Why I Left Facebook to Build Scrollmark

It was a blast talking about why and how we're changing the way brands think about and use social media.

Dive in to catch the juicy bits of our talk and see how Scrollmark can pump up your social media strategy.

Aha moment at Facebook

Back at Facebook, I was deep in the trenches with the Creators team  - helping connect influencers and brands to their fans.

The project I worked on was Top Fans - if you comment often on a specific page, for example Steph Curry or The New York Times - you’d get a badge saying you’re a Top Fan of this page. The next time you commented, there was a little badge saying Top Fan next to your name. It was a huge success - it moved all the major metrics Facebook tracked. I took it from just me to a team of 10 people.

That gig clued me in on something big: superfans are gold.

1. 90% of your outcomes is going to be driven by the most engaged 10% of your audience, your “superfans”. So the challenge here is how do you move more people into that highly engaged bucket, and then how do you drive more outcomes both from and for your superfans?
2. People love to be recognized, and feel like they’re part of a community. It doesn’t matter if you get something from it - the Top Fans badge cost Facebook nothing and gave the consumer the virtual equivalent of a “good job” sticker. But people went wild for it.

So how can brands recognize, reward, and monetize their superfans off of social? To answer these questions, I started Scrollmark.

Different kind of social media marketing automation

Scrollmark is a social marketing automation platform that turns standard social interactions into powerful engagement opportunities. We automate responses via Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs, and more, using a Zapier-style flow builder.

The heart of the platform is a Zapier style flow builder. You can build automations such as auto-DMing anyone who comments on your post or sending a DM based on certain keywords someone uses in a DM they send you.

You can use these automations to collect first party data like emails and phone numbers, or even build these flows on influencer accounts and paid media. We help you build mailing lists over social so that you can periodically reach out over social DMs.

Scrollmark automated DMs achieve a 90% open rate and a 15-25% reply rate. These numbers show the power of engaging with users precisely when they are most attentive to your brand—turning passive interactions into active leads and sales opportunities.

This approach upgrades social media from a simple awareness tool into a direct response powerhouse that drives actual business results.

Pushing the limits of direct response

We’re bringing about a new kind of social media marketing strategy called social direct response.

We’ve all seen direct response in other formats. For example, on TV, you’d have “Call this number now to get your 50% off your blender. This is a limited time offer”.

But many brands use social only for brand awareness - almost as a PR channel. Scrollmark changes that. The way social direct response works is you add a CTA to your social posts, “Comment on this post, and I’ll send you a DM with 10% off your next order”. And you can build a conversion funnel to collect that person’s email and get leads for your omnichannel marketing campaigns.

This has a few advantages:

1. You’re able to drive and track conversions off social.
2. Feed ranking responds positively to the engagement you’re driving, and increases the organic impressions your posts receives.

The best part is that Scrollmark partners with all of the social platforms we work with, so none of these automations will put your account at risk.

Power to the social media managers

It’s a tough world where social media managers are first on the block when budgets bleed.

Typically, every other marketer - whether it’s a CRM marketer, or a performance marketer, or an SEO specialist - can point to a number or a set of numbers and show how the work they did drove revenue.

Today, social is measured on likes and comments - what does that really mean? We’re not ready today to call a comment a lead. But if we can follow up on a comment to ask for an email and then add the user in our CRM, that’s value for any company or retailer. If we can drive a website visit, and ultimately a purchase, from a visit to your social page, that’s value.

There are entire brands across industries like Fashionnova in retail, Wendy’s in QSR, Duolingo in consumer tech, like Ryannair in travel, like Safely in CPG, that have significantly grown brand affinity and ultimately revenue by developing their own brand voice and engaging with fans on social.

But the conflict in investing in social is that CMOs have the shortest tenure of the C-suite. They need to show value from every channel they invest in from day 1. Without a tool like Scrollmark, CMOs and social media managers are:

1. Leaving money on the table, because you’re not pushing for conversions on the people you engage.
2. Not getting the credit you deserve for the business you drive.

Final thoughts

I’m happy to have sat down with Chris and Anne to share how Scrollmark is scripting the next chapter in social media marketing.

With Scrollmark, there’s finally a way for social media teams to point to a number saying “here’s the value social brings to the company”. And it’s revolutionary to the way that social teams will conduct their profession and prove the value of their work.

The way that email marketing managers today cannot live without MailChimp, Braze or Klaviyo, in 5 years, a social media marketing manager will not be able to live without Scrollmark.

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