L2 awards Yves Rocher with Russia digital 'genius' status
Russia remains the only BRIC country where the luxury market contracted 7% in 2014, and instead of further saturating Moscow and St. Petersburg with costly additional storefronts, luxury brands have turned to digitally catering to the domestic Russian consumer.
Among 16 brands maintaining dual presence across Facebook and Russian social networking site VK; the latter community is larger than Facebook’s by 2.3 times. However, this number was skewed by three brands mirroring posts across the platforms - Faberlic, Vichy, and Yves Rocher, having attracted over 100,000 followers.
"Yves Rocher is the only non-Russian brand to demonstrate the reverse trend. It gained 35% more interactions on the observed posts published on VK vs. Facebook," the firm's analysts reported.
'Genius' status for digital efforts
Yves Rocher’s interaction rate was found to be consistent across the platforms, despite a significantly larger community on VK compared to Facebook (145,500 vs. 39,700).
In fact, seven out of 12 brands have larger audiences on Facebook, 2,000 more than VK. When comparing identical posts on two platforms, brands enjoy higher traction on Facebook, getting 1.2 times more interactions per post than on VK and twice the relative engagement to their community size.
Email marketing a winner
According to market researcher L2; 35% of Russian internet users report that they discover new brands or learn about product launches through email newsletters.
The majority (72%) of brands surveyed provide consumers with the option to subscribe to a newsletter (either directly or via account creation), but only half (52%) sent any 48% marketing correspondence within two months of initial sign-up.
L’occitane en Provence, Clarins, and Armani effectively drive 38% consumers from the inbox to the shopping cart by featuring time 31% sensitive offers as well as “buy” buttons linking to specific product pages.
14% among brands participating in email marketing, 31% still fail to localize content. Many of these brands demonstrate an awareness of their subscriber base, but an inability to escape a “one size fits all” approach. For example, Kenzo asks users for their country or origin during initial email sign-up on the brand’s global 'Buy Now Buttons'.
