Lessons from DMEXCO: How to Drive Sales and Engagement Through Social Commerce

In some respects, success in social marketing depends on the traditional rules — delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time. But the form is evolving so rapidly that many of the old rules are becoming outdated. The trends toward live shopping, unfiltered or less-scripted content, and everyday influencers are just a few examples of how brands are adapting their approaches to benefit from the social aspect of shopping. Which social-commerce strategies and metrics should brands focus on? And how should new social campaigns be designed?

MMA Germany recently took on these questions and more at DMEXCO, Europe’s leading digital marketing and technology event, with a panel discussion called “How to Get Social Commerce Right.” Moderated by Peggy Anne Salz, Chief Content Officer of MMA Germany, the discussion featured three social-commerce experts from the perspectives of agency, client, and social platform: Stefanie Tannrath, CEO, Universal McCann; Jenny Song Schmidt, Lead Influencer Marketing & Social Media, Gymondo; and Goetz Trillhaas, General Manager, Snap Inc.

Harnessing the Connections Built Through Social

Our panelists discussed how the most successful social commerce efforts leverage the connective power of social — connecting with emotions, peers, and experiences. Universal McCann’s Stefanie Tannrath pointed out that social commerce has capitalized on the phenomenon of impulse buying: “A colleague of mine recently said, ‘On social media, I buy the products I didn’t know that I needed.’ You’re flipping through a story, and this product, all of a sudden, comes up [and] inspires you to buy it immediately.” For marketers whose products don’t deliver that quick emotional hit, the challenge is how to “give it that appeal of, ‘I must have it now,’ or a different appeal in terms of, ‘This is just so easy and so convenient.’”

From the client side, Jenny Song Schmidt of Gymondo, Germany’s leading video-on-demand fitness platform, said that her company’s partnership with hundreds of relevant social influencers has helped increase Gymondo’s user acquisition rate by a factor of 40 since 2018. Significantly, she noted that it’s not simply about using influencers with the greatest number of followers: “For us, it’s about finding the people with the right target audience, people that match our success criteria, which is both quantitative and qualitative.”

Meanwhile, Goetz Trillhaas of Snap noted that the pandemic has accelerated the shift of the retail experience from the physical space to the digital space. In particular, he said, augmented reality has given an immense boost to social marketers in retail segments such as fashion, beauty, and automotive. “In the fashion industry, trying out shoes, trying out clothes, basically projected on your body online, is a great opportunity for consumers to buy products, and also for brands and retailers to reduce the return rate.”

Watch video of the full session here and subscribe to the MMA EMEA YouTube channel for more content like this.