Five Cool Retail Social Media Offerings
Most retailers now have some sort of social presence, but too often it consists of having an account on popular social media networks and little more. Following are five examples of recent retail social media offerings that leverage social media’s unique ability to engage consumers, improve operations and boost profits.
American Eagle – ‘Rock Your Walk’
American Eagle is running Rock Your Walk,” a series of consumer-created videos showing them wearing American Eagle jeans that will create a “virtual denim runway.” Consumers can upload videos via Instagram or Vine and have them added to the virtual runway displayed online.
In addition, select videos will be displayed on an LED screen in Times Square. “Rock Your Walk” is part of a larger video-based promotional campaign called “Live Your Life” that American Eagle has been running since fall 2012.
Belk – Pinterest Bridal Sweepstakes
Belk teamed up with digital engagement platform ePrize and Pinterest and Instagram marketing analytics provider Curalate to launch a bridal Pinterest campaign called “Pin to Win.” During the promotion consumers visited a sweepstakes microsite where they could "pin" a pre-populated pin board image based on their bridal type or select an image of their own for a chance to win a $5,000 Belk gift card.
Consumers were then directed to the Belk wedding registry site to set up their own registries. Belk also created unique pin boards based on different bridal types to browse for wedding ideas.
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – Location-based Social Marketing
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf uses the MomentFeed location-based marketing platform. MomentFeed initially registered all local Facebook pages and Foursquare venues. With this infrastructure in place, the retailer has curated the best customer Instagram photos and shared them to either its corporate Facebook page or the local Facebook page that corresponds to the photo location. The retailer also responds directly to customers via Instagram.
The retailer has seen results including a 136% total increase in local Facebook fans and average monthly increases of 36% in local engagement, 46% in local impressions and 53% in local reach.
Duane Reade – Twitter Engagement Drives Sales
Duane Reade has amassed more than 1.1 million Twitter followers since launching its corporate Twitter account in September 2012. Duane Reade has been successful in using social media to drive engagement as well as sales.
The drugstore chain’s “Show Us Some Leg” social amplification vendor campaign, which bolstered ROI including a 28% lift in legwear sales, included Twitter parties and photos. Duane Reade has also developed an “always on” Twitter Ads strategy that is driven by consumer-generated media and is integrated across channels.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries – Listening to Chatter
Five Guys Burgers and Fries has implemented social intelligence technology from newBrandAnalytics (nBA) to monitor social media chatter to help implement operational changes and improve engagement with customers. Five Guys also leverages the technology to gauge interest in potential new menu items.
For example, when Five Guys was recently considering introducing a smaller size French fry order based on customer requests, the company monitored social media commentary to determine there was widespread demand.