According to comScore and Shareablee’s recent report, The Rise Of Brands On Instagram, the free photo app social network is second only to Facebook in the competition to win consumers’ attention. Further, retail’s darling generation — millennials — make up more than half of Instagram’s mobile audience. Overall, brands are still new to Facebook-owned Instagram, as only 30% of all socially active brands have an Instagram profile (luxury retail has the most of any retail segment). And, 23% of Fortune 500 brands are active on Instagram.
It’s one thing to have a healthy following on Instagram; it’s another to actually increase sales as a result. Currently, Instagram is limited in its ability to drive followers to retailers’ e-commerce sites. But, via plug-ins, retailers such as Alex and Ani drive conversions from user photos. The plug-ins deliver Instagram photos tagged with a specific hashtag to the retailer’s site, and those photos can be associated with a product. For example, Coach found success doing this very thing. According to Forbes, the affordable luxury retailer relied on Instagram to improve sales even during the recession. The #CoachFromAbove hashtag helped the company experience a 5-7% lift in conversion rates and 2% boost in the average order value.
Please log in or register below to read the full article.
