Create An Emotional Commerce Experience For More Sales

The focus on content marketing and social media recently has led to a convergence in retail and publishing. To rise above the advertising noise, many brands are starting to take an editorial driven retail approach – think magazine meets online store.  E-commerce brands are producing high quality content to engage and inspire their audiences. Jason Goldberg, founder and CEO of Fab.com, calls this “emotional commerce” and he believes it is the next frontier in retail.

Emotional Commerce is all about taking the best offline shopping experiences—of being lured in by storefronts, of browsing through assortments and colors; it is the joy of the hunt and finding something fabulous—having fun while shopping—and making that entire experience even more amazing online,” he explains.

The retail model is evolving. Many e-commerce stores are expanding their brand by creating magazine like sites rich in editorial content. Net-A-Porter creates a weekly online magazine with the production value of what you would pick up in the store – a far cry from the old PDF version of a sales catalog. Kitsune & Colette started experimenting in the early days with the concept of emotional commerce. They created music compilations and extended the brand lifestyle with unique artist collaborations. A good multi-pronged content strategy is about depicting a certain lifestyle that customers might aspire to.

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One brand excelling in this arena is Frank & Oak. The menswear designer employs a 7 person in house editorial team to craft their unique content. They even go old school by printing a quarterly magazine that gets distributed to hotels and select small businesses. In addition to their print magazine Frank & Oak has a finely curated Instagram feed, and a SoundCloud profile with monthly mixes. The content focuses more on the process and the lifestyle than the actual product. This is the key to success because customers can see right through an advertisement masquerading as editorial content.

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On the flip side of this, publishers are starting to get into the retail game. Through e-commerce deals and affiliate marketing, publishers are starting to cash in on purchases made from their editorial content. Vogue now lets users shop their Instagram posts with the app Liketoknow.it. These affiliate programs are a great monetization tool for bloggers and publishers, and help retailers to get new traffic and sales.

So how do you integrate emotional commerce into your brand? Go back to your drawing board and think about the lifestyle that your brand conveys. What is your brand’s personality? Brainstorm ways to communicate that lifestyle to your audience, whether through music, photography, behind the scenes videos, or written content. Create an editorial calendar and stay true to your brand in everything you create.