5 Reasons Why Social SSO Can Be a Marketing Dead-End

When Facebook announced the “open graph” in 2010, marketers everywhere rushed to figure out how to get on board with this new “social graph”. Most ended up with Like buttons on their product pages, and some replaced their traditional site login with the new Facebook Connect – otherwise known as social Single Sign-On (SSO).  We often get questions about how Merkle’s Integrated Site-Social (ISS) solutions are different from the standalone “Single Sign-On” technology that many marketers either have already or may be considering for their site.  The answer at a high level is that our site-social experiences  are customizable solutions meant to deliver ongoing value to the consumer and drive sustained engagement with the brand. Single Sign-On, in comparison, is a technology point solution that provides the user with a utility – an easier way to register or create an account with a brand. Here is a more detailed look at the top 5 differentiators between a site socialization solution and SSO:

1. Reason to Engage: Standalone SSO is a standardized experience with a singular focus on registering or creating an “account” with a brand. It is focused on providing utility, rather than driving a value exchange between the consumer and the brand. Site socialization experiences deliver a strong value exchange, with engaging and customizable experiences that provide a clear connection to value for the user.
2. Ongoing Engagement: Whereas SSO is an effective mechanism to drive initial onsite registrations, it does not support ongoing engagement. Site social “experiences” (like our Social recommendations, Friend Store,  and Pinboard modules) are designed to drive sustained consumer engagement with your brand – giving customers a reason to return to see what their friends have engaged with, or what new content the social community has prioritized.
3. Conversion:  Many marketers serve up an option for SSO via Facebook midway through the cart experience – so rather than taking the time to create an account, a shopper can easily create an account with their FB credentials. This is likely to decrease cart abandonment at that point, and therefore increase conversion - a great benefit for marketers.  ISO takes this a step farther - a customized site social integration provides a much stickier experience where a consumer is more likely to purchase based on their social engagement with the brand, and also based on the influence of their friend’s activity with the brand.
4. Analytics & Insights: The difference in analytics and insights between SSO and a site social experience boils down to the fact that SSO only provides insights on interactions with a single registration touch point. Compare that to the analytics and insights that a site social experience provides across multiple social touch points over time. The site social insights are not only deeper, but provide an ongoing picture over time of how consumers interact with your brand.
5. CRM integration: Data captured from the Single-Sign On solution may provide interesting consumers insights, but unfortunately it is not very actionable. By the terms of the FB privacy policy, there’s just not much you can do with that data. With a site social experience, however, we are able to integrate relevant social data into CRM programs that are relevant to that experience – including site personalization and email integration.

Bottom line: Social SSO on has a place in enabling a smoother account registration process, but should not be the only way marketers integrate social into their site. Site social experiences provide a stronger value exchange, drive deeper customer engagement, and drive actionable CRM insights.