The Total Economic Impact™

Of Sprout Social
Cost Savings And Business Benefits
Enabled By Sprout Social

APRIL 2023

A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ STUDY COMMISSIONED BY SPROUT SOCIAL

Table Of Contents Consulting Team: Stephanie Slate
Claudia Heaney
Executive Summary ................................................. 1 Sarah Lervold
The Sprout Social Customer Journey ................... 7
Key Challenges ...................................................... 7
Investment Objectives ............................................ 8
Composite Organization ......................................... 9
Analysis Of Benefits .............................................. 10
Savings From Publishing, Scheduling, Listening,
Replying, And Planning Productivity Or Efficiency
.............................................................................. 10
Paid Media Savings From Advocacy Program..... 14
Savings From Reporting Efficiencies ................... 16
Cost Avoidance On Consolidating Legacy
Solutions ............................................................... 20
Savings For Customer Service Specialists Through
Smart Inbox Capabilities ...................................... 21
Unquantified Benefits ........................................... 22
Flexibility ............................................................... 27
Analysis Of Costs .................................................. 28
Sprout Social Annual Subscription Fee ................ 28
Implementation Fees And Internal Labor Costs ... 30
Ongoing Management And Training Costs .......... 31
Financial Summary ................................................ 34
Appendix A: Total Economic Impact ................... 35
Appendix B: Endnotes .......................................... 36

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THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL

 Executive Summary
According to Forrester’s 2022 Customer Trends Benchmark Survey, 88% of US adults
use one or more social media network and/or messaging app weekly. 1 As audiences
continue to seek help, entertainment, updates, and more on social media channels,
businesses are being asked to meet their needs. With an uncertain economic landscape
in 2023, leaders need to find ways to create efficiencies and consolidate efforts while
continuing to amplify and grow their brand’s audiences and influence customers.

Sprout Social was built to centralize, facilitate,

analyze, and streamline social media management. KEY STATISTICS
Through its publishing, customer response, listening,
and reporting capabilities, Sprout Social empowers
organizations to boost efficiency, connect directly
with customers, harness social intelligence, and
strengthen their market position through social
media. Businesses can also use social media to Return on investment (ROI) Net present value (NPV)
dissect trends and customer insights to inform their 233% $1.30M
strategies and measure success.

Sprout Social commissioned Forrester Consulting to

conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and
examine the potential return on investment (ROI)
enterprises may realize by deploying Sprout Social. 2
The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a
framework to evaluate the potential financial impact
of Sprout Social on their organizations.
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks
associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed
five representatives with experience using Sprout
Percentage of reporting
time saved with Sprout
Social
Social. For the purposes of this study, Forrester
aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and
combined the results into a single composite
organization that is a B2B organization with revenue
of $1 billion per year.
Prior to using Sprout Social, these interviewees noted
how their organizations relied on both legacy social
media solutions as well as native social media
networks to engage with customers, schedule and
publish content, and track success. However, these
tools did not provide a comprehensive or accurate
view of their brands’ effectiveness. As more
stakeholders requested information and social media
post volume increased, the interviewees’
organizations struggled to find efficiencies and
enhance their productivity, especially with the

75%
increasing demands on their social media teams.

After the investment in Sprout Social, the

interviewees’ organizations found significant time
savings around publishing, scheduling, and reporting,

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 1

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
which empowered them to maintain agility, innovate,
and share insights with leadership to make strategic,
data-driven decisions. Because of Sprout Social’s
ability to integrate with existing customer relationship
management (CRM) systems, the interviewees’
organizations saw additional cost savings in their
customer care departments as customer service
specialists were able to respond directly in those
systems. This helped streamline tech stacks.
Moreover, the interviewees noted that Sprout Social's
technology kept up with social media changes,
trends, and emerging networks, which allowed their
organizations to experiment, innovate, and add new
social media networks with ease.
KEY FINDINGS
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted
present value (PV) quantified benefits for the
composite organization include:
• Drove social media team productivity and
efficiencies of $973,000. Sprout Social’s
platform provides the composite organization the
ability to publish, schedule, listen to, reply,
analyze, and plan multiple posts across social
media channels without having to log into each
individual profile. It also allows the composite
organization to achieve a productivity lift of 55%
in Year 3 for its social media team.
• Improved organic reach by 85% on social
media through the Employee Advocacy
solution, saving $233,000 in paid media
spend. Through Sprout Social’s Employee
Advocacy solution, the composite organization
sees an increase in its employees’ approved
posts’ organic reach of 7,200,000, which offsets
the need for paid advertising.
• Eliminated manual data aggregation to
prepare monthly reports by 75%, saving
$39,000. By having accurate reporting data a
click away, Sprout Social enables the composite
organization to eliminate manual hours for the
social media managers. They can now focus
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
more on business insights instead of report
building.
• Retired legacy solutions and centralized
social media needs in Sprout Social migration
saves $473,000. As the composite organization
consolidated other legacy social media tools into
Sprout Social, it was able to stop paying those
solution fees. The composite organization
eliminates two legacy solutions to save almost
$200,000 annually.
• Enabled customer service specialists to
respond with the right context and track
responses sent, creating efficiencies of 92%.
Through the increased visibility provided by
Sprout Social’s integrations with CRM systems
like Salesforce, the composite organization’s
customer service specialists save over two hours
per week tracking down completed responses.
This leads to three-year, risk-adjusted savings of
$142,000.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value
for the composite organization but are not quantified
in this study include:
• Streamlined mentions to improve the
customer experience, creating faster
response times and brand credibility as a
reliable channel for support. Keeping up with
brand mentions across social media channels
manually is practically impossible. Sprout Social’s
Smart Inbox makes it easier for organizations to
monitor the volume by streamlining mentions in
one place. This allows them to keep a pulse on
what people are saying about their industries and
respond to customers in a timely fashion, which
is seen as critical.
• Enhanced the ability to prepare for crisis
communication needs and procedures.
Through Sprout Social’s listening capabilities,
organizations are able to track conversation
spikes and improve their responses to critical
2
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
events and incidents. They can also proactively
plan approval processes to minimize business
disruption.
• Strengthened compliance and security. Before
Sprout Social, organizations’ team members (as
well as extended team members) logged into
their social media channels natively. Once
Sprout Social is in place, they benefit from
improved security through a single sign-on
system and automated approval workflows.
• Enriched cross-functional relationships by
improving the ability to strategize and
collaborate across teams. Organizations are
able to closely align with different teams across
their businesses, discuss campaign strategies,
and easily share insights with them.
• Improved employee experience through UX
and a streamlined environment. The intuitive
and clean user interface of Sprout Social makes
it easy to use and helped streamline
organizations’ processes.
• Increased employee confidence as data
drives decision-making. Organizations are
much more confident in their decisions with
Sprout Social in place. They can easily tell what’s
working, what’s not working, and offer guidance
to other teams about the content that resonates
and the appropriate platforms to use.
• Gained industry knowledge and best
practices through Sprout Social’s customer
service. Not only do organizations feel
supported, but the Sprout Social team keeps
them up to date on changes across social media
platforms.
• Amplified brand voice on social media
channels, which led to more customer
engagements and impressions. While it’s hard
to place a tangible value on an increase in the
number of impressions and engagements across
social media channels, Sprout Social helps
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
organizations increase those metrics by a
considerable percentage.
• Uncovered competitive insights and
strategized against industry benchmarks.
Organizations use Sprout Social’s listening and
analytics capabilities to get a pulse on what their
competitors are saying, posting, and doing, as
well as identify other key trends across their
respective industries.
Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the
composite organization include:
• Sprout Social subscription license fees. The
composite organization pays an annual
subscription fees. This includes a Sprout Social
Enterprise license as well as its Social Listening,
Premium Analytics, Employee Advocacy, and
Premier Success add-on solutions. Over three
years, they add up to about $424,000.
• Implementation fees and internal labor costs.
The composite organization requires internal
social media resources to connect its social
media profiles and Sprout Social. The three-year,
risk-adjusted value of these costs is $17,000.
• Ongoing management and training costs.
After deploying Sprout Social, the composite
organization holds biweekly strategy calls with
Sprout’s internal team to ensure it is utilizing the
solution appropriately. It also designates one of
the social media managers to bear the
responsibility for ongoing management to
maintain the solution, its workflows, and its
integrations across their systems. From a training
perspective, the composite organization
dedicates training sessions for its social media
team, customer service specialists, and
employees who are onboarded into the
Employee Advocacy solution. The three-year,
risk-adjusted value of these costs is $118,000.
The representative interviews and financial analysis
found that a composite organization experiences
3
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

benefits of $1.86 million over three years versus

costs of $559,000, adding up to a net present value
(NPV) of $1.30 million and an ROI of 233%.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 4

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

ROI BENEFITS PV NPV PAYBACK

233% $1.86M $1.30M <6
months
Benefits (Three-Year)

Savings from publishing,

scheduling, listening, replying and $973K
planning productivity or efficiency

Paid media savings from

$233K
Advocacy program

Savings from reporting efficiencies $39K

Cost avoidance on consoldiating

$473K
legacy solutions

Savings for customer services

specialists through Smart Inbox $142K
capabilities

“As a small content team, Sprout

Social (and Advocacy) means we
can keep up with everything
without needing to take on costs of
employee headcount during a time
of economic uncertainty.”
— Senior manager of content marketing, SaaS
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 5
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
TEI FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY
From the information provided in the interviews,
Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™
framework for those organizations considering an
investment in Sprout Social.
The objective of the framework is to identify the cost,
benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the
investment decision. Forrester took a multistep
approach to evaluate the impact that Sprout Social
can have on an organization.
DISCLOSURES
Readers should be aware of the following:
This study is commissioned by Sprout Social and
delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be
used as a competitive analysis.
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI
that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly
advises that readers use their own estimates within the
framework provided in the study to determine the
appropriateness of an investment in Sprout Social.
Sprout Social reviewed and provided feedback to
Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over
the study and its findings and does not accept changes to
the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure
the meaning of the study.
Sprout Social provided the customer names for the
interviews but did not participate in the interviews.
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
DUE DILIGENCE
Interviewed Sprout Social stakeholders and
Forrester analysts to gather data relative to
Sprout Social.
INTERVIEWS
Interviewed five representatives at organizations
using Sprout Social to obtain data with respect
to costs, benefits, and risks.
COMPOSITE ORGANIZATION
Designed a composite organization based on
characteristics of the interviewees’
organizations.
FINANCIAL MODEL FRAMEWORK
Constructed a financial model representative of
the interviews using the TEI methodology and
risk-adjusted the financial model based on
issues and concerns of the interviewees.
CASE STUDY
Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in
modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs,
flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing
sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT
investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology
provides a complete picture of the total
economic impact of purchase decisions. Please
see Appendix A for additional information on the
TEI methodology.
6
The Sprout Social Customer Journey
Drivers leading to the Sprout Social investment

Interviews
Social Social media Social media
media profiles networks
Total team managed by connected to
Role Industry Region Revenue employees members Sprout Sprout Social
Senior manager of $477 Twitter, Facebook,
SaaS Global 2,037 2 11
content marketing million LinkedIn, & Instagram
Twitter, Facebook,
Associate director, Higher 4 plus 2
USA $8.8 billion 38,000 596 LinkedIn, Instagram,
social media education interns
TikTok & YouTube
Community and Twitter, Facebook,
6 on the social
social engagement SaaS Global $2.8 billion 2,021 22 LinkedIn, Instagram &
care team
senior team lead YouTube
Proactive social $8 billion 1 for proactive Twitter, Facebook,
Transportation APAC 7,500 4
media manager (AUS) social media LinkedIn, & Instagram
Senior manager,
social media
Twitter, Facebook,
community $7.84
SaaS Global 49,000 20 145 LinkedIn, Instagram &
engagement and billion
TikTok
employee
advocacy

KEY CHALLENGES “There was no rhyme or reason

Before using Sprout Social, the interviewees’
organizations used a mix of other social media
solutions and native posting onto corporate social
media channels. Because of this, the interviewees
noted how their organizations struggled with common
challenges, including:
• Disjointed cross-channel measurement,
management, and insights. The siloed legacy
solutions and the native social media channels
created a lack of cohesive visibility for the
interviewees’ brands. While they were able to see
reporting from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.,
the channels’ individual reporting did not show
the full brand reach across platforms and which
themes and messages had impact. A senior
manager of content marketing for a software-as-
a-service (SaaS) company illustrated this
experience by sharing, “Leadership and other
teams lacked visibility into organic social insights,
to volume. We were publishing
on LinkedIn natively in particular
three, four, five times a day. That
doesn’t work for me and I’m sure
it doesn’t work for many people.”
Senior manager of content
marketing, SaaS
which was definitely an issue [that] created a
disconnect and hurt strategy development.”
▪ For a higher education institution, the
inability to see what content audiences
found engaging made it difficult to
collaborate universitywide. An associate
director, social media shared: “Some

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 7

 THE SPROUT SOCIAL CUSTOMER JOURNEY

people were using the native scheduling and employee advocacy at a SaaS company
platforms or just posting on the fly, but described this situation by saying: “We had too
there was no way to help give people that many people on the [legacy] platform and too
higher view of ‘Okay, here's how you can many people with native access. It was a lot to
plan out your content and strategy.’ We manage and keep track of.”
were too siloed and didn’t understand
what themes we needed to weave into
other university priorities.”
“We were missing Instagram
▪ A community and social engagement
senior team lead at a SaaS company
message requests. They never
said: “We were running into a lot of things got responded to until a year
that were kept behind the curtain, which later. All I could say was, ‘I’m so
created a lack of visibility between my sorry. We never saw this.’ It hurt
team and the product marketing teams. our customer experience for
This made it hard to show the value of my
sure.”
team and the impact that we are having
on our community.” Proactive social media manager,
• Thinly resourced teams created inefficiencies transportation
and meant opportunities to engage with
customers were missed. No matter if they were
using different social media solutions or working
INVESTMENT OBJECTIVES
natively, all the interviewees struggled with
The interviewees’ organizations searched for a
inefficiency, which led to poor customer
solution that could:
experience. A proactive social media manager at
a transportation company told Forrester: “[Before • Deliver accurate analytics, insights, and visibility
Sprout], unless I was going and checking to the social media team by consolidating tools
[LinkedIn] every half hour or so, it was easy to into a single source of truth.
miss stuff [because how LinkedIn displays its
• Create consistency across the organization using
notifications]. People were not getting responses
agreed-upon KPIs so everyone is measuring
for a few days — or sometimes not at all.”
success in the same way.
• Inability to control who had access to the
• Increase team efficiency.
native platforms, which led to security
concerns. As new employees were onboarded • Increase internal user adoption.
and organizations grew, some of the
• Expand and amplify brand reach and follower
interviewees’ organizations struggled to maintain
growth to drive customer engagement.
who had access to the social media channels.
Passwords were shared in insecure documents • Make it easier for extended teams to support and
and people sometimes still had access to the share content on social media- without losing
company pages after they left roles that required oversight.
it. Without a single sign-on, security concerns
After a request for proposal (RFP) and business case
grew. A senior manager, community engagement
process evaluating multiple vendors, the

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 8

 THE SPROUT SOCIAL CUSTOMER JOURNEY

interviewees’ organizations chose Sprout Social and Employee Advocacy program, a total of 18% of its
began deployment. workforce will join the program in Year 2 and a total
of 20% of the workforce will be onboarded in Year 3.
COMPOSITE ORGANIZATION
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI
framework, a composite company, and an ROI
analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected.
The composite organization is representative of the
five interviewees, and it is used to present the
aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The Key Assumptions
composite organization has the following • $1 billion in revenue
characteristics:
• 5,000 employees
Description of composite. A global, multibillion- • B2B
dollar B2B organization that provides customer and
• 10 people on the social
sales support over social media at a high volume. It
has $1 billion in revenue and 5,000 employees. The
media team
composite organization has a strong brand, global • 10 customer service
operations, a large customer base, and a strong specialists
online and offline presence. • 16 social media profiles
Deployment characteristics. The composite connected to Sprout
organization deploys Sprout Social and has 10 social Social
media team members (one director, three social • 750 employees
media managers, and six social media associates)
onboarded to Employee
that use it to streamline efficiencies across its
channels. There are 16 social media profiles
Advocacy in Year 1
connected to Sprout Social: corporate profiles for
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and
LinkedIn as well as ten regional Twitter handles to
further support customers. Because Sprout Social
integrates with CRM solutions, ten customer service
specialists will have access to respond to customer
inquiries on social, allowing them to also see
efficiencies across their team.

The composite organization seeks increased

capabilities and therefore opts to purchase the
additional add on subscriptions Social Listening,
Premium Analytics, Employee Advocacy and Premier
Success. This is to further transform its social media
reach and growth. With the Employee Advocacy
solution, the composite organization onboards 750
employees, or 15% of its workforce, in Year 1. As the
composite organization sees success with its

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 9

 Analysis Of Benefits
Quantified benefit data as applied to the composite

Total Benefits
Present
Ref. Benefit Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Savings from publishing,
scheduling, listening, replying,
Atr $354,313 $393,682 $433,050 $1,181,045 $972,817
and planning productivity or
efficiency
Paid media savings from
Btr $77,760 $96,811 $110,160 $284,731 $233,465
Advocacy program
Savings from reporting
Ctr $15,444 $15,444 $16,541 $47,429 $39,231
efficiencies

Cost avoidance on
Dtr $190,000 $190,000 $190,000 $570,000 $472,502
consolidating legacy solutions

Savings for customer services

Etr specialists through Smart $57,057 $57,057 $57,057 $171,171 $141,892
Inbox capabilities

Total benefits (risk-adjusted) $694,574 $752,994 $806,808 $2,254,376 $1,859,907

similar messages. Moreover, the lack of a single view

SAVINGS FROM PUBLISHING, SCHEDULING,
made it difficult for the interviewees to understand
LISTENING, REPLYING, AND PLANNING
when and how often to publish messages on various
PRODUCTIVITY OR EFFICIENCY
platforms or what content was resonating with their
Evidence and data. Prior to using Sprout Social, the
audiences. With Sprout Social in place, all the
interviewees’ organizations experienced an inability
interviewees commented on how they gained time
to streamline operations as they were logging in and
back for their teams.
out of native social media networks to schedule
For example, before Sprout Social, a proactive social
media team member at a transportation company
relied on native scheduling and publishing tools on
“We have avoiding hiring Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Because
additional team members. We their company had to address and respond to
can schedule, publish, and get transportation concerns (disruption in service, train
everything we need through breakdowns, etc.), planned content had to be
removed at a moment’s notice. However, this was a
Sprout Social and our annual
tedious process as they would have to log into each
spend is less than it would be if of these systems individually to remove the content.
we hired someone full-time.” With Sprout Social in place, the proactive social
media manager only has to log into one platform to
Senior manager content marketing,
remove or pause any planned messages if there are
SaaS any issues.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 10

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS
• Taking the guesswork out of the best time to post
was a common theme among interviewees. A
senior manager of content marketing described
how Sprout Social’s Optimal Send Time
technology empowered them to find the exact
time to best engage with audiences, saying,
“Being able to filter into data down to a time —
whether it’s morning, midday or night — it saves
a significant amount of time, taking out the
guesswork.”
• An associate director, social media at a higher
education institution shared that their team not
only reduced their scheduling and publishing time
through Sprout Social, but were more importantly
able to plan campaigns more efficiently because
they could see what the right content was for the
right audience. They said: “The biggest thing now
is that we know exactly what we’re posting, who
we’re targeting, and why we’re posting every
single post that goes out. It [reduced the time it
took for] our scheduling and reporting processes,
as we can make sure we are hitting all these
goals and reaching the right people on the right
platforms.”
Modeling and assumptions. To calculate the value
of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following for
the composite organization:
• The composite organization employs six social
media associates and three social media
managers to oversee them. The average fully
burdened hourly rate for a social media associate
is $49 and the average fully burdened hourly rate
for a social media manager is $65.
• In the prior environment, each individual social
media associate spends 90% of their time
scheduling, publishing, listening, and replying on
social media channels, totaling 36 hours per
week.
• In the prior environment, each individual social
media manager spends 60% of their time
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
“Our practitioners can schedule
more on Sprout than they were
before. And we can utilize the
workflows within the publishing
workflow with pre-approved
approvals in place. We’ve done
this around our large-scale
events, which helps us when
we’re working in a superfast
environment.”
Senior manager, social media
community engagement and
employee advocacy, SaaS
scheduling, publishing, listening, and replying on
social media channels, totaling 24 hours per
week.
• In the prior environment, a social media director
spends 50% of their time each week on
campaign planning, totaling 20 hours per week.
• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a
social media director is $78.
• For Year 1, the social media team members each
see a 45% lift in productivity In Year 2, this
increases to 50% and to 55% in Year 3.
Risks. The ability of organizations to see savings
from publishing, scheduling, replying, and planning
productivity or efficiency through the deployment of
Sprout Social can vary across organizations due to
differences in:
• The number of social media associates an
organization has along with their respective
hourly costs.
11
 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

• The number of social media managers an

organization has along with their respective
hourly costs.

• The amount of time each team member spends

on scheduling, publishing, listening, and replying
on social media in the prior environment.

• The number of hours a social media director

spends campaign planning as well as their fully
burdened hourly cost.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester

adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%)
of $973,000.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 12

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Savings From Publishing, Scheduling, Listening, Replying, And Planning Productivity Or

Efficiency
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

A1 Number of social media associates Composite 6 6 6

Average fully burdened hourly cost of a

A2 TEI standard $49 $49 $49
social media associate
Number of hours per week that each
social media associate spends
A3 Composite 36 36 36
scheduling, publishing, listening, and
replying on social media channels
Total amount of hours spent on
scheduling and publishing by social
A4 A3*52 1,872 1,872 1,872
media associates in prior environment
per year

A5 Number of social media managers Composite 3 3 3

Average hourly rate burdened cost of a

A6 TEI standard $65 $65 $65
social media manager
Number of hours per week that each
social media manager spends
A7 Composite 24 24 24
scheduling, publishing, listening, and
replying on social media channels
Individual time spent on scheduling and
A8 publishing by social media managers in A7*52 1,248 1,248 1,248
prior environment per year
Number of hours per week dedicated to
A9 campaign planning by the social media Interviews 20 20 20
director in prior environment
Individual time spent on campaign
A10 planning by social media managers in A9*52 1,040 1,040 1,040
prior environment per year
Average hourly rate burdened cost of a
A11 TEI standard $78 $78 $78
social media director

A12 Productivity lift with Sprout Social Interviews 45% 50% 55%

Savings from publishing, scheduling, ((A1*A2*A4)+(A5

At listening, replying, and planning *A6*A8)+(A10*A1 $393,682 $437,424 $481,166
productivity or efficiency 1))*A12

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Savings from publishing, scheduling,

Atr listening, replying, and planning $354,313 $393,682 $433,050
productivity or efficiency (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $1,181,045 Three-year present value: $972,817

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 13

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

PAID MEDIA SAVINGS FROM ADVOCACY

PROGRAM
Evidence and data. To raise brand awareness and
encourage consideration, companies continue to
▬ Voice Of The Customer
invest in social marketing, especially in the early
stages of the customer lifecycle.3 However, as B2B
marketing leaders faced intense budget scrutiny,
“With Employee Advocacy, we’re able to
some of the interviewees opted to invest in an arm our sales team [members] that
employee advocacy program to amplify their brands specialize in these verticals with very
without having to spend on paid media.4 specific content for them. They’re able
to roll it out. They have the connections.
• For a senior manager of content marketing at a They have the audience. So, we are
SaaS company, the investment in Sprout Social’s saving ourselves by: 1) not burning it on
Employee Advocacy solution not only helped organic social media ourselves and 2)
them amplify their content but it also helped
by not having to pay for display ads —
enable their frontline team members to share
both of which may not ultimately move
relevant content. They said: “It’s been huge for us
the needle or make a difference.
to have boots on the ground — on the front lines,
Instead, it’s just burning cash.”
in the trenches — sharing our content to expand
our reach. It’s better for our salespeople to share Senior manager of content marketing,
specific content with their [personal] audience on SaaS
LinkedIn or Twitter as their [followers] know that
they specialize in that content. We’re able to be
very precise in empowering specific verticals and
mobilizing our employees to speak to a specific
audience.”
Modeling and assumptions. To calculate the value
• The same interviewee commented that with the of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following for
Employee Advocacy solution it was easy for them the composite organization:
to add and expand users. Over time, they’ve
• The composite organization will onboard 15% of
increased their user base by 40%.
its employees into the Employee Advocacy
solution (750 employees) in Year 1. This will
increase to 18% (900 employees) in Year 2. By
Year 3, the composite organization will onboard
Percentage of employees
20% of its workforce into the solution (1,000
actively promoting content on
employees).
social due to Sprout Social
Employee Advocacy by Year 3 • In Year 1, 80% of those onboarded into the

85%
Employee Advocacy solution will actively
promote the composite organization’s content on
their personal social media profiles. In Year 2 and
Year 3, this increases to 83% and 85%,
respectively.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 14

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

• The average annual reach for posts made by a • The percentage of employees actively promoting
social media ambassador is 12,000 views. content on their personal social media profiles.

• The average paid spend to achieve the same • The average annual reach for posts made by a
organic reach is $0.012. social media ambassador.

Risks. The ability of organizations to see paid media • The average amount of money an organization
savings from an advocacy program through the spends to achieve the same organic reach.
deployment of Sprout Social’s Employee Advocacy
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
solution can vary across organizations due to
adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a
differences in:
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $233,000.
• The number of employees onboarded into the
Employee Advocacy solution.

Paid Media Savings From Advocacy Program

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Number of employees onboarded onto
B1 Composite 750 900 1,000
Advocacy
Percentage of employees actively
promoting organization content on
B2 Interviews 80% 83% 85%
personal social media profiles through
Advocacy program
Number of employees actively promoting
B3 organization content on personal social B1*B2 600 747 850
media profiles
Average annual reach of each social
B4 Assumption 12,000 12,000 12,000
media ambassador (views)
Total annual reach achieved by
B5 B3*B4 7,200,000 8,964,000 10,200,000
Advocacy program
Average paid spend to achieve the same $0.012 per
B6 $86,400 $107,568 $122,400
organic reach view*B5
Paid media savings from Advocacy
Bt A6 $86,400 $107,568 $122,400
program

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Paid media savings from Advocacy

Btr $77,760 $96,811 $110,160
program (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $284,731 Three-year present value: $233,465

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 15

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS
SAVINGS FROM REPORTING EFFICIENCIES
Evidence and data. Prior to Sprout Social, the
interviewees described the manual and cumbersome
processes they conducted to generate reports. They
had to log into each social media tool individually and
download the data from that one social media
channel, repeating the process for each one they
managed. Networks can only report on their own
metrics (e.g., Twitter could not report on the impact of
the content posted on Facebook), as they have their
own logic for measurement. As a result, the
interviewees struggled to communicate their overall
content performance.
“Sprout Social’s ability to track
and tag content allows us to
continue to be a very data-driven
institution. We can tag all our
content and then quickly run
reports [on the back end] to see
how it is performing.”
Associate director, social media,
higher education
Moreover, as the interviewees shared information
with leadership, they would request additional
information. This meant spending even more time
sourcing that data. Once Sprout Social was in place,
the interviewees’ organizations utilized Sprout
Social’s tagging features to label specific campaigns,
see what was resonating, and report impact upward
to stakeholders; Sprout Social eliminated the multi-
network, siloed measurement burden the
interviewees’ organizations faced.
• A senior manager of content marketing at a SaaS
organization praised Sprout Social’s Premium
Analytics tool and how its accessibility helped
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
their team share information across their
organization. They said: “Sprout Social allows us
to deliver information automatically in a tailored
way to each stakeholder, from executive
leadership to product marketing to our demand
generation team. It’s also easy to digest [no
matter if] you’re familiar with Sprout Social or are
a first-time user receiving a report.”
• Sprout Social’s ability to easily filter data and
customize reports was noted as a strength by
interviewees.
• Every interviewee commented that the
accessibility of Sprout Social reports allowed
them to reduce requests from leadership as they
had the information they required.
▪ An associate director of a higher
education institution described how
appropriately tagging any universitywide
campaigns enabled their team to pull out
certain filters. They said: “In the past, we
had to reach out to people, ask them for
their analytics, and create a long email
chain back and forth. Now, we can give
our Board of Trustees a safety report from
ten different social media accounts on
campus. When you are looking at
analytics across departments, Sprout
Social has greatly improved our
collaboration and efficiencies.”
▪ A proactive social media manager at a
transportation company described how it
took them 30 minutes in the prior
environment to find the data executives
wanted. They said: “I would have to go
into the little business center and extract
everything I wanted to add and take in.
On top of that, I had to take screenshots
of everything too.”
▪ A community and social media
engagement senior team lead described
16
 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

how their team became the de facto

Sprout Social reporting experts at their
organization. They said: “People come to
me and my team and we build custom
▬ Voice Of The Customer
reports based on their needs. We help
“We spend 75% less time on our
them understand what they want to see,
reporting than we did in the past.
build it, and see how it performs to get the
Before, we had to pull [the data]
report to a place where they are really
natively, drop [the data] into CSVs, add
getting value from it.”
up all the metrics summaries, then do
▪ A senior manager of content marketing at that for the next native platform. In
a SaaS company commented on how Sprout Social, everything is in one
they have been able to avoid 30-minute place. We can use their filters to easily
meetings with an SVP of marketing by combine everything, and it just presents
automatically sending them a Sprout us with those metrics that we need.”
Social email with the numbers every
Senior manager, social media
week.
community engagement and employee
▪ A senior manager, social media advocacy, SaaS
community engagement and employee
advocacy at a SaaS organization shared
“We can’t live without this type of
how Sprout Social’s internal and
analytics. We run several campaigns
competitive reporting enabled them to say
simultaneously for our verticals, and we
no when things don’t make sense for their
need a tool strong enough to display
channel’s strategy. They said: “We have
analytics across them. Sprout Social
access to profile- and post-level
does exactly that, and we’re able to
performance, which is not something we
had before and it’s not available natively.
examine within each campaign what’s
This has allowed us to streamline our
working and what’s not to deliver
reporting access across teams. We’ve
feedback to our campaign managers
been able to do a competitor performance
about how we should recalibrate.”
report to understand what our competitors
are doing and influence our content Senior manager of content marketing,
marketing strategies and internal SaaS
performance. All this data allows us to
easily show our decisions and the impact
of our work.”

Modeling and assumptions. To calculate the value

• In the prior environment, it took 20 hours to
of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following for
generate each monthly report.
the composite organization:
• In Year 1, the composite organization will
• The composite analysis creates monthly social
conduct quarterly special social media marketing
media reports for leadership.
campaigns around a specific event or focus.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 17

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Leadership will want to see a custom report for Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
this campaign. This will increase to five adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a
campaigns by Year 3. three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $39,000.

• In the prior environment, it took 25 hours to

generate each campaign-specific report.

• The average fully burdened hourly cost of a

social media manager is $65.

• In the prior environment, a social media director

spent four hours each month either meeting with
or emailing internal stakeholders and answering
any questions regarding the social media report.
This increased to six hours per campaign-specific
report as more eyes were on the data and,
therefore, more questions were raised.

• The average fully burdened hourly cost of a

social media director is $78.

• The composite organization saves 75% of its

reporting time with Sprout Social.

Risks. The ability of organizations to see savings

through reporting efficiencies achieved by Sprout
Social can vary across organizations due to
differences in:

• Their annual cadence of reporting as well as how

many campaigns require additional reporting.

• The number of hours it takes to generate a

report.

• The total number of manual hours the team

dedicates to reporting.

• The total number of manual hours a social media

director dedicates to answering questions both in
person as well as over email.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate of a social

media team member.

• The reporting functionality depends on an

organization’s ability to tag their content. If an
organization isn’t as organized, reports will not be
as detailed.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 18

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Savings From Reporting Efficiencies

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

C1 Annual cadence of reporting Interviews 12 12 12

Number of hours per reporting cycle a

social media manager spends manually
C2 aggregating, collecting data and Interviews 20 20 20
preparing monthly reports in prior
environment
Number of marketing campaigns or
C3 events that need additional reporting Interviews 4 4 5
for stakeholders
Number of hours to generate marketing
or event campaign reporting by a social
C4 Interviews 25 25 25
media manager in the prior
environment
Average fully burdened hourly cost of a
C5 A6 $65 $65 $65
social media manager
Subtotal: Cost of manual hours
dedicated to reporting by the social C1*C2*C5+C3*C4*
C6 $22,100 $22,100 $23,725
media manager in the prior C5
environment
Number of hours per reporting cycle a
social media director spends with social
C7 Composite 4 4 4
media reporting, including meetings
with internal stakeholders
Number of hours per reporting cycle a
social media director spends with
C8 Composite 6 6 6
campaign-specific reports, including
meetings with internal stakeholders
Average fully burdened hourly cost of a
C9 Composite $78 $78 $78
social media team member
Subtotal: Cost of manual hours
C10 dedicated to reporting by the social (C7+C8)*C9 $780 $780 $780
media director in the prior environment
Percentage of reporting time saved
C11 Interviews 75% 75% 75%
with Sprout Social

Ct Savings from reporting efficiencies (C6+C10)*C9 $17,160 $17,160 $18,379

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Savings from reporting efficiencies

Ctr $15,444 $15,444 $16,541
(risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $47,429 Three-year present value: $39,231

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 19

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

COST AVOIDANCE ON CONSOLIDATING
LEGACY SOLUTIONS
Evidence and data. Interviewees shared a strong
desire to rationalize their organizations’ social media
applications prior to implementing Sprout Social. The
ability to consolidate down to a one-stop-shop
allowed the interviewees to retire redundant solutions
that were no longer meeting their organizations’
needs and stop paying their license and support fees.
• A proactive social media manager at a
transportation company found inconsistencies in
their prior solution’s reports. They said: “Our old
solution had inaccurate reporting, so it never
matched up to what was in Facebook or Twitter
natively. The numbers were always weirdly high
and way off. When I compared the reports in
Sprout, it would match up perfectly. On top of
Smart Inbox] and another we used for publishing
and do everything in the Sprout Social
environment [instead].”
Modeling and assumptions. To calculate the value
of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following for
the composite organization:
• The composite organization has two additional
legacy solutions used for social media in the prior
environment.
• The cost per legacy solution is $100,000.
Risks. The ability of organizations to see savings by
consolidating legacy solution media solutions can
vary across organizations due to differences in:
• The number of legacy solutions a company
eliminates.

that, the more I used [our old solution], the more I • The annual subscription cost of the legacy
didn’t like their publishing features. It was easier solution.
for me to go post natively, so that’s when I told
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
my team that this isn’t the greatest system.”
adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a
• A community and social engagement senior team three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $473,000.
lead at a SaaS company saved their organization
20% of their total cost by consolidating to Sprout
Social. They said: “We were able to retire one
solution we used for care [and replace it with

Cost Avoidance On Consolidating Legacy Solutions

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Number of additional legacy solutions
D1 used for social media in prior Interviews 2 2 2
environment

D2 Cost per legacy solution Composite $100,000 $100,000 $100,000

Cost avoidance on consolidating legacy

Dt D1*D2 $200,000 $200,000 $200,000
solutions

Risk adjustment ↓5%

Cost avoidance on consolidating legacy

Dtr $190,000 $190,000 $190,000
solutions (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $570,000 Three-year present value: $472,502

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 20

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

SAVINGS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE Modeling and assumptions. To calculate the value
SPECIALISTS THROUGH SMART INBOX of this benefit, Forrester assumes the following for
CAPABILITIES the composite organization:

Evidence and data. Some of the interviewees • The composite organization employs ten
discussed how Sprout Social’s ability to connect to customer service specialists.
their CRM instances allowed for their organization to
• In the prior environment, it took three hours for
have even more visibility into the engagement of their
customer service specialists to scroll through
top accounts. Moreover, the interviewees expressed
social media feeds to see if a response
how Sprout Social enabled their customer service
happened. With Sprout Social and their
teams to respond directly in Salesforce, which
integrations into the composite organization’s
allowed them to own the response and act.
CRM, it takes 15 minutes.
• Before Sprout Social, interviewees described
• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a
how people outside of the social media team
customer service specialist is $42.
(customer service representatives, salespeople,
etc.) would spend hours on emails to the social
media team to see if customers who raised
concerns online had those issues resolved. As a
community and social engagement senior team “[Before Sprout Social], I’d be
lead at a SaaS company said, there was no way scrolling through comments and
to have a note in the CRM that said any concerns comments and comments. I had
had been addressed. to screen shot everything in
• Through Sprout Social’s Social Listening there and send it to my bosses
platform, a community and social engagement so they knew a response took
senior team lead at a SaaS described how they place.”
used themes to create notes for their engineering
teams in their CRM. They said: “We have this Proactive social media manager,
massive listening topic that is tied to our brand to transportation
see what people are saying about a certain topic.
… [In one instance,] I took what people said
around accessibility and send the information to
Risks. The ability of organizations to see savings for
our accessibility engineering team.”
their customer service specialists can vary across
organizations due to differences in:

• The number of customer service specialists who

are responsible for social media monitoring at an
Percentage of time gained back organization.
by customer service specialists
through Sprout Social’s Smart • The average fully burdened hourly rate for a
Inbox customer service specialist.

92%
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 21
 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester

adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $142,000.

Savings For Customer Service Specialists Through Smart Inbox Capabilities

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Number of customer service specialists
E1 Composite 10 10 10
who are responsible for social media
Amount of time for customer service
specialists to see if a response happened
E2 Interviews 3.00 3.00 3.00
online to a client in prior environment
(hours) per week
Amount of time for customer service
specialists to see if a response happened
E3 Interviews 0.25 0.25 0.25
to a client with Sprout Social (hours) per
week
Subtotal: Time saved with Sprout Social
E4 2.75 2.75 2.75
Smart Inbox per week (hours)
Percentage of time gained back
E5 (E2-E3)/E2 92.00% 92.00% 92.00%
through Sprout Social Smart Inbox
Average fully burdened salary of a
E6 TEI standard $42 $42 $42
customer service specialists
Savings for customer service specialists
Et E1*E6*E5*52 $60,060 $60,060 $60,060
through Smart Inbox capabilities

Risk adjustment ↓5%

Savings for customer service specialists

Etr through Smart Inbox capabilities (risk- $57,057 $57,057 $57,057
adjusted)

Three-year total: $171,171 Three-year present value: $141,892

UNQUANTIFIED BENEFITS
Interviewees mentioned the following additional
benefits that their organizations experienced but were
not able to quantify:
“Because of [Smart Inbox], we
• Streamlined mentions to improve the are demonstrating to our
customer experience, creating faster community that we’re not only
response times and brand credibility as a
addressing the customer we’re
reliable channel for support. When customers
cannot find the content they are looking for on
interacting with, we are also a
websites, they will bounce and leave.5 The reliable channel.”
interviewees noted how there is a similar
Community and social engagement
expectation from customers on social media, as
team lead, SaaS
customers seek immediate answers to their
questions and concerns. By decreasing the
average first reply time, customers knew they

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 22

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS
could depend on their channel for support. A
proactive social media manager at a
transportation company described how being a
reliable channel has increased positive brand
sentiment, saying: “If customers message us on
Facebook, they’ll get a response in two minutes.
No matter where they are or the issue, we can
respond right away. Our team is constantly
looking at the Smart Inbox and waiting for stuff to
come in there. People know now that if they
contact us, we’re super reliable, and we’ll get
back to them right away.”
• Enhanced the ability to prepare for crisis
communication needs and procedures. With
the COVID-19 pandemic, many interviewees
expressed how they felt that their social media
teams were on the front lines of crisis
management. By having Sprout Social’s Smart
Inbox in place, a senior manager, social media
community engagement and employee advocacy
said they were able to better identify situations.
They said: “We utilize Smart Inbox for tagging
and tracking crisis situations, and the tag
reporting allows us to provide listening
summaries around those conversations that are
accessible to anyone on our team. Sprout Social
has enabled us to make smarter decisions about
how we show up as a brand in times of crisis
because of the listening tools.”
▪ An associate director at a higher
education institution echoed how Sprout
Social helped them understand their
brand health during times of crisis. They
said: “Social media is an area our
marketing communications team leans on
in a crisis. And their listening tools have
been great to get a feel for how people
are talking about our institution.”
▪ A proactive social media manager at a
transportation company described how,
through Sprout Social, their organization
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
has reduced the time needed for
approvals and gained public confidence in
the process. They said: “[Sprout Social]
has helped us be able to proactively get
on top of issues. Approvals for big issues
can take days and days to get a response
approved. Instead of having to work
reactively when something’s already
blown up, we can get ahead of it a few
days. [Then] when it does blow up, we
already have something ready. I’ll say this
has helped us in the public eye because
we’re not going quiet on issues for days at
a time.”
• Strengthened compliance and security. Sprout
Social’s interface allowed the interviewees to see
which team members created, scheduled,
responded to, and published tweets and other
posts. This audit trail enabled a senior manager,
social media community engagement and
employee advocacy at a SaaS company to track
every action that had been done in Sprout Social
and improve their overall security and
compliance.
For a proactive social media manager at a
transportation company, their country updated its
social media laws, which required them to have a
record of all posts and replies. They said: “The
good news is that with Sprout Social, even if we
delete it from our feed, it keeps a record of it.
When this law came out, we initially panicked but
quickly determined that Sprout Social does all
this for us. We didn’t need to do anything, and it
saved us massive fines and a lot of manual
work.”
• Enriched cross-functional relationships by
improving the ability to strategize and
collaborate across teams. Before Sprout
Social, a senior manager of content marketing at
a SaaS company described how each vertical
had its own campaign initiatives and plans. They
23
 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS
said, “Everyone brought their own spreadsheets
and we had to make sense of it.” With Sprout
Social in place, the interviewee shares a template
with each vertical. Then they know what is being
promoted and posted on social media each
week, which lead to increased trust and visibility.
• Improved employee experience through UX
and a streamlined environment. Prior to using
Sprout Social, the interviewees shared their
experiences with other social media providers,
describing competitor interfaces as clunky and
not intuitive. They said that Sprout Social made it
easy to bring together scheduling, publishing,
analytics, and social listening and helped
streamline processes.
A senior manager of content marketing at a SaaS
company stated how Sprout Social’s clean UX is
a differentiator in the market. They said: “I’ve
used a whole bunch of other tools having done
this for a few years now. Sprout is the one that I
truly enjoy using because it has a good mix of
robust features and it’s also clean.”
• Increased employee confidence as data
drives decision-making. Because Sprout Social
provides detailed reports, the interviewees
commented how they were able to rely on those
reports to check their strategies and recalibrate
as needed. A community and social engagement
senior team lead told Forrester, “I can go in and I
can look at the data and make informed
decisions on the strategy based on that data.”
Sprout Social enhanced an associate director,
social media at a higher education institution’s
ability to plan for its campaigns. They said:
“We’re using the Sprout Social reports to help us
make data-driven decision into our overall
campaign planning strategy.”
• Gained industry knowledge and best
practices through Sprout Social’s customer
service. Among the interviewees, Sprout Social’s
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
reputation for customer service was a reason
they selected them as their vendor of choice. An
associate director, social media at a higher
education institution said: “We choose [Sprout
Social] for its customer service, for how open it is
and available they are for any questions. I value
our meetings with [their team] where we can talk,
ask questions, raise concerns, etc. It’s quick to
adopt new things and test new things out.
Overall, its customer service has been
incredible.”
▪ A community and social engagement
senior team lead echoed the value they
see in the customer success partnership,
saying, “It’s really great. Its team knows
all our hopes and wishes and asks. If
something isn’t working as we would like
in the product, the organization always
takes the feedback back to the product
teams. It are also keeping us up to date
on releases every month.”
▪ A senior manager, social media
community engagement and employee
advocacy at a SaaS organization
described how Sprout Social’s dedication
to research and development was a
reason they found the partnership to be
valuable.
• Amplified brand voice on social media
channels, which led to more customer
engagements and impressions. Before the
interviewees’ organizations adopted Sprout
Social, their social media teams found it difficult
to understand what was leading to customer
engagement. While the native social media sites
did provide basic metrics, the interviewees said
that they felt they were not seeing the full picture
and merely got a list of numbers. The robust
reports in Sprout Social allowed interviewees to
see what posts were resonating with their
organizations’ audiences and which ones were
24
 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

not. This allowed the interviewees to increase the

number of posts that delivered positive brand
sentiment and drove further engagement.

• Uncovered competitive insights and

strategized against industry benchmarks.
Sprout Social enabled the interviewees’
organizations to get a pulse on what their
competitors are doing through their competitive
performance reporting. An associate director,
social media at a higher education institution said
their team went a step further and “set up
listening queries to monitor what our competitors
are doing.”

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 25

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 26

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

FLEXIBILITY
The value of flexibility is unique to each customer.
There are multiple scenarios in which a customer
might implement Sprout Social and later realize
additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Enabling employees to innovate and test new

content approaches. Because of the level of
reporting that Sprout Social provides,
organizations can easily track success and
convince stakeholders to try new tactics as new
trends emerge. A proactive social media
manager at a transportation company illustrated
this, saying: “Sprout Social helped me convince
our minister and my bosses to try new content
because they know when I do it, I can pull reports
and show them the stats and how it compared to
other posts. They are more willing to have me
experiment because they know I can track
everything.”

• Enabling organizations to add emerging

social media channels and easily integrate
existing internal applications. With new and
emerging social media channels like TikTok,
Sprout Social has empowered its users to
implement new channels quickly. An associate
director of a higher education institution summed
this up, saying: “They were really quick to get
TikTok in there from a reporting aspect. They got
Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels analytics
before they were available natively. We couldn’t
pull those manually, so having access to them
was huge for us.” Likewise, a senior manager of
content marketing at a SaaS organization said
that knowing Sprout Social has customer
relationship management (CRM) integrations with
Salesforce, Marketo, and other providers
empowers their team to want to explore syncing
in the future.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as

part of a specific project (described in more detail in
Appendix A).

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 27

Analysis Of Costs
Quantified cost data as applied to the composite

Total Costs
Present
Ref. Cost Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Sprout Social annual
Ftr $0 $162,750 $170,888 $179,432 $513,069 $423,994
subscription fee
Implementation fees
Gtr $17,199 $0 $0 $0 $17,199 $17,199
and internal labor costs
Ongoing management
Htr $0 $44,066 $46,876 $51,601 $142,544 $117,570
and training costs
Total costs (risk-
$17,199 $206,816 $217,764 $231,033 $672,812 $558,763
adjusted)

▪ Premium Analytics to measure success

SPROUT SOCIAL ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION FEE
Evidence and data. The interviewees’ organizations
incurred software fees for Sprout Social. These are
annual recurring license fees based on business
needs and the features and capabilities used by the
organizations.
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the
information provided by Sprout Social:
• The composite organization purchases the
Enterprise plan offering and opts to bundle the
Premium Analytics, Premier Success, Employee
Advocacy and Social Listening add-on solutions
in their annual subscription. The Enterprise
bundle with the premium add-on subscriptions
includes all Advanced features and:
▪ Tailored implementation and onboarding
to get teams up and running quickly.
▪ Premier consulting services.
▪ 24/5 prioritized customer support with
Premier Success.
▪ Social Listening to uncover emerging
trends, brand influencers and competitive
intel.
across all social channels.
▪ Employee Advocacy solutions to amplify
the brand’s organic reach.
• The composite organization incurs an annual
subscription fee of $155,000. This includes the
Sprout Social annual subscription, along with
internal team users; social media profiles; and
additional subscriptions for Social Listening,
Premium Analytics, Employee Advocacy, and
Premier Success. Forrester assumes a 5% year-
over-year growth in costs and, as a result, the
composite organization will pay $162,750 in Year
2 and $170,888 in Year 3.
• Pricing may vary. Contact Sprout Social for
additional details.
Risks. The cost of the Sprout Social engagement
may vary based on:
• The chosen plan for the organization. Sprout
Social offers Standard, Professional, Advanced
and Enterprise plans with additional add-on
subscriptions. Should an organization opt for a
different set of capabilities and features or forgo
the add-on subscriptions, the annual subscription
fee will change.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 28

 ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester

adjusted this cost upward by 5%, yielding a three-
year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of
$424,000.

Sprout Social Annual Subscription Fee

Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Sprout Social Enterprise annual
subscription, including users and social
media profiles, as well as additional Composite + 5%
F1 $155,000 $162,750 $170,888
subscriptions for Social Listening, YoY growth
Premium Analytics, Employee Advocacy
and Premier Success

Ft Sprout Social annual subscription fee F1 $155,000 $162,750 $170,888

Risk adjustment ↑5%

Sprout Social annual subscription fee

Ftr $0 $162,750 $170,888 $179,432
(risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $513,069 Three-year present value: $423,994

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 29

 ANALYSIS OF COSTS

IMPLEMENTATION FEES AND INTERNAL LABOR
COSTS
Evidence and data. For Sprout Social to work and
get the visibility and productivity their organizations
seek, the interviewees said that they needed to
dedicate time and resources upfront to connect
Sprout Social to their social media networks. While
the initial connections did not take long, the
organizations with a higher volume of social media
profiles to connect meant additional time was needed
to make those connections.
• The number of hours organizations need to set
up Sprout Social and its corresponding workflows
and integrations.
• The fully burdened hourly costs of the social
media director and social media managers.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
adjusted this cost upward by 5%, yielding a three-
year, risk-adjusted total PV of $17,000.

All the interviewees shared that the speed of

connecting their social media profiles was fast and
seamless. However, if organizations had complex
workflows, internal resources dedicated time to
create those components. A senior manager, social
media community engagement and employee
advocacy at a SaaS organization explained, “Those
additional hours with the team helped us set things
up.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the

information provided by Sprout Social:

• The composite organization has one social media

director overseeing the project. The social media
director’s fully burdened hourly rate is $78.

• The organization has three social media

managers supporting the social media director.
Their fully burdened hourly cost is $65.

• The task takes 15 hours per week for one month

across the team to connect all the social media
profiles to Sprout Social, set up the appropriate
workflows, and integrate the solution across
internal systems. This totals 60 hours per person.

Risks. Implementation fees and labor costs may vary

based on:

• The total number of employees working on the

implementation and their respective titles.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 30

 ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Implementation Fees And Internal Labor Costs

Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Number of social media directors for
G1 Composite 1
implementation
Number of social media managers
G2 Interviews 3
resources for implementation
Number of hours dedicated to
G3 Interviews 60
implementation
Average fully burdened hourly cost of
G4 C9 $78
social media director
Average fully burdened hourly cost of
G5 A6 $65
social media manager
Implementation fees and internal labor G1*G3*G4+
Gt $16,380 $0 $0 $0
costs G1*G2*G5

Risk adjustment ↑5%

Implementation fees and internal labor

Gtr $17,199 $0 $0 $0
costs (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $17,199 Three-year present value: $17,199

ONGOING MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING COSTS
Evidence and data. While Sprout Social is intuitive
and easy to use, all interviewees noted that they held
training sessions with Sprout Social employees to
ensure their social media teams could navigate the
solution with ease. Moreover, for those organizations
that purchased the Employee Advocacy solution,
interviewees said they held additional training
sessions to train those extended team members who
were not necessarily as social media savvy.
• An associate director, social media at a higher
education institution shared the following context
around both training and ongoing support, “Our
enterprise social media team had a formal
training for about an hour, and then we have
monthly calls with Sprout Social to talk about
roadmaps and to answer any questions that
might come up.” To maintain an additional level
of governance over social media, the associate
director went onto say how their organization
requires new users to complete a certificate to
onboard into the system. They said: “We work
with different groups and have people complete a
certificate. Once they do, we add them into
Sprout. We don’t want people going in there and
running wild; we want to set them up for
success.”
• Onboarding was also a crucial component for the
Employee Advocacy program at the senior
content manager of content marketing’s SaaS
company. They shared with Forrester: “We’ve
now onboarded hundreds of more employees
and continue to do so into Employee Advocacy.
They’re easily able to be on our frontlines [once
the training is complete], sharing our content with
their relevant audience.”
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumed the
following for the composite organization:
• For the first year, the social media director
spends 26 hours meeting with Sprout Social, or
biweekly. As an Enterprise customer, the
composite organization uses the time to discuss
strategy, reporting, and ongoing needs. In Year 2

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 31

 ANALYSIS OF COSTS

and Year 3, the social media director will meet • The average fully burdened hourly cost of a
with Sprout Social almost once a month, or for 13 social media team member is $51.
hours a year.
Risks. Ongoing management and training costs may
• The social media director’s fully burdened hourly vary based on:
rate is $78.
• The number of people trained.
• One social media manager from the composite
• The total number of hours of training.
organization’s team will be tasked with
maintaining integrations, workflows, tagging, and • The average burdened cost of the trainees.
reports. They dedicate thirty minutes per week to
• The burdened annual costs of the social media
this task, or 26 hours per year.
director and the social media manager.
• A social media manager’s fully burdened hourly
• The number of hours dedicated to maintaining
cost is $65.
integrations, workflows, tagging, and reports.
• The composite organization trains ten customer
• The number of hours dedicated to discussing
service specialists who will be seeing Sprout
strategy with the Sprout Social team.
Social notifications in their CRM system. The
trainings are one hour each year. Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
adjusted this cost upward by 5%, yielding a three-
• A customer service specialist’s average fully
year, risk-adjusted total PV of $118,000.
burdened hourly rate is $42.

• The composite organization will onboard 15% of

its employees into Employee Advocacy (750
employees) in Year 1. This will increase to 18%
(900 employees) in Year 2. By Year 3, the
composite organization will onboard 20% of its
workforce into the solution (1,000 employees).
Each year, the composite organization needs one
hour of training to onboard employees.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate of the

composite organization’s employees is $45.

• The number of people on the social media team

is 10.

• In Year 1, the composite organization dedicates

one hour a week for two months, or eight hours,
to train its social media team. In Year 2 and Year
3, the composite organization holds a 2 hour
training call with Sprout Social for its team to
discuss best practices and ask additional
questions.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 32

 ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Ongoing Management And Training Costs

Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Ongoing hours spent meeting with
H1 Composite 26 13 13
Sprout
Average burdened hourly cost of social
H2 C9 $78 $78 $78
media director
Ongoing hours spent maintaining
H3 Composite 26 26 26
integrations with Sprout Social
Average burdened hourly cost of social
H4 A4 $65 $65 $65
media director
(G1*G2) +
H5 Subtotal: Ongoing management costs $3,718 $2,704 $2,704
(G3*G4)
Number of customer service specialists
H6 E1 10 10 10
in training

H7 Number of training hours Composite 1 1 1

Average fully burdened hourly cost of

H8 E6 $42 $42 $42
customer service specialists
Subtotal: Customer service specialist
H9 H6*H7*H8 $420 $420 $420
training costs
Number of participants in Employee
H10 B1 750 900 1,000
Advocacy training

H11 Number of training hours Composite 1 1 1

Average fully burdened hourly cost of

H12 Composite $45 $45 $45
employees
Subtotal: Employee Advocacy training
H13 H10*H11*H12 $33,750 $40,500 $45,000
costs
Number of participants in training for the
H14 Composite 10 10 10
social media team
Number of training hours for social
H15 Interviews 8 2 2
media team
Average burdened hourly cost of social
H16 Composite $51 $51 $51
media team
Subtotal: Social media team training
H17 H14*H15*H16 $4,080 $1,020 $1,020
costs

Ht Ongoing management and training costs H5+H9+H13+H17 $0 $41,968 $44,644 $49,144

Risk adjustment ↑5%

Ongoing management and training costs

Htr $0 $44,066 $46,876 $51,601
(risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $142,544 Three-year present value: $117,570

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 33

Financial Summary

CONSOLIDATED THREE-YEAR RISK-ADJUSTED METRICS

Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)

The financial results calculated in the

Total costs Total benefits Cumulative net benefits
Benefits and Costs sections can be
used to determine the ROI, NPV, and
$2.0 M payback period for the composite
Cash
flows

organization’s investment. Forrester

assumes a yearly discount rate of 10%
for this analysis.
$1.5 M

$1.0 M
These risk-adjusted ROI,
NPV, and payback period
$0.5 M
values are determined by
applying risk-adjustment
factors to the unadjusted
results in each Benefit and
Cost section.

-$0.5 M
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

Cash Flow Analysis (Risk-Adjusted Estimates)

Present
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Total costs ($17,199) ($206,816) ($217,764) ($231,033) ($672,812) ($558,763)

Total benefits $0 $694,574 $752,994 $806,808 $2,254,376 $1,859,907

Net benefits ($17,199) $487,758 $535,230 $575,775 $1,581,564 $1,301,144

ROI 233%

Payback period
<6
(months)

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 34

Appendix A: Total Economic
Impact
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed
by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s
technology decision-making processes and assists
vendors in communicating the value proposition of
their products and services to clients. The TEI
methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify,
and realize the tangible value of IT initiatives to both
senior management and other key business
stakeholders.
TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT APPROACH
Benefits represent the value delivered to the
business by the product. The TEI methodology
places equal weight on the measure of benefits and
the measure of costs, allowing for a full examination
of the effect of the technology on the entire
organization.
Costs consider all expenses necessary to deliver the
proposed value, or benefits, of the product. The cost
category within TEI captures incremental costs over
the existing environment for ongoing costs
associated with the solution.
Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be
obtained for some future additional investment
building on top of the initial investment already made.
Having the ability to capture that benefit has a PV
that can be estimated.
Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost
estimates given: 1) the likelihood that estimates will
meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that
estimates will be tracked over time. TEI risk factors
are based on “triangular distribution.”
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time
0” or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All
other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the
end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total
cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary
tables are the sum of the initial investment and the
discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value
calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow
tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL
PRESENT VALUE (PV)
The present or current value of
(discounted) cost and benefit estimates
given at an interest rate (the discount
rate). The PV of costs and benefits feed
into the total NPV of cash flows.
NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV)
The present or current value of
(discounted) future net cash flows given
an interest rate (the discount rate). A
positive project NPV normally indicates
that the investment should be made
unless other projects have higher NPVs.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)
A project’s expected return in
percentage terms. ROI is calculated by
dividing net benefits (benefits less costs)
by costs.
DISCOUNT RATE
The interest rate used in cash flow
analysis to take into account the
time value of money. Organizations
typically use discount rates between
8% and 16%.
PAYBACK PERIOD
The breakeven point for an investment.
This is the point in time at which net
benefits (benefits minus costs) equal
initial investment or cost.
35
Appendix B: Endnotes

1 Source: Forrester Customer Trends Benchmark Survey, 2022.

2 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s
technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in communicating the value proposition of their
products and services to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the
tangible value of IT initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders.
3 Source: “The Social Technology Convergence Stalls Out,” Forrester Research, Inc., June 4, 2021.
4 Source: “Navigating The 2023 Downturn: B2B Marketing Executives,” Forrester Research, Inc., January 26, 2023.
5 Source: “The B2B Consumer Grows Up,” Forrester Research, Inc., March 2, 2020.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 36

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SPROUT SOCIAL 37