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Social Commerce Platform Overview: ShopIgniter – More Than Just “One-Off” Promotions

Without a doubt, the social web is changing the way products are discovered, bought and shared – creating new opportunities for companies to engage customers and drive revenue in places like Facebook, mobile and existing eCommerce sites.

ShopIgniter – the latest platform to be covered in our series – provides social commerce solutions that enable brands and retailers to take advantage of these opportunities. The platform allows brands to create social promotions, storefronts, and reward programs that leverage the social graph to activate customers across a wide variety of social commerce experiences.

ShopIgniter’s social commerce platform delivers a full suite of capabilities for social promotion, shopping and rewards –and analytics to measure the effectiveness.

By leveraging the platform to consistently create social commerce experiences in a way that integrates with existing processes and systems, brands and retailers are able to build valuable long-term social insight and assets.

ShopIgniter Products

Social Storefronts – allow clients to create and manage full-featured stores in Facebook and social sites. It integrates with existing eCommerce infrastructures and enable full control of products, pricing, options, categories, collections. Experiences are designed to make best use of social platform capabilities – such as in-tab product promotion and checkout directly in the Facebook stream.

Social Promotions Engine – gives brand and retail marketers the ability to target highly influential customers, promote products effectively, and reward customer referrals to build social momentum. Promotions can be integrated across Facebook, Twitter, Email and campaign websites.

Social Commerce Analytics – provide marketers and merchandisers with detailed results on their social commerce and promotion efforts, as well as insight into social customer behavior. The Social Analytics Dashboard shows high-level ROI, and the new Customer Influence Score lets clients identify their most influential brand participants.

ShopIgniter Clients

Current clients include such brands as Nike, Levi’s, CafePress, Kaenon, Birkenstock, Alima & Mountain Outfitters. Here are some screen shots representing the types of products made by ShopIgniter for brands:

Kaenon – dotcom full catalog compared to curated Facebook Shop

Kaenon

Kaenon

Nike viral promotion, using limited-quantity pre-release product and limited time availability on Facebook page.

Nike

Perrin Performance Facebook shop.

ShopIgniter Competition

ShopIgniter maintains a unique vantage point in this increasingly competitive market. At least, they think so. “We’re not aware of any competitors pursuing an enterprise-class social commerce platform similar to ShopIgniter’s,” said Kevin Tate, ShopIgniter CMO.

Historically, many brands and retailers have worked directly with advertising and interactive agencies to create “one-off” social experiences and campaigns. ShopIgniter believe that the long-term opportunity – and complexity – of social commerce will require that enterprise-class companies leverage more efficient, scalable and repeatable platforms.

Of the platforms that are emerging to help companies create and manage their social commerce experiences, we find most are focused on either a) one-off experiences like those mentioned above, or b) packaged transaction tools for smaller retailers.

ShopIgniter UVP

ShopIgniter differentiates itself in the marketplace by offering more than the “one-off” and smaller scale options mentioned above.

The company caters to brands that:

  • Are planning multiple social commerce storefronts and promotions, and want efficiency & repeatability across those efforts;
  • Are interested in building long-term social brand, product and customer assets – in a system that allows them to create marketing & merchandising advantage;
  • Want to leverage existing products, customer and fulfillment systems, which requires enterprise integration capabilities
  • Want to create unique and loyalty-building experiences between their brand and their customers.

“We find that the combination of flexibility and scalability that ShopIgniter offers is a good match for retailers and brands who are investing in Social Commerce for the long term,” said Tate.

ShopIgniter Results

A recent study of retail customers found that, after redeeming a friend-sourced deal, more than 83% would go on to become repeat customers.

“One of our clients ran a social promotion to engage and reward their key product influencers with early access to a limited edition, time-based product giveaway and saw a 6x ROI with more than 60,000 shares and double the usual Facebook impressions,” stated Tate.

Company Information

Based in Portland, Oregon, ShopIgniter was founded in 2009 by Alan Wizemann, Dan Warner and David Glover. The management team consists of:

  • Matt Compton, CEO
  • Alan Wizemann, Chief Product Officer
  • Tom O’Keefe, Chief Revenue Officer
  • Kevin Tate, Chief Marketing Officer
  • Dan Warner, Chief Technology Officer
  • Jason Glover, Creative Director
  • Brent Newton, Director of Software Engineering and
  • Steve Heikkile, Director of Operations.

The company is funded by early Amazon.com investors, Madrona Venture Group and Trinity Ventures. In May, ShopIgniter raised $8 million in Series B funding from these two investment groups.

Those interested in ShopIgniter’s products and services can find out more about ShopIgniter visiting the website. , However, the best way to reach the company is via email at info@shopigniter.com.

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1 comment
  • Many retailers are in need of out sourced companies to help them manage their social commerce needs.
    I think that a connection with facebook is of course very important but it’s not the only one. retailers need to allow their clients to share info and items from the web site to the various social commerce sites.
    similar to ShopIgniter I know that Zizio allows retailers to post group sales and daily sales on their online site plus power share buttons that allows users to share the info with their friends, which is highly beneficiary to the retail company
    https://www.facebook.com/ZizioGroupSale

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