Myntra aims to double its consumer engagement in 2023 through social commerce

As of today, 20% of Myntra users are exposed to social commerce through M Live and Myntra Studio on the app. The fashion e-tailer now aims to take consumer engagement up to 40% through social commerce on the app in 2023, said Arun Devanathan - Senior Director, Social Commerce at Myntra.

Increasing e-commerce penetration and consumer engagement with content gave rise to a new shopping trend: Social commerce.

Therefore, to make the most of this trend, Myntra upped its game on the social commerce front with its two important properties M-Live and Myntra Studio.

Launched in 2020, Myntra Studio is a personalised content destination on the platform that provides users with access to original, entertaining and shoppable content at scale.

Myntra launched M-Live in 2021. It’s live video streaming and a live commerce section on the app.

Since the inception of M-Live and Myntra Studio, the platform has recorded a 5X increase in traffic and 20X scale in demand, after clocking 8,000+ live video sessions.

Devanathan added that M-Live had been witnessing over 100% engagement rates, along with Myntra registering a 2X surge in the average time spent on the platform since January, while highlighting the 10 billion social impressions the platform recorded via its social commerce propositions, in a year.

Talking about various brands’ growing interest in M-Live on the platform, Devanathan said that 75% of the live sessions during the last three End of Reason Sales’ (EORS) were brand-led live. He further said that during the early phase of M-Live, brands like Libas, Roadster and Tokyo Talkies came on board to do live sessions.

Devanathan commented, “Earlier, we used to do 20-odd brand-led sessions every day. Cut to today, we are doing 40-45 brand-led sessions per day. In the last EORS, Myntra saw international and domestic brands like H&M, Puma, Lakme and Adidas participate in the live sessions.”

For M-Live and Myntra Studio, the platform onboards its Style Squad members. It is a curated group of fashion content creators and influencers, who exclusively collaborate with the marketplace and its brand partners to become the faces of its social commerce proposition.

The 17^th edition of Myntra's biannual End of Reason Sale will start today, December 9, 2022. In the run-up to the EORS, Myntra organised its first Creator Fest on December 2. It was an event celebrating and recognising the content creators in the fashion and beauty space.

“We found it the right time to bring all our creators together and have a physical event which is a celebration of the work we are doing with brands and creators. It was also the precursor to the launch of EORS,” said Devanathan.

While 2022 was all about building credibility around Myntra’s social commerce play and establishing its value among consumers, brands and influencers, the e-tailer’s focus for next year would be to scale it up further.

After the success of Style Squad, Myntra will be expanding its focus on Beauty Squad. Devanathan said, “We’ll be inducting 80+ beauty and personal care content creators in our Beauty Squad. Beyond traditional beauty content creators, we are onboarding dermatologists and makeup artists to bring expert perspectives in addition to having entertaining content.”

Devanathan told BuzzInContent that they also intend to go deeper geographically through their social commerce play. To do so, “Myntra will be bringing in a large number of regional creators who will be making content beyond English and Hindi on the platform,” he said.

Talking about why Myntra strengthened its social commerce arm, while they could have just collaborated with influencers and created videos for social media, Devanathan said, “Social media are good at social media engagement. Commerce platforms are good at helping consumers discover products and getting them delivered to their doorsteps. It is only logical and necessary for the commerce platform to capitalise on social engagement to help consumers discover products.”

He further said that while building social commerce capability is inevitable for eCommerce platforms, doing marketing activities through influencers on social media is equally important.

Devanathan then went on to speak that while it’s not viable for every individual company to build its own social commerce platform, it should definitely focus on building community, influencer ecosystem and engagement models using the platforms that exist.

He also spoke about different skill sets needed by influencers for Live Commerce and non-live social commerce. “For Live commerce, a very peppy kind of communications skill is required. It also requires the content creator to be very spontaneous to engage with the audience Live. On non-live social commerce, the content creator must have the talent of  creating beautiful imagery of the products.”

Myntra has been a huge believer in content marketing for many years now. Previously, it also conducted three seasons of ‘Myntra Fashion Superstar’ across TV and OTT with slight variations in all three seasons. 

Devanathan added, “While social commerce is very integral for us, we also collaborate with content creators on a regular basis to market our brand on social media.”

Combining social commerce and regular influencer marketing activities Myntra intends to work with close to 2,000 influencers this year. “Going forward, we will be collaborating more with non-metro and regional influencers,” said Devanathan.