ShopStyle is giving luxury shoppers more reasons to shop its platform.
On Tuesday, it rolled out a new shopper rewards program called Shop Smarter, offering members exclusive products and sales, next-level personalization and cash back on select purchases.
ShopStyle launched in 2007 and serves most basically as a product discovery tool for consumers. The brand now has a host of offerings including its influencer ShopStyle Collective, with 20,000-plus influencers, and tools to make YouTube videos shoppable.
After quietly rolling out its Shop Smarter program to its existing 60 million annual shoppers in May, the brand is now offering it up to potential customers, as well. Shop Smarter is a free program allowing shoppers to “favorite” any item, brand, search term or influencer look posted on ShopStyle’s site. When users “favorite” more items or looks, ShopStyle can then use that data to give them a more personalized shopping experience through product recommendations and sales alerts.
Since adding the ability to “favorite” brands and influencers, Alison Stiefel, vp of marketing at ShopStyle, said the company has seen a 20% increase in favorites being created year over year.
“A good portion of our app revenue is actually driven by favorites,” she said. She declined to share specific revenue numbers. “We also worked with our partners to launch an exclusive section that only signed-in members can see. It helps drive full-price sales for our partners, not just sale merchandise.”
On Tuesday, the exclusive deals and collections rolling out are with partners including Stuart Weitzman, Intermix, Stylebop, Stadium Goods and Houzz, and ShopStyle plans to add more brand partners in the future. In the last month, the company has seen a 15% higher conversion rate around its style articles driving to exclusives — shoppers can find a collection of items from Barney New York’s designer sale at up to 60% off, for example, and new summer arrivals from Intermix for up to 15% off. That 15% boost is compared to trend articles that are posted by brand partners or the brand’s contributing editors. Those editors are a a group of 30-plus unpaid influencers who work closely with the brand and post content on its site. The brand will tap its collective of 20,000 influencers to push the news of Shop Smarter via social media.
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“In just a few weeks of testing the Shop Smarter program we are seeing a 300% increase in conversion rates. ShopStyle has so much shopping and consumer preference data it can offer a personalized experience and put our products in front of the right customer,” said Diego Abba, CEO at Italist.
A final component to the rewards program is cash-back on luxury purchases, through its parent company, e-commerce marketplace Rakuten. ShopStyle users can now receive up to 10% cash back on purchases made through ShopStyle at over 21 retail partners like Saks, Barneys New York and Intermix, which collectively carry 4,500 brands including Ted Baker Golden Goose and Valentino.
Since launching this feature, ShopStyle found that members who join the rewards program bring in 38% more sales to the company and its retail partners than non-cash-back shoppers. On average, they have a 21% higher order value.
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“We’re more of a content-discovery platform, and so that’s why it was really important that our program wasn’t just cash back,” said Stiefel. “This components of saving your [favorites], making personalized recommendations, offering exclusives — that’s the core that’s powering this.”
