Using their social tools, Cozi empowers their customers to do what they already love and support what they already value. They do well by doing good, and fans help them in return as loyal customers and passionate brand advocates

1. Cozi Case Study
The Big Picture of Social Success

2. Cozi Case Study
The Big Picture of Social Success
About Cozi
Cozi is a free, web-based organizer that helps families manage crazy schedules, track
shopping and to-do lists, organize chores, and share memories. Its thriving, brand
community is also brimming with useful discussions and content, like meal planning
resources or calendars of the best up-and-coming, family-friendly movies.
Parents are one of the busiest, most passionate, schedule-juggling audiences out there.
So Cozi’s outstanding social engagement with its customers—a relationship with mutual
benefits—stands testimony to its excellent social media tools and practices.
Fanatically family-focused, Cozi is a three-time winner of the National Parenting Center
Seal of Approval and the Parents’ Choice Recommended Award, a two-time Mom’s Choice
Award Gold Recipient, and a winner of the Washington Technology Industry Association
2010 Consumer Product of the Year.
Business Challenge “Once we began that effort in earnest,” much more meaningful insight into the
says Schiller, “we saw relevant discussion. And we needed a much bigger,
In its space, Cozi is the leading family
conversation about our brand taking more sophisticated picture—not only of
calendar by far. But online, its primary
place on every key social network.” ourselves, but of our competitors, over time.”
competition is Google. How does a
The free or inexpensive tools simply weren’t
smaller enterprise compete against
Like a lot of companies, they started out up to the task.
giants, win over its audience, and achieve
using all kinds of free or inexpensive
a level of commercial insight—the
tools like Google Alerts, Twitter Manager, Her team started to look into alternatives,
competitive advantage formerly only
and TweetDeck to monitor and analyze and in November 2010, they picked Scout
much larger companies could expect
their customer activity. For a while that Labs, now a part of Lithium Social Media
to get?
seemed like enough. But as their user Monitoring.
base exploded and the online, peer-to-
peer conversations took off—not only The secret of Cozi’s social success is first
A Cozi Story on Cozi’s brand pages, but in blogs, in having a product that delivers, but also
The first goal was to get a lot of people on Facebook, Twitter, and all across involves two crucial social choices:
excited about the product. Cozi’s Social the social network—the spreadsheets
Media Director, Carol Schiller, knows that became totally unwieldy. The freeware 1. Having the right SMM tools to give
when the pay model is in advertising, a just couldn’t keep up. them the best, most advantageous
lot comes down to winning eyeballs—and view of the whole field: their own
not just the one-time eyeball, but the “That was how we began,” says Schiller. business, promotions, fans and
loyal, repeat returns. Her team began “I could know what people were saying buzz, and their competition’s too.
to explore creating a meaningful online about us today, and I had a sense of what
presence and how best to use social people had said about us yesterday. But 2. Smart promotions and incentives
media as a key part of their to meet our competitive goals and really that deeply engage their passionate
marketing mix. engage our customers online, we needed community.
1

3. Cozi Case Study
The Big Picture of Social Success
Usually you’d have to be at a much bigger company with a much
bigger budget to get this level of insight. We’re able to compete
with bigger guys by using this tool. For us, it’s a significant
spend, but it’s worth it because we want to lead in our space.
Carol Schiller
Social Media Director, Cozi
The Coign of Vantage ways to measure it all, so that her team’s a thousand new features they might
conclusions relied not on hunches and add to improve their product. But
What They Needed
hype, but on hard data. now that Cozi could catch real-time
To get the most strategic perspective
conversations comparing their product
on themselves and their competition,
What They Got to their nearest competitor’s, they could
Schiller wanted a more robust,
Before, Cozi didn’t have a good way to more quickly respond to customer
streamlined tool set, a package with
evaluate discussions except to have demand and maintain feature parity.
deeper capabilities, and more advanced
someone go to a competitor’s Facebook Cozi uses its community to help them
features. She needed their competitive
page or Twitter feed and manually scan brainstorm, choose, and prioritize
analyses to be more efficient, too, the
through what was there. Now they had which developments will be the most
team could spend less time measuring
tremendous visibility and insight into meaningful to their customers.
and more time coming up with fantastic
forum discussions—one area where the
promotions to better engage their
free tools had been particularly weak. As significantly, keyword searches of
community.
They could now nimbly track down buzz their community inspire ideas for content
about their brand and their competition’s, and features tailored to their customers’
Specifically, she wanted a clear and
both the positive and the negative, and real-time interests, needs, and concerns.
immediate understanding of what was
they could see who was using what For example, knowing that meal planning
being said about Cozi and its competitors,
technique. is a huge issue for parents, they searched
both real and potential. But she also
their forum discussions and found that
needed to know how seriously to take
With the Share of Voice feature, keyword customers were talking a lot about “slow
those conversations. If a competitor got a
searches proved very powerful too, cooking”. As a consequence, they ran
big bump in buzz, she wanted to be able
directly influencing product development. an article on the Ten Best Slow Cooker
to track it and understand exactly where
As with any company, there are always recipes.
it came from. Finally, she needed reliable
2

4. Cozi Case Study
The Big Picture of Social Success
I want to be able to say that we get better levels of
engagement than the biggest brands out there. Now I
consistently can do that. It’s very rewarding for a small
company like ours to be able to deliver on that. And I mean
financially rewarding, not just that I feel good about it.
Carol Schiller
Social Media Director, Cozi
And when they’re dominating the via our social networks,” says Carol not only allow them to monitor the most
discussion above their competition, now Schiller. “So it’s very important that we important conversations and respond
they can quantify it. “It’s not just my can measure that well, and maintain it.” quickly, but to respond personally. “The
hunch based on what I see,” says Schiller. fact that you cared enough to answer
“I can actually go into the tool and see Their success in generating an their question is hugely meaningful,”
who’s getting conversation, and when, exceptionally high level of community says Schiller. “Customers want to hear
where, and why they’re getting it.” Once, engagement, on Facebook in particular, back from a live human being, who
she traced a competitor’s spike in buzz comes from a savvy mix of knowing their understands her situation and can
down to a particular paid sponsorship. “It customers extremely well, offering clever answer her question—or who simply
was immediately clear to me what they incentives, and in providing an extremely cares enough to try.”
were doing. It was very comforting to high-touch customer service.
know that I could analyze that and know
with quite high level of certainty how they There’s nothing new about that business The Mutual Benefits of
were achieving it.” model except the strategy: Cozi is doing a Personally Engaged
it through their online community. “The
Community
strategies we developed were very
A Deeply Engaged Community thoughtful in making sure we captured It’s the easiest thing on the web to ignore
moms online where they really were,” a company. Over 90% of email users have
One of the more interesting stories about “un-Liked” a brand! That’s why Cozi’s
says Schiller, “and not just the ones
Cozi is how they’ve managed to win over highly engaged community—whether
who were super techy, passionate about
their online audience—the technophiles you’re looking at its most whimsical
blogging, or being online per se.”
and casual users alike. “It’s meaningful chatter or their most serious social
to advertisers when we can demonstrate commentary—is no small achievement.
They also understand the importance
that we really understand our customer
of having a human company. Their tools
3

5. Cozi Case Study
The Big Picture of Social Success
They understand that once a customer our social customer intimately, and About Lithium
‘Likes’ their page, it’s the company’s job we use Lithium SMM to further that
We help great companies build brand
to provide a great reason to stay, return understanding.”
nations for their most engaged
with friends, and actively participate—
customers. With Lithium, clients such
because a “Like” doesn’t matter unless it Cozi also offers some highly successful
as Best Buy, AT&T, Research In Motion
leads to action...and then interaction. As bricks-and-mortar incentives to engage
Limited (RIM), Univision, and PayPal
a result, only a small percentage of Cozi’s and grow their base. For instance, every
turn their customers’ passion into
Facebook content actually discusses year they donate money to PTAs, knowing
marketing, product development, sales,
Cozi or how to use the tools. Instead, it’s how much busy moms care about their
and customer service assets. For more
much more of an authentic peer-to-peer schools. Furthermore, being aware that
information, visit lithium.com, or connect
conversation around issues that moms parents often have to rely on friends and
with us on Twitter, Facebook, and our
tend to care about. Sometimes it’s just neighbors as much as family, they give
own nation—the Lithosphere. Lithium
for fun. away funds around the country to host
is privately held with headquarters in
block parties.
Emeryville, California.
For example, recently Cozi asked moms
on Facebook, at noon, how many people “Those programs also motivate
were still in their sweatpants (lots!) customers to tell other people about
Or they pose Fantasy questions, like them—and us,” says Schiller. “If you get
asking customers to imagine what everyone on your block to sign on, not
they would do if they had no childcare only are we getting you to “Like” the page,
duties this weekend. This isn’t random but there’s a high likelihood that if you’re
or impersonal chit-chat, though. It isn’t participating in the PTA or a block party,
spam. The questions demonstrate an you’re also in our target audience.”
empathy with what their customers’
schedules and lives are like. And those Using their social tools, Cozi empowers
customers respond. their customers to do what they already
love and support what they already value.
“What’s great about those Fantasy They do well by doing good, and fans help
conversations is that they also deliver a them in return as loyal customers and
lot of insight into who our customers are, passionate brand advocates.
what their passions are, and what they
care about,” says Schiller. “In turn that For more information about Cozi, visit:
helps us decide what sort of content to cozi.com
deliver in the future. We now understand
Lithium
lithium.com | 6121 Hollis Street, Suite 4, Emeryville, CA 94608 | tel 510.653.6800 | fax 510.653.6801
© 2011 Lithium Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4