BzzAgent Unveils the ‘Pulse’ Social Monitoring Tool

BzzAgent, the social marketing arm of dunnhumby, has launched Pulse, the industry’s first dashboard that connects insights from consumer word-of-mouth to actual store sales data to provide a complete view of a product’s health.

Pulse integrates qualitative and quantitative data – social media content created by brand advocates with in-store sales from dunnhumby shopper data – in a single dashboard to provide CPGs an analysis of their best advocates, what those advocates are saying about the brand, and how their actions are influencing product sales.

“Pulse gives brands unrestricted access to tweets, posts, photos, conversations, reviews and recommendations that brand advocates are sharing as part of a BzzCampaign,” said Malcolm Faulds, SVP of Marketing for Boston, Mass.-based BzzAgent. “That intimate view, joined up with shopper data is presented in an intuitive fashion so that marketers have a birds-eye view of their brand initiative.”

Additionally, Pulse allows CPGs to measure the return on investment of brand advocacy initiatives and gain insights that can improve their marketing messages and new product development. Faulds noted that what customers say they’ll do is not necessarily indicative of actual purchase behavior, adding that “CPGs can customize their Pulse view to help them understand who buys their brand based on actual purchase habits, the impact of their campaign on in-store behavior and what lifestyle segments are saying and doing.”

With Pulse’s household-level purchase data taken from more than 60 million U.S. households, brands can understand, for example, “…how price-sensitive shoppers are influenced by social media content as compared to those that tend to exhibit 'splurge and save' behavior in-store, and whether or not they actually purchase the product per their online intent,” Faulds added.

BzzAgent’s BzzCampaigns are customized for each brand, with thousands of individual opt-in advocates who participate online and in-person sharing their experiences and opinions of a product with millions of others.  “CPGs can understand how their BzzCampaigns impact the category overall, and the impact it has on competitive brand sales at a household-level,” Faults said.

BzzAgent program results have been validated by dunnhumby shopper data, Marketing Mix Modeling and Matched Market Tested by third-party measurement firms.

With insights from over 400 million shoppers around the world, BzzAgent provides marketers precise targeting and a powerful engagement platform to turn loyal customers into advocates. BzzAgent has launched programs for global companies including Unilever, Wrigley, L'Oreal, and Green Mountain Coffee.