Netcomm Forum 2022: live shopping & GUESS Europe’s best practices
Been there, done that
In its 17th edition, the Netcomm Forum has been confirmed as one of the most important Italian events for digital and retail marketing. This year’s edition shed some light on eCommerce and Digital Retail — focusing on networking, innovation and omnichannel. Over 21 thousand attendees registered during the two-day event (May 3rd-4th) hosted by MiCo in Milan. Despite this, one could also remotely attend the event (an apt move considering over 5,000 additional virtual attendees). No hesitation for the Radicalbit team to join such an amazing experience; indeed, we joined Netcomm Forum as Sponsor and Speaker, with our partner Global Blue and GUESS, the worldwide fashion brand. As the event focused on retail and eCommerce marketing, we took the stage with GOLIVE, our Live Shopping platform.
The event in a nutshell
We mention some take-home messages from Netcomm Forum 2022; first of all, in the online shopping market, these are the products that lead the ranking:
- Clothing (covering alone almost 46% of the market),
- Health and wellness (40.4%),
- Cosmetics and perfumes (36.6%),
- Electronics (32%)
- Accessories (31%).
Meanwhile, food & household products (37.2%) and the digital products market (travel, digital content, online services and insurance) are growing. The main changes in the Digital Retail industry concern payment methods, logistics and artificial intelligence to automate some retailing process stages. Notable mention of Gen Z as the new target for the online retailers. Gen Z has been considered the most purpose-driven generation ever, whose behaviour and values are pushing companies and experts towards innovation.
About our partner Global Blue
GOLIVE’s partner, Global Blue, is a tax-free and payments operator with long-standing experience in corporate and physical retail industries. Denise Bolandrina, Global Blue Marketing Manager states: “Covid19 has clearly confronted us with major changes, and what we have seen has unquestionably had to do with countless brands — especially in the fashion industry — that have suddenly realised a need to change their approach to physical retail. We have indeed faced this challenge ourselves by providing our expertise also through the advisory services of innovative partners such as Radicalbit, with GOLIVE.”
The state of the art of Live Shopping in 2022
According to a McKinsey research, by 2026 based on the scenario coming from Asia, Live Shopping has been established mainly in the US. Moreover, by 2026, between 10% and 20% of online transactions will start from a live stream. Therefore, the immense e-commerce market is growing by leaps and bounds; it follows that a large part of the turnover of these companies will definitely come from live video. Ecommerce on social media is nourished through marketing activities and boosts two essential aspects: brand awareness and online sales.
The success of GUESS’ Live Shopping strategy
The demand for live shopping by GUESS Europe arose during the pandemic; a historical moment when stores were closed; the need to communicate with customers and, at the same time, involving the staff became more and more imperative. At Netcomm Forum 2022, we took a workshop with Global Blue and GUESS Europe, in order to showcase the best practice and successful case with GOLIVE as a live shopping platform.
“Looking at the market, we noticed that similar solutions in Asia had a remarkable success, and this was the ideal chance for us to test a new way of speaking with our customers. Our main goal was not pushing sales, but offering an experience to make our customers feel like they would be in our physical stores” states Alessandro Puci, Guess Europe Retail Operations Manager.
“We aimed at simplifying the process as much as possible to make it expandable and applicable in different countries too. For instance, in 2022 we exported this project to 2 other countries: Germany and UK” — continues Puci. The success of this kind of event also depends on meticulously planning the details and creating a sort of “pre-packed format”. Product selection is also a fundamental aspect as it needs to be aligned with the company’s demands of product messaging.
GUESS’ secret of success
However, there’s no magical potion for success. GUESS tested a lot since their pilot period (but also afterwards) in order to find a balanced strategy between social media advertising (on Facebook and Instagram in particular), influencer marketing (as plenty of influencers have been involved for each country), local brand awareness and meticulous teamwork with the company’s eCommerce team.
Indeed, the more accurate the marketing activities are, the most satisfactory will be the results. For GUESS, the combination of newsletters & email, content & digital marketing activities and influencer marketing actions and coordination turned out to be the secret to triumph.
Here it comes GOLIVE
When talking about Live Shopping platforms, innovation is THE pivotal aspect. In a world where technology and software are constantly evolving thanks to Artificial Intelligence, GOLIVE definitely stands out.
Radicalbit’s Live Commerce platform combines Livestream shopping with artificial intelligence and real-time analytics. So, where most other tools only showcase your products, GOLIVE goes one step further and includes the tech you need to turn customer data into intelligence. With this feature, you can keep track of the following parameters of a live show:
- number of viewers;
- likes;
- messages (pin, delete, set a list of banned words);
- trendline with viewers’ interaction;
- geographical heat map;
- most clicked products;
- traffic sources with UTM tracking;
- Live Shows Score;
- most viewed and effective Live Shows;
- Live Shows Rank;
- understand the audience’s feelings through NLP (Natural Language Processing).
Secondly, GOLIVE is a white-label platform forever. This means one can customise the layout and graphics according to the brand’s identity without mentioning GOLIVE at all — nobody’s gonna know!
Finally, concerning viewers’ engagement, GOLIVE offers different features to support a brand’s strategy. For instance, you can create a live poll to show during the live event — keeping the viewers’ attention high. Subsequently, you can share the results live while broadcasting your show. Moreover, you can perform like a pro with GOLIVE’s ultimate feature: multi-camera streaming.
To have a proper overview of GOLIVE, you can take a look at the official website and — why not? Try GOLIVE for free for 30 days
Future expectations for eCommerce
According to Netcomm Forum’s research, eCommerce will exceed EUR 45.9 billion in Italy in 2022. The survey taken by Osservatorio eCommerce B2C Netcomm of Politecnico di Milano School of Management shows that online shopping is growing by +14%. Italian e-retailers have increased by 9.6 million compared to the pre-pandemic period. Moreover, Italian consumers have a digital approach to shopping and won’t proceed backwards. On the contrary, the demand for a customised shopping experience is boosting. A notable mention for the mCommerce rise; 55% of eCommerce value comes from purchases via smartphones.
Radicalbit team can’t wait to see what the future would bring for online shopping and what innovations would be developed. See you in 2023 at the next Netcomm Forum!
