Padawan Series: Social Posts Your Brand Should Implement

Padawan Series: Social Posts Your Brand Should Implement

by | Nov 2, 2020 | Apparel, Digital Marketing

On average, users spend 144 minutes on social media daily. The platforms most visited are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. While having social media is not essential for every brand, you do have more opportunities and places to reach potential and existing customers if you are active on social media. As an apparel and accessories brand, there are many types of social media posts you can add to your account that can gain more followers, brand awareness and purchases that we will go over in this guide.

Lifestyle Shots

Social media users love seeing apparel lifestyle shots where people or items are in a scene over laydowns. These types of images feel more authentic and relatable to people. But, also remember that you can publish laydown posts by incorporating fun design elements like text, stickers, gifs, etc. Lifestyle images give you the opportunity to get creative at photoshoots. This is the moment where you get to direct models or influencers to pose or act a specific way. If you do not use models or influencers, set up a scene that looks realistic for product photos. Make sure to bring a shot list that includes social media ideas for every photo shoot. It is better to plan your social calendar at least one month ahead of time, so you have time to create, design and write every post. 

Even though Schuler Shoes only sells shoes, they still manage to create lifestyle shots of their product by putting them in a scene that many people can relate to:

Sustainability and Inclusivity

Right now, the apparel and accessories world is all about sustainability and inclusivity. Many sustainability supporting organizations are calling out many fashion brands due to the damage they are doing to the environment and how unethical their work practices are. Some fast fashion companies like BooHoo are under fire right now, especially since many of these brands do not have safe factories, are environmentally wasteful and create clothes mostly for small, petite people. As a business, you do not want customers to label your brand like this. That is why you will want to share any sustainable brands you sell and show a wide range of people, whether they are models, influencers or regular people on your social media.

National Holidays

Who doesn’t enjoy a fun national day? It gives us that extra excuse to dress-up, take photos or try something new. These days are not just for everyday people. Businesses can work these national days into their social media marketing as well. There are a ton of trending national holidays that you can post on that revolve around or can relate to apparel and accessories. Holidays like National Handbag Day, National White T-Shirt Day, National Lipstick Day, National Wear Red Day, etc. work great and have already established and well-followed hashtags. You can find a list of national holidays on the National Day Calendar. While creating these posts, you can get creative with the design. Add festive symbols, stickers or words that go with the holiday. For example, flag stickers or emojis on the 4th of July or snow, bells and lights around Christmas. Schuler Shoes added simple graphic elements on National Nurses Day that are effective and promotional at the same time:

Insta Stories and Facebook Stories

Stories are popular on Facebook and Instagram. Audiences love the valuable, engaging and creative content that comes from these posts. They also enjoy that stories involve more interactions over just leaving a like or comment. It’s the perfect area to add interactive buttons, stickers, music, questions, links to products, etc. Also, remember that on Instagram, you cannot link to anything on your news feed. However, you can link to as many products or blogs that you want on Insta Stories. The more engaging you are, the more chances you have of people following your accounts, interacting and shopping with your brand.

Authentic Influencers

Influencers are not for every apparel and accessories company, but if you already have or are willing to add influencers to your social media campaigns, then you can gain more followers on your social media pages. 78% of businesses implement influencer marketing with it to continue to grow every year. And this year alone increased influencer marketing substantially; however, customers are looking for authentic influencers instead of celebrities or high profile influencers. Micro-influencers and nano influencers are gaining popularity with consumers since they relate more to users. For more information on these types of influencers and how they can help your social media marketing, check out this guide.

Community Engagement

Without your community of followers, your social media would not go very far, and you would essentially have no one to market to. Whether you have a plethora of followers or a small handful, there is always room to gain more. Users on social media are looking for brands, companies and people that make a connection with them. Brands that do not relate or connect to an audience lose followers quickly or are slow in gaining new ones. You can make this connection by engaging with the community. Respond to comments, follow similar brands, react and like users’ posts and create posts about how you are helping the community. The more you show that you are part of your targeted audience, the more social media users will want to follow your company. 

Engaging with the community also means answering questions that come through on posts. The Fawn Shoppe gives thorough explanations and apologies whenever things go wrong:

Announcements

Social media is a great place to drop any exciting news or announcements about your brand. In many cases, if you have a stronger social media presence compared to email subscribers, it will be one of the main ways people will know about any announcements you make. And even if you have more email subscribers, not all your social media followers subscribe to your emails, so to keep everyone in the loop, it is best to post on social media as well. Things like new collections, collaborations, brands, offers, events and grand openings are perfect to post. 

Seiko does an excellent job of taking advantage of Facebook to introduce a new product they have by including links and a detailed description:

Contests

People love winning things, and social media is a fun and interactive way to host a contest. Whether it is a simple tag yourself or submit a photo or story, many of your current followers and potential followers will jump on board. If you are growing your social media presence, make sure to include in the rules that for valid entry, they must be following your page. Before creating your contest, decide on the prize, the ways to enter, disclaimers/rules/regulations and meet with your company’s HR team or legal team. The best way to make sure your contest goes smoothly is to work with a company or agency that has implemented many successful contests or giveaways.

Conclusion

Depending on your brand, audience and products, you can publish many other types of social media posts. Any time you start a social media page, there is a lot of creating, monitoring, tracking, responding, researching and improving that goes with it. Trends constantly change, and each platform adds new features throughout the year. While you can plan, post, watch and change elements on your own, it is an added step that takes more knowledge, time and effort. Take the stress off by working with a team of experienced professionals who have worked with many high profile clients. At Interactone, we have years of social media experience and understand everything that it takes to create a successful page. For more information on how we can help your company, shoot us a message today.

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The Uncertain Future of Progressive Web Apps

The Uncertain Future of Progressive Web Apps

by | Oct 28, 2020 | Digital Marketing, eCommerce

At InteractOne we’ve been singing the praises of progressive web apps, or PWAs, and the many advantages they bring to eCommerce websites of all shapes and sizes. PWAs are websites that provide users with the look and feel of a native app, straight from a mobile browser.

As we’ve outlined before, PWAs offer a number of benefits, whether you’re running a web store for a pharmaceutical brand or another kind of eCommerce website. PWAs enable a greater user experience, they can increase conversion rates and overall revenue, and they’re less costly to develop and maintain than a native app. 

The Background Surrounding PWAs

Because PWAs are not apps, they’re not required to be submitted to the Apple App Store (or the Google Play Store) for approval. This means they don’t fall under the purview of Apple or Google, so they aren’t held up by these stores for their lengthy review periods. It also means they don’t provide traffic or fees to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. 

As CNET points out, “native apps are integral to Apple’s business,” whereas for Google, “keeping people on the web is key.” This suggests that the lack of oversight, control and ability Apple has to profit off PWAs is the reason why they have been imposing increasingly severe limits on them.

“It starts coming down to app store politics and revenue,” Peter Sheldon, Senior Director of Strategy at Magento, told CNET. “If you make web apps as good as [native] apps, where does the app store revenue go?”

The Current Issues Facing PWAs

Recently, Apple announced that the Safari browser would not support a number of web application programming interfaces—16, to be exact. This included Web Bluetooth, Web NFC, Network Information, Proximity Sensor and Geolocation Sensor, to name just a few (read the rest of the APIs here.) This meant that developers would have an even more uphill battle in creating and implementing powerful web apps. 

Apple also announced, via a blog post about enhancements to their Intelligent Tracking Prevention, that they will be “deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site.” Some in the industry claim that this sudden change—from no storage limit to a seven-day storage limit—seemed extreme and unnecessary.

What is Apple’s Reasoning for Restricting PWAs?

Apple is limiting PWAs in an effort to discourage their development. They claim that their goal is to protect users’ privacy, as they say the web APIs enable advertisers and data analytics companies to develop scripts that fingerprint people as well as their devices. 

User fingerprints are small scripts that are loaded and run in a user’s browser, and are used to measure their responses to websites. Marketers develop user identities based on these unique responses. While this is obviously useful for companies seeking to measure their websites’ engagement and success, this seems to be a point of contention for Apple.

What Can Be Done About It?

Developers have been attempting to come up with various workarounds to some of the challenges they’re being presented with, and some have been sharing their ideas. One wrote that he believes that PWAs can be made to “work without a backend component by storing all data for a given user at the user’s own machine,” therefore getting around Apple’s privacy concerns. 

Another developer proposed an idea on Apple’s Developer forums to “create an app that proxies push notifications for various apps,” to get around the core issue of Apple not allowing push notifications for PWAs. 

Apple has yet to make a statement about whether or not they will allow push notifications for iOS, and this is causing friction. At least one petition has been started to call for push notifications to be implemented. Developers are calling for the company to at least communicate their intentions on this matter, so that they can then create a native app or move forward in some other way.

Conclusion

To their credit, Apple is intent on providing fast, secure and private browsing. But they are attempting to do so at the expense of developers’ freedom to create more user-friendly online experiences. It comes down to a conflict of interest, and unfortunately one side has more power than the other. Only time will tell whether compromises will be made.

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3 Mobile Strategies to Light Up Your Automotive Holiday Sales

3 Mobile Strategies to Light Up Your Automotive Holiday Sales

by | Oct 26, 2020 | Automotive eCommerce

Once your automotive eCommerce store is up and running, one of your first priorities should be to set up email autoresponder campaigns. Autoresponder campaigns allow you to maintain engagement and contact with your customers through a series of emails, and convert this engagement into sales.

Despite what the name may imply, autoresponder emails aren’t simply emails sent to anyone who sends a query or complaint to your business. They’re targeted to customers at different stages of the buying journey. Their purpose is to maintain contact with your customers at key moments. 

Different types od autoresponder emails include:

  • Welcome emails — for new subscribers to your newsletter or new additions to your membership program 
  • Thank you emails — sent after someone signs up for your newsletter or makes a purchase at your store 
  • Transactional emails — receipts, bills, order confirmations 
  • Activation emails — providing more information on how to use a product purchased 
  • Post-purchase emails — surveys to gauge customer satisfaction or emails to request customer product reviews 
  • Upsell or cross-sell emails — promoting products based on past purchases 
  • Date-triggered emails — for birthdays, anniversaries or subscription renewals 
  • Event countdown emails — for sales, competitions or other special promotions 
  • Re-engagement emails — for winning back customers who haven’t visited or engaged with your business in a while 

Shopping cart abandonment emails — to entice or remind customers to complete their purchases

As you can see, autoresponder emails come in many shapes and sizes, and vary depending on when they’re sent and what they aim to accomplish. 

Once you have determined your demographics and the auto-responder emails you’d like to send, it’s time to start crafting your emails. Here are some tips on how to create effective autoresponder content for your automotive eCommerce store.

Compose compelling subject lines

Crafting effective autoresponder campaigns begins with writing the perfect subject line. After all, competition is fierce and open rates are notoriously challenging. Once you’ve segmented and targeted your subscribers, craft compelling subject lines that will inspire them to click open on your emails.

For some types of autoresponder emails (such as welcome or thank you emails) this can be pretty self-explanatory and basic, but you can always get creative with it. Instead of writing “Thanks for subscribing” you could write “Welcome to the club!” to make it more engaging. Cross-promotional emails might require a little more creativity to convert customers. For example, “Love your seat covers? Complete the look!” or “This will go great with your trunk or hatchback organizer…”

Use the right tone in your email content

After the all-important subject line is written to perfection, you need to ensure the content of your email is also delivered the right way. Each email needs to be written in the appropriate tone for its purpose—and for your brand. Extend the style you used in your subject line and use a headline, a few sentences, or a short paragraph, as well as a clear call to action.

Stay true to your brand voice, but focus on the matter at hand. As we mentioned above, different autoresponder emails have different purposes—some are informational, some are promotional, others are requests. Keep this in mind when you’re crafting the content of your email and ensure the tone follows suit.

Promotional emails for sales, birthdays or events might work well with a more playful and experimental style than informative emails, which need to clearly communicate order confirmations, information about returns, or receipts. Competition emails fall somewhere in the middle; you might find that a more playful tone is effective in the headline and subject line, but then more straightforward copy is required later on to disclose the terms of the contest.

Design your emails for maximum impact

Similarly with the copy, your autoresponder email design should also be adjusted depending on the type of email you are sending. Order confirmation emails are best kept clean and simple in order to display important information clearly and quickly. But event-related emails such as for big sales or promotions are a cause for celebration, and so the email design should also reflect that excitement. Inspire this feeling in your readers with different, interesting visual elements.

Regardless of the type of autoresponder email you’re sending, a balance of text and images is key. Be mindful of using relevant images that make sense to the reader and what they’re interested in. Use personalization to ensure your content is engaging. For example, set autoresponder emails to be sent to a customer after a certain amount of time has passed since they purchased a product that will now likely need to be replaced, for safety reasons or because they’ve likely used it up. Include an image of the product they bought, along with a subject line like, “[Name], it’s time for a new [product]” or “Need a refill on [product]?” Speaking to them directly about a specific item they bought will be more effective at engaging them.

A/B test your emails to see what’s working

Not all shoppers will commit to buying straight away—some may browse your products for a while and then leave, others may get as To ensure your emails hit the mark, send different variations to different segments of your audience, otherwise known as A/B testing. This will give you an idea of what your audience responds positively to, and what they don’t, as you’ll see what’s opened and clicked on, and what’s ignored. You can then adjust your designs and copy accordingly.

Conclusion

This has been a basic introduction to autoresponder emails for automotive eCommerce stores. For more information on the types of autoresponder emails your automotive eCommerce business should be sending, and for help crafting them, please get in touch with us.

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October Orange Report

October Orange Report

by | Oct 23, 2020 | Digital Marketing, Past Newsletters, Technology

October 2020 ORANGE REPORT

For this month’s Orange Report, we’re sharing a few of our best and most recent blogs that speak on all things Magento, eCommerce, and Digital Marketing. Like always, we encourage everyone using Magento to make the most of its functionalities by incorporating the very best Magento extensions and news.

SIGN UP FOR THE ORANGE REPORT

Everything you need to know about eCommerce, digital marketing, and Magento.

How to Make the Most of the Media on Your Product Pages

Your product pages must look their best so customers will be engaged to make a purchase. Here’s how your product page media (images, videos, gifs, graphics, etc.) will make that initial connection. 

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Creating Customization Through Search, On-Site & Email

Modern customers are more complex and demand better experiences from merchants. Here’s how you can use Magento to create a personalized Customer Experience that will identify and speak to specific demos and groups of customers.

READ MORE

The Beginners Guide to Creating Brand Guidelines

If you don’t know who exactly you are how will future employees or customers know? You must be the one to define your brand. Here’s how you can build a great brand guide today.
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How to Optimize Your Homepage Design

Your eCommerce website’s homepage is your digital storefront. And just like your physical storefront, it needs to be welcoming, well designed and easy on the eyes. Here’s how to make it happen.
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Is Your Fashion eCommerce Store Holiday-Ready?

Is Your Fashion eCommerce Store Holiday-Ready?

by | Oct 23, 2020 | Apparel, eCommerce

We’re coming up to a busy time for online shopping, and this year is shaping up to be bigger than ever, as customers start hunting for promotions early. A study by Yotpo in August 2020 revealed that nearly 40% of customers planned to start holiday shopping in September, October or November, and 20% claim they’ve already started. 

The overall eCommerce conversion rate is up 6% from last year, and daily online fashion and accessory sales are up 10% year on year for early August, according to another study. So clearly people are in the mood to shop! 

Capitalize on this moment by making sure your eCommerce store is up to standard. Here’s a checklist of tips for how fashion eCommerce websites can prepare for and make the most of the holidays.

Create a special holiday promotion page

51% of online shoppers consider “free products and buyer perks (secret sales, free shipping, promo codes)” as “the best ways for brands to show they care,” according to a new global study. Show your customers you care—and get that holiday buzz going—by creating a special web page for your holiday promotions. This could spotlight deals on specific products, or it could focus on exclusive access or the introduction (or reintroduction) of rare or high-demand products. Focus your promotions on where you’ve done well and where you want to improve. If you want to increase items per order, consider offering a bundle deal. Regardless, ensure you have a solid inventory of your most popular items. And consider organizing these products into new categories like “gifts for women” and “gifts for men.”

Promote your upcoming sale or special

When you’ve decided what your holiday promotion is going to be, ensure you share it widely through social media, emails and paid advertising. Generate a sense of urgency by communicating the limited nature of your promotion. This means communicating the end date of your sale, or the limited availability of particular styles that you won’t be repeating. Well-designed timers and countdown clocks on your holiday promotion page can be a great way to add a sense of urgency and increase conversions.

Collect email subscribers by offering early access to sales

Turn one-time shoppers into long-term customers, drum up excitement and grow your mailing list all at the same time. Nurture leads with content that builds excitement and tells your brand story. Your emails could count down days to your sale, hype up particular products or even drop hints about what special offers will be available. Promote this special newsletter-only content on your social media by letting your followers know that by signing up they will get access to exclusive information and offers.

Offer gifts with gamification

Stand out from the crowd by offering a range of different gifts, for example a different free item with a certain dollar-amount purchase every day or hour. A timer on your website could indicate to shoppers how long they have left to make the purchase in order to get that gift. You could also offer certain gifts only with certain items that you’re trying to push, or present an array of gifts that the shopper simply chooses from at checkout.

Take care of any overlooked areas of your website

Optimize and streamline your cart and ensure everything is in working order. Ensure that your website can handle increased traffic, that your navigation is in shape and that all of your pages are optimized for mobile. Your search bar should always be highly visible and well configured, but in the high-traffic holiday season it’s more important than ever. Make the most of past and present popular keywords to drive shoppers to important products. And, of course, be ready to offer and promote gift cards and gift wrapping on your holiday promotion page, on product pages and at checkout.

Get your abandoned cart strategy ready now

Not all shoppers will commit to buying straight away—some may browse your products for a while and then leave, others may get as far as adding products to their cart and then exit your website. That’s why you should have a series of both browse abandonment emails and cart abandonment emails ready to go, so that you can win these people back. A series of well-timed emails with short but compelling copy in the body and subject line will help you to convert any browsers into buyers. This is another opportunity to create urgency by reminding of the limited nature of your promotion.

Have a solid post-purchase communication plan

Get ready to welcome your new customers with great emails after they’ve made their first purchase. Introduce a loyalty program that rewards customers any time they make an additional purchase, and share your compelling brand story and content to keep them engaged and invested in your brand. Also make sure you follow up with first-time purchasers to ask about their experiences. Encourage them to review the products they bought on your website, and ask them to follow your social media channels.

Continue to nurture your community

Engagement is more important than ever, so don’t neglect your core community. Keep engaging with your audience as you normally would, while also driving home your holiday campaign. This will be an unusual holiday season with emotions running high as people reflect on the challenges of the year, and their purchases will likely reflect that. Consumer behavior might be unpredictable these holidays, but remain consistent with your brand and provide messages that resonate, reflect and inspire.

Spruce up your homepage

A special holiday-related landing page is important in this very competitive time for eCommerce, but not all of your shoppers will see it. Many people still go straight to the homepages of stores they’re interested in shopping at, so it’s important that this part of your website is not overlooked in your holiday overhaul. Ensure your homepage is up to date and includes all of your holiday specials and announcements. For more advice, check out our recent blog about how to optimize your homepage design.

Conclusion

Getting your eCommerce store holiday-ready requires a juggling act of creating and maintaining content for your website, emails and social media, and this needs to excite and engage customers both old and new. InteractOne is well versed in managing these needs and can help you with every step of the process. Reach out to our team to put your holiday goals in motion today.

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