Social platforms drive 70% of purchase decisions: Achint Setia on Myntra's Content-To-Commerce strategy 

In conversation with Social Samosa, Achint Setia, Head of Marketing and Social Commerce, Myntra gives an in-depth insight into Myntra's content to commerce strategy and how Original creator content on the app has opened the doors to experiential online shopping.

Myntra launched Myntra Studio back in 2020, propositioning it as the platform for original and exclusive content in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle. Achint Setia, Head of Marketing and Social Commerce, Myntra shares how their video platform is leveraging fashiontainment content to take online shopping to the next level, especially for the GenZ.

Since the platform's launch, the brand has released an array of original shows featuring celebrities and creators, organizes daily live sessions, and has introduced shoppable content. Myntra’s investment in influencer-led content is 3X-4X of what it was in 2019.

Setia gives Social Samosa an understanding of how the brand's content to commerce funnel functions.

Edited Excerpts:

When Myntra studio was first launched, the brand shared that exclusive content on it will enable Myntra to transform from a shopping app to a habit app – how successful has the brand been in achieving this?

Myntra Studio provides our users with access to 20,000+ original, inspirational, and shoppable fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content assets at scale. It has helped establish Myntra as a frontrunner in content-led commerce and helped bridge the gap between inspiration and commerce. Our Live-streaming commerce traffic has grown by 5X+ and orders by 10X+ in the last 6 months. We have witnessed a growth of 10X in content-led commerce in Studio as well. 

Some of our top brands have communities 2-3 times larger on Studio as compared to other similar influencer-led platforms. They even have a 3 to 4 times higher engagement when compared to similar content-driven platforms. With Myntra Studio, Myntra has become one of the early e-commerce movers to solidify its positioning in driving a content-led approach, strengthening its fashion proposition and consumer engagement. 

What kind of content consumption patterns have you seen on Myntra Studio in the last few months?

Myntra Studio gives our patrons personalized access to original content led by their favourite influencers. e. Currently, M-Live holds 600-700 live sessions every month, we have 20000+ content assets on fashion and beauty tips, hacks, celeb watch, trend decoding, and original fashiontainment shows. For brands, Myntra’s Studio and Live ensure popular influencers and experts help in establishing more meaningful connections with one of the largest communities of fashion-forward customers by enabling them to offer real-time and on-demand demonstration of features and other aspects while creating visibility for brands in an otherwise crowded environment. 

We made some substantial strides especially with our live sessions on Beauty and Personal Care as more and more shoppers base their purchase decisions based on the authenticity of the product, organic ingredients used, and reviews from trusted sources.

Shoppable content is also popular among social media savvy and fashion conscious patrons as they immediately get to purchase the item recommended by their favorite influencer. 

Also Read: Social commerce expected to reach $1.2 trillion globally by 2025: Accenture Data

Myntra’s investment in influencer-led content is 3X-4X of what it was in 2019. How often does content translate into commerce? How much percent of your total transactions are derived from the content on Myntra’s Studio?

The biggest strength of M-Live is that it's the nearest to an expert-assisted offline shopping experience that is fully experienced online. The core benefit is the users’ ability to get interactive descriptions of products independently curated by experts they can trust and identify with while getting instant advice on various aspects like styling, fitment, product quality, and material. With several concurrent users joining the live sessions, it also gives users the opportunity to shop as a community and benefit from the community’s knowledge, observations, questions, and comments, enabling a more confident shopping decision that is backed by social validation. 

This format of shopping has been a big hit with our shoppers, especially, the social media savvy and fashion-conscious cohorts.

With more than 600 - 700 live sessions every month, M Live has seen a 5X growth in traffic in the last 5 months and our orders have gone up by 10X in the last six months. 

The brand has time and again spoken about influencer-led commerce – how exactly would you define influencer-led commerce for our readers? How has it performed on the app? And what are your plans of expansion for the same?

Influencer-led commerce, as the term suggests, is all about having influencers or key opinion leaders as the trusted source between brands and their customers. They, therefore, play an important role in the purchase decision of shoppers by engaging in two-way communication with their audience.

Social platforms drive 70% of purchase decisions for consumers, especially for those who are fashion-forward, such as Gen Z, which is a cohort that is significantly skewed towards content viewing, takes inspiration from social media and undertakes trust-based shopping. 

The influencer ecosystem in India has begun to significantly scale up, with new digital content-first creators having roughly grown from 2 lakhs to 20 lakhs over a period of 12-18 months. Myntra Studio currently engages 20% of Myntra’s monthly active user base and we expect this to grow to 50% in the next 3-4 years. We have integrated content across the Myntra commerce journey to drive contextualized inspiration (eg. influencer-led content on product pages, list pages, my orders pages, etc.) which have led to an improvement in the conversion funnel and user repeat rates.

We work on a commission-based model, where the influencers get paid a percentage for every purchase, giving creators easier monetization of their work and an incentive to constantly improve.

Long-term influencer marketing is said to have more benefits as opposed to one-off posts. Has creating a community of influencers helped you create better results? Influencer marketing v/s community marketing – what works best for Myntra?

Long-term influencer marketing certainly offers more benefits as opposed to isolated bursts of communication. Customer engagement is a continuous process and requires long-term commitment to build meaningful relationships. Creating a community helps in higher frequency and quality of engagement with customers. It is a mix of both, influencer and community marketing, depending on the ask of the brand in question, that helps strengthen its bond with customers. Video and influencer-led commerce is expected to grow to $8 Billion by 2025 and fashion and beauty is expected to demand the lion’s share of this market at 50-60% as per industry estimates.

Also Read: Sale Promotion Strategy: Role of social media in the Myntra EORS 14 rollout

What are your plans for Myntra Studio for 2022?

Consumers are increasingly relying on live commerce for seeking shopping inspiration and we intend to optimize their experience, leveraging our keen context expertise in the field of fashion, beauty and lifestyle. We are aiming to launch new and exciting live commerce content formats, including step-by-step beauty tutorials. We will also work on curations from top global and Indian brands to enable our shoppers to make informed fashion and beauty purchases tailored to their preferences. To keep content interesting and fresh, we are exploring exciting content in partnership with popular media houses. 

What is your objective from the creator economy in 2022?

Live commerce is making way for the creator economy phenomenon and is the future of shopping. Without live commerce, creators’ main sources of income are limited to platform fees as well as brand endorsements. Live commerce would enable creators to build a highly engaged trend-loving follower base and also create meaningful monetisation opportunities for themselves by partaking in the sales outcomes and creating measurable business impact. 

Myntra is investing in grassroots-level development of the creator economy. More than 50% of our top creators are those we have discovered through various talent hunt engagements over the last 3 years. On Myntra, they would also get the opportunity to partner with leading Indian and global lifestyle brands.  It will propel the rise of a different segment of creators who are relatable, engaging and confident sellers.