Source: Lamps Plus/YouTube
Will Amazon Live video light up sales for Lamps Plus on Prime Day?
It will be “lights, camera, action” when Lamps Plus debuts its first Amazon Live video next week as part of the retailer’s efforts to increase sales during the 48-hour Prime Day event.
Lamps Plus, which bills itself as “the nation’s largest lighting retailer,” will go live with the video on Tuesday, July 16. The 10-minute broadcast will be hosted by Jennifer Farrell, an interior designer and on-camera personality, to discuss the chain’s top selling table and floor lamps and sconces. Consumers will be able to ask and have questions answered during the event.
The retailer, which operates 37 stores in seven western states, has made extensive use of videos in the past. Last year, it created its first video ads on Amazon, leading to this year’s live event. Lamps Plus has also found success with video on other channels.
“One of our more recent initiatives focused on buying guide video content for our site and YouTube channel based on users’ questions and reviews, leading us to create different series with installation, purchasing and styling tips,” Angela Hsu, senior vice president of marketing and eCommerce for Lamps Plus, told RetailWire in an interview.
With the Prime Day event, Lamps Plus is looking to build on a successful 15-year run on Amazon’s marketplace. Success, Ms. Hsu said, will be determined based on specific metrics.
“We will look at a combination of cost per view, cost per engagement, cost of sales and reach,” she said. “We will also review the sales lift of the products we showcase on Amazon Live as well as the overall sales lift of our Lamps Plus products on Amazon.”
The retailer is a big believer in being wherever its customers are. Lamps Plus, in addition to Amazon, also sells on the eBay and Walmart marketplaces.
Broadcast details: Watch Lamps Plus at https://www.amazon.com/live at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET, July 16. The event may also be accessed through the Amazon shopping app.
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What do you think of Lamps Plus’ strategy when it comes to the use of video communications and online marketplaces? What do you see as the most important metrics (cost per view, cost per engagement, cost of sales and reach, sales lift, etc.) when it comes to assessing the success of events such as Lamp Plus’ Amazon Live video?
Poll
BrainTrust
David Weinand
Chief Customer Officer, Incisiv
Ananda Chakravarty
Vice President, Research at IDC
Some might say, hey who has time for this? But the answer is, many people do.
Look at the years of success with QVC and HSN back in the day when skeptics never thought a 24-hour TV shopping network could work. It’s true that many people don’t have time to watch a 10 minute video presentation, but they only need to watch a short time before making a decision to buy something, and for those that watch the whole video they’ll have a better chance to see and learn about products they might not have been interested in at first. So this is a win/win all around.
Lastly, the fact that it is interactive, allowing customers to ask questions and get answers takes the old QVC up several notches. I see this as something that will not only be successful but that will cause other retailers to seriously think about getting in the game.
Home goods and video just plain mix well together. Leveraging video to not only tell but show how items look in an environment is smart business. The Lamps Plus team is a group of extremely smart people and the addition of Angela a few years back added marketing muscle to the group of great operators. They may only have 37 stores but their online sales are huge and strategies like those detailed above will continue to help drive more. In terms of the campaign itself, sales lift and cost of sales/reach will be the KPIs I’d be paying the closest attention to.
Video is a powerful medium that really resonates to many consumers and provides value in their shopping quest. Lamps Plus is doing a great job at leveraging video in the places their target customers want to shop. Whether it’s Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc. they are following their customer and ensuring they make it easy to shop with them. Adding an interactive element to the Amazon video during Prime Day only increases the value for those customers. This is a win/win/win for Lamps Plus, Amazon, and shoppers. All the talk about being omnichannel from retailers really comes down to this point – have you enabled your customers to buy from you when they want, where they want, how they want? This is a resounding “yes” for Lamps Plus!
It’s tough to argue with “being where its customers are.” If Lamps Plus has a 15 year run on Amazon, then they surely have a proven track record of success with Amazon. Plus they have the opportunity to compare all their metrics with results on eBay and Walmart. My question is, what sales window will they use to measure the results? A couple days? A couple weeks? A month? At some point the costs are done and fixed. The longer the window to measure the results the lower the “costs per…” and the higher the sales. What’s appropriate in measuring the ROI of this event? Or is that even possible?
Lamps Plus gains national exposure to audiences ready to buy when they partner with online marketplaces. Their Prime Day video is akin to placing a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl – a very smart move, and making it interactive boosts the engagement quotient. Top metric has to be sales lift while realizing that this investment pays back over time and can be leveraged in many ways even in the physical store.
I think this is smart.
There are quite a few Lamps Plus stores near us and, other than for research, I have never visited them to buy things. Despite the name, I just don’t think of them when buying lighting – we’ll go to Crate & Barrel or a furnishings specialist for that as we will likely be buying other home products as well. As such, any initiative to increase visibility and brand knowledge of Lamps Plus is useful.
Fascinating and I think we will see so much more of this. Gary Vaynerchuk recently said that he wishes he had used email more in the ’90s – the point being that people opened marketing emails then. Images and video are now where email was in the ’90s.
Mediums like QVC have done very well — but there are some other outstanding users of video. One example I love is AO.com – who used video as a tool of disruption in the home appliance market – substituting in-store displays with outstanding in-use videos.
Using video and Amazon Live video are great ways to increase awareness and interest in visual products, like lighting. My only concern with having a live video event on Amazon Prime days is that it might get overshadowed by all of the other promotions competing for attention on these days.
There’s a reason the TV ad market still exceeds $100 billion. The multi sensory engagement with video exceeds anything print, radio or other mediums can provide through sound and sight. Within online marketplaces, this method is a great way to stand out when you don’t always have the buy box on the crowded Amazon market. This drives customer attention.
The cost/per metrics Lamps Plus use are fine to get started, but they really need to focus on sales lift and most importantly, longitudinal sales lift. This effort translates into more than immediate conversion, but is especially strong as a long term brand awareness play — for a regional brand looking to operate in a global marketplace. Good move on expanding their marketing horizons — including leveraging the marketplaces.
Interactive video on well-viewed channels like Amazon (where Lamps Plus has a history of success) will undoubtedly fire up key metrics pre-, during and post-sale.