Fashion at Your Fingertips!

It’s About the Experience

The new paradigm of eCommerce is moving away from a product-centric approach and towards a customer-centric approach. What Rue La La has done is create interest, excitement, and nearly “theatrical” show around the shopping experience on their site. Engaging consumers is more than having a basket of products, its creating excitement and interest and, when Rue La La consumers find something interesting and exciting they share it with their social network. That’s why Rue La La views social, not as a separate channel or initiative, but as an integral part of their business. As it is structured as a “members only” shopping site, most of their members have come from being invited by other members. Because of this, all new innovations that the company launches are done via social channels as it is the most valuable and productive way to get the word out.

Given their values and business methods it should be of no surprise that Rue La La has been very successful in building a very active and passionate community around the brand and its products. The key factor to this success is the fact that Rue La La customers are not only thrilled about the quality of the products but are also very passionate about Rue La La’s customer service standards and have built a community on these overwhelmingly positive experiences with this company. As one could guess social media marketing plays a significant role in building this customer community. Compared to its competitors, Rue La La is an extremely involved company when it comes to social media. They run a page on Facebook, an account on Twitter, several Tumblr pages, have a YouTube channel, and even display a live Twitter feed of customer mentions at the bottom of their online site.

Given their target demographic, which skews heavily towards fashion conscious female internet users, this social presence appears to be the right approach. As we have learned from Groundswell, young people are more likely to be Producers and/or Engagers making social media websites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. excellent places for Rue La La to reach their audience. A smaller but potentially equally important demographic that Rue La La doesn’t appear to explicitly target through its social media marketing strategy would be less online present “moms”, as they are both female and more likely to be fashion consumers who are looking for  curated content and handpicked product selections. From a consumer engagement standpoint, what could be better than providing shoppers with the opportunity to curate an eCommerce boutique full of items they love?

After launching a blog on Tumblr, Rue La La decided that they would give their Facebook fans the opportunity to vote on their favorite items which would then be featured in an upcoming Rue La La Boutique. The voting took place via the “Vote For Style” tab found on Rue La La’s Facebook page.

Only a few hours after the curated boutique opened, 8 of the 24 items had sold out. 

While some brands are uploading their entire product catalogs to Facebook, companies like Rue La La prove that that’s not necessary.  With a little creativity, you can get your customers excited about your products and shopping on your eCommerce site. People love deals and a little entertainment, and Rue La La smartly took note of that and gave its customers what they wanted—even after it sells out! 

Sold Out, Still Want It?

Say there’s an item you love, but it sells out. Total bummer! But wait, on July 21, 2011, Rue La La came up with the ultimate solution that’s different from its competitor Gilt Groupe’s waitlist feature. With Rue La La’s “Still Want It”, the customer is able to tell Rue La La just what they’re looking for, and if they can get it for you, they’ll charge your credit card and send it.

Most Rue La La events last just two days, but a “Still Want It” request remains active for much longer.  Say you really wanted those black suede Puma sneakers, but you didn’t have time to buy them before they sold out. Previously you’d just have to wait and hope we’d run another Puma sale event.  But now you can use the “Still Want It” popup and place a request for those sneakers in your size.  The site collects payment information, shipping address and place a back order in their system for the item. This is just one of the small changes along with a new logo, new shipping boxes, free shipping for 30 days after a purchase, new site navigation and better product photography to “make shopping more social” and ultimately responding to their customers wants and needs via the groundswell. Along with these major site changes, Rue La La’s expansive and diverse social presence has only boosted its groundswell presence.

Rue La La’s Blog: The (Style) Guide

Rue La La itself has an extremely well-maintained and comprehensive blog which is easily accessible from its homepage. It has a host of information on topics ranging from product description/questions and user reviews to fashion trends and site changes. One of the greatest things about the forum in my opinion is that it is completely immersed in the fashion world and gives all sorts of perspectives on today’s fashion for women, men and children. Such a diverse approach gives Rue La La’s blog a true sense of a community, where everyone can find something that interest/pertains to them and better yet, everything is well laid out and beautiful!

A simple search on blogsearch.google.com for “Rue La La” yielded over 561K mentions in the past month! For a fairly niche-market high fashion members-only shopping site, Rue La La appears to be fairing pretty well in the blogosphere. One of the things that struck me while looking through the blogs was that there were virtually no negative mentions or feedback and when there were average users, not Rue La La employees, stood up to defend the site – that’s the power of the groundswell at work. 

Facebook  

Rue La La has one main Facebook fan page. The overall tone for Lush’s Facebook page is very informal and conversational, making people feel that they really are connecting with fellow friends and Rue La La enthusiasts. The page is easily accessible from the Rue La La homepage as well as The (Style) Guide, Rue La La’s blog. Just becoming a fan of their Facebook Pages not only gets you in, but provides you with insider tips on how to best shop their sales and advance notice of upcoming designer deals—important information when people can swipe items out of your cart up until the last second.

The page is very well-maintained, organized and updated frequently. It serves a dual function of the central hub for Rue La La fans to express their love as well as the place to learn about the latest fashion trends and Rue La La fashion events.

In my opinion the key accessory to Rue La La’s success are their extremely prompt response and a friendly and informal conversational tone. In the examples below not only was the question addressed within an hour of it being posted but the administrator also took time and effort to provide a comprehensive and thorough response.  

High engagement level, informal/friendly tone and of course great content is what makes Rue La La’s Facebook fan base feel that they are heard and appreciated, providing all that’s necessary for an active and passionate community.

YouTube

Rue La La even has it’s own YouTube channel. It’s full of videos about the company, its products, what are Rue La La staff’s fashion styles, favorite brands, best buys etc., but also quite a few on the company’s business philosophy, its charitable work and social events.

Rue La La’s YouTube channel is good, very good in fact but I do feel that Rue La La could benefit from better organization: for example they could do a better job with grouping the videos into playlists with more comprehensive names like “About Rue La La”, “How we choose what we sell”, etc. Additionally I’d suggest creating a playlist with videos on how best to use Rue La La as a shopping site, especially considering that shopping on Rue La La can at times seem like a fine art form

There’s an App for That!
It is no secret mobile usage among consumers is growing. And for private-sale retailers, mobile is even more important. Many industry experts have been skeptical about the long-term and sustainable growth companies such as these can maintain. But, as Rue La La is seeing, brands and consumers alike are continuing to vote yes to private-sale sites.

Rue La La's Mcommerce site (mobile phone screenshot to the left)  helps members stay on top of daily deals, as consumers may not know where they’re going to be at 11 a.m. every day when Rue La La posts the products of the day. And because the deals are limited-time and limited-quantity, a consumer will want to get there fast. Rue La La wants to ensure its customers can get to deals anytime, anywhere. Stephanie Brocoum, vice president of member marketing stated,
 “We believed early on that we needed to have a strong mobile offering,” Brocoum told attendees at the Mobile Shopping Summit this week in New York. “In the beginning there was a lot of hype, and a lot of pressure from the CEO’s office, and there were a lot of fun and gimmicky apps out there. We understood if we could focus on members’ core needs and develop an app that would be useful, it would create value for them and fill their needs and they would share it virally.” 

Right Here, “Right Now”

Another change to the Rue La La site hasn’t even been in place for more than four months, yet it’s changed the way customers are shopping already! Rue La La mobile users can now watch product movement in real time. In October, Rue La La introduced it’s new mobile-only feature called, “Right Now” that lets members watch the movement of products in real-time so they can see which items are selling quickly and which sizes are sold out.

With “Right Now”s Rue La La sessions between 1 and 3 minutes in length increased 514 percent in the week following the soft launch, 3-to-10-minute sessions increased 444 percent and 10-to-30-minute sessions increased 261 percent (mobilecommercedaily.com, 2011) Rue La La also reports that 60 percent of users are coming back to its app within two days. Mobile is a quickly growing channel for Rue La La, with up to 20 percent of sales coming in via mobile on week days and up to 30 percent on the weekend. In comparison, mobile accounted for 2 percent of sales back in January 2010.

 Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York

Social Mention

To further illustrate a progression of how Rue La La’s online presence has increased with the help of its mobile site, it is helpful to look at the metric site Social Mention.

SocialMention snapshot comparisons of “Rue La La” (March 8, March 15, and March 22)

According to Social Mention, Rue La La seems to have an overwhelmingly positive presence on the web. Based on the data from Social Mention Rue La La’s average Sentiment stands at 18:1, meaning that for every 18 positive comments they only receive 1 negative comment. There also seems to be a consistently high passion score ranging from 27%-30% meaning that customers not only talk about the brand, but do so repeatedly. On average, Rue La La is mentioned every 29 minutes! That’s crazy!

By looking at the progression from three different weeks, we can see that Rue La La is mentioned pretty often (strength), the general tone is positive with every one comment being negative (sentiment), users are sometimes really talking about the site repeatedly due to a steady decline (passion), and Rue La La is reaching a decent amount of users (reach).

The Future of Rue

All in all Rue La La seems to have a very good handle on their social marketing strategy. They are actively engaged in several types of online social media and have used it successfully to promote its products and brand. Rue La La does have outstanding products, positive corporate image and has effectively succeeded in promoting both through the groundswell by creating a strong and passionate online community. That said, I would offer a few suggestions to further build on their existing success: 

Create a loyalty program (and/or a more lucrative referral program)

A few customers noted the lack of a loyalty program as surprising, especially considering that Rue La La products aren’t always cheap and also noted that Rue La La only offers a $10 referral fee for every member recruited as opposed to Gilt which offers a $25 referral gift. The call for a boost in cash and the start of a loyalty program further indicates that Rue La La users view their relationship with Rue La La as something different from their relationship with other shopping sites. This suggests that Rue La La should not discount this opportunity to further strengthen their brand and continue to strengthen their community’s passion. 

Better organization of YouTube channels

While Rue La La’s YouTube channel has a lot of great information it appears to be slightly disorganized. Better organization could help improve user experience and eliminate potential frustration; it could also help shoppers easily distinguish between Rue La La-produced and non-professional videos, minimizing the possibility of a bad experience with a Rue La La product based on a misinformed video. 

Add playlists with Rue La La buying trends and practices

While most of this information is already available on the Frequently Asked Questions, adding a playlist with “how-to” videos could help further engage existing customers as well as acquire new ones. 

Engage the “mom” demographic

In my opinion the “mom” demographic could carry a lot of potential for Rue La La. As we learned from Groundswell moms are a bit less likely to be “creators” of content, however they are actively engaged online as consumers. Rue La La could engage this population by creating content (through already existing social media channels like Facebook and YouTube) that specifically targets moms (e.g. a video featuring a dermatologist that explains why Rue La La’s featured Dermatologica products are not only suitable for them but also beneficial for young kids)

And by FUTURE, you mean today right?

Although the third part of the Groundswell: “The Groundswell Transforms” is the shortest part of the book, I believe it is the most critical section for the success of a business. While the previous two parts of the book focused more on the concepts behind the Groundswell—blogs, RSS, social media marketing etc.—the last part talked about how the company itself can change by embracing the power of Groundswell in its internal interactions. 

The Best Buy case study does a great job showing how the internal groundswell successfully touches upon all five objectives which includes: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing. The employees are imperative to a company’s success, as shown through the company’s Blue Shirt Nation platform, which makes employees feel more empowered, connected, and more committed on a daily basis. By tapping the groundswells of ideas among employees (at the ground level of how your business operates) though connections on social networks, collaborations on wikis, and contributions to idea exchanges, this drastically helps organizations run more smoothly and efficiently.

Essentially, the Blue Shirt Nation internal social media platform was created to listen to what Best Buy employees have to say and rapidly fix any rising problems before they escalate. “The online forum on Blue Shirt Nation is a natural extension of that mentoring culture, where employees can find the support they need from around the company, not just from within their store or district” (p. 238). This platform gives employees and upper level management the ability to generate and carry out ideas.

It is also in this last chapter of the Groundswell where the authors also gives a snapshot of how the groundswell may look in “the future”: 

"Your phone is also telling you that the Federal Trade Commission is thinking of blocking your top two competitors from merging with each other, and that the two hot colors for next spring look like mauve and canary yellow--because you’ve set the device up to bring you information from the Wall Street Journal, Footwear News, and Women’s Daily. The feeds are smart, they watch what you’ve been reading and bring you more of the stuff they know you, and others similar to you, would like to know...Downing the last of your morning coffee, you receive an alert that warns the interstate is backed up again--better take the alternate route.You make sure your phone’s GPS tracking system is on so that you can add your own commute progress to the traffic database..you check your monitoring dashboard. Mauve is on fire" (p. 276).

It's all going MOBILE!

Well, I think it’s safe to say that the authors were pretty spot on! Literally everything the authors described is happening today from the “smart” news feeds to GPS phone alerts to harnessing the power of the collective to gather the data on anything and everything from traffic to the presidential race. Li and Bernoff note that “the technology moves fast” and from the looks of it, the Groundswell is moving at lightning speeds, most notably making the move to everything being increasingly more mobile. Having the world in “the palm of your hand” is quite literal these days. The groundswell is extraordinarily effective since it is cheap, easy to create, simple to improve upon, and gives people the chance to connect to one another. With strengths such as listening, patience, opportunity, flexibility, collaboration with others, and being humble, the authors assure that with the Groundswell, “you’ll be able to build on your successes, both with customers and within your company” (p. 259). 

The Newest Fashion "Icon": Rue La La's Gone Viral

For my social media monitoring project, I decided to follow the members-only shopping site RueLaLa. The tech company database CrunchBase describes Rue La La as 

“the invitation-only destination for a life of style. Where members delight in discovering private sale boutiques that open daily and stay open only for a short time. A community where members shape the experience and enhance the excitement by inviting their friends. A place where they discover some of the most sought-after brands in fashion, accessories, footwear, home, travel, wine, gourmet food, local services, and more.”  

Once reserved exclusively for those "in the know" and living in major fashion hubs, sample sales have now gone mainstream, over the past year a number of online sample sale sites have popped up, such as Rue La La’s competitor GiltGroupe. I am sure anyone who is an avid online consumer/shopper has heard of some sort of members-only shopping sites since they have exploded in popularity throughout the past few years.

Both Rue La La and Gilt Groupe operate using similar models — both are invitation only, meaning that you have to be invited by an already existing member to take part in the action. They feature premium designer clothes and accessories in private sale boutiques that are only open for a limited time. Members receive reminder emails when new sales are about to open —driving interest and visitors to the online boutiques before coveted items are sold out. Over the past year the word has clearly spread and the secret is out that these sites exist. This is evident from the chart below which shows that Unique Visitors to both sites have been steadily rising.

I wanted to follow the website’s trends in online conversation and other social media because of her incredibly rapid success in use within the online shopping industry. To monitor RueLaLa, I utilized a variety of social media monitoring resources such as IceRocket, Social Mention, FameCount, Trendistic, Twitaholic, Google Blog Search and Insights for Search, Facebook Lexicon, YouTube, and Twitter. The increasing traffic to the site show that in these times premium brand shoppers are looking for deals too, even if it is on a $300 pair of jeans. Over the next couple of weeks, I will use these tools to further investigate the topics, tone, message, word-of-mouth, engagement, campaign and especially the mobile capabilities of Rue La La in order to make my own suggestions for the future direction of my client. Stay tuned for a more in depth look at this fashion "icon"...literally!

TV: The New Screen Culture

The comeback of TV! According to Viralblog, soon tablets (ie. iPads) and smartphones (ie iPhones) will even become an integrated part of the screen experience, making social TV a reality. Like social shopping—my previous original post topic—social TV is propelled by giving consumers the ability to interact and share their TV experiences with other viewers. It’s no secret that TV viewership has already become a social activity. As a new show is about to premiere, anticipation builds online and often continues throughout the season. But how do TV viewership and social media relate to one another?

With the current economy, businesses are searching for new and innovative ideas that help them not only survive, but also succeed beyond their competitors. Online TV is more dynamic than just YouTube or UStream, professional, state-of-the-art studios with production support and quality at a cost that makes it accessible to almost any business, big or small. With today's technology, you don't even have to live in the same city as where the studio is located to use the facilities. Regardless of whether online TV is being used in the entertainment field, to sell investments for a living, or to teach yoga, now businesses have a powerful communication tool that, until very recently, was reserved only for those companies with large support staffs and budgets.This is important as it allows businesses to connect with their customers or attract new ones in a whole new way while complimenting what it is they are already doing. People have always said, “Show it, don't say it.” The online TV trend allows you to do just that!

"Online TV allows us another affordable way to connect with people and further brand our message." Rick Amato, columnist and radio talk show host

While business owners and entrepreneurs stress over the challenges posed by the economy, there are other ways in which Social Media and the real world are fusing together through television. Several shows like the X Factor, Prject Runway and American Idol allow you to vote for you favorite contestant through the popular social network, Twitter. American Idol lets you vote for your favorite person by using their Facebook application. Other shows like Bones and Royal Pains post on-screen hashtags to promote their shows through Twitter. Since these Social Networks have a huge presence on both computers and mobile phones, you can virtually do these tasks from anywhere.

Shows like Project Runaway let you vote via Twitter

So how much of a difference does having online voting really make if you can still text in your votes? Since the major social media networks contain such a large quantity of people, integrating voting allows you to share exactly what you’re doing with your peers to create interaction—something you can’t do when texting and something that is one of the most important key elements of social media. Posting hashtags on Twitter about your favorite show while it’s airing allows you to show your friends to know what you're watching, and at the same time you can check out what your friends are viewing via their hashtags, and possibly even connect with new friends with common interests!

Technology is already starting to adapt. 2012 was the first time the Super Bowl was streamed live to the world, and soon there will be literal Social Televisions released called Smart TV’s that function just like a regular Television, but are equipped with an operating system so that the users can interact with widgets and applications while browsing their favorite shows. With Smart TV’s, you no longer need to visit twitter on your mobile or tablet to vote, you can do it all in one cohesive screen without the need for multiple social networks or devices.

Smart TV

One Spanish-language television station is using social television to discuss hot button issues across language barriers. This rapid growth of online television technology is clearly not limited to English speaking, US consumers. Another article found that nearly 17% of British TV viewers use social media to find new television shows to watch. Now that’s really “showing” how social TV viewers are becoming!