A Zappos partner has offered a glimpse into the effectiveness of that online retailer's Facebook activity illustrating that Facebook posts prompted both traffic and purchases during a two-month period.
The retailer's status updates from Nov. 20, 2012 to Jan. 20, 2013 prompted 85,000 visits to Zappos's site, according to Kenshoo, a digital marketing specialist that works with the retailer. Zappos has 419,000 fans for its Facebook Page. Kenshoo found that 42% of Zappos's status updates during that period led to purchases. The other 58% didn't lead to sales, but prompted other activity like "Liking," shares and comments.
Overall, each status update during the period had a conversion rate of 1.75%, meaning that roughly one person in 50 clicked from the update to buy something. Bryan Eisenberg, a marketing ROI expert, says Zappos' results are decent since the average conversion rate for retail is 2% to 3%. Meanwhile, Kenshoo found that for one particular post, Zappos got a 3.5% click-through rate and a 3.4% conversion rate for a revenue per click of $4.90, which represented a 34X ROI. Eisenberg says that he recently worked with an unnamed "top 30 retailer" who got $0.55 per click and was spending $1.50 per click.
However, Eisenberg cautions that Zappos has a particular kind of customer. "They have visitors that keep coming back every few days," he says. "There's just a few companies -- Overstock, Amazon, Zappos -- that have that."
Another factor also helps boost results: Most Zappos status updates contains a URL with a link to the site.