How Sam’s Club Uses Social Listening to Serve Member Desires

The Sam’s Club Deep Dive is a new five-part series that explores how social media teams run their day-to-day operations over several episodes instead of just one. Social Pros interviewed several Sam’s Club social team members to learn the secrets of their success.

Social Media is a Window into Customer Opinion

Other than direct feedback or surveys, nothing quite captures the opinion of customers like social media can.
Social media can provide a window into the minds of customers. It can help brands understand where they’re going right or wrong and what customers really want. That’s why Sam’s Club takes social listening so seriously.
In this episode of the Social Pros Deep Dive into Sam’s Club, Social Pros speaks again with Sabrina Callahan, Senior Director of Brand and Social Marketing, and Mark Quine, Director of Social and Brand Media.
They discuss the importance of social listening and how Sam’s Club responds to social opinion so quickly and effectively. Mark then discusses Sam’s Club’s approach to paid social and which strategies work best for the club.
All five episodes are out now, so get ready to binge!
As this is a brand-new series, we’d love to hear some feedback on what you think of the Social Pros Deep Dive. Please share any thoughts you have by emailing Jay directly.

In This Episode:

• 6:06 – Sam’s Club’s philosophy around social listening
• 8:18 – Why Sam’s Club has a member insights team
• 10:37 – How Sam’s Club measures and tracks customer sentiment on social
• 11:55 – How the social team translates its metrics for other departments
• 16:06 – How Sam’s Club introduced ‘Hero Hours’ during the pandemic after social posts went viral
• 21:47 – How Sam’s Club distinguishes between signal vs. noise
• 25:37 – Which channels Sam’s Club values the most for its insights
• 29:03 – The role of paid social in Sam’s Club
• 29:52 – How Sam’s Club measures the success of paid social
• 31:21 – How Mark tries to establish real causation and correlation in paid social
• 32:10 – How the social team keeps things consistent by working closely with the digital marketing teams
• 36:59 – Sam’s Club’s methods and strategies around boosting social posts
• 38:27 – Mark’s thoughts on which creative ad formats perform best for Sam’s Club
• 44:26 – Mark’s number one tip for becoming a social pro

Quotes From This Episode:

We prioritize channels based on where our members are. We want to make sure we are serving them where they are showing up. Click To Tweet
“It really helps that our CEO speaks and understands social.”
“We need to make sure we are communicating the value of the engagement, the value of social listening in a way that can provide a business impact.”

Sam’s Club Brand and Social Team:

To help you follow along, here’s an organizational chart of the Sam’s Club Brand and Social Team.

Resources:

• Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce
• Download Upfluence’s Brand Influence Ranking Report
• Download the Social Media Metrics template from Supermetrics