2022 Customer Awards: Target - Partners for Life

Company: Target

Company background: Minneapolis-based Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT) serves guests at nearly 2,000 stores and at Target.com, with the purpose of helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. Since 1946, Target has given 5% of its profit to communities, which today equals millions of dollars a week. For the latest store count or more information, visit Target.com/Press Center. For a behind-the-scenes look at Target, visit Target.com/abullseyeview or follow @TargetNews on Twitter.

Contact: Karen Rutkowski

Title: Sr. Marketing Manager, Social Content Strategy

Related URLs: https://twitter.com/Target, https://www.instagram.com/target/, https://www.facebook.com/groups/TargetFam/, https://www.facebook.com/target

Kudos Category: Partners for Life

1. Describe your partnership with Khoros. Tell us about which Khoros teams you partner with (e.g. Strategic Services, Professional Services, Customer Success, etc) and the outcomes you were hoping to drive.

In order to position Target as the most beloved brand on Social, our partnership with Khoros Strategic Service has included weekday support to moderate daily conversations across platforms, identifying proactive engagement opportunities, brainstorming and activating on real-time trends across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Target has also partnered with the Customer Success team on platform enhancements by participating in alphas and testing new capabilities via Khoros Care.

2. How have your Khoros partners helped you shape your strategy and align your people and processes?

Through Khoros Marketing, Khoros Care, and Khoros Intelligence, Target has leveraged the software to facilitate content publishing across channels, scale brand love moderation, and enhance social listening solutions. Along with the robust analytics capabilities of the platform, the collaboration with the Khoros Strategic Services has been key in identifying near real-time engagement opportunities with Target guests and brands. Additionally the team has evolved their scope to bring new offerings to the team such as moderation on Livestream events, group management, and reporting proficiency as we keep a pulse on potential brand safety risks and overall social landscape.  We have also been able to revamp and optimize our engagement strategy in order to measure, meet and exceed KPIs.


3. What successes have you experienced because of your partnership with Khoros? How are you better able to deliver your strategic priorities and deliver value back to your business? Please include metrics if possible.

One of the biggest achievements has been establishing the Target voice on Social. With the leadership of the Target team, we focused our efforts on building a voice that was fresh, relatable and totally Target. Through social listening and daily moderation in partnership with the Khoros team, we created the brand’s persona and an engagement strategy to bring Target's personality to life. Within the first year, the Target Twitter account saw a 57% increase in total engagements. The most engaged content of the year received over 149K total engagements and successfully tapped into the Target experience while staying true to the Twitter culture. For this work, we received a Shorty Award for overall Twitter presence. Since then, we have brought the Twitter voice to other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. It also served as a building block when we approached emerging platforms such as TikTok. 

Our partnership has also been helpful when launching and managing the Target Fam Group. Thanks to the active group engagement from Khoros, we have created a welcoming and positive digital community of Target guests. The group has garnered 50K members. In 2020, it had an honorable mention in the shorty Awards for best online community.

In 2021, the Khoros team was integral in brainstorming the new meme strategy and as a result, Target saw an Instagram follower count increased by 650K, garnering a total of 4.95 million followers, the most of any of big box retail competitors on the platform. There were quotes of positive sentiment such as “IDK who Target hired to do social but I cannot get enough these days,” “This spoke to my heart,” Target knows wassup” and “Target Social media manager gets it” among others. Target was chosen as a finalist in multiple categories for the Shorty Awards 2022 with Khoros partners credited for three of their submissions.