Neiman Marcus has a new tool to help sales associates build their own social media presence while also driving sales, even when their customers make purchases online.
The brand is working with a new offering from mobile platform Salesfloor, called SocialShop. Salesfloor is an application designed to give sales associates easy access to customer bios, shopping history and contact information to help improve the shopping experience, both in store and online.
SocialShop will live in the Salesfloor app and allow Neiman Marcus stylists to create shoppable Instagram posts. For example, if a Neiman Marcus employee posts a new pair of Christian Louboutin shoes to their Instagram account with a link in their bio to a SocialShop page, customers can click on that link and find the shoes on Neiman Marcus’s website. If the customer ends up buying the shoes using that sales associate’s link, “then they’re actually buying from the store associate through the website of the retailer,” said Ben Rodier, chief client officer at Salesfloor.
Basically, the tool tracks any converted sales back to the employee who posted the product, giving that employee and the store they work at credit (and in many cases commission) for that sale.
“Associates have been waiting for something like this for a long time, so that they could better serve customers where they are choosing to shop and be inspired,” said Elizabeth Gleason, director of online experience and service for Neiman Marcus. “We’ve seen high adoption and engagement with our associates in a short period of time.”
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Neiman Marcus implemented the technology roughly three weeks ago, but declined to share any specific results at this time.
Associates using this tool are creating separate Instagram accounts for work that they then share with their customers. On those accounts, they share the latest items in stock and style them, as well, providing customers with outfit inspiration even when they can’t make it into the store.
“Our associates spend a lot of time pulling together beautifully curated pages on Instagram, but they did not have a way to sell these items to their customers digitally,” said Gleason. “What sets this solution apart is having a dedicated page to support the associate’s social posts that is transactionable and easy to shop.”
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Salesfloor worked directly with Neiman Marcus to develop the new tool. Neiman Marcus originally approached the Salesfloor team, asking them to create something that could help stylists build a presence on social media while also promoting some of the products they sell.
“Giving store associates a way to engage with online customers is an underserved opportunity in retail, but if you think about being able to give them the tools for just maximizing their social media presence, that is way underserved,” said Rodier. “It’s not even being touched right now by a lot of companies, because it is technically difficult to do.”
SocialShop rolled out to a handful of other retailers last week, including Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue and Peruvian Connection. It will continue expanding to more brands this week. Salesfloor plans to extend the SocialShop tool to social platforms, beyond Instagram, in the coming months.
