Luxury cosmetics line Marc Jacobs Beauty has nearly 110,000 followers on Instagram. Now, it’s trying to turn those followers into customers.
The company has added an addition to its Instagram page to better target visitors who like a particular picture.
Here’s how it works: Followers click a link at the top of the brand’s Instagram page instructing them to sign up with their e-mail address and Instagram handle. Once registered, consumers will receive an e-mail about how to purchase any product they “like” on the company’s Instagram page that has the hashtag #ShopMJB.
Kelly Coller, senior director of marketing at Kendo, an LVMH company that runs Marc Jacobs Beauty’s e-commerce business, says the visual nature of Instagram proved a natural fit for a company that makes its money in aesthetics.
“We want to reach our customers and provide an experience that fits seamlessly into their daily lives,” she says. “Instagram is also highly visual, so we’re able to reach our beauty enthusiasts with a unique mixture of product and lifestyle images that will engage and inspire them.”
The company developed the technology behind the platform in-house in order to have complete control of the interaction between the brand and the customer, Coller says. Instagram’s user interface on the whole doesn’t lend itself to easy online shopping, she says. “While it took some work on our end to build a unique experience in-house, we’ve already surpassed initial expectations for sign-ups, proving our customers are hungry for the ability to shop on Instagram,” she says. She wouldn’t disclose how many people have signed up through Instagram.
The move comes at a time when Instagram’s audience is growing at a rapid clip.
The photo-sharing social network, which launched in 2010 and was acquired by Facebook two years later for $1 billion, recently announced it crossed the 200 million user threshold, with those users sharing more than 20 billion photos.
Marc Jacobs Beauty isn’t the first luxury brand to try driving sales via Instagram.
Luxury retailer Nordstrom Inc. paired with visual analytics and marketing vendor Curalate in August to roll out a new Like2Buy addition to its page. The addition to Nordstrom’s Instagram page takes visitors directly to the product page on the retailer’s web site when someone clicks on an Instagram post. Nordstrom is No. 24 in Internet Retailer’s 2014 Top 500 Guide.
Marc Jacobs Beauty itself is fairly new to e-commerce, having just launched its online store, MarcJacobsBeauty.com, in May. The company, however, has a foothold on social networks, with nearly 100,000 Facebook fans and just over 7,000 followers on Twitter.
Coller says the brand’s focus is on driving sales via Instagram first, but didn’t rule out initiatives on other social networks.
“We know our customers are very engaged on digital, and we’re always looking ahead to discover new ways to surprise and delight our customers,” she says. “For us, it’s not just about the metrics. When you build an awesome experience that fits the way our clients consume content, we’ve found that the metrics follow.”