Post by Alana Golob
With the approaching holiday season, retailers are really stepping up their game within the social space. With more than 1 billion users on Facebook and Twitter alone, it’s imperative for retailers to innovate their approach to driving point of sales and standout in the sea of sameness. The following platforms have recently rolled out new products that can help businesses drive e-commerce sales:
PinPointing:
In October, Zappos.com announced that they’ve partnered with PinPointing, which is a service that recommends products based on the users pins and boards on Pinterest. Then the user has the ability to shop that specific category, whether it’s “Beauty” or “Burberry” directly on Zappos.com. Essentially, it takes some of the legwork off of the shopper, and directs them to the product based on their shared interests through Pinterest.
Just last week, Pinterest rolled-out new Business Pages which allow businesses to verify their accounts. Although from a user standpoint, there aren’t many changes with the new brand pages beyond the verification and new business terms, this is yet another example of a platform that is accommodating businesses and encouraging point of sale. Hopefully, platform analytics is on the future horizon for Pinterest.
YouTube:
YouTube and Juicy Couture partnered to launch a new shoppable video. Although shoppable videos have been around for some time now, they’ve recently made them more user friendly and less clunky. Throughout the video you’ll notice a box, if you click in that box at any point during the video it will direct you to that featured product on the Juice Couture website. With just a single click, shoppers can purchase a product. Give it a spin. (Warning: you may have the sudden urge to hit the gym once you’ve watched this video. Or maybe that’s just me)
Another brand that is innovating their use of unique video content is Asos, a retailer based out of the UK. They’ve partnered with artists, Ellie Goulding and Azealia Banks, as well as popular UK model, Charlotte Free for their #BestNightEver campaign. Each of the women have their own page on the Asos website with an exclusive video. These videos give viewers the ability to shop for the singers looks directly from the music video. This is a win-win for the retailer and the three personalities, because they are able to humanize their brand and grow their fan base through the feature, and Asos has access to valuable content that they are also able to monetize. Combined, the three videos have received more than 1.1 million views since the campaign launched.
Facebook:
Facebook continues to roll-out new promoted products to help businesses to monetize their social media efforts. One of the more successful products I’ve seen is the Facebook Offers. Facebook Offers are exclusive promotions or offers that are posted directly to a brand’s timeline and will appear in their “Likes” newsfeed. In order to run a Facebook Offer, your brand page must have at least 400 Likes. You can experiment with Facebook Offers for free the first time, and then a minimum of a $5 budget (product/service value) is required anytime after.
Facebook Offers help businesses drive traffic to a physical location or a website via redemption of the offer. Bath & Body Works is a good example of how you can leverage Offers to drive engagement, fan acquisition and traffic. They have given away free mini candles or small bottles of aromatherapy to fans who like their page. To them the investment is minimal, however the payout is high. Specifically when looking at page engagement, the following Bath & Body Works example experienced more than 600,000 claims, 22K Likes and 18K shares.
The key with any giveaway or promotion is to be cautious of those hollow fans that you may attract. Hollow fans are those fans who will participate in a giveaway specifically for the free product, with no intention of converting as a consumer. Hollow fans are similar to an unopened rate on an e-blast. If they aren’t opening the email, your time spent marketing to them is pointless and the ROI is low.
Interested in learning more about these promoted products and platforms? Give our Digital Royalty University classes a spin and join #TeamRenegades. Also, I encourage you to check out our Black Friday/Cyber Monday exclusive offer.
