Social martech platforms pivot quickly facing COVID-19 crisis

Opendorse, a social publishing tool designed for athletes and sports marketing teams, had plans to release a solution for businesses, but made a swift move in response to the COVID-19 outbreak and moved up the release date for its latest product roll-out by a month.

“Influential people have something to say and we wanted to give them a platform to do it,” said Opendorse VP of Marketing Chris Allen. He says the company knew that communications would be key for businesses during such challenging times.

Making the pivot

Fortunately, Opendorse had already been working to launch its Opendorse for Business platform. Building the new platform involved adding LinkedIn to its publishing capabilities — a list that already included Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Opendorse’s development team was able to move up the release of Opendorse for Business by a month, giving Allen a whole new appreciation for his colleagues: “How many companies do you know that could actually move something up and deliver the same thing?”

The project took Opendorse approximately six weeks, including a period of beta testing to make sure the platform was up to speed. Opendorse for Business officially launched the end of March starting at $299 a month ($100 less than Opendorse’s solution for sports marketing teams).

Sharp rise in social platform usage

Opendorse’s new sales had been sluggish since the outbreak as a number of sporting events have been canceled, but overall usage on the platform has been up. “Some of our most active users are actually staff for professional sports teams,” said Allen.

Social media management platform Socialbakers confirmed it also has experienced an uptick in usage across its platform. CEO Yuval Ben-Itzhak said it’s happening especially with the company’s Social Customer Care solution.

“More and more brands are communicating with their customers to answer questions or alleviate concerns during the COVID crisis,” said Ben-Itzhak, “We are also seeing more usage on the content creation and execution modules of our platform, as brands understand they cannot afford not to communicate during a crisis.”

Social tools designed for crisis communications

In March, Socialbakers made its platform free for non-government organizations (NGOs) tasked with providing the public with essential information related to the pandemic. It is extending a similar offer to government institutions to help with their communication programs during the crisis. Socialbakers also released a COVID-19 Dashboard for brands, NGOs and government organizations to track coronavirus-related news and content.

Sprout Social has released a COVID-19 Featured Listening Topic tool, a data insights feature that is now available to all of Sprout Social Listening users at no additional cost. “With the impact of COVID-19 being felt by organizations across every segment and vertical, we wanted to ensure Sprout Social customers had the tools needed to quickly uncover meaningful social conversations and identify actionable data,” said Sprout Social Product Marketing Specialist Diana Barris. According to Barris, it took the team just over a week to move the feature from concept to launch.

“In times of crisis we see brands focusing even more than ever on their social media activity because social is the platform of choice for users looking to engage with brands,” said Ben-Itzhak, making clear just how crucial social media martech platforms are right now as businesses do all they can to connect with customers.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.