The Monthly Retail Social Index Spotlight: Cheaper Than Dirt, DSW, Yankee Candle

In addition to demonmstrating that it “gets” its customers, Cheaper Than Dirt gives them reasons to interact with the brand. The majority of its posts include questions or calls to action, such as “Tell him what you think,” “Click ‘like’ if you agree” and “Fill in the blank.” It's within this active community that even posts featuring products (something that’s difficult for any brand to float on Facebook and Twitter) earn respectable numbers of shares and comments.

Although they're very different brands, DSW and The Yankee Candle Company use a similar tactic to earn high social engagement: giving fans exactly what they want and expect from their Facebook pages. Both of these brands hit the RSJI’s top 10 regularly, and their average scores over the last month — DSW’s 251 and Yankee Candle’s 172 — dwarf the overall RSJI average.

Much like Cheaper Than Dirt, DSW has a singular focus on Facebook. For the shoe brand, it’s — what else? — shoes. But not just any shoes: free shoes. Fans can win shoes by providing the correct answer to a question on “Free Shoesday” (the brand’s rename of “Tuesday”). Fans can win shoes if they cheer on the winning product in a weekly “Style Race.” Fans can win shoes if they post pictures of themselves wearing shoes on the DSW timeline during a “Frenzy,” if they read a blog post and if more people “Like” the page. Giveaway after giveaway, DSW receives accolades from its adoring fans. It even has a tab dedicated to free shoes. Its “DSW Free Shoes-O-Meter,” which displays the number of free pairs of shoes fans and followers have won, was approaching 3,500 as of press time.

The singular focus for Yankee Candle is fragrance. Fans are extremely vocal about the scents they love and those they love to hate. The brand feeds this passion with lots of questions — e.g., “Do scents remind you of a favorite memory?" "What fragrance is your happy scent?” — and polls about product lines, like its new “Man Candles” offering. Everyone has opinions about these new candles, and they’re not all positive. However, the brand showed it has, um, a “scents” of humor about it, sharing with fans the recent Jimmy Fallon segment that mocked these “mandles.”