Social media can be a powerful tool to listen to, engage with and gain access to customers that you would otherwise not be able to connect with. However, the Holy Grail in social media is finding a path to move those dialogues "back to your house"; that is, to be able to engage with the customer directly without a middle man, and even better, create a loyal, lifetime fan of your business.
In comes Sephora, whose latest efforts are backwards, in my opinion. Now, I am a loyal Sephora customer and a member of their formal loyalty program (the Beauty Insider/V.I.B. program). Whereas industry standard email open rates are pegged around 10-20%, I personally open approximately 75% of emails I receive from Sephora and act on many of them, as both a spender (spending real dollars) and a senders (telling others about them). That makes me an ideal engaged customer.
As such a customer, you could imagine my initial delight when I got an email with the following:
I saw makeup (which I love) and Hello Kitty (which I love more) and was ready to go make a purchase. However, I couldn't.
Upon reading the email offer more closely, it was telling me, the "Very Important Beauty Insider," that I should leave my email and not go make the purchase, but rather go "Like" Sephora's Facebook page to get first access and free shipping on this new, hot item.
The problem with this directive is multi-faceted.
First, I am already in their "exclusive" loyalty program (and a big spender, nonetheless), but apparently, that doesn't give me access to these most coveted items and deals. I have to also go to Facebook, because this deal wasn't offered to loyalty members at that time, only to Facebook fans. This is not a good way to engender customer loyalty.
Second, I already have a direct dialogue with Sephora. I am opening their email and responding to their offers. Why would they want to put an intermediary into that relationship?
Finally, I was ready to buy from them. Why would they create a roadblock to completing the purchase by sending me to Facebook instead of their site? In this case, I even went to the Sephora site to see if I could buy the item directly, but no, I couldn't get to it without Facebook (until two days later, when it did appear on the site and in my V.I.B. email). It's like having a customer standing in your store with cash in hand ready to check out and your sales associate saying, "Great, please go to a different location across town to complete your purchase." It lacks business sense.
With social media tools and tactics abound, some companies are losing sight of the end goal of these efforts. The goal is to get the customer to purchase from you -- a lot and often, if possible -- in the most direct and cost-effective way possible. Using social media to re-direct your direct dialogues to a third party site is not only foolish, but can have the opposite of the intended effect.