Lisa Yeates has been a Client Partner at Facebook for the last four years and leads Facebook’s relationships with luxury brands based in the UK. Her role is to support partners with their strategy across the Facebook family of apps to help them achieve their results and deliver business outcomes.
This September, Lisa Yeates will explore the trends shaping the transformation of luxury shopping. Sharing new insights into the behaviours of luxury consumers, guests will discover the guidance for brands and advertisers as we enter a new era of luxury shopping. To find out more, Lisa spoke with us to discuss what the future holds for the sector and how the pandemic has impacted Facebook.
How have the events of the past 16 months impacted Facebook?
As a tech company we were very fortunate in that we could make the switch to remote working quickly with products like Facebook Workplace. Our main role was to help other businesses accelerate their digital transformation and ecommerce strategy. Last summer we launched Facebook Shops, a free online storefront for businesses built in the UK, and consumers can discover new brands and browse collections via Facebook and Instagram. Shops now has 300 million monthly Shops visitors and over 1.2 million monthly active Shops globally.
What do you see as the Future of British Luxury?
Technology is most certainly transforming the ways in which consumers engage and shop with luxury brands. The rise of social media, and evolving role of the in-store experience, means consumer shopping habits are both evolving and transforming the market into a more immersive experience.
I think the future looks really exciting for luxury brands, especially for the bounce back predicted for the year ahead. We can expect to see even more brands leaning into how they connect the physical and digital worlds of their consumers, with more experience led communications enabling customers to connect with brands in ways they haven’t been able to before.
What can we look forward to hearing you discuss during the Summit?
Over the past 15 years, Facebook has been building products and solutions to help businesses reach current customers, find new ones, sell products, and grow their business. During this time, shopping habits and the customer journey have fundamentally shifted. Our focus has remained on continuously evolving our shopping and commerce solutions to help people and businesses make meaningful connections. At the summit, I intend to cover some of the shifts we are seeing in luxury consumer shopping habits, as well as introduce our Discovery Commerce system, to help you better navigate how you can match people to the products they are most likely to love.
Why is your partnership with Walpole important?
Walpole has built a fantastic community of Luxury retailers in Britain. Over the years, our partnership has enabled us to better serve luxury businesses, through broadening our understanding of the industry’s challenges, so we can continuously evolve our solutions to meet these needs.
As well as sharing interviews with speakers, we revisit some of the insights and expertise shared at the 2020 Future of British Luxury Summit at The May Fair Hotel in February, before the pandemic had officially reached our shores.
"Friction poses one of the biggest threats to any business. When a customer decides they want to buy it now and do it with ease, and a brand can’t meet those expectations, then the cost is huge. A conservative estimate puts the price of friction to UK businesses at £36 billion and rising."
In this week's Flashback we revisit our session on 'Zero-Friction Retail' - as Facebook's Ciara Palmer explains why the online experience must be just as memorable as an in-store purchase in the film below.
