Social Media @ Wal-Mart – Social Gifting Facebook Application Shopycat Case Study

Wal-Mart has a very active Facebook page where it has close to 23 million likes, close to million visitors to the page and according to a statement from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, he and his top management team travelled to Bentonville, Arkansas to "deepen" its relationship with Wal-Mart. The relationship between Facebook/Wal-Mart is very lucrative for both parties considering the fact that Facebook has one billion monthly users. @WalmartLabs is developing tools and technologies that will help Wal-Mart analyze the relevant information hidden in the hundreds of millions of social media conversations occurring online every day and through mapping social DNA of social networks users and sort through posts, updates, likes, comments looking to target products based on the genome. WalmartLabs defines the "Social Genome" as "a giant knowledge base that captures entities and relationships of the social world.

In November, 2011, WalmartLabs launched an application for Facebook called Shopycat, which currently has close to 20,000 likes or roughly one-hundredth of one percent of Wal-Mart's Facebook likes. WalmartLabs says the Shopycat app "makes gift giving less stressful and more fun "by analyzing their Facebook activity through likes, shares and posts using our Social Genome technology." Shopycat tries to figure out from a person’s Facebook profile what they’re most interested in, but also then has to find that product and match it to a link online. Shopycat is the first social shopping application from Wal-Mart’s recently-formed @WalmartLabs unit which is focused on developing platforms, products and businesses around social and mobile commerce. Along with products from Walmart.com and Wal-Mart, Shopycat matches users' interests to a catalog that includes other sites like bookseller Barnes & Noble and gifts store RedEnvelope.

According to Ifeelgoods.com Wal-Mart case study where they studied customer acquisition by Wal-Mart through its Facebook social gifting application called Shopycat. Ifeelgoods worked with @WalmartLabs to build the user base for Shopycat. In the initial month-long campaign, Ifeelgoods hosted a seamless user experience that gave 10 Facebook credits to users that allowed the Shopycat application and for preventing fraud credits were direct deposited into eligible users’ Facebook accounts. As an added service, Ifeelgoods assisted with driving targeted traffic to the promotion by displaying ads via the Ifeelgoods publisher network, ultimately managing campaign performance for @WalmartLabs. There was a good 42% conversion rate for users allowing Shopycat and a 27% redemption rate on the credits offer, which highlight campaign success. 50% of users shared the Shopycat promotion with their friends, and that viral earned media traffic flow generated an incremental lift in conversions of 25%. The cost per new user was far less than campaign targets, and the users directed to Shopycat from the Ifeelgoods campaign stayed with the app, making up approximately 90% of the Shopycat user base. Shopycat application success has encouraged Wal-Mart to focus more on becoming social media retail mega player.