Tips to scale engagement across multiple audiences

0:01My name is Jill Gagan, Editor of Drapers, and I'm delighted to welcome you to Draperers Talks, our podcast series bringing you cutting edge content from our live events. This episode was recorded live at Draper's Social Summit on the 20th of May. From unlocking the value of influencer partnerships to navigating emerging platforms, we explored how to cut through the noise, build real communities and drive measurable growth in an ever-shifting digital landscape. In this episode, Draper's News Editor Chloe Mills discusses scaling engagement across distinct audiences with Catherine Weller, Social Media Lead at Wise London, Natasha DeBell, Head of E-Commerce and CRM at Percival, and Stephanie Oakes, Social and Influencer Lead at Rees.

0:45Enjoy. At Percival, thank you all so much for being here. I think a good point to start is, you know, throw it out to all of you, so whoever wants to pick this one up first, what does a genuinely engaged community look like for your respective brands? Well, I've got a funny story actually um that um shows how engaged our audience and community is we hosted a live event on saturday um and just if you don't know the background about wise the demographic about customer base is um i'd say 35 40 to up to 70 so it's a very different demographic and um I ended the live event and Instagram had a glitch and we lost the live I couldn't get it back from archives and we were inundated with DMs what's happened to live is everybody okay did anything happen in the shop what happened and on my personal account and the wise account we literally had loads of messages so for me that demonstrates how engaged the audience is that they just missed something that they usually watch at half past nine on a Saturday and were really concerned about us.

2:00So the amount of feedback we get through our DMs, I think for me, shows how connected our customers are to us. And through getting to know our customers, they are friends of the brand. Absolutely, Natasha. Yeah, I mean, whoa, that was old. Sorry, also just want to say I am stepping in for my colleague, but I will do my best to represent the Percival community. There's only 15 of us in the office. So I feel like I've got a good hand on that. But I think I just want to reiterate the same thing. Like for us, it feels like our customers are our friends. And when we get a collaboration, the response isn't necessarily the buzz for the collaboration.

2:45it's almost a buzz for us and they're excited for us that we've got that as a young brand and we really feel that through like messages through dms but also we know that if we've done something good that our community have loved isn't necessarily the immediate response that we get through social although that is very good it's the way that that the halo effect and the way that spreads um and they tell someone who tells someone and it's that kind of six degrees separation we then get a text from someone so obscure and everyone's phones in the offices are pinging so we know we're doing something that our community loves when it scales and gets out and comes back around to us that way yeah um i would say definitely for reese it's similar from a customer point of view um but also it's kind of we have online social community we have our in-store community the people that shop with us every day um but it's also bringing those people in on the journey with the people in the business and the product teams and the stylists the creators that we work with and making sure that that feels like one big community and then we're all kind of like on the same journey together absolutely um and kath wise london is very much you know customer first um and foremost can you tell us a little bit about your how your role is you know plays into that almost and how you've created such a strong community on socials so I discovered wise during lockdown and I am their typical customer so and I think that's ultimately what we all want to achieve as brands is to be your customer because then you understand how to develop content and develop services and product actually that meets your customer needs so I met Marielle I was say in a car boot it wasn't a car boot it was in a sample sale and um we just connected we chatted through dms i used to send photographs of me and by his clothes and i thought we could do this i thought we could do that and as the business grew she needed somebody who could support her with her social media and what i do for the community first and foremost i am the community i'm one of the community so customers really identify with me and that is most probably the most powerful transparent and authentic relationship you can have with your customers.

5:06They know I've got a full-time job so they identify with me walking the dog, they'll identify with me going to work, they'll see me in the clothes and the situational element of me being in day-to-day is what really lands well with them um and i think if you sort of take that and even you know if you look at the sheer luxe model you see the girls going into the office you see what they're wearing you'll immediately see yourself in an office situation and want to wear exactly what they're wearing so the situational um authenticity of that relationship so i'm a real person wearing wise clothes with the real life and that has really connected us as a brand with the community so it's been incredibly powerful for us we will co-create so we use our community to ask for feedback on clothing so this jacket sold out we asked them if they wanted us to do it in a different colour that's probably been our most engaged recent post because we had so much feedback with people telling us whether they wanted us to do this again or a different colour um so it's asking for feedback and acting on it so I think you don't want to ask for feedback and not act on it because it's not authentic um and then we do that with all of our um ambassadors so our ambassadors are our customers it's very customer heavy I think we'll talk about influencers later um but our influencers tend to be our ambassadors who are all customers of all different shapes sizes heights um that can authentically represent the brand absolutely so important and that's great to sort of hear that side um stephanie reese has a very premium identity and sort of positioning how do you approach influencer partnerships at reese um and community building in a way that's aspirational and on brand but still authentic and true to what you're trying to achieve yeah absolutely I actually get asked this all the time similar to what um you kind of said um customers are really big for us um but I mean kind of like who are those influencers and creators that are tagging us in their posts every day um who are already wearing our clothes who are already ambassadors for the brand and then bringing those people in bringing them on the journey and actually getting them in to come and create content with us and it not being so transactional um so it's very like do you want to come and shoot with us actually getting their feedback on the day what kind of content works with our audience and works for our audience um so yeah i would definitely say we put a big focus on the influencers and creators that are already kind of tagging us um in things because i just find that the more transactional relationship is the less authentic it is overall yeah absolutely um tash what have you found resonates most strongly you know with the male audience um on social media and how is that evolving um so not to be like really reductive but like men care about what's happening now women we like to plan ahead i've got weddings i've got holidays i'm looking ahead so i need to see that men it's raining i need a raincoat so we have to be like genuinely I'm honestly not lying um so we have to be really reactive we have to plan with the seasons what's happening but we have to be a bit scrappy um but uh and have kind of banks of content where we can dip into as and when we need so we do feel like we've got social content coming out of our ears but it's a good thing for us because it means we can think and be reactive in those moments um we have a really broad customer base so uh like 23 to 65 plus we've got dads and granddads buying for their sons um which is really really nice but it sometimes has made our messaging quite hard and i think we've tried to speak to each pocket at different times um but then that gets a bit confusing for the customer.

9:14As an example, not social, but email, I got an unsubscribe. And the reason for unsubscribe was because I wrote garms in reference to clothing. And so, you know, we have to be conscious of how we communicate, keeping our essence, but also making sure that we're speaking to all of our customers how they want to be spoken to. and I think over the years we've really refined that now and I think if you looked at Percival even a year ago versus now we've come a long way to make sure there's that seamless experience from social to online to the store so yeah it's been a journey. Absolutely and just a reminder to please submit any questions via Slido for our panel.

9:58I know we touched briefly on influencers I kind of wanted to ask all of you how are you approaching influencer partnerships and I guess how has that changed and evolved as well um so definitely for Reese um we've really seen this shift from say like this transactional shopping influencer and we kind of went back to drawing board and was like actually what do people want to see from the content for through creators and it really is that style um so people that you know people go to for styling inspiration um actually for educational styling um whether that be because they don't know how to style something or actually they just want more ideas how to style an investment piece um in multiple ways um so we kind of really leaned more into that niche less away from you know here's everything that i got from reese um and you know here's my massive unboxing that's just really not authentic at all i'm more into those people that you know really curate um and can style and teach our audience things yeah i had to go yeah yeah so the educational piece is really powerful so in terms of influencers um we don't typically have a lot of budget for that do we um so our customers are our best ambassadors um it's about being true to the brand real life people that our customers identify with again that demographic that I spoke about there are there are many women in that demographic who feel lost and that they have lost their sense of self and identity so being able to show them real women in that kind of situational context is so important we developed a series around style solutions so I'll often do little shout outs on Instagram and say what's your style dilemma this week and then really quickly a little bit like you we'll get some clothes and then I'll do some styling solutions on a situation and how we can help them dress what accessories they might want to put with it so it's it's really reactive to a specific situation but I've got no doubt that influences are valuable in terms of potentially gaining new customers but I think for us um stores will be uh the channel that we would look to acquire more customers through rather than an influencer strategy that's so interesting tash what would you say yeah influences our influencer strategy has been quite i would say strong internally because our use case isn't just to get and send an influencer something and for it to be organic although we obviously want it to be but we work with people that we can obviously afford um but also utilize the content after so they'll post it and then we'll whitelist it so there's a lot more legs in the content um and we'll send them a product and kind of give them the kind of highlights of what we want them to say but really we're going to them because we like them we like their story we like their background and you let them create the content in the way that they see fit so then it's really authentic um and so uh yeah we work with a lot uk us and just tested france but um yeah i think the whitelisting angle means you give more legs to the content absolutely um and you know as audiences become more fragmented across the different platforms and sort of niche areas that they maybe specialize in or the audience are looking for how do you decide where to invest that time budget and energy I guess um Tash I'll throw tea first yeah um I think we've had the moments where someone's gone here's a new channel we need to do this and we need to try that and we've kind of gone down that avenue whereas as mentioned us kind of bringing everything together our focus has been more from the top previously when we've been planning shoots it's been very like this is social only Tash don't worry about it and I'm like let's go from the top down and create content that everybody can use.

14:00So then that creates that seamless experience from start to finish. Sorry, I'm coming at it from a very different angle to you guys. But actually with that, it's meant that everything's a lot more cohesive. Our socials and our email and our site is really aligned. And so we've just got that baseline lift. And I think that's actually really helped us. And from a channel perspective, we started another channel, Discord. um i don't know if anybody's used it and like it's a really sick community of little people but if you don't have the time and energy uh and infrastructure internally to manage it beyond the first few weeks of excitement then don't go into it unless you know that this is something you can manage long term because we basically stopped using it because we didn't have enough time and capacity internally um and then that's just really disappointing for your customers definitely Stephanie yeah we're very very similar to that in terms of that content first approach um so we kind of look at it as content buckets across all our platforms and how do they feed down um through everything that we do um but I would also just say making sure that you know looking at what the team can actually do from a resource point of view and putting the money putting the resource where the money is um so essentially don't you know give two people a job that essentially is not you're not going to see enough return from and we really had to double down on what do we do really well and for reese that is instagram and that is a the most part where our customers are um so obviously is a huge focus for us and then tiktok kind of being secondary um and i think there's so much to be said for not just spreading the team thinly and saying get on every single platform and copy every piece of content onto each platform and actually just focusing on what you know you know what the customers are and you know what you do well um and kind of you know getting that right first and then hopefully you'll see the success from that and you can start to build the teams out to then you know focus on each channel individually definitely yeah gosh a risk of repeating everything you both said i think doubling down is absolutely find the channel that works for you um we've looked at tiktok we might do some trial reels on tiktok but our audience that's not where they tend to go to shop so our audiences has got a strong relationship with Instagram so we will pursue Instagram I think we've got um uh I think it's about how you use it so there's a regular rhythm to what we do so lives is a brilliant channel for us um you know if we launched we've recently launched some collaborations if you do a live on the day when you're doing a collaboration drop because we we um we sell in drops uh we drop products every five days a week so if you do a live in conjunction with a drop you typically get a higher take up in terms of sales so I think more Instagram the lives are a great opportunity for us I think in terms of customer acquisition it will be around stores because we've started a branch out of store network because our customers are the best advert that we can have for our organization it's all word of mouth that's the most important thing and um and then what we do do and I think wise were one of the first brands to do it with the Deborah Brett originally is create uh collaborating collaborative opportunities with um people Deborah Brett I've just done a collaboration with wise um and growing your base through their network um has been really beneficial to us yeah it's interesting to hear you've all got sort of a slightly different focus is it is that really important to stay in your lane figure out what works and you know how how do you keep that focus I suppose when there's so much external pressure or almost temptation to try different channels yeah we we have this a lot with Reese like I feel like it's like oh there's this trend like can we jump on this and all those threads like should we jump jump on this and I think we just have to really keep focused to like where are our customers and what is our customer doing on social um and i similar to you with a tiktok thing it's definitely something that we're focusing on but i think it's actually just how can we use that channel differently so is that through creators and influencers and using their platforms um or do we have to find people that embody our brand and bring that to the forefront on tiktok from a personality point of view um because obviously not being a founder-led brand we don't have that person um so yeah i think that's probably the main thing yeah I also think it's just a it's an internal shift that's where it starts you'll have to agree that we're going to make sure that we're questioning the whys of everything that we're doing before we just jump on it I mean we've literally kissed every frog it feels like so I feel like we're confident now and maybe you do need to kiss your frogs but um and like like you said about your channels have their use cases and like TikTok for example perhaps all of our demographics it's not necessarily where they're going to go to shop but like 50 % of people now use TikTok as a searching tool and a discovery and a learning tool so for us our best performing TikToks have been where it's like how to do something or they're trying to learn about something they're not necessarily going to go and buy it but it's like an educational tool that then feeds into other channels.

19:25Definitely. Kath, would you agree? Yeah, yeah. And I think, again, in terms of the kind of the searching is I guess YouTube. So, and again, you've mentioned that we're a founder-led brand. So there is, you know, definitely more of the personality you can bring through the brand. That's obviously a massive USP for us at Wise. and um you know podcasts probably that's where we would go having a tv channel on youtube is probably where we'd go more than tiktok um but we're always open i think it's really important that you're open to it because you've got to consider all the platforms because they could be the next big thing but just have a go you know and with the capacity that you've got I'll just add to your point about podcasts um and again it's you know in your gut right so we've just done a podcast ad um which is a sizable chunk and it was with Jamie and Sophie Habuz um but the we're a male you know male clothes give or take but um their audiences is like 80 percent women but we knew in our gut that if we reached out to all of the female audiences that they should buy their suit for their wedding and or you know and and in theory oh sorry in theory on paper you know a 80 female audience doesn't feel right but we knew that was right for us we've seen massive successes from that just from running it for two weeks so yeah yeah we've talked a lot about that engagement and authenticity which is incredibly important if you give one piece of advice um individually to any brands or retailers in the room and are maybe struggling to engage or build that up what would it be which are one word of wisdom stephanie mine would just be brave and advocate for things um i think that's a lot especially in my traditional heritage brand like reese um there's a lot at the top why are you doing this is this right for the brand i think Like as a team, you owe it to, you know, what you guys do and you're the experts at the end of the day.

21:40So be brave, try new things. It actually isn't that deep. Like if something goes wrong, we'll forget about it in 24 hours. So I think that has to be the strategy. And that trialing and testing is how you find what works, not by being too afraid to put something out there. So, yeah, don't hate me saying that. Kat? Well, mine would be know your customer. You have to understand what your customer wants. you have to understand what you're trying to turn on for your customer. Solving problems for your customer, I think, sells. So that would be my absolute focus. Understand your customer, give your customers a voice.

22:18That's the most important thing. We've got customers who work in our stores. All of our DMs typically are signed off by an individual. We leave them voice notes. We've formed relationships when you come to a store event. You've got people who are going to one another's children's graduations because they met through Wise. They're going on holidays together because there's a massive community. So the added value you get from it is that community that you create. So for me, know your customer, deliver what your customer wants. Cash. so what I was going to say is probably not very helpful because I think maybe it's from a personal level but it was it was question why but I guess it's a combination though trust your gut because you know and go for it and if anything in your gut is saying no then it probably could be a waste of time and money and or could we just tweak one thing to change it to make it even more impactful and effective and cost effective but um I think collectively as a team yeah questioning why but being brave yeah and to clarify we have like iterations and iterations of sort of like you know rigorous feedback and that's why we can we can be as brave as we can and if you even if you look at sort of the Rees channels in the last sort of three or four years being brave as of what's got us here essentially um so yeah nice uh combination of answers there we've got some great questions coming through um someone has asked how do you manage communication between all the different age groups and demographics across your socials um tash i might throw that to you first yeah it's a good yeah it's a good question i think um i actually think the biggest thing for us i don't know it's very helpful to say but it's like to be kind and patient just because you don't know exactly who you're speaking to and or how old they are and or how much they understand about something let's say you're getting a customer service message in your dms you might come back a bit more bantery but actually just take that a step back um but uh yeah sorry that's not not the most solid answer um i would say for us it's kind of about like how do I say it so say this um we it doesn't have it doesn't matter what age you are if you like fashion you like fashion you want to be inspired um so essentially you know even if we're talking to someone who's 25 and they're you know wanting their outfit for their first you know corporate job or that we're actually talking to someone who's been in the world for you know 10 20 years what they want from us is is like education on how to do that and how to look great um so i think you can you can tailor in different ways but for us it's just if there's a shared like what um or need there to be specific as you know this is just for this age um yeah i think we will do um our tailoring through asking people what type of style solutions they want and just generally having an interaction with the customer base because the customers are of a different demographic or age set we'll answer their questions individually or maybe design products to suit their needs but I think you're right you know people who love fashion love fashion so it shouldn't be tied to a number specifically in terms of age.

25:50Absolutely another question somebody has asked how are you using affiliate platforms such as LDK, Shopmy with your wider influencer and you know community strategy are you using them and how are they doing we've only just started um so i'm not sure whether we got any data in yet but it's been is it is it okay yeah i think we and i personally i use shopmine i think shopmine is great you know in terms of um as a platform um but um it's a start for us and it will help us because it is something we haven't had to do for a number of years so we do see it as a way of you know translating to sales from it yeah it's um for recent is part of our strategy and so we have an affiliate manager who kind of deals with ltk and shop my and i would say it's very um from a brand point of view the influence that with um you know have to align with our like brand values what who we are what we look like um however affiliates can flex a little bit so it can be a little bit more like you know do these people convert and doesn't have to show up on the brand platforms it can just be it can exist in their platform and serve their customers um so i think that's definitely the biggest difference that we find interesting cash i don't think we use uh either um and that might be due to the male demographic or it being less or our affiliate focus is more with uh pr but i'm gonna go and check while i get that takes us on nicely to uh another question on we briefly sort of spoke about the difference in that male demographic and how they shop um so how do male customers engage with social media content versus your female customers um and i guess how do you tailor that message as well this is predominantly you okay um well I think um yeah I feel like women are quicker to build a community um I think men uh slower and shop around but once they found a brand they love then they're in and then they're hooked and then they're like everything in my wardrobe is Percival and you'll probably see that you're like my partner just buys the same t-shirt from the same place um Mm-hmm.

28:18And yeah, I think again, wow, sorry. I think how they engage again is slower. I mean, if we post, it's not as quick for everyone to comment and engage and like and share. I think in general, men are just a bit more shy with that. And I would love for us to have more people posting and sharing and tagging us. But again, I think it's just a lot more shy and a lot less of a uh a thing that men do and i feel like a lot of everything in the male fashion world is kind of like a year or two or three behind women's wear both in style both in everything we do so hopefully that's going to come but that's again up to the brand to kind of give them the confidence to post and share and if people do post and tag us we will do our best to kind of reshare it so they know that we've seen and we'll always like everything and the team will go through and like everything so I think that's the best thing you can do is just yeah engage and use the team as much to engage but uh yeah it's definitely will take more time absolutely yeah it's very similar to be honest for Rhys um I would say that we've really nurtured our kind of brand following and it is very heavily women and so we found that using influencers and creators with really strong male audiences is actually what we see works better than you know chucking all of it on our brand channel um and i would kind of say without you know stereotyping anyone i think like male audiences look for a person whether that be a talent or an influencer and they'll actually follow like quite a lot of what they do whether that be their interest in music their interest in um home wear or or you know clothes and i think they then look to that person for everything and so i know my partner will be like oh yeah well this influencer wears the jacket i like but but also that coffee machine I want as well.

30:08And, you know, lots of different things. So I think it's a different approach to that sort of lifestyle influencer rather than someone that can just show him quickly, like the best T-shirt to wear. Yeah, absolutely. Another question, Catherine, I'm going to throw this one to you. How do you measure the effect of sort of return on investment of that community element and community programs and initiatives? I mean we try to track it through sales and obviously through ShopMiner we'll be able to track that a little bit more but it's you know it's a relatively small investment it comes just from really small gifting to influencers and we will we've started to track some some sales through our lives and I think we were able to track we recently did one in Paris and I think we tracked when we were showing things and trying things on in Paris when sign-ups were being clocked on so that's how we tend to do it and through paid search then so through paid ads we've got we work with an agency then who will measure that for us and then we'll dynamically assess which ones are working which ones aren't and there's a whole variety of different styles that we're trying to make sure that we get a return investment from our paid social.

31:33And that's been really interesting because typically what you think works on paid social, we've had our eyes really open wide, you know, because the kind of the haphazard, you know, Marielle falling off a stage, you know, will sell whatever she's wearing because people just identify with it. The amount of sales and success that we get through customers identifying with the content is is just speaks volumes that's brilliant Steph Tash would you say that differs or similar yeah I think from our point of view we we also just need to shout louder about you know the metrics that we track um and tried to prove to the business sometimes that it is you know awareness and reach and engagement that are important um and then in terms of actually measuring ROI we we've built a content engine that essentially serves paid so that essentially we can track that roi and unlock more budget to be able to create more content work with more influencers across paid and organic and i think someone up here mentioned that earlier essentially seeing it all as one big content engine for paid and organic and not siloed and that's been a really big unlock for us in the past year yeah tash um yeah i think the only thing to add to that was something that we started testing more recently was like in the description if we were introducing something new or a product with a name or a loyalty program we would then say like if you want this not link in bio but search x and then we could see the halo effect on our website and people aren't just searching for like brown coat they are searching for minnesota which is a specific coat and we know that that uplift has come through an influencer through social content and then we can track it that way so we can really see that halo and uplift um on site and through google search that's yeah really interesting we are very nearly out of time so i'm just going to go to one last question um how i guess has customer loyalty changed over the years you know customers are shopping across multiple brands um so just to bring us back to that we spoke a lot about engagement so yeah how has that loyalty evolved and how do you keep focused on building that yeah i think for us we've really seen that that shift and also just like the competitors in the market um are you know getting really close to what we what we do um so i think for us it's really making sure we've got one up all the time on our product and like product is at the heart of everything that we do making sure that um the quality is absolutely top tier and not better can't they can't get it better anywhere else um but making sure the customer knows that and they're involved in that storytelling so they are aware that the way that this has been made and the product and the materials that it's been made with is better than the competitor um and i think that that is one thing that keeps our customer with us i agree product first if you've got great product it will sell um i think that we have found that shopping behaviors have changed so recently from a store perspective you'll have customers going to store and whereas previously they would just you know buy something just in case so all of that is changing so a reason to buy the right product at the right time is absolutely critical we operate on a pre-order model a lot of the time so that we can anticipate demand and drive the volume then to meet the demand but if a product's not in stock when people want to buy it they'll go somewhere else and buy it for that occasion so having your product ready at the right time I think it leans into what you were chatting about how men buy you know they'll want it instantly so you need to have it there available and then wrap around all of the ways to wear so all of that education on ways to wear is what will keep your community with you because they'll know that if they're unsure especially our customer base they've lost their confidence they know they'll come back to us because we'll help them wear what they've bought absolutely and Tash any final words I think just reiterate what you guys have said um and obviously product is the start and end of everything but also it's that brand world that's like we keep shouting about internally but like whoever that model is whoever that influencer is the lifestyle that they're living I want to be them and like it's going to stand out on my social feed against everyone else okay that's it I'm sold I'm sold on the location of your shoot or the content or the storytelling around the quality, you know, give people what they care for and they will keep coming back.

36:07That's brilliant. We'll carry on all afternoon, but we're out of time. Thank you all so much. This podcast was brought to you by Drapers, delivering you exclusive content from Drapers Social Summit. We hope you enjoyed it and thank you to our speakers for their time and expertise. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe to have each new episode delivered directly to your device. Thank you and see you soon.