As I continue to monitor social media analytics of the Dunkin' Donuts brand, I am constantly amazed at their ability to maintain an upward trend in the growth of their fan base. In this post, I will present my findings from February 27 through March 27, 2013 and point out the relationships between my findings and the happenings at Dunkin' Donuts and how they are related. Finally, after crunching the numbers and analyzing customer engagement, I will outline some steps that DD could take in order to increase positive attention to their brand and, in turn, increase market share and profits.
In my first post monitoring Dunkin's social media engagement, I showed their success in attracting and retaining customers is, in large part, due to their continual use of promotions. Another factor here is Dunkin's ability to start and keep conversations going with their customers. Whether they are responding to questions, general customer statements, and even negative experiences, the folks behind social media marketing are doing an impressive job keeping in contact with their fan base.Breaking It Down Into Smaller Bytes
The results from Addictomatic remain consistent with a high presence of Dunkin' Donuts searches, mentions, posts, images, videos, etc. from Twitter to Google to YouTube, Flicker, and even Delicious Tags. These results were not surprising and were, actually, expected.
When these results are broken down by their individual social media sites we can see, at a closer level, more specific data and interpret these findings in order to put together a maintenance or improvement plan for Dunkin's social media efforts.
In viewing Social Mention data for the past month,the overall findings are consistent with very little variance. The results between March 15 and 25 are virtually identical in all categories. For this post, I also broke down these findings even further. The first group shows the results for all mentions across the internet. The second group includes findings specifically for microblog mentions and the third groups shows the results for images. The data for the microblog mentions seemed the most impressive, showing more than 50% strength and an average of 94% reach. What this tells us is that the likelihood of the brand being discussed is high and the range of influence is enormous. The sentiment, at 3:1 and 5:1 is not as good for the microblog data as it is for the image search and overall search data, which show anywhere from a 6:1 ratio to a 15:1 ratio of positive to negative comments. This tells us that, although sentiment is mostly neutral overall, within the microblog category there are fewer positive mentions. This data also shows us that in microblog and overall searches, the Dunkin' brand is being mentioned every minute (or less).
In the Google Trends graph below, I have included four areas of web search interest across the US of the Dunkin' brand over the past month: Web, News, Images, and YouTube. Here we can see that they are continually in and out of the news...the latest spike on March 20 correlates to the 'free iced coffee day' in some of the southern states. This spike can also be seen on the web where searches and inquiries to Dunkin's Twitter and Facebook pages were inundated with people from across the country asking where the promotion was being held. The spike that appears from March 5 through 10, relates to the news, images, videos, and web searches regarding the employee who scared off the thief that tried to rob her by throwing some very hot coffee on him. This video went viral with 1,493,710 views within days.
Dunkin's Social Numbers Continue a Climbing Trend
Dunkin' Donuts has successfully utilized their Facebook and Twitter pages to better serve their fan base.
To date the Dunkin' Donuts Facebook page has
generated 8,501,594 fans, up from 8,473,323 five days prior, and at my last posting they were at 8,357,269...that's 144,325 (1.7%) new fans in just 30 days, which exceeds the average monthly increase by 16,845. In addition, 'people talking about Dunkin' Donuts in the US' has increased from 46,920 at the end of February to 196,553 last week. These numbers reflect that
there are close to 150,000 more people (320%) talking and sharing information about Dunkin' Donuts through Facebook today than there were just three weeks prior! In the graphic below the left three images I include to show the typical amount of engagement that can be seen on the Dunkin' Facebook corporate page. With a total of 34,329 likes, 2,189 shares, and 1,685 comments it is apparent Dunkin' enthusiasts are participating in posts that aren't even linked to winning a prize. They simply love their brand and want to let everyone know it. I found it interesting that specific promotions posted to Facebook (two on right below) didn't draw as much attention as the general postings above them.
In addition to Facebook, Dunkin' has tapped into the groundswell with its Twitter account,
reaching 209,042 followers as of March 25, up 4,545 followers from the previous month (204,497 on February 24). Dunkin' does a great job, both with Facebook and Twitter, in actively
engaging their 'joiners.' They show an extremely high level of interaction with their customers and it is obvious they are doing it right with the daily increases in their fan base. They have also done an admirable job of swinging their 'joiners' over to 'critics' by recognizing and responding to their audiences on all social media platforms they utilize. It is in this way that they continue to engage their customers to take part in the groundswell. Leveraging Visual Media
As Dunkin' leverages Twitter and Facebook as primary ways to engage and converse with their fan base, they are also utilizing YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest on the more visual side of marketing to draw in enthusiasts of their brand. Currently there are 299,453 photos of Dunkin' Donuts items that have been posted to Instagram. The Dunkin' Donuts main page has uploaded 139 photos and boasts nearly 37,000 followers. On Pinterest, DD has 19 boards that include 610 pins. They currently have 3,821 followers. Across all of Pinterest, I found 106 boards titled 'Dunkin' Donuts' created by DD enthusiasts globally that include pins and repins into the tens of thousands. YouTube appears to be Dunkin's forgotten child. There have been no additional videos posted by DD within the past month, the last one being uploaded just prior to posting Part I of this project. In spite of this, there has still been an increase in subscribers, up by 42 and 10,000 additional views within this time span. The most viewed video by Dunkin' was the 'Tell us how YOU keep America running,' from 2008. This 30-second-spot received 526,021 views as it encouraged consumers to create their own YouTube video explaining how they keep America running. The top 50 videos won a year's supply of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Recommendations and Conclusions
Clearly Dunkin' Donuts' marketing department has put together an extraordinary social media team that is utilizing social media platforms to their fullest. When it comes to listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing the groundswell, it does appear they have all of the bases covered. And although they have instituted an excellent social media strategy that is clearly working to their advantage in many ways, I do see a few things that they could improve upon and incorporate.
I'll start with Facebook and Twitter. Over the course of monitoring Dunkin's social media usage, I have noticed that the corporate pages for Facebook and Twitter (these pages are directly monitored by corporate staff) do not bring an awareness of regional promotions. They do a great job of responding to inquiries from their fans who have obviously heard that others are getting something for free, but the locations that they frequent are not offering the same promotion (and may not even know about other regional promotions). They should randomly incorporate posts into these feeds for their customers to stay connected in order to find out when these offerings will be made in their region and they should post about it when these offerings are in effect. This will most likely cut down on having to answer so many inquiries regarding this issue, and could also lead to an even higher number of fans and customer retention.
Second, I think they need to increase their YouTube efforts. YouTube is a great and creative way to interact with your customer base. They could create integrated full on interactive YouTube campaigns to answer customer’s questions and provide witty comments. If they are creative enough, they could essentially replace their FAQ's with video. This is also a great tool to use to answer customer questions while creating a database full of answered questions. Utilizing YouTube in this way can make them appear more personal.
Third, they could create quite a lot of buzz, interest, and conversations by posting about their values, ethics, contributions, etc. In 2010, they published their first ever Corporate Social Responsibility report. This report covers sustainability issues, environmental issues, fair trade, health and wellness, efficiency improvements, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), community support, hunger relief, children's health, and other charitable giving through the Dunkin' Donuts & Baskin Robbins Community Foundation and all of the ways that they serve their communities and help to preserve and improve the environment from their packaging to the way they run their businesses. This information could get them an extraordinary amount of conversation while tapping into another part of the market.
Finally, I would like to see a more sincere effort in the responses to negative posts. It is great that each and every negative post is responded to, however, the fact that each of these responses is identical and 'canned' shows a lack of empathy and sincerity to the customers plight. I think a more personal response would make customers more inclined to maintain the relationship despite the negative experience they are complaining about.
It is obvious that Dunkin' cares about it's customers' needs and wants. They are thriving through social media and embracing the groundswell to their overall advantage. The results they have achieved far exceeded my initial expectations when I set out to monitor the company.
(Social Media Monitoring Project Part 2)
No comments:
Post a Comment