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Live shopping is a format that is growing exponentially in its use since exploding onto the scene in China during the Covid-19 pandemic. This blog looks at some of the key ways brands are able to encourage, retain and increase viewers at their live shopping events.
Leveraging your database of customers can be a great way to let your audience know what you’re doing as well as to bring qualified viewers to your live shopping event. Since these customers will already be aware of the brand and its products, they are more likely to have an interest in the live shopping event as well as to make a purchase.
A CRM Campaign that tends to perform well is Email Newsletters. Sending an email to your customer database a day, 10 minutes and even 1 minute before the live shopping event allows the customer to plan but also reminds them when the live shopping event is about to happen.
In addition to email newsletters, we would also recommend brands include a permanent section in all customer emails that mentions the Live Commerce program. This should contain a link to the live shopping page on e-commerce which contains upcoming and past shows. This is a very efficient way to create a large-scale reminder of the brand offering this new way to shop.
Another way to fully leverage your customer database is to send SMS reminders. Chances are your customers are not refreshing their email 1 minute before your live shopping event happens. What they will most likely do is check their phone if they get a notification. That is why we see this type of reminder to be a highly successful way to increase views.
Social channels are a great way of driving awareness of the brand’s live shopping offering. Live shopping events can be shared across many social media platforms through a link. This link will be ideally the landing page where the live shopping event is embedded. In this instance, we would recommend building a landing page for the different streams and sharing that link on social media. That way the audience not only can see the upcoming live shopping event, but also past ones. This helps to increase views on recordings too.
If you prefer to share a link just to a single live event, we would recommend for it to be embedded as near to the top of the page as possible so the traffic that is redirected to that landing page can immediately see the live shopping event without having to scroll down.
A range of different content from custom event banners to behind-the-scenes footage can be used to build up hype before the live shopping event.
The presenters and influencers can also be involved in creating and sharing this content via social media to broaden the reach of their follower base. See the example below.
In addition to promoting key events, it is important to continue sharing about the live commerce program in between events regularly. The live shopping event page on a brand’s ecommerce can be shared on social media anywhere where a link can be added. This could be included via link in bio, link in a story, as well as a swipe up or CTA click on paid social ads.
See the example below.
Following the live shopping event, either screen recordings of the event itself, or shot clips of the recording can be used across different channels from Youtube to paid ads to promote the live shopping and encourage people to go to the website to watch the full recording and to sign up for upcoming shows.
Once you have directed all the traffic possible to the landing page through the methods above, at Smartzer we recommend you enable our ‘Add to Calendar’ feature. This will allow your audience to save the event and the link to the landing page on their Google and/or Outlook calendar. Having a reminder in their regular calendar massively helps to increase views during the live shopping event.
One of the crucial steps to maximise views, is to make it as easy as possible for your customers to access the live shopping shows. Don’t embed the shows on hard to find pages on your website unless the purpose of it is a private limited audience event. One of the best ways of doing this is adding a dedicated section for live shopping on your website, which is navigable through the main menu.
We would also recommend to use banners on your e-commerce shortly before and during the shows to capture visitors that may not have been aware of the live shopping shows taking place.
The next important thing to consider when increasing views on live shopping events is the type of content you are going to delight your audience with. Below you will see some of the things that have performed the best.
Content must be educational and engaging. You not only have to sell on live shopping events but you also have to make sure our audience understands and is engaged with our products.
Having a Host capable of interacting in real-time with the audience making them participate in the content of the show is key in this aspect.
The live shopping event should be somewhat scripted to make sure the brand mentions and showcases all the products and functionalities desired. However, having that said, the brand should also leave room for improvising and interacting with the audience. This is what will make them stay and come back for the next live stream.
Aligned with the last point, in order to increase views and keep them, which is as important, one of our best practices is to stream regularly. This means having a date and time when your brand will go live and undertaking the respective promotion for it every time.
This way your audience gets used to the schedule and increases the chances of them going to the live shopping event every week increases significantly. Madison Avenue Couture saw 31x audience growth through regular streaming.
Giving your audience some kind of reward for attending the live shopping event is also a great way to make them come back to the next one.
These rewards could take the form of exclusive discount codes as well as rare-to-find items. Customers love a good discount or having access to items before anyone else. This can be a huge driver for them to go to the live shopping event.
Collaborating is a great way not only to increase views but also to broaden your scope and get new potential customers to know your brand.
Combining audiences and doing the promotion mentioned above by all parties involved in the live stream (Brand, Host, Guest, etc) tends to also increase views.
In short, in order to increase views on your live shopping event you should first leverage your client database, share across social media, and create engaging content that makes the audience want to go back for more.
If you don’t know how to get started with live shopping events, feel free to book a demo with us here!