5 Key Content Marketing Lessons Brands Can Learn from Net-A-Porter
The top online fashion shopping destination in the world and the largest global luxury e-commerce site, one of the first digital enterprise to launch a shoppable print magazine and an undisputable leader in a successful marriage of content and commerce in the fashion space.
Who is Net-a-porter.com
Net-a-porter.com. Founded in 2000 by a former fashion journalist Natalie Massenet as a digital magazine women can shop from, the online style empire has not only revolutionized the world of fashion magazines but also seriously impacted the way we purchase and experience designer clothing.
Massenet created a unique concept of a cross between a high-fashion magazine and a store. She pioneered the online selling of luxury goods despite disbelievers who could not have imagined selling designer goods without a physical retail outlet.
The thinking behind Net-a-porter was to blend fashion content with e-commerce so it would make it possible to enjoy both an online fashion magazine and a-single-tap purchase of every single outfit featured within the publication. In other words, Net-a-porter was meant to shorten the distance between a high-fashion inspiration and a transaction, once and for all.
Fusion of (fashion) content and e-commerce for print success
2014 saw a continuation of the fusion between fashion content and e-commerce, as Net-A-Porter’s Porter magazine was brought to live. The glossy and entirely shoppable print magazine combined the intimacy of print with state-of-the-art digital technology. The accompanying app version of the Porter magazine enabled readers to scan a print issue and shop instantly with their smartphones as they read. What is more, in many cities, purchases arrive the same day.
The first social shopping network
2015 witnessed another brave move in the Net-a-porter universe, as the first social media shopping app was launched. The Net Set, a Facebook-style social commerce platform combined both the social and shopping functionality and enabled users to shop anything they would see, right in the app.
A new service, designed with social media passionate Millennials in mind, allowed users to create a profile, fill it with the [Net-a-Porter] clothes they like, build and join communities of so-called “style tribes” and follow other shoppers including the most influential style icons. Thanks to the built-in visual recognition technology, the Net Set app would even recommend shoppable styles that match any colour or pattern a user would capture and uploaded.
The app successfully connected dots between platform and checkout representing a perfect marriage of technology and shopping, especially on mobile. The solution reinforced also the Net-A-Porter.com’s status of a world leader in e-commerce and content. What can other brands of all kind learn from this experience? Here are the 5 key content marketing lessons Net-a-porter success can teach other businesses.
5 Key Content Marketing Lessons Brands Can Learn from Net-A-Porter
1. Ask your Customer What They Need
Dedicate your time to gain a deep understanding of the needs, desires and life habits of your audience. Porter launch was preceded by a comprehensive study of 10,000 of their valuable customers to find out how they consumed fashion content. Print turned out to be the highest read form of fashion content for the affluent fashion consumer worldwide and 88 per cent of Net-A-Porter.com customers cited print as their preferred media for fashion content.
“I want to take the time to invest myself in new consumer habits. It would be suicide not to. I believe we must never fall in love with the way we are doing things, but we must always focus on what our consumers want”, says the founder of the fashion e-commerce empire.
2. Blend Content and Commerce
Customers, and in particular fashion customers, buy into a lifestyle as well as a specific product. Providing high-quality and in-depth shoppable editorial drive sales. A research showed that since Porter launch, Net-A-Porter.com customers who subscribe to the magazine increased their spend on the site by 125 per cent and their rate of frequency on the site by 25 per cent. Also, since the launch, readers have scanned more than 90,000 products with an 80 per cent click through conversion to Net-A-Porter.com or third party sites.
In other words, tailored shoppable content that came as a fruit the of fusion between content and commerce provided engaging shopping experience and generated revenues without the inventory costs of a traditional point of sale.
3. Embrace Mobile Generation (the Generation of have-it-now)
A recent Gartner survey reported that mobile commerce currently generates 22 per cent of digital commerce revenue, and by 2017, that number is expected to jump to 50 per cent. As shoppable content provides an experience easy and to navigate on a mobile device it benefits both brands and mobile consumers. A direct purchase link to an item featured in mobile content offers users an instant access to their shopping cart and satisfies their need of having the product without any further delay.
“I think the most important thing is that we are talking to consumers who have been trained by Uber, Deliveroo, and Amazon. When they want something, they want something now” says Ms. Massenet. With this in mind, a mobile content marketing strategy that includes easy to navigate shoppable content comes almost intuitively.
3. Let your customers speak
“One of the most exciting differences working here is the dialogue that exists with our consumers,” said Tess Macleod Smith, the vice president of publishing and media at Net-a-Porter. The dialogue with customers stays at the core of the Net-a-porter’s content marketing strategy. It first grounded the success of Porter magazine which, with the pre-launch research, met the exact demand from the Net-A-Porter.com’s customers for print. It was also the underlying idea of the first social media shopping app, Net Set. “We went from having a very controlled, one-way conversation with our customers, where we dictated what product was important, to saying — OK guys, now you create your own Net-a-Porter”, said the fashion entrepreneur.
4. Use the Technology Advances
Net-a-porter is a perfect embodiment of so called fashtech. It is where fashion meets technology. Experimenting with the technological innovation has been also the key driver for Net-a-Porter going forward. “Digital innovation doesn’t stand still and neither do we,” says Massenet. Pioneering online selling of luxury goods, introducing the entirely shapable print magazine as well the first social media shopping app are the initiatives that prove Net-a-porter embraces digital at the heart of how they communicate. “We must never fall in love with the way we are doing things” and we are privileged to use technology advances to reinvent the way we are doing things.
5. Offer value
Delivering value instead of just talking about their own products lies at the core of Net-a-porter’s business strategy. Net-a-porter content entertains, inspires and informs in addition to being shoppable. Not the other way around. Take Porter as an example. The magazine features not only brands stocked at Net-a-Porter.com but also other fashion names from outside of the home catalogue. Additionally, users get 24/7 customer service available in 24 languages to find any item featured in the magazine. Net-a-porter keeps customer’s best interest at the very heart of every single activity and this approach help them to create an empire with 28.8 million average monthly unique visitors and 8.4 million orders per year.
Any other content marketing lessons businesses can learn from the success of the first luxury fashion e-tailers in the world? Share your comments below.
The article originally published at gosialetki.wordpress.com on the 8th of May 2017.
