The building blocks of social commerce

Send the Trend founders

Send the Trend is a great example of a ground-up social commerce company.  In a video interview with Entrepreneur Magazine, CEO Divya Gugnani explains the company’s core DNA:

Curated content

Like Fab.com or Gilt Group, Send the Trend takes on the role of fashion curator by constantly editorializing their product mix.    Visitors who come to the site expect a level of fashion quality, just as they would from any trusted luxury brand.  Consumers depend on Send the Trend’s fashion expertise and contribute their own style by creating their own MyStyle page.

Social by design

The brand experience is based on the way fashion shoppers inherently search, browse, and share great fashion finds, ie social by design.   The curating and sharing environment created among like-minded shoppers generates a community ecosystem.

Send the Trend already has a strong social media presence with nearly 250,000 Facebook fans and 12,000 Twitter fans.  Additionally, they use Youtube to publish rich content, Pinterest for first-view photos, and Tumblr for an inside peek at the company itself.

Social incentives

For starters, Send the Trend uses a classic “tell a friend” marketing technique.    Users are asked to invite a friend with $10 cash credit.   When that sendee purchases, the sender gets $10 credit.

Like Polyvore or Pinterest, users can collect items and place them in their virtual, hosted collection.  The user is then asked to promote their MyStyle page.  They earn a commission when someone registers on the site or purchases via their MyStyle page.

Additionally, users are literally given store credit when they share Send the Trend items on Facebook or Twitter.   Users become brand advocates just by sharing their favorite items with their network.  The social insight here that fashion-find sharing feels nature because shoppers have always behaved this way, even before social media.   Send the Trend community members are proud of their finds and happy to share them among their fashionista friends.

Geo targeting + personalization

In addition to product curation and incentives to share, the Send the Trend website detects your location and services geo-specific recommendations, like sweaters for visitors from the Midwest and sunglasses for visitors from California.     Together the combination creates a more personalized browsing experience.

Focus on sales

Lastly, Gugnani emphasizes the importance of sales in every faction of the business.  Remember that your brand and all your shopping features are built to sell.  The entire social commerce flow needs to optimize the shopping experience.  The entire brand experience, including all the social building blocks, is a finely tuned, guided sales experience.