Clarks uses Social Media to Engage Customers

kharman    February 8, 2016

Social media is continuously expanding and it’s no surprise that consumers today have turned to social media to voice their opinions, share pictures and videos, and reach out to companies. With social media on the rise companies like Clarks have recognized the need to take their social media tools to the next level to enhance their customer engagement.

Clarks has implemented many avenues of social media into their organization all aimed towards improving their customer engagement and customer experience with the ultimate goal of improving business results

How Clarks Uses Social Media to Engage Customers

Clarks is using traditional social media accounts on Twitter (@ClarksShoes), Facebook ( , and Instagram (@clarksshoes) to engage in two way communication with customers. On these platforms Clarks is able to communicate with their customer in many ways including answering customer questions and concerns, running campaigns and encouraging customers to submit photos, videos and stories resulting in a pool of user generated content.

Clarks is then taking the content they generate from their customer engagement to the next level by featuring the content that customer share with Clarks on their website and in their marketing with Bazaarvoice Currations. Doing this extends the transparency of the content to their website building trust with future customers by showing how products actually look and what customers think about the product and brand.

In addition to being present on the traditional social media platforms Clarks is exploring new and untraditional strategies to engage consumers using social media.

Recently Clarks launched a campaign ‘Rats to Rudeboys” on WhatsApp, a social messaging app that connects users from all mobile carriers and devices.

Rats to Rudeboys is a playful and interactive campaign that allows customers to engage with Clarks and live chat with three non-fictional characters that are significant to the history of their Desert Boot. The campaign is supported and promoted through videos on their other social media platforms such as youtube as seen below. The interactive campaign is developed to bring consumers closer to the brand and increase brand loyalty. Using social media strateiges and platforms like WhatsApp also provides Clarkes with another avenue to communicate future promotions and sales to consumers.

Keen to embrace new technology Clarks has also began to implement a new customer intelligence, marketing and analytics tool CROWD that will help the company to better use their customer’s social media to personalize engagement. The program uses smart wifi to allow companies to connect and interact with their customers as well as their customer social network.  Through the use of CROWD Clarks is able to provide more personalized customer engagement through offering real time promotions and delivering location based content. So far Clarks has implemented CROWD across 566 locations in the UK and has successfully been able to get 125,000 customers to engage with the company within the first few months.

Lessons for Others

As social media grows companies are able to capitalize on the increasing opportunities to engage with customers. Not only can traditional social media platforms such as facebook, twitter and Instagram be used by organization to improve business results and reach, but organizations can reach outside the box to use social media and technology in new ways to improve their customer engagement.

Organization: Clarks
Industry: Retail
Name of Organization Contact: Melissa Potter, CEO

Authored by: K Harman



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