Poler Outdoor Stuff activates Instagram indoors

Consumers who live active lifestyles often document their adventures on Instagram.



Poler Outdoor Stuff, a Portland, Oregon-based specialty outdoor retailer that operates an e-commerce site, as well as a flagship store, has been using Instagram for online promotions since launching four years ago. More recently, Poler has also been leveraging the promotional power of Instagram in its store.



“We play a feed of customer Instagram posts on in-store flatscreen TVs,” said Benji Wagner, creative director and co-founder of Poler, in an exclusive interview with Chain Store Age. “We curate the most relevant and beautiful photos.”



Poler uses a social media engagement platform from Postano to curate specific posts from its Instagram feed. In addition to providing Poler with a live feed from its Instagram page, Postano also provides Poler with access to some social metrics.



“We can go in and see the impressions we are creating on Instagram,” said Wagner. “We can see how often our ‘campvibes’ hashtag is used (more than 500,000 times by 350,000 followers to date), who’s using it, who our top influencers are.”



By expanding its successful Instagram marketing program into its flagship store (a second Southern California store is slated to open next year), Poler is better engaging customers who may not normally be on Instagram.



“It’s a slick way to show off our awesome imagery and user content,” said Wagner.



Although Postano provides an option for automatic or exception-driven curation, Poler generally creates a manual feed every day. So far it only uses Instagram stills for in-store display, but may expand to video in the future.



“Video relies on an audio component, which isn’t really ready in the store right now,” Wagner said.



Poler, which launched the Postano platform earlier this year, has not collected detailed performance analytics yet, but is running an analytics beta. The retailer may also expand its analytical program for in-store Instagram.



“We are going to drive Postano data into our Google Analytics data,” said Wagner.