In a recent Facebook Live segment, Dia & Co stylist Alexandria shared different ways to style blue spring dresses with the plus-size subscription and styling service’s online community. The video, which dissected the topic for 43 minutes, has gathered 4,200 views and about 300 comments since going live on April 13.
The viewers are women and customers of the plus-size subscription service, who tune in to learn new styling tips and swap tricks and feedback with fellow commenters. Dia & Co has been running Facebook Live segments on a weekly basis for a year now. Videos typically revolve around trend discussions and styling tips with Dia & Co’s stylist team, but others have featured live styling sessions with customers, pop-up shop tours and event coverage. While Dia & Co has tested similarly formatted features on Snapchat and Instagram, its Facebook Live videos receive the most engagement, according to founder and CEO Nadia Boujarwah.
“So much of what’s driven marketing and brand communications in the past is based on what’s aspirational, but what’s resonating most now is what’s authentic,” said Boujarwah. “There’s nothing more vulnerable for a brand than being in a live conversation with your community, but that’s what’s gotten success on the platform for us.”
Dia & Co, which sells clothing plus-size women within the size 12 to 32 range, isn’t seeing big view counts by any stretch of the imagination. But Boujarwah pointed to the high engagement in comments.
The comments on a recent Dia & Co Facebook Live session
Dia & Co mines the comments left on its Facebook Live videos — each of which generally reaches about 300 comments — to get insight on style trends that customers have top-of-mind, combining that with social data from Instagram comments and tweets. That data is then added to individual subscribers’ profiles, which can be linked to their social media accounts. The rest of the data is culled from the style quiz taken at sign-up, feedback given on each item received in a box (whether it’s kept or not) and discussions with stylists via phone or email. The Dia & Co team then feeds customer information back to its brand partners in order to flood the plus-size market with better intel on its shoppers.
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Boujarwah said that, as a result of Facebook Live conversations, Dia & Co is in the process of tweaking its own business model. Customers watching the videos want to shop what they’re seeing in the stream. Right now, since Dia & Co sends product through its boxes and can’t be shopped directly, the retailer set up a landing page for products seen on Facebook Live, linked with each video. While customers can’t shop the products directly, they can request that the item appear in their next shipment.
“We’ve learned about the ways she wants to shop, the type of content that’s resonating most, and generally, more about who our customers are beyond size,” said Boujarwah. “We consider ourselves a company of listeners. Our success is based on that feedback.”
