The Estée Edit features stories about beauty, style, iconic Estée Lauder models, and even baking; adding in references to brand heritage and product recommendations, and a ‘shop the story’ collection at the end of each post recommends relevant brand products.
The initiative differs from other brand content in that it resembles a magazine with post in beauty and non-beauty industries.
User generated content
One of the blog’s innovative features is video reviews, hosted in the ‘shop the story’ section. Visitors can post a link to a video reviewing an Estée Lauder product and users can give feedback by rating it as helpful or not helpful.
According to L2 ThinkTank, reviews are becoming an essential component of brand sites, as 79% of consumers trust them as much as a personal recommendation.
L2’s Digital IQ Index: Beauty, finds that 85% of Beauty brands feature reviews on their site, more than any other site investment.
It seems that user-generated content is becoming more prominent for many brands, not just at Estée Lauder, as they are going through it and featuring the best ones on their sites.
“Given that they combine two of the most trending site features, these Estée Lauder pages could be grounds for budding vloggers,” says L2.
Partnerships
Blogger and celebrity social media partnerships are nothing new to Estée Lauder having previously handed over the blog to model Joan Smalls for three days in December, and saw a spike in engagement rate and followers.
Even though the number of followers declined slightly after the partnership ended, engagement rates remained at their highest level.
In 2012, Estée Lauder also enlisted lifestyle blogger Emily Schuman of Cupcakes & Cashmere to curate shoppable posts titled ‘Emily’s Picks.’
L2 says that these social collaborations have paid off. Estée Lauder has the fourth largest e-commerce presence in the US, UK, France, and China combined (after Bobbi Brown, Clarins and Clinique) among Beauty brands in L2’s Digital IQ Index.
“If The Estée Edit becomes a destination for original content, Estée Lauder’s digital footprint could become even stronger,” it ends.