Q: Social + RFM: Are your most valuable guests active on social media?

photo of the author Gregg Blanchard

Our recent social media research brought up some interesting points. It put the social marketing movement into perspective but also set a baseline for the resort industry so we can track these trends going forward.

Sitting on this data, we couldn’t help but ask deeper questions. Seeking a relationship between social activity and RFM is one of them.

The RFM Breakdown
RFM stands for recency, frequency, and monetary. Scores are assigned to each component and brought together to form one, telling number. It’s a way to identify the guests that have come often, visited not too long ago, and spend a lot during each stay. In other words, it’s a way to identify your most valuable customers.

For this analysis, we’ve made three groups of scores: high RFM, medium RFM, and low RFM scores.

Socially Active vs. Not Socially Active
We’ll be comparing RFM again a question from the social media survey that has been deployed at dozens of resorts. The question was simply:

Q: Are you active on social media?

More than just having an account (that may be dormant), this question identifies guests that could even have a chance at being reached by a tweet or post.

Social Activity vs RFM
Here’s what we found. Within the socially active group, 37% had a high RFM score, 33% had a medium RFM, and 30% were in the low RFM group. Within the NOT socially active group, 43% had a high RFM score, 29% had a medium RFM score, and 28% were in the low RFM group.

In other words, those that WEREN’T active on social media were much more likely to have a high RFM score than those that WERE active.

What does this mean?
First, if you use social media, your messages have a better chance of reaching your low RFM guests than those with high RFM. It’s also a reminder to use multiple channels. These most valuable guests aren’t going to be reached the same way your less frequent and less wealthy skiers are.

You MUST use other media – print, email, direct – to make sure your offers get in front of their eyes. There is likely a correlation between age and RFM score as well as there is with age and social activity. Older customers typically spend more money and visit more often but are less likely to be active on social media.

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