How earned content is

TRANSFORMING RETAIL & E-COMMERCE

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MODERN CONSUMERS ARE DEMANDING MORE FROM BRANDS THAN EVER BEFORE.

Certainly, they still expect brands to convey the utility of available products, however, today’s consumers also want to align themselves with organizations that match their desired lifestyles and values. This has presented a unique challenge for brands in the retail and e-commerce sectors. Specifically, brands that have traditionally catered messaging toward product features, specifications, and price in their marketing and advertising efforts. In a time of dramatic growth, where global retail e-commerce sales reached $1.67 trillion worldwide in 2015 and are projected to be $3.02 trillion by 2018, there is a palpable pressure to connect with consumers and drive loyalty1.

1 - “Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2019 (in billion U.S. dollars).” Statista. 2016.

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Additionally, with a growing set of relevant channels to consider, retail and e-commerce brands are struggling to fulfill the volume of high-quality content required to both engage and convert their respective audiences.

As a result, many global brands have turned to user-generated, or “earned,” content as a way to both solve the content gap and forge deeper relationships with their loyal digital followers. With over 500 million users now on Instagram alone, posting a whopping 95 million photos and videos daily, the wealth of available earned content is staggering2.

In the following report, Olapic will share strategies for harnessing the power of this earned content, including ways to curate, activate, and analyze its impact on retail and e-commerce experiences. We’ve developed these insights through a combination of proprietary research, analysis of over 130 million pieces of revenue-driving content, and our work developing an earned content strategy for hundreds of leading consumer brands.

2 - Titlow, John Paul. “How Instagram Thrived To 500 Million Users While Others Struggle To Grow.” Fast Company. 6.21.16.

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Consumers are craving more content throughout the purchase process. In fact, they now engage with 11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase (Forrester Research) and are 5 times more dependent on content than they were 5 years ago (Nielsen). With the emergence of direct-to-consumer retailers, online marketplaces, and increased global competition, retailers face an uphill climb in attracting and maintaining consumers’ attention.

“EARNED CONTENT CAN BE USED TO CREATE PERSONALIZED BRAND NARRATIVES AND CONSUMER EXPERIENCES, AT SCALE, ACROSS ALL RELEVANT CHANNELS.”

— PAU SABRIA, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, OLAPIC

EARNED CONTENT AND THE NEW CONSUMER JOURNEY

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To begin, retail and e-commerce professionals must consider the foundational changes that are happening to the broader industry. The consumer journey has significantly lengthened, and become far more complex. Even large, established brands are struggling to define cohesive and personalized experiences for consumers across a rotating set of both online and offline channels. What is the solution? At Olapic, we firmly believe the answer is leveraging high-quality earned content that is already being created by consumers on behalf of brands.

Below are a few of the key disruptions we believe are converging to feed the earned content revolution.

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THE RISE OF “MICRO-MOMENTS”

Over the past several years, technology, and more specifically, mobile devices, have fundamentally changed how people engage with the world around them. In fact, consider these insights shared by Google Think3:

3 - Lawson, Matt. “Win Every Micro-Moment With a Better Mobile Strategy.” Google Think. September, 2015.

87%OF PEOPLE TODAY HAVE THEIR SMARTPHONE BY

THEIR SIDE AT ALL TIMES, DAY AND NIGHT.

68%OF PEOPLE CHECK

THEIR PHONE WITHIN 15 MINUTES OF WAKING UP

IN THE MORNING

150TIMES A DAY WE CHECK

OUR PHONES ON AVERAGE, AND SPEND 177 MINUTES

ON THEM PER DAY

Still, many brands have struggled to adapt to this changing behavior, continuing to cast out broad marketing messaging, and doing so in the more popular, high-traffic moments of the consumer lifecycle. Certainly, there are moments that inherently stand out. As a basic example, when a consumer purchases a new home, he or she may be most interested in offers for new furniture. But more often, as a result of mobile disruption, the consumer journey has been fractured into hundreds of smaller decision-making moments across all stages, including post-purchase.

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This shift has made “micro-moments” the new battleground for retail and e-commerce brands. According to Google Think, there are four micro-moments that teams must consider when designing meaningful consumer experiences:

"I-WANT-TO-KNOW" MOMENTS:

According to a study at Columbia University, people are now more likely to remember where to find information than they are to remember the information itself4. In the context of the customer journey this finding holds true, as 65% of online consumers look up more information online now versus just a few years ago. What does it mean for marketers looking to engage during these moments? By creating more informational and authentic customer experiences, using consumers’ own content, brands can drive traffic and loyalty toward owned properties and away from competition.

4 - Padala, Satya Nagendra. “Google is Changing the Way We Remember Things: Study.” International Business Times. 7/15/11.

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02 03 "I-WANT-TO-GO" MOMENTS:

Consumers now use their mobile devices to find places to shop, eat, and entertain themselves while on the move. In fact, in the past year, the “near me” search interest has doubled! Additionally, 82% of smartphone users rely on a search engine when looking for a local business, and 73% lose trust in a business when its online information isn’t updated. This has created the need for geolocation and beacon technology, where brands are able to engage consumers with relevant messaging when they are near a store location. Through implementing relevant visual earned content, retail and e-commerce brands can showcase product benefits at the most relevant moment possible: when a consumer is near the business and seeking information.

"I-WANT-TO-DO" MOMENTS:

Today, 91% of smartphone users turn to their phones for ideas while doing a task, and 100 million plus hours of “how-to” content have been watched on YouTube so far this year. Perhaps you’ve also fallen in love with the BuzzFeedFood “how-to” video format? For marketers looking to capitalize on the “I-want-to-do” moments, again, adding utility to the consumers’ lives is critical. We’ve found that brands using consumer-generated content have more success because they allow the consumers to educate one another on the use and style options of various products. In turn, this can increase a customer’s confidence in producing the same results exemplified by users in branded earned content.

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"I-WANT-TO-BUY"MOMENTS:

Finally, the point of purchase! Traditionally, this is where retail and e-commerce brands excel, but the new buying journey has diluted the process. Marketers now have to work harder than ever to succeed in this moment. In-store, 82% of smartphone users consult their phones while deciding what to buy, likely looking up product reviews and related user-generated imagery. Meanwhile, the industry has seen a 29% increase in mobile conversion rates in the past year. These moments demonstrate that consumers are ready to be sold to by a brand. However, it’s difficult to tell when, or where, these moments will occur. People decide to buy at home on desktop, or on the go via their mobile devices. By setting up a sophisticated program in the moments leading up to “I-want-to-buy,” brands can draw on behavioral cues to trigger conversion-based messaging once a customer is ready to receive it. Additionally, in making earned content shoppable directly on social networks like Instagram, brands can shorten the consumer path and create frictionless purchasing opportunities.

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125 - Swant, Marty. “Twitter Says Users Now Trust Influencers Nearly as Much as Their Friends.” Adweek. 5.10.16.

POWER SHIFT: LONG-TAIL INFLUENCERS VS. CELEBRITY ENDORSERS

Another trend in the retail and e-commerce sector involves the shifting power of influence on consumer behavior. Traditionally, the best method to raise awareness, and therefore revenue, for a brand and its products was to employ celebrity endorsers. However, with the advent of marketing technology, we’re learning that social influencers are wielding more power than previously thought. According to a study by Twitter and analytics firm Annalect, roughly 40% of respondents reported purchasing an item online after seeing it used

by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine, or YouTube5. Meanwhile, 20% of respondents said they shared something they saw from an influencer, while roughly 33% of millennials say they follow a creator on Twitter or Vine.

Still, at Olapic, we’ve learned that many times there is not a direct relationship between the follower-count of a user and the amount of revenue said user’s content generates for a brand. For some brands, images shared by consumers with fewer followers tend to result in the largest conversions on retail and e-commerce experiences. When these “long-tail” influencers are added to a healthy mix of standard influencers and traditional celebrities, brands can achieve a balance of brand building and conversion.

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FEMALE SHOPPERS DEMAND AUTHENTICITY

Female shoppers drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing through a combination of their buying power and influence. Moreover, global incomes of women are predicted to reach a staggering $18 trillion by 2018, according to global professional services firm EY6. These findings underscore that retail and e-commerce brands need to listen to their female constituents if they want to succeed now and into the future.

Women have emerged as a powerful demographic on social and are making their preferences abundantly clear — photoshopped models and staged photo shoots no longer resonate. These consumers are demanding more authentic and relatable content. Fortunately for brands, earned content satisfies this demand by embodying shopper sentiment, which effectively reaches consumers at a lower cost than stock photos and branded content.

6 - Brennan, Bridget. “Top 10 Things Everyone Should Know About Women Consumers.” Forbes. 01/21/15.

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MILLENNIAL MINDSET

Having relatable content is essential to Millennial shoppers — nearly a third of Millennials said they are more likely to buy a product if the brand’s content isn’t “sales-y” and instead feels authentic and honest. Millennial shoppers are also turning to one another for inspiration and validation in the purchase process. Compared to Baby Boomers, Millennials are 3.8x more likely to use Facebook and Instagram to discover new products.

Sharing fan content builds meaningful consumer relationships for retail and e-commerce brands. In fact, 62% of Millennials say that if a brand engages with them on social, they are more likely to become a loyal customer. Seeing their photo shared on a favorite brand’s Instagram account, website, or email campaign is a source of excitement for fans, and proves that the brand recognizes their individual personalities.

EARNED CONTENT SUCCESS STORIES

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Now that we’ve established the reasons why consumers are craving more authentic, earned content, let’s discuss some of the retail and e-commerce brands that are succeeding in using it to create more impactful marketing and advertising experiences.

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CROCS

Crocs, Inc., the world leader in innovative casual footwear for men, women, and children is a fantastic example of how a brand with a loyal, fun-loving audience can activate consumers to become part of the marketing process. The brand has worked with Olapic since the beginning of 2015 to introduce the hashtag #FindYourFun”.

Olapic has enabled Crocs to streamline the collecting, curating, rights management, and showcasing of user-generated photos leading to an increase in average order value, number of photos collected, and conversions when users interact with UGC.

“Olapic helped us further build upon the success of #findyourfun, creating meaningful marketing interactions by showcasing the ways in which our consumers connect with our fun-loving brand”.

— HARVEY BIERMAN, VP E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS, CROCS

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GIGGLE

giggle isn’t just a baby store, it’s a new parent experience. The brand wanted to create a more inspiring and personalized shopping experience, while increasing engagement and sales on their e-commerce site and other marketing channels.

giggle leveraged visual earned content through Olapic, which they activate on-site, in email, and within their mobile app. As a result, giggle is able to enhance the shopping experience by adding a dimension of richness and personal connection between the customer and the products being featured.

“Using olapic across all channels has allowed us to create authentic experiences for our customers to enable them to make the best purchasing decisions for their family and strengthen their loyalty with the giggle brand”.

— SHAWNA HAUSMAN, VICE PRESIDENT, ECOMMERCE AND DIGITAL MARKETING, GIGGLE

25K PHOTOS COLLECTED

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AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS

American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) has a large and active brand following online, with fans regularly posting photos to its social channels. AEO leverages Olapic’s Ambassador tool, a component of the platform that enables brands to build loyal relationships with content creators who align with the brand’s aesthetics and produce revenue-generating imagery.

AEO discovered new ambassadors through the Ambassador tool and now feature these ambassadors on the online #AEOStyle gallery.

“Olapic’s Ambassador Community has helped us connect with our most loyal customers and encourages others to share how they wear American Eagle Outfitters to express their personal style”.

— JAMIE SIMONI, SR. SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER, AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS

66% Increase in conversions after building ambassadors relationships

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NYX COSMETICS

NYX Cosmetics, the LA-based brand known for high-quality, professional makeup at accessible prices, is one of the most socially savvy cosmetic brands in the world, boasting an enormous online following, including 5 million Instagram followers.

NYX was seeking a seamless way to efficiently produce and feature high-quality, authentic visual content that would inform a user’s purchase decision

and enhance their overall e-commerce experience. With Olapic’s help, NYX is now able to leverage its loyal fan base to build a large library of user-generated content that provides consumers a realistic and accurate portrayal of what its products look like on customers with similar features. Olapic’s platform enables NYX to tag its earned content to specific products and publish it across the site as well as in-store.

Higher average order value for customers who interact with ugc than for customers who don't93%

“We couldn’t be happier with NYX’s relationship with the Olapic team, who’ve been true partners at every step of the journey. The speed with which Olapic has developed and grown its platform has exceeded my expectations—every time I log in, I discover a new feature that significantly improves the experience. The results to date have been tremendous”.

— MEHDI MEHDI, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL NYX COSMETICS

BEST PRACTICESSetting Up Your Earned Content Strategy

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Now that we understand the converging factors making earned content so valuable for retailers and e-commerce brands, and have shared some use cases of brands with effective strategies, it’s time to address the steps your brand can take in order to realize the same success. At Olapic, we

010203

CURATE

ACTIVATE

ANALYZE

help brands construct an earned content approach in three distinct phases: Curate, Activate, and Analyze.

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Within the “curate” phase, there are four steps brands must take to prepare their content for activation across all channels:

COLLECT EARNED CONTENTFor some brands, there is already a wealth of high-quality visual earned content being shared by customers. For other brands, there is a need to devise an intelligent hashtag strategy to solicit new content. Regardless of which

01CURATE

Collect existing images and videos being shared by customers

Identify the highest-quality content through a combination of machine learning and human moderation

Obtain rights from earned content authors to build trust and protect the brand

Map the content to products in the e-commerce or retail experience

Create a simple hashtag. It should be easy to spell and remember.

Make sure your hashtag is on brand and one that all stakeholders feel comfortable using long term.

Research the usage and popularity of your hashtag prior to implementation to ensure that it’s unique. While it is possible to shift your earned content strategy with new hashtags, it’s a challenge that is best avoided through some up-front legwork.

Use title case when necessary to make the hashtag more easily understood (For example, “#WeLoveBrandX”).

area you identify with more, you can never have too much earned content. With that, here are some considerations when developing the most actionable hashtag:

Of course, there are also some areas you’ll want to avoid when considering a hashtag strategy.

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Once you have a hashtag in place, you can collect images and videos from all major platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Vine. By placing your hashtag across all channels, you’ll increase your brand’s ability to drive interest and submissions. Cat Footwear, a division of Wolverine World Wide, is an Olapic client with a comprehensive hashtag strategy. They’ve placed their hashtag on shoeboxes, flyers, handouts at live events, and on billboards across Latin America. They also have the hashtag in-store on window displays across each of their 120 locations worldwide.

Avoid generic hashtags (i.e. #Shoes or #Home). You’ll lose the connection to your brand and open it up to an enormous amount of spam potential.

Don’t solicit answers or content from open-ended questions without considering the responses you may receive.

Don’t use too many hashtags at a given time.

Choose hashtags that don’t have an adverse meaning in different languages.

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SURFACE THE HIGHEST-QUALITY CONTENTOnce you’ve drummed up a considerable amount of relevant consumer-generated content, you will want to moderate said content to pinpoint that it is both high-quality and, in e-commerce environments, most likely to perform. At Olapic, we believe that the most effective curation process involves a combination of machine learning and human moderation. For our clients, Olapic’s proprietary algorithm Photorank™ evaluates multiple data points to accurately predict engagement and conversion for each piece of content. After the UGC predicted to perform the best is surfaced to the top of the queue, a human moderation team further segments the content based on a set of agreed-upon brand guidelines.

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CONSUMER TRUST AND EXPLICIT PERMISSIONWhile earned content creates valuable relationships with retail and e-commerce consumers, it’s important for brands to take careful measures to build trust instead of skepticism. If a brand comes across a user-generated image it would like to use in a social media or e-commerce campaign, it should secure explicit consent to use that image from the owner. Reach out to the consumer, let them know you appreciate the image, and express that you would like their permission to use their content in future marketing efforts. If a consumer declines, respect their decision and leave their photo be; after all, with 95 million posts uploaded to Instagram each day, there’s no shortage to choose

from. We work with our clients to deploy a seamless ability to request rights, and then aggregate the approved content in a media library so marketers have easy access to it.

TAG THE CONTENT TO PRODUCT SKUsOnce the content is collected, moderated, and permissioned, the last component is to organize it. Olapic’s Media Library is an easy workflow management that enables our clients to create folders of content for activation per channel, by specific product SKU, and with other custom tagging filters. Now, your brand is ready to activate the content across all channels, both on-and-offline.

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02ACTIVATE We’ve discussed the growing complexity of the customer journey, especially in the retail and e-commerce sector. Jerry Storch, CEO of Hudson’s Bay Company, recently highlighted that there are now over 100 possible touchpoint combinations just from the origin of purchase, to distribution, to fulfillment. For example, a user could purchase a product on mobile/desktop/social/in-store and then either pick it up in-store, schedule delivery from the brand, or schedule delivery from a third party. Understanding and maintaining control over the customer experience across so many varying and potential touchpoints will make any retailer’s head spin. Brands need to be ready to adapt to any possible scenario.

ENTER EARNED CONTENT.We work with hundreds of brands to activate their earned content across all channels, delivering a consistent thread between otherwise disparate consumer experiences. Here are some of the channels that you can optimize with your own earned content strategy:

Web & E-Commerce: Build beautiful galleries on your homepage and within specific category pages to increase engagement and time on site. Or, connect content and commerce directly on product pages to drive longer time on site, while increasing average order value and overall sales. This is especially powerful when your content can be mapped directly to product SKUs, which therefore creates a quick path to purchase for consumers.

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Social Media: On Instagram, we work with retail and e-commerce brands to create a dynamic and shoppable marketplace directly on the platform through Olapic Tapshop and Scheduler. Social media, long known for its ability to increase engagement for brands, is now a source of meaningful conversion as well.

Digital Advertising: Simply by swapping expensive brand-owned creative for earned content generated by consumers, we’ve seen brands boost awareness, increase click-through rates, maximize reach, and decrease acquisition costs with prospecting and retargeting ads across Facebook, Instagram, and other ad display networks.

Email: Retail and e-commerce emails, often triggered through automation tools after specific customer-intent behavior, see increased effectiveness with earned content. Brands are able to drive more revenue, transaction value, and brand engagement through trigger and promotional emails that feature customer photos.

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Mobile: Ensure your mobile site and app are as visually captivating as your website and drive engagement and purchases accordingly. Mobile has obviously become a critical component of the consumer lifecycle, and an excellent opportunity for brands to employ earned content to create a consistent experience across all touchpoints.

Offline: Most brands rightfully focus on the high-growth potential of online channels, and for e-commerce experiences, that is understandably the sole consideration. But for brands with an in-store presence, the best customer content can create a more effective experience. Consider the previous example of NYX Cosmetics, which has used earned content to personalize the shopping experience in-store. Other brands use their images to power in-store displays and artwork. Beyond the store, UGC can also be effective on digital billboards, print advertisements, direct mail, and in other offline activations.

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DEVELOPING NEW TYPES OF CONTENT Another way brands are activating earned content is by developing new uses for the same individual consumer image. With so much noise in the marketplace, consumers’ attention is drawn in endless directions, so brands need to be unique and creative with their messaging. Recently, at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook, talked about creating “thumb-stopping moments,” meaning something that will cause a user to stop scrolling through a feed on mobile to consume the content7. At Olapic, we’re always thinking about ways to push new content that fulfills this imperative.

7 - Schulte, Erin. “The Thumb-Stopping Moment: Tips From Facebook For Advertising On Facebook.” Fast Company. 11.12.15.

Recently, we’ve pioneered an offering called “Content in Motion,” where we take a static image from a brand and turn it into a dynamic animation. Consider NotOnTheHighStreet.com, a brand with a mission to “hunt out the most original items from the best creative small businesses, and bring them together in one place, making it easy for people to browse and buy.” Given the brand’s creative DNA, designing new media from existing content makes a lot of sense. Olapic has worked with NotOnTheHighStreet.com on several Content in Motion assets, with the following positive results:

“Content in Motion has enabled us to create timely and on-brand content at scale, with initial results yielding a low CPA”.

— PHOEBE ELDRID, SENIOR SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTENT EXECUTIVE, NOTONTHEHIGHSTREET.COM

33% Post engagement lift on instagram

93% Lift on completed video views on instagram

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HOW BRANDS ARE ACTIVATING EARNED CONSUMER CONTENT Olapic has gained valuable insights and expertise in these earned content success strategies from the retailers and e-commerce brands we are fortunate to work with. Still, to truly understand how the broader industry is incorporating earned content into their marketing and e-commerce efforts, we recently partnered with Worldwide Business Research (WBR) on a survey of industry leaders called, “The Mid-Year E-Commerce Outlook.” Following are the key findings of the report:

Channels Being Filled with Earned Content We asked retail leaders to tell us which marketing channels they were already optimizing with earned content. Perhaps not surprisingly, 70% reported using earned content on the brand-owned website, 43% reported using it in social advertising, and 36% reported using it in email efforts. Most telling, 30% of those surveyed reported using earned content

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offline, meaning in print or direct mail, at events, or even in-store.

Earned Content Impact on Brands We posed a series of questions to identify the effectiveness of earned content, starting with how it is changing the customer/brand relationship. We found that 51% of industry leaders surveyed believe that earned content “generates more authentic marketing opportunities,” 43% said, “it is getting consumers to be much more engaged with our brand,” 28% noted, “it improves our customer feedback loop,” and finally, 26% reported, “it reduces the amount of new content we have to create ourselves.”

90% of those using earned content “are seeing measurably positive results from their campaigns.”

Barriers to Entry Despite the enthusiastic response toward earned content from most retail and e-commerce leaders, roughly a quarter

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surveyed have still not implemented an earned content strategy. Here were the top reasons why:

In aggregate, 47% reported that a lack of technological capability was the primary reason they hadn’t implemented earned content. A whopping 91% believe that earned content would fit the tone and personality of their brands. This is consistent with Olapic’s experience in the marketplace.

We don’t have the proper technology to collect UGC from our consumers

We don’t have a cohesive UGC strategy to make the most of our efforts

Our consumers don’t regularly create UGC for our brand

We don’t have a strong analytics platform to measure its effectiveness

29%

24%

24%

18%

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This brings us to the final phase of an effective earned content strategy: Analyze. Unsurprisingly, given the relative ease of measurement, in our WBR study, we found that 42% of respondents are already analyzing the “engagement” of their earned content across channels, followed by “analyzing sales and conversions” with 31%, and finally “analyzing brand awareness and publicity” with 25%. It’s encouraging that 81% of respondents are already measuring effectiveness in some capacity, but those measuring all three criteria have a distinct advantage over their competition.

At Olapic, we work with our clients to give them that advantage, as brands can use our platform to measure engagement as well as metrics like influence on sales, and lift in revenue from earned content.

03ANALYZE Recall the concept of the “long-tail influencer.” For many retail and e-commerce brands, accurate measurement can help identify individuals’ content with relatively low follower-count and engagement, but enormously high conversion results. This creates an opportunity for “consumer delight,” where brands can engage unsuspecting users with free products and incentives, further driving up loyalty and the propensity to create similar high-performance content.

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Retail and e-commerce brands should be working to understand their loyal ambassador communities in a number of relevant ways, including but not limited to:

While the adoption of earned content hasn’t yet reached critical mass for retailers and e-commerce brands, our experience indicates that the industry is reaching a crucial moment in its lifecycle. Driven by changing consumer

E-commerce revenue generated by photo, by user, and by specific piece of content

Number of followers, likes per photo, and total number of likes

How these figures stack up against other forms of brand-owned content and creative

behavior, brands are now fully recognizing the need to tap into earned content as a way to engage and convert their consumers. As a result, the industry has moved past early adoption and into late adoption. Now, the task is continuing to innovate and increase the ability to measure effectiveness, and connect the dots across all channels. This adoption rate is validation for Olapic as we have continued to evolve ahead of the curve to guide our clients to a place of earned content maturity.

To learn how to apply these strategies to your brand, please schedule a consultation with one of our earned content experts.

CONTACT:

sales@olapic.com +1 888 399 6685 Olapic.com © 2016 Olapic Inc. All rights reserved

REAL PEOPLE. REAL STORIES. REAL RETURN.