Things have moved fast since StoryStream was appointed by Boden to manage User-generated Content earlier in 2021. From curating social media posts, they are now increasing social reposting, extending UGC across email campaigns, gathering up content via competitions, and, most importantly, driving revenue.
Boden has always been a trendsetter in the retail industry – not just in terms of clothing fashion, but right across their business. As far back as 1991, Boden was using friends and family to model for their first ventures into mail-order catalogues, foreshadowing current trends for real people in marketing, and the company was an early adopter of eCommerce.
Boden continues to pioneer ways of engaging with customers – with its focus on UGC not only driving sales but also helping to build the diversity and inclusivity of the brand’s marketing campaigns.
Boden x StoryStream: It takes two …
“The relationship between StoryStream and Boden has worked from the start,” says Kristie Saunders, Senior Digital Content & SEO Manager at Boden. “We feel as though they are a complete partner of ours, rather than a service. They’ve helped us to build and develop bespoke modules for our website from scratch to fulfil very specific aims and needs of ours. The technology is great, but the service and support really stand out too.”
“The ‘Boden by Me’ gallery has generated a lot of engagement with our customers. We were always interested in StoryStream’s strategic vision, as well as the technology platform. And we always felt that there should be a strong e-commerce angle to what we’re doing with User-generated Content – not just a PR element.”
The impact of the Boden by Me gallery – which StoryStream manages across six major geographic markets – has been clear, with 94% of people who view it engaging fully with the experience.
Crucially, for users who’ve engaged with StoryStream on Boden’s site and then gone on to make a purchase, the average order value of transactions is 60% higher than those who haven’t encountered and clicked a StoryStream CTA.
When people come to shop they hit the StoryStream feed, and when they hit the StoryStream feed, they spend.
“The competition for online shopping is obviously greater than it’s ever been by a huge margin,” says StoryStream’s COO Cameron Franks. “That means brands need to double down on high-performing channels and content, and so we’re really pleased that Boden’s StoryStream modules are performing well and delivering revenue, along with page engagement.”
Recent figures for Boden’s StoryStream feed show over 2.7m total engaged views, 60% uplift in AOV, and a return on investment of over 5:1 with StoryStream’s ‘SmartGoal’ measurement recording.
With live video publishing, email campaigns and a ‘holiday carousel’ now active, the campaign objectives of delivering content at scale across the Boden website, increasing audience engagement and increasing web page conversion have been met and exceeded.
UGC’s role in promoting inclusivity and diversity
Nicola Huet, Boden’s Digital and Marketing Director, recently joined our panel on Diversity in eCommerce.
Nicola talked us through the importance of celebrating UGC in Boden’s commitment to diversity: “I think brands and businesses should embrace diversity because it’s actually beneficial to everyone who gets involved. And because Boden wants to be more accessible as a brand, we’ve been using UGC for a while.
“The combination of imagery and product reviews is powerful together. And we have an example of a customer who said she had explicitly gone to look at images from our StoryStream feed because she could see how relatable it was for her. She could see how she was going to look in that product rather than the 5’ 10 models who bore no resemblance to her body shape at all.
“We’re seeing customers engaging with it, they’re spending time looking at it, and we’ve done lots of user testing and they say they want to see more of it, so we’ve designed our product page to bring up our User-generated Content because purely from a commercial view it makes sense.”
Learn more about the StoryStream visual commerce platform here, or get in touch with StoryStream to organise your platform demo.
