Data from top US retailers has the revealed to what extent influencers are responsible for boosting online sales.
Digital intelligence platform SimilarWeb reports that 74 per cent of Nordstrom's mobile web traffic for the month of August came from a referral channel, with influencer network RewardStyle accounting for 79 per cent of those referrals. Put simply, that equals four out of every five of Nordstrom's mobile web visits.
RewardStyle's 20,000 strong network is also responsible for 34 per cent of Revolve's referral traffic, 30.83 per cent of Net-a-porter's, 24 per cent of Shopbop's and 21.94 per cent of Sephora's US site.
In an interview with WWD earlier this week, SimilarWeb senior director of marketing insights Gitit Greenberg said it was "interesting" that RewardStyle is dominating such a large percentage of referral traffic to these websites, but that she's not at all surprised. She commented that leveraging the power of influencers is crucial to brands' and retailers' digital strategies today.
“This shows that people that are actually clicking on a link have a high buying intent because they saw a recommendation that they trust. It’s going to be a source that the consumer trusts. [Consumers think], ‘If I read this blog by this person I trust or I go to the site I know offers the best deals — I have trust.’ It’s like word of mouth,” Greenberg said.
RewardStyle co-founder Amber Venz Box also told WWD that the numbers (mentioned above) came as a huge surprise to her. After founding RewardStyle with her husband Baxter Box in 2011, with the goal of monetizing her own blog, the company is now on track to propel over $US1 billion in sales by the end of 2017.
"As physical stores are struggling, marketers are being pressed very hard to get provable, positive ROI on digital spend. It is more rationalised than ever before so marketers are looking at casting and tracking based on data. Venz Box explained to WWD. "Brands come to us for rationalisation, and brand spend from 2015 to 2016 was up 300 percent year over year with us.”
