Salesforce Is Making It Even Easier to Create Shoppable Posts on Instagram

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By simply tagging products in photos
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Ann-Marie Alcántara | 23 January 2018

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a shoppable image on Instagram worth?

Announced at last week’s National Retail Federation conference, Salesforce Commerce Cloud revealed that retailers can now use their entire product catalog to create shoppable posts on Instagram. This includes product details like the price, name and a short description (an example of it, from Milk Makeup, is above).

The new integration is seen by many industry insiders as vital to the growth of ecommerce in a mobile-first world. As users continue to shop through their phones, reducing the steps between discovery and purchase becomes necessary. And as Instagram continues to grow as an important tool for marketers, creating opportunities to make purchases on the platform makes sense for everyone: retailer, platform and user.

“Photos posted on the platform already often contain sponsored retail products, and making them shoppable just adds another layer of convenience, which is of the utmost importance in today’s fast-paced environment,” said Pehr Luedtke, senior vice president, marketing and international at Valassis Digital.

With the new Instagram integration on Commerce Cloud, retailers, which already have their product catalog on the cloud, can simply create shoppable posts, by tagging products.

“This is an example of reducing friction [in the mobile experience],” said Rick Kenney, head of consumer insights at Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

It’s also not an entirely new concept. Shopify, the ecommerce platform, rolled out an Instagram integration as well in 2017. Merchants who use Shopify can also make any Instagram post shoppable.

However, it’s a growing trend that shows a good mobile strategy goes beyond just thinking about an app or web experience, says Maya Mikhailov, co-founder and CMO of GPShopper, a mobile commerce platform.

“Whether from brands themselves or influencers engaged by brands, retailers must utilize social media to reach shoppers not only at the inspiration stage of the consumer journey, but the point of purchase as well,” said Mikhailov. “Shoppable posts are a crucial e-commerce tactic for retailers because they provide a convenient path to purchase.”  

Kenney believes that the new feature will help consumers know more about what they’re looking at—and potentially buy it.

“We think we’re doing [this] right and what we’re able to do is bring that innovation to that retailer,” Kenney said.

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