Dell to offer cash for social media shares

ARTICLE UPDATED 10 APRIL 2011, SEE BELOW. Dell, the world’s third-biggest PC maker by market share, is to reward its customers with cash for marketing its products on social media.

Dell

Customers will earn £5 for any shares on sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest that lead to a purchase worth more than £70.

The reward scheme, which Dell says turns consumers into “micro-affiliates”, will be promoted by a “share and earn” button placed in its newsletter, which is sent to more than 200,000 registered Dell customers.

The strategy is similar to that of PeerIndex, which offers influential social media freebies from brands to encourage them to share more content about their products.

The Dell campaign has been implemented by UK-based digital marketing agency Digital Animal. It will be tracked via Trade Doubler.

Meanwhile Dell is also currently in the midst of an experiential and social media drive to support its new Ultrabook, the XPS 13. The activity includes a Twitter hunt, that sees Dell-branded supercars driving across London waiting for people to find them based on clues it releases throughout the day.

* UPDATE Dell has contacted Marketing Week with this statement:

The reality is that the press release you based your story on was an inaccurate characterisation of the affiliate test program, and the press release itself was not approved by Dell. That’s why we directed [marketing agency] DigitalAnimal to pull all external communication.

This was an affiliate test programme targeted at affiliates, not customers. This test program was similar to many that we run through Dell’s Home Affiliate Program. Affiliates get paid a portion of the sales that they generate through Dell.com links they can post on their sites. This programme had nothing to do with paying customers for promoting Dell. We consider anything like that to violate the spirit of our Social Media Policy, which is built on transparency and adhering to high ethical standards.

Recommended

Jo Roberts

Respond to your customers, and respond quickly

Jo Roberts

Shocking is the word that most accurately describes the findings of Maritz customer service research. Stuart Handley, EMEA director of communications at Dell can’t believe that brands aren’t responding to customer comments posted online.