MeUndies discovered a new sales channel on Black Friday: Facebook Live.
The underwear company ran a late-afternoon, two-hour event on Nov. 25 complete with a DJ and dance contests. As more people joined, MeUndies unlocked larger and larger discounts.
The Live event attracted 13,300 viewers. Those users tallied 5,998 engagements.
The Facebook Live audience opened their wallets. Users converted at a rate of 25%, 13 times the average conversion rate for MeUndies on Facebook.
Because of that success, MeUndies is already considering how it can replicate the event.
“Facebook Live is a great way to reach out to people who genuinely care about what we are doing, and something we want to continue,” said customer acquisition lead Hailey Pink, who led planning of the event.
MeUndies purposely limited the scope of its first event. It invited its 314,000 followers to the Facebook Live event. Since some of those users shared the invitation, news of the event reached 660,000 people, almost all organically.
“We wanted to give a thank you to the people who follow us, and gift them an extra bonus for being so awesome,” Pink said.
MeUndies also ran a Facebook event ad targeting people who still opened MeUndies emails but hadn’t made a purchase in more than a year. The ad buy cost $2,000 and reached about 70,000 people, half of that target group. Pink plans to optimize for reach, not cost per click, when she creates future ads so they are seen by a greater percentage of the target group.
The Live event viewership spiked 30 minutes in, and again at the hour mark. Because those peaks happened early, MeUndies will shorten future Facebook Live events to about an hour.
While some brands pre-record Facebook Live segments, MeUndies scripted out the event in advance but did the whole thing live. Since the brand normally records 20 takes of a Snapchat story, it knew how difficult it would be the deliver a polished event live.
The entire marketing and acquisitions team showed up to help. Just three people manned the comments section to respond to the flood of responses to the event.
Despite the planning, MeUndies expected some hiccups with its live broadcast.
”Facebook Live is a scary product for brands, because it’s not something where you can plan out every detail and have it go perfectly. This is live and raw,” Pink said. “We are not afraid to show our imperfections. Because we are young and small, [customers] don’t expect us to be perfect.”
While some brands like Birchbox have also experimented with Live, the field isn’t crowded yet. Pink noted that large brands may not tolerate the imperfections that come with a live broadcast and adopt a wait-and-see approach with the platform.
By experimenting with Facebook Live ahead of the pack, MeUndies hopes it can establish roots early in a high-performing channel.
Three years ago, the company started podcast advertising when few brands advertised there. Podcast ads remain its No. 1 marketing channel, and “Facebook is a close second,” Pink said.
