Bemz sees $1.65 million in new revenue from social commerce tools

Bemz is all about personalization. The brand specializes in creating made to order, high quality covers for IKEA furniture so people can update their sofas, chairs and other items of furniture in their home to better reflect their personal style.

In early 2020, Bemz realized its site was lacking user-generated content (UGC). Because all of its products are customized and made-to-order, there’s about 60,000 total products customers can buy from Bemz. With that many SKUs, there’s no way the company can photograph every product. It needed a better solution for adding customer-generated images to all of its marketing channels—which is why Bemz decided to partner with Bazaarvoice.

“Customers are always requesting to actually see what the product looks like in a real living room setting, and UGC is really useful to illustrate what our covers look like in peoples’ homes,” said Annie Karlsson, Chief Commercial Officer at Bemz.

Influencers + real customers = big results

Today, Bemz relies on Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce tools to showcase products in more natural settings across web, social, and email channels.

“For populating product pages specifically with UGC, Bazaarvoice has made a really big difference,” said Karlsson.

On social media, Bemz uses a mix of branded imagery and UGC. It’s found that followers typically engage much more with the customer imagery over the professionally styled photoshoots. The brand also works with several influencers to create imagery for social channels, which is a key part of its marketing strategy. Bemz continuously collects evergreen content from influencers, and this new content is integrated into marketing programs using the Bazaarvoice platform.

Because Bemz is such a small company, it mostly works with a core group of influencers who match the brand’s aesthetic. That way, Bemz can continue to post the influencer images for weeks or even months to get more out of the partnership.

Rather than use influencers who are big names in interior design, the brand relies on regular people with large followings who already own an Ikea product to build trust among customers.

“​​We’re not another brand that just pays people to have products in their home. It’s people that have the sofa or chair already,” said Karlsson.

Bazaarvoice allows Bemz to collect all of this influencer and customer content and instantly populate galleries on product detail pages so shoppers can see what each SKU looks like in a real person’s house.

“The Galleries have been a really, really good solution for us, and we’re currently looking at ways to make them even more visible for the customer on the product pages,” said Karlsson.

A 72%+ increase in revenue in one year

In the past year, Bemz has seen $1.65 million in revenue that can be attributed to on-site use of social and click-throughs—a 72.56% increase from the year before.

Because of thumb-stopping UGC on social channels, the brand has also seen click-through rates on social platforms increase by 41%.

“UGC on social media has been really important for business growth,” said Karlsson.

Adding UGC galleries to product detail pages on the website has also produced some significant results for Bemz. Galleries has contributed to a 270% lift in time on site, a 290% lift in conversion rate, and a 34% increase in average order value.

Because the Bazaarvoice platform allows Bemz to measure the impact of UGC on social media from top to bottom of the funnel for the first time ever, the brand has seen how valuable this initiative is for the company, and is increasing its investment in social.

“Now that we can see how well people are reacting to the imagery, it’s built a case for us internally and proves that we should be putting more money toward creating more content surrounding our products in natural settings,” said Karlsson.

Bemz hopes to continue to work with Bazaarvoice to find ways to make UGC even more visible during the user journey across its website.

“Bazaarvoice’s platform is a comprehensive tool for many different members of our marketing team to work in, and it’s very easy to use,” said Karlsson. “Working with the Bazaarvoice team has been very good, and if we ever need help with anything, we can reach out and immediately get that support.”

Learn more about how Bazaarvoice Social Commerce tools can help your brand delight shoppers and create a better customer journey across every channel. Or request a demo here.