-Time Web and its Future.
Augmented Reality
- Qualcomm Launching SDK for Vision-Based AR on Android this Fall
More Augmented Reality coverage
Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Our Newest Research Report
We're pleased to announce ReadWriteWeb's latest premium report, Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Analysis of the Leaders, the Challenges and the Future. This report will help you develop a sophisticated understanding of Augmented Reality (AR), the mobile and Web technology that places data on top of a user's view of the physical world. The research included will help you decrease your AR development time to market by learning from the first wave of early adopters. AR offers a new marketing and product paradigm for a high impact, high value customer experience. More than 1,000 AR campaigns were kicked-off last year and we expect to see many more in 2010. In this report, we profile key AR development companies, their campaigns as well as development lessons learned. For more information or to buy the report, visit here.
Mobile Web
- Kindle App for iPhone, iPad Now Does Audio and Video
- Despite Glitches, iPhone 4 is Apple's Biggest Launch Ever
- Footfeed Jumps into the Check-in Aggregation Game
More Mobile Web coverage
Internet of Things
- Kuniavsky's Orange Cone: Designing Read-Write Web-Created Things
More Internet of Things coverage
Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App
We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.
ReadWriteStart
Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.
- Top 5 Reasons Why Your Startup Needs an API
- GitHub Introduces Organizations, Makes Managing Code Repositories Easier
- YouPhonics Launches Music Collaboration Tool
ReadWriteCloud
Our channel ReadWriteCloud, sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing.
- Alcatel-Lucent Acquires Programmable Web - Well-Known Source For APIs
- How to Connect an Office Building to an Activity Stream
- The Cloud Can Save Us Billions...But Can We Afford it?
ReadWriteEnterprise
Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.
- Antivirus Product Testing is Changing, Whether Vendors Like it or Not
- Scheduling App Doodle Now Features Calendar Integration
- Cisco Entering Tablet Market with Android-Based Device
ReadWriteBiz
Our channel ReadWriteBiz is a resource and guide for small to medium businesses.
- InDinero Launch Gives Small Businesses Real-Time Financial Tool
- Essential Tools For SEO on a Budget
Enjoy your weekend everyone.
Subscribe to Weekly Wrap-up
You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrap-up by RSS or by email below.
RWW Weekly Wrap-up Email Subscription form:
how to lose weight fast
Francine Hardaway: <b>News</b> Died This Week
But both the news and journalist Daniel Schorr died this week. Schorr died peacefully after a long and productive life. The news, however, was murdered. Unworthy commentators destroyed news.
Fox <b>News</b> Audience Just 1.38% Black
Fox News may be the undisputed ratings champion in cable news, but not among black viewers. The New York Times' Brian Stelter tweeted that, according to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News has averaged just 29000 black viewers in primetime ...
This Week's Health Industry <b>News</b> - Prescriptions Blog - NYTimes.com
More earnings reports from health insurers and drug companies, as well as agency hearings on medical devices.
