Net-A-Porter new shopping social network – ‘The Net Set

Last week, luxury fashion retailer Net-A-Porter launched its eagerly anticipated new social shopping network called ‘The Net Set’ labelled ‘the social shopping network we have all been waiting for.’

As a luxury brand that never devalues its products by offering discounts and offers (apart from their end of season sales), Net-A-Porter’s strategy has always been to focus on creating the very best customer experience and creating loyal customer advocates. This is evident from their launch of Porter magazine last year which blurred the boundaries between content and commerce. In some ways, The Net Set is an extension of this and seeks to create an interactive and inspirational experience for its customers.

In a nutshell, The Net Set allows you to virtually shop with the most stylish women on the planet, including the likes of Poppy Delevigne and Laura Bailey, as well as a community of like-minded fashion fans, sorted into ‘style tribes.’ Features include being able to shop any item directly from the app, and if you upload your own style or outfit, their image recognition tool will find similar styles for you to shop.

Here at Leapfrogg, we obviously love shopping and all things social, so our Social Media and Content Consultant, Hannah and I wasted no time in downloading the app and giving it a whirl.

Currently, the app is ‘invite only’ and after signing up their website, we received a code to register. By not being publically available, Net-A-Porter is perhaps creating an air of exclusivity and buzz around the app and slowly building up its user numbers, whilst refining and tweaking the app. For now, the social network remains invite only, with Net-A-Porter shoppers allowed to sign up with the ability to invite five friends. Pinterest started out in a similar way and now is open to all with over 78.8 million users.

The app itself reflects the look and feel of shopping on Net-a-Porter which is minimal and stylish with their signature black and white branding. The only pops of the colour come from the products themselves which enables them to really take the spotlight.

Signing up was simple and we were given the options of personalising the app in six short steps which included which designers to ‘admire’, style tribes to join, and the option to add products to your wish list called a ‘Love List’ .

There are 13 high-profile designers featured on the app at the moment, and seeing as they stock hundreds I would expect them to be adding more as time goes on. A key feature of the app is that you can discover products and then purchase them within the app itself. The checkout process was very straight forward and the purchase journey is clear, but it could perhaps be made more user-friendly. Apparently, Natalie Massenet created the app as she believes digital shopping is quickly moving to mobile devices with 40% of Net-a-Porter’s transactions taking place on mobile. “The Net Set was essentially us entirely rethinking Net-a-Porter, as if we were building it from scratch today,” she says. “We created it with the expectations of the new socially connected consumer and the latest technology in mind.”

We couldn’t see any video content, which is a shame as their website features videos of their products in use, so it would have been a nice touch to see this integrated into the app and would convey a lot of information easily.

The feature I liked most about the app was the image recognition technology which allows you to upload an image of any kind to the app – whether it be a person, print or an inspiring image which is then matched to their product inventory providing further areas for exploration. For example, uploading an image of our office dog, Nora, brings up a selection of products which match her colouring if you’ve ever fancied emulating her glossy black coat (who wouldn’t!). I imagine this would be a useful feature if you have a colour or pattern you’ve spotted and want to find something similar. However, I couldn’t see a way to filter these products down or find complementary items that don’t necessarily colour match.

nora

All in all, we really enjoyed using The Net Set and imagine we will be checking in frequently. It’s a great way to enhance the experience of shopping with Net-A-Porter and discovering new products. It will be interesting to see how people use the app. Given the price point of Net-a-Porter products, it’s certainly not a place for impulse purchases. I imagine people will use it more for discovery, saving items they like and purchasing later on or using the app for inspiration to find similar items elsewhere.

 

Leapfrogg speaking and sponsoring SheerB2B 2015

The Leapfrogg team are looking forward once again in taking part in SheerB2B, SheerLuxe’s annual eCommerce conference, on the 13th and 14th of May 2015.

This year’s theme is ‘A Conversation with a Customer’ and will focus on how you can put the customer into the centre of your organisation. Speakers include premium brands such as Rodial, Avenue 32 and OKA as well as industry names like Sarah Curran and B2B experts such as ourselves and our partners Epsilon Abacus and Feefo.

On Wednesday, our Managing Director, Rosie Freshwater, will be speaking about how to weave a customer-first philosophy into your digital marketing activity.

On the second day of the conference, our Insight & Strategy Director, Lucy Freeborn will be talking about our recent engagement reports and which retailers came out top and why exactly they are leading the way in customer engagement through content.

You can follow the event by following us on Twitter and #SheerB2B.

The link to the agenda and booking form is available here.

The Hype: what’s hot and happening in premium retail this month?

 

 

Welcome to The Hype – our monthly digest of the hottest products, trends and innovations from the world of premium and luxury retail, hand-picked by our Premium Panel.

 

 

Lilly Pulitzer for Target

Last month, U.S discount retailer, Target, launched their highly-anticipated collaboration with Lilly Pulitzer, – a brand best known for its fun prints and chic resort wear. The 250 piece collection featured an affordable line of brightly printed clothing, homewares and cosmetics all created in Pulitzer’s distinctive neon prints.

However, within hours (even minutes in some locations), the collection almost entirely sold out, in stores and online and according to Target, it was one of the fastest-selling collaborations it has undertaken. This caused disappointment and outrage as shoppers discovered they couldn’t shop the items they had lusted after. Unsurprisingly, many items also appeared on eBay for more than double the original price.

The collaboration came under criticism from some fashion devotees think these collaborations are ruining the brands’ luxury aesthetic and the limited amount of product is simply a shrewd marketing ploy to create more demand for the brands.

H&M Exclusive Conscious

H&M is another brand that is well known for its sell-out designer collaborations. Last month, they launched a new collection of party wear as an extension to their existing successful Conscious collection. Entitled Conscious Exclusive, the debut range features an array of evening-appropriate clothing and accessories for both men and women. Each piece has been created from sustainable materials, including organic cotton, recycled polyamide and Tencel. The collection was modelled by actress Olivia Wilde, and unsurprisingly sold out online within a few hours. However, I spotted that since the launch, there are still limited pieces of the collection available online.

Endource launches

Last month, I also noticed the launch of a new fashion website called Endource.com which was created by the co-founder of holiday website Secret Escapes.

Endource.com scours magazine websites and influential fashion blogs to bring shoppers the ultimate fashion directory that has been editor-approved, with the aim of replicating the experience of shopping with a personal stylist. If you follow fashion magazine’s and bloggers, then this website is the perfect place to find the most covetable and endorsed products in the fashion world.

Condé Nast to Transform Style.com into Global E-Commerce Player

Over the last few months, we’ve seen many traditional content creators realise their potential power to sell and evolve themselves into ecommerce platforms. Grazia famously bought London Boutiques, to develop its own branded ecommerce offering and now Condé Nast have followed suit and have announced that Style.com will be the home of their new ecommerce business.

The new platform – which is the first of its kind for the publisher – will launch this autumn in Britain and sell merchandise to consumers, including readers and users of its magazines and websites such as Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ, targeting fashion brands as well as upmarket brands from other sectors such as beauty, travel services and technology.

Marks and Spencer’s sell-out suede skirt

Every year has its ‘It’ item and in 2013, Marks and Spencer’s pink duster coat caused a fashion frenzy, and now their brown suede skirt is fast becoming the must-have item for Spring 2015.

The 1970’s-style suede skirt with a price tag of £199 goes on sale later this month and currently has a waiting list of over 3,500 people. Demand has been so high that five times the original amount has been produced to satisfy requests. To cater to demand, Marks & Spencer have also set up a sign up page for the skirt until it’s release date.

The skirt received a huge amount of exposure on social media after fashionista’s Olivia Palamo and Alexa Chung were both spotted wearing it and it consequently featured in magazines such as Vogue, Red and Glamour which created a huge amount of social buzz.

The hype around the skirt will be regarded as a major success for the M&S, who are aiming to improve their fashion credentials to improve sales. Although a single item cannot save a struggling retailer, high-profile hits such as this will definitely help improve their brand image and appeal to a wider audience who may not necessarily shop there.

A review of the last few months in premium retail

As we’ve come to the end of the first quarter of the year, I’ve asked our Director’s to reflect on the past couple of months in retail and share the trends and common threads we’ve noticed across our retail clients and the sector as a whole.

 

 

Rosie Freshwater, Managing Director

Customer-centric marketing

Over the last couple of months, I have seen a continued trend towards customer-centric marketing with more brands quite rightly putting their customers at the heart of their marketing strategy. Retailers are waking up to the importance of combining data and insight in order to understand who their customers are and the experience they desire. I feel there has been a big shift from retailers making assumptions about their customers to investing in data insight to show them an accurate picture. However, many retailers still aren’t spending enough on data and are consequently unable to make changes to their customer experience.

Mobile websites

With the arrival of ‘Mobilegeddon’ (Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update) and the continued growth of mobile, we’ve seen many retailers dedicate more budget to mobile and ensure their websites are well optimised. Having a mobile-friendly site is now critical. We have noticed more customers using their mobiles for browsing on the way to and from work and in the evenings, they are multi-screening on both their tablet and mobile. In the forthcoming months, we can expect to see a stream of new initiatives available to marketers in terms of paid search and online specifically for mobile.

Engaging content

We’ve seen the trend for creating engaging content continue to grow and retailers are becoming much more consistent across all channels. We’ve recently been examining how retailers are creating customer engagement through content in our recent engagement reports and have found many retailers have a disparate content strategy across their social channels and are often creating content with little or no engagement. Forward thinking brands have kept their customers at the heart and are using insight about their customers to create cohesive content strategies around specific customer segments.

Email marketing

We’ve also seen a shift in the use of email marketing thanks to customer segmentation. Abandoned basket emails are still popular as are post-purchase communications and we’ve seen more retailers use past purchase data to ensure they are promoting relevant products. The most popular form of email marketing is for retention, but it’s also a strong acquisition tool if you invest in growing your mailing list. This is a great mechanism to capture those who are interested in your products so you can market to them whilst they make purchasing decisions.

Challenges

A key challenge for retailers has been the growing expectations of consumers. They expect a seamless and personalised shopping experience and it’s a long term investment for retailers to meet those expectations. As the economy starts to feel more positive, I hope to see more retailers making longer term investments in experience to create long term value. Many marketing decisions in recent years have been made for the short term gain – often at a cost to long term profit and customer loyalty. Change will involve technology and a cultural shift and hopefully retailers will feel more confident about doing this.

Strive for a single customer view

I’ve seen many retailers struggle to combine multiple data sources to create the single customer view. The big retailers are starting to see progress in this area, but for smaller retailers it can be a challenge due to budget constraints. My advice would be to begin doing this bit by bit. Start by understanding the online customer and tailor your marketing activity towards them. Then combine that insight with in-store data. In the meantime, take small pockets of data and try to extrapolate out.

Looking forward

Over the next coming months, I’d like to see more suppliers to the retail industry working more closely together to provide a full customer experience service. As retailers grow their customer experience teams, those teams will start to look for suppliers that can help across multiple aspects of the customer experience and so those agencies and suppliers that are geared up to collaborate closely on projects across multiple customer touchpoints will be in high demand.

 

Ben Potter, Commercial Director

I’ve noticed the needs of some larger retailers are changing where their search agency is concerned. Often retailers have people internally all doing (in the main) great stuff in content creation, PR and social media (all essential components of a contemporary natural search strategy).

However, the activity is often managed by disparate teams and therefore not aligned and working towards overall business objectives (or even towards more granular natural search goals). Such silos are the enemy of an integrated search strategy so we are increasingly finding our role is changing. Rather than being responsible for execution, brands with in-house teams are looking for Leapfrogg to advise at a more strategic level, to help facilitate change and deliver training. This might include helping the client to put in place the necessary framework, team structure, processes and guidelines to align and maximise the impact of in-house content, social and PR activity.

We are not necessarily saying that in-house teams are set up to do everything themselves. There will always be gaps. But in a lot of cases we are finding larger clients are not looking for a fully outsourced solution in the traditional sense. They require a partner that can be flexible, adding value in the most appropriate fashion. This highlights something that I said in one of my Econsultancy posts back in 2012 – that natural search cannot be purchased and delivered as a commoditised, packaged service. Every business is entirely unique in terms of their agency requirements, determined primarily by their objectives and in-house resource/expertise. Only by building an understanding of the retailers business, sector, products, competitive landscape, internal resource or offline marketing activity can an agency deliver exactly what the client needs, which is often different to what they think they want.

 

Lucy Freeborn, Insight & Strategy Director

The most exciting development I’ve seen in premium retail over the past few months has been the evolution of content strategy AS retail strategy.

Although data, wrapped in insight, smothered in relevant content, has been at the heart of a good digital marketing strategy for a good couple of years now, informed content strategy as an ecommerce strategy is starting to be taken seriously by those brands with vision and the ambition to invest in creative and practical resource.

Trail blazer, Mr Porter has has this ‘Content as an Ecommerce’ platform nailed for a little while now; I certainly always look to them for a bit of lifestyle inspiration. But more mainstream brands have been developing this forward thinking, natural-search-proofed, social-media-gold-plated strategy on the quiet for the past few months. Farrow & Ball is one of my favourite brands who is doing ecommerce content well at the moment. What started at “shoppable content” a couple of years ago has become a fully fledged stand alone retail strategy in itself.

Indeed, we’re also starting to see one of the most exciting (and game changing) shifts in ecommerce content, as the traditional content creators realise their potential power to sell and evolve themselves into ecommerce platforms. Grazia famously bought London Boutiques, (one of our previous clients!) to develop its own branded ecommerce offering and I’m really looking forward to the launch of Conde Nast’s long-anticipated e-commerce venture later this year under the company’s existing brand Style.com. What could be a bigger threat to those retail brands working hard to become inspirational homes for content, than those already established homes for inspirational content, becoming retailers?

Indeed, as print publishing becomes a much more cut throat game, print advertising budgets are slashed and readerships drop, how else can those big publishers survive?

If understanding your customer is central to developing a solid retail strategy, then who’s better to develop a compelling retail offer, than those who have been developing a relationship with their reader for years. A flurry of publishing houses entering the retail landscape, I think, will shake things up for the better.

‘Skill Swap’ session with Secret Linen Store

Here at Leapfrogg, we’re constantly immersing ourselves in the world of retail in order develop knowledge of the premium shopper, their needs, and the challenges retailers face in meeting them.

In light of this, our Managing Director, Rosie recently arranged a ‘Skill Swap’ session with new luxury bed linen etailer Secret Linen Store who popped into Leapfrogg to share their retail experience with us in exchange for the opportunity to pick our brains on all things digital and customer experience.

The session was really insightful, so I thought I’d share a few insights from the session starting with the questions we asked The Secret Linen Store and their responses…

Secret Line Store Bed Linen

LF: How do you plan for seasonal peaks in revenue, activity and products? How far in advance are you able to plan?

SLS: As a new retailer, we’re still learning about seasonality as this year was our first year of trading. So far, we’ve found out that Christmas doesn’t really affect linen purchases and that our busiest period is by far the January and summer sales.

In an ideal world, we’d start plan our marketing six months in advance, but at the moment it’s actually more like three months. We’ve found that volumes of stock shift a lot, with some products selling well and then dropping off dramatically. We’re currently running new analysis on page view vs. sales to determine if people are looking at products but not purchasing them. If we spot a product just isn’t working then we will quickly remove it from our line.

We have four product launches per year and we’re currently focusing on contemporary lines and building our collections around design and colour as these products have proved the most popular. Our products have a three month lead time which can be a challenge when trying to respond to customer demand. PR has also had a huge impact on our sales – for example a recent article in the Daily Telegraph on 600 thread count sheets saw our products fly of the shelves!

LF: How do you use data to provide a more personalised experience for your customers and which specific data driven actions have had the biggest impact on conversion rate?

SLS: It’s still very early days for us in terms of personalisation. We’ve recently signed up to an email marketing data company called Rais which links our Magento website to Mailchimp and segments our data by date, purchase frequency, customer location and life time value. We’re looking forward to seeing how we can use this data to make our email marketing more targetted.

LF: How much qualitative insight do you currently have about your customers and how are you planning on expanding that in the future to deliver the best possible experience for your customers?

SLS: Customer reviews are really important to us and we often change our products based on customer feedback. For example, we recently altered our pillow designs as we discovered that our customers didn’t like the seam being in the middle in case you wanted to turn your pillow over. We often use Survey Monkey to gather customer insight which is really valuable to us. We‘ve recently conducted some postcode analysis and found that our customers come from a wide sector and there is no bias towards one area.

LF: What do you think the main challenges are for specialist online-only retailers today?

SLS: Our biggest drawback as an online-only bed linen retailer is that our customers cannot see or feel our products. We offer samples, but we’ve actually found that 85% of our customers buy without ordering a sample and our return rate is quite low at 6%. We definitely recommend offering free returns as this definitely boosts sales.

As a small team, we lack manpower. We have to do everything ourselves and it often means we can’t move as quickly as we’d like. We’ve just initiated Google’s way of planning called ‘OKR’s’ which stand for Objectives and Key Results which definitely helps us get stuff done and work more efficiently. We’d recommend this way of working.

LF: Have you had any bad press or bad customer feedback? How does that make you feel and what actions have you made to improve the customer experience?

SLS: Luckily we’ve never had bad press but have a couple of customers whose orders weren’t as they expected. We take our customer’s experience of Secret Linen Store very seriously and always address their issues quickly and consequently have turned unhappy customers into very happy ones! I think it’s really important to focus on customer service as a new online retailer in order to provide a good customer experience that encourages loyalty and repeat purchases.

LF: Knowing what you now know, if you did it all again, what would be the one thing you would change that would make the biggest difference to your business?

SLS: We would have focused more on brand and content from the beginning and consequently made our website experience much more engaging and user friendly. We aspire to content-led websites such as Mr Porter, AndOtherStories, Everlane and Spoke and would love to develop a similar experience for our customers.

 

Big thanks to Secret Linen Store for coming in and chatting to us. Watch this space for our second post to find out what happened when the tables were turned and Secret Linen Store picked our brains about digital marketing and customer experience…

The Hype: what’s hot and happening in premium retail?

Welcome to The Hype – a monthly digest of the hottest products, trends and innovations from the world of premium and luxury retail, hand-picked by our Premium Panel.

Apple Watch launch

On the 24th of April, the long-awaited Apple Watch Sport, Watch and Watch Edition will go on sale. There are three different models on offer in two different sizes and prices range from £299 to an eye-watering £13,500. In addition to telling the time through a range of customisable clock faces, the Apple Watch offers notifications, health and fitness tracking and new ways to communicate with others. Several apps will be available on the Watch too, including Siri, Messages and Maps along with information pulled from calendars and email. There’s been very mixed opinions on the Watch especially from the fashion world who have viewed the watch as a gadget, rather than this season’s must-have accessory. Whatever your opinion, it’s guaranteed to cause chaos outside Apple stores across the globe when it launches in a few weeks.

The Cult and Classic

This month sees the launch of The Cult & Classic, a new womenswear e-commerce site. Having gone live with a preview site on March 18th, the official launch is scheduled on April 15th. Founder Beth Wallace, who was previously Michael van der Ham’s Business Partner, selects labels ranging from emerging talent, to wardrobe staples and heritage brands with an edited selection of pieces from these collections. Our Premium Panel has been eyeing up their collection of iconic Bella Freud Jumpers.

The Cult & Classic also focus on the very best customer experience. All customers will receive a personal shopper who will be on hand to answer any queries and they also offer a generous loyalty scheme to all registered customers on the basis of one point earned for every pound spent. Check it out here: www.thecultandclassic.com.

An exclusive discount from Secret Linen Store

Secret Linen Store

In our last survey, our panel members stated that they’d like to access more discounts and offers from premium and luxury brand. In light of this, we are delighted to offer our Premium Panel members an exclusive discount from luxury bed linen destination Secret Linen Store!

The Secret Linen Store offers the most luxe bedding we’ve ever come across. All bedding is designed in-house and woven in Portugal using the best cotton yarns and come in an array of beautiful prints and patterns.

Not only do they already offer beautiful linen at up to 40% less than the high street – they’re also tempting us with an extra 12% OFF* their new collection.

Just use code MAKEMYBED at the checkout to receive your discount until 30th April 2015. *Please note offer is not valid on clearance lines, or valid with any other offer.

Visit Secret Linen Store here: http://www.secretlinenstore.com/

Spring fashion picks

With Spring well on the way, our Premium Panelists have been looking to purchase some new-season staples. We’re clearly ready to ditch our boots as high on the panel’s wish lists is footwear from strappy ballet flats to bright and colourful trainers.

Two new launches that have caught our panel’s eye this month are the Addidas x Pharrell Williams Supercolour range which come in a spectrum of 50 different colourways as a ‘celebration of equality through diversity’.

Nike have also launched their Air Max City Collection which is made up of six pairs which represent the fashion-forward capitals of London, Milan, New York, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo each sporting a vibrant, floral pattern that symbolises its region. We want them all!

Shopping survey

Thanks to everyone who completed our Easter survey last month and congratulations to Naomi Flood who won our hamper of Easter goodies from Hotel Chocolat!

If you’re interested in reading about the findings of our shopping survey’s – check out our new series on our blog each week – the Insight Edit.

See you next month!

We’re off to Berlin for the European Search Awards!

We had some great news last week as we found out our brilliant Paid Search Analyst, Joe Appleton, had been shortlisted for the European Search Awards in the Young Search Professional of the Year category.

Now in their fourth year, the European Search Awards celebrate the very best in SEO, PPC, Digital and Content Marketing within Europe. Last year, we won ‘Best Use of PR in a Search Campaign’ for our work with Wedding Rings Direct, and we are honoured to be recognised once again in these prestigious awards.

Joe has been with the company for over three years and in this time, he has grown from an intern into an expert in the field of paid search. He manages a wide range of paid search accounts across social, search and display for with a number of our clients including Cult Beauty, Lulu Guinness and MPB Photographic and works tirelessly to produce to best possible results for our clients.

The award ceremony takes place on 22nd April in Berlin and our Managing Director, Rosie, and Joe will both be heading out there for the event.

Good luck to all the brands and agencies shortlisted. See you in Berlin!

Social engagement within the premium multi-brand fashion sector

As part of our ongoing crusade to create the perfect customer experience, we’ve recently been examining how well premium retailers understand their customers and are therefore able to produce content that engages them.

Last year we looked at premium furniture retailers and this year we’ve been focusing on multi-brand fashion retailers.

For multi-brand fashion retailers, building a unique identity that customers want to engage with can be challenge compared to retailers that stock own-brand products. Own brand retailers are much better placed to be able to carve out an identity for themselves through the uniqueness of their product and being able to focus their brand and style to a narrower target audience. In light of this, multi-brand fashion retailers need solid and effective content strategies tailored to specific customer segments in order to stand out in a competitive market and engage their customers to encourage purchases and loyalty.

In our report, we’ll reveal how 15 leading fashion retailers have performed in our analysis. We’ve also looked in depth at the three top scoring brands and explored the reasons why these brands have scored higher whilst offering some tips and recommendations for these brands to create even more engagement that other brands can learn from.

Get your copy of the report here.

The Hype: what’s hot and happening in premium retail this month?

Welcome to the February edition of The Hype – our monthly digest of the hottest products, trends and innovations from the world of premium and luxury retail, hand-picked by our Premium Panel.

The Culture Cloud

Lulu Guinness has just launched The Culture Cloud – an interactive hub and online magazine. Each issue will present a new topic to explore, collaborating with a brand partner to give exclusive content and will also offer the chance to review products, attend exclusive events and win prizes. Click here to join the newsletter.

Very Exclusive launches

This month also saw the launch of Very’s new online shopping destination Very Exclusive.

The site is the latest project of Sarah Curran, founder of My-Wardrobe, and offers an expertly edited selection of over 100 of the world’s leading designers and beauty brands.

The bit that has got everyone the most excited is the fact that the site operates on Very’s payment model, allowing customers to buy an item and spread the cost in installments in order to make luxury designer labels accessible to all.

The Premium Panel were impressed with the new website which looks slick and stylish but also includes every ecommerce tool, filter option, social media links and product information that you see other websites criticised for not including. The user journey and editorial content is also seamless with links to inspiration pieces which add value to the customer and link to the products on offer.

The new High Street label

Another new launch this month was the highly anticipated new fashion label Finery London. The label is the brainchild of a former Topshop designer and ex-Asos fashion and buying directors and offers luxurious, concept-driven designs at an accessible price point. The Premium Panel were particularly excited about this new launch due to the uniqueness and price of their garments which are reminiscent of labels such as Cos and Whistles.

Live trends at London Fashion Week

Last week also saw London Fashion Week come round once again with designers showing off their AW15 collections. This year, more brands than ever used technology during to engage their customers and deliver an omnichannel experience for not only those attending the shows but also for shoppers.

Topshop and Hunter both launched large scale outdoor digital ads to engage with fashion fans not attending the trade event.

Tosphop teamed up with Twitter to analyse real-time data to identify trends as they emerged and allow shoppers to buy goods in real-time. As key trends emerged they appeared in the Topshop trend cloud on billboards as hashtags such as #colourblocking, #pleats and #utility.

Topshop then allocated a screening area at its Oxford Circus flagship store to allow customers to watch the Topshop Unique fashion show streamed live from Tate Britain. The move furthers the brands attempt to democratise London Fashion Week for its customers and involve them in the event.

Customers were then able to Tweet @Topshop using one of the trend hashtags to receive a curated shopping list from the store which was inspired by the trend.

Hunter streamed their Fashion Week show live across the UK. In partnership with Ocean, an outdoor marketing specialist, the brand’s autumn/winter show in London was shown to shoppers and fashion fans on large-scale outdoor screens in some of Britain’s largest cities; including Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester in order to bring their show to a wider national audience.

Forward thinking British brand Burberry also partnered with Twitter and offered users of the social media site the chance to capture pictures of its show live from the runway.

By tweeting #Tweetcam to the @Burberry Twitter account, users will trigger a camera to take a photograph from the best vantage point within the show space as the models walked down the runway.

Each picture is then personalised with the user’s Twitter handle, a time stamp of the moment the image was taken and then tweeted back to them.

The Leapfrogg Premium Panel survey

Thanks to all who filled in our February survey. You can read about our findings on sale shopping over on The Insight Edit. Big congratulations to Laura Mottam who won our survey giveaway and will be receiving a rather lovely subscription to Not Another Bill.

Watch this space for our next survey launching mid-March!

What we learnt in 2014 and what we look forward to in 2015

With 2015 well and truly upon us, I asked the Leapfrogg team to reflect upon what we have learnt over the last 12 months in the world digital marketing and premium retail and how we expect this year’s developments to evolve.

Here’s what they came up with:

 

 

Rosie FreshwaterRosie Freshwater – Managing Director

2015 will be the year of “Customer Experience”

Last year, customer experience still felt very much like a theory that everyone preached and understood that they needed to start doing. However, retailers were challenged to do anything about it as they felt there was so much to be done just to get to the point of best practice. Only then did they feel they were ready to start tweaking the experience they give to certain customers.

I believe that 2015 will be the year that customer experience really does get put at the heart of digital marketing teams and retailers work out how to do that and build a focus on customer insight and data into every job role within their marketing teams and wider across the business. We will start to see roles such as ‘head of customer experience’ appear and more and job descriptions will include the need to understand customer data.

 

Ben PotterBen Potter – Commercial Director

Customer insight is key

If pretty much any year from 2008 onwards was labelled ‘the year of mobile’, 2014 was very much about ‘customer experience’ with marketers at the turn of the year proclaiming it to be the most exciting opportunity.

However, customer experience is nothing new, there is just far greater attention being paid to it as a discipline in its own right because, in a consumer-led, multi-device world, a seamless and consistent experience is so difficult to deliver.

The ability to decide where to invest for maximum return, minimal waste and happy customers will separate the good from the great this year. This is where customer insight is key. It shouldn’t only be shaping the big decisions but the ‘smaller’ ones too. Even at the most granular of levels, every decision should begin and end with the customer.

I hope to see marketers take a step back and see the bigger picture in 2015. If 2014 was the year customer experience became as much a part of the vocabulary as SEO or social media, 2015 is the year when retailers need to really live and breathe it. It’s the year when every decision is made on the basis of what customers actually want rather than what the retailer thinks they want.

 

Suzanne TaylorSuzanne Taylor – Website optimisation manager

Focus on your wider strategy

In 2014 it felt like brands and retailers took further steps to root digital execution in their in-house teams. It’s hugely important that internal departments are all embracing and ingraining digital in their day-to-day marketing efforts as this will provide a long-term foundation for digital success.

This year, online brands and retailers really do need to focus on building their brands by engaging with their customers and providing unique experiences. Although different channels all have their part to play, it’s important that brands focus on the wider strategy to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards overall business objectives. Better segmentation and personalisation are likely to get more advanced in 2015.

 

Alice ReevesAlice Reeves – Social Media and Content Manager

Video will dominate further

This year, video is set to become even more important and brands not creating their own video content are going to lose out to competitors that are.

Video doesn’t just give you the chance to create compelling, easy-to-consume content about your products and services, it also performs exceptionally well on social media. According to figures released in September 2014, around a billion videos are viewed on Facebook every day. Consumers’ thirst for quality video content is only set to increase in 2015 and the social networks know it, that’s why they’re going to be investing in and pushing their own video hosting capabilities. Get on the bandwagon early.”

Social media strategies need to be engagement-focused AND include paid media

The biggest disruptions to the social media sphere in 2014 were the various updates to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm which suppressed organic reach for brand Pages. As a result, our clients across the board saw their organic reach (along with resulting website traffic and conversions) taking a dip. With the roll out of further updates beginning this month which will suppress “promotional content” from Pages, brands are going to need to divide their Facebook strategy into two distinct areas in order to see success on the platform:

• Paid promotional
• Organic engagement

It’s not just Facebook that’s making changes like this in the name of improving the user experience. Pinterest recently introduced its ‘Smart Feed’ which means that pins are no longer shown in chronological order – they’re assessed on the basis of quality and relevance to the user. There’s also been speculation around whether Twitter is going to abandon its chronological timeline and serve users tweets based on relevance instead. If you want to see success on any social media platform in 2015, your strategy is going to need to be wholly engagement-focused AND include an element of paid media.

Content strategies need to be altruistic, not self-indulgent.

My final prediction for 2015 is that brands that don’t focus on delivering what their customers want via their social media and content are going to fall behind. In-depth customer insight (we’re not talking ACORN profiles here) should be the starting point for any content strategy and maintaining genuine engagement with consumers is going to be how brands see success. Content marketing is going to be entirely about answering problems and adding value.

 

Ben AdamBen Adam – Senior website optimisation consultant

Backlink relevancy will still be a big win in terms of search quality

In 2014, Google found a way to ‘encourage’ webmasters to help them start clearing the web through Penguin and its regular updates – something they have been attempting to battle unsuccessfully for a number of years. Over the last year, in fear of action from Google, website owners have been trawling through historic ‘spammy’ links, requesting removal of them and supplying lists of websites in the form of disavow files, shopping these offending sites directly to Google.

Last year saw many predictions and outcries of links being dead. However they still remain a core factor in the way Google ranks search results and they have got much better at identifying manipulated links thanks to the webs clean up.

Google are yet to find a better approach. They even tested removing links internally but the resulting quality was much worse. Matt Cutts stated “It turns out backlinks, even though there’s some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part are still a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results”. I would expect it to stay that way for some time.

 

Ben RobsonBen Robson – Senior social media and content consultant

Create content that has a purpose, rather than content for content’s sake.

2014 showed us that Google continues to place more and more emphasis on high quality content, rewarding businesses and brands who cater for online searches with content that is relevant and useful.

In 2015, I’m looking forward to seeing the trend develop further – helping our own clients position themselves as trusted sources of highly relevant, highly shareable content that attracts engagement from the right visitor demographic. I am also hoping 2015 is the year more brands recognise that adding to the growing amount of ‘content noise’ on social media (adopting a quantity vs. quality approach) is never the way forward. May 2015 be the year of content that has a purpose, rather than content for content’s sake.

 

AnnAnna Taylora Taylor – Sales and Marketing Executive

Customer-centric fulfilment

In 2015 the importance of free, speedy and flexible delivery and return options will continue to grow as ecommerce customers will start to expect this to be the norm. Gone will be the days of waiting weeks for deliveries and even months for your refunds. To compete, online retailers will need to provide an optimised online shopping experience and offer great deals on delivery and a fast turnaround time on all orders.

I think 2015 will also see personal and effective customer service becoming crucial in such a competitive retail landscape. We’ve seen many examples of retailers such as ASOS who may be pushing the boundaries in terms of innovation and expansion but they’ve come under recent criticism for their automated customer service processes. The fact that that 80% of UK consumers are less likely to buy again after one bad experience will mean that the retailers who can’t provide this will certainly fall behind

I think we will be seeing plenty to advances to online retail in 2015 but hopefully every single one will boil down to improving the customer experience.

So, what do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts on our predictions so please feel free to leave a comment below.