How Clarks converted likes to sales through influencers in Singapore and Malaysia

While influencer marketing ROI is notoriously hard to measure, British footwear brand Clarks may have found some success in this area.

Speaking at eTail Asia 2024 in Singapore, Annabelle Lin, Clarks director of marketing for Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, said the push came from stakeholders of the 199-year-old heritage company.

“We would get this question from our stakeholders: ‘Can we convert the likes from all the different posts into sales?’”

Lin shared four metrics, including that of sales conversion, used by her team to measure the effectiveness of an influencer campaign

• Engagement rate: This refers to the level of interaction that the influencer has with audiences and takes the form of likes, shares, saves and friend mentions. Line said higher interaction means the influencer is resonating with the audience. “With every campaign that we do, we make sure we have a hashtag to monitor user-generated content on Instagram or Facebook."

• Brand mentions: The frequency and context of brand mentions based on the campaign hashtag and UGC from the influencer collaboration are tracked on the social platform.

• Website traffic: Website visit changes attributed to the influencer campaign are tracked with a web analytics tool (Clarks uses Google Analytics). “This is a good indicator of how effective the influencer is at driving lots of interest and curiosity about the brand.”

• Sales conversion: Here, the influencer is given a unique UTM link to the brand.com, which they can then include in Instagram stories. “Sometimes, we also provide a code so that we can give additional perks to their followers, driving more direct conversion.”

She said these metrics have allowed the team to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of its influencer marketing efforts.

From many influencers to one

Determining sales conversion from influencer campaigns has not always been easy for Clarks as it was “difficult to pinpoint" the effects to the efforts of any one influencer, since its campaigns were typically done with many influencers at the same time.

This became the impetus behind the team’s decision to pivot with a "radical” change in its influencer marketing approach in 2020, at the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Part 1: Testing the waters with mini campaigns

Breaking away from the past approach of running "more generic campaigns” with a group of influencers, Lin's team focused on working with just one influencer, Singapore-based fashion personality and content creator Drea Chong, on a series of mini campaigns.

Two Instagram posts and six Instagram stories strategically appeared over three months on Drea Chong’s Instagram account to introduce Clarks shoes to her followers in a gradual manner.

"In March, she posted a set of shoes but in August, it was a teaser of the sandals. So in October, when we finally relaunched these sandals, we provided a UTM link for her followers to click to purchase."

Source: Drea Chong, Instagram

Taking a lean approach to working with just one influencer allowed the team to measure campaign effectiveness with ease, right down to sales conversion.

“We could track the traffic peaks every time she posted, with or without a link.”

Part 2: Going full steam thereafter

Clarks is now in its fourth year of working with Drea Chong and in April 2024, it launched a new Summer Freedom campaign featuring a Chong-curated selection of 11 SKUs from the brand’s SS24 summer collection.

Lin said, "We had the trial project (in 2020) to make sure that everything works. That set the stage for me to convince my global team that this may be something very different from what's been done but we want to try it and it will be successful for us.”

She also reflected on how Chong’s involvement as a curator meant a much shorter project turnaround time compared to co-designing new Clarks products.

“For her (Chong) to design, the project would take two years.”

Source: Drea Chong, Instagram

The 2024 campaign had a 360-degree roll-out including strong visibility on the clarks.sg e-store landing page and in-store visuals, PR seeding, a meet-and-greet fan event at Clarks’ ION Orchard store, as well as digital (social ads and EDMs) for wider reach. Chong also posted about Clarks on Instagram through reels, stories and posts with product links.

The results have been promising with the effort garnering “a nice PR value” of US$227,000 in just the first two weeks of the campaign launch.

But Lin said sales were more important – a 93% sales increase was observed on the event day, compared to average Saturday sales at the ION Orchard store. Overall sales also rose by 200% versus the previous week and a 31% spike in web traffic to clarks.sg versus the previous week was also observed.

Part 3: Same experiment, different market

This experiment was replicated in the Malaysian market, where Clarks worked with celebrity actress Zahirah MacWilson for its 2024 Ramadan influencer campaign, with slight tweaks to the formula.

“Because Ramadan is really a lot about family, we worked with Zahirah and her husband Aiman (Hakim Ridza) together with her young son (instead of only Zahirah). We had a family campaign themed around the season."

MacWilson was chosen as she had “credibility” as a fashion icon among many Malaysians.

Also drawing on Clarks’ SS24 collection, MacWilson and her family curated a selection of 13 SKUs across women’s, men’s and children’s footwear. Similar to Clarks’ Singapore campaign with Drea Chong, the Malaysia campaign also had a 360-degree roll-out, including a March 2024 launch event that took place at the Clarks store in TRX, Kuala Lumpur.

Source: Zahirah MacWilson, Instagram

As with the Drea Chong campaign, this effort saw encouraging payoff. Sales increased by 185% compared to the previous year and the number of Clarks Malaysia member signups grew by 26%, while web traffic also saw an 84% increase during the campaign period.

"There was also an IG highlight story she (MacWilson) had on her IG grid that got us thousands and thousands of new users. Every time she posted, we would get a spike (in web traffic).”

Influencer marketing has caveats but the opportunity is real

While none of Clarks’ influencers have been dogged by scandals or controversy, Lin admitted to worrying about this as it would "really impact the brand”.

"This has not happened (to Clarks). But if it did, we would have to remove all the posts and everything from the campaign. Everything would fall flat. So that's really a big risk and also a challenge.”

In conclusion, Lin said converting likes to sales is a real possibility with influencer marketing.

"If you work with the correct influencer who can resonate with your work and amplify content on the correct social platforms that works for your brand, it is possible to effectively convert likes to sales, at least for Clarks.”

She adds that “younger brands” would probably find it “easier to adopt” influencer marketing.

“Clarks is a brand that most people think is more mature, so it is actually more challenging for us to engage and to convert this way with the influencer campaigns we have done.”