Loup'd In

DefineMe caught our attention early on. They signed up on a Monday, had their onboarding the next day, and went live on their website that Thursday! We recently sat down with their Marketing Coordinator, Hannah Toporoff to hear how it all came together, how it is going, and what advice she would give to someone thinking about hosting live events on their own website.

Can you tell us a little bit about DefineMe?  

Jennifer, our founder and CEO, created DefineMe back in 2015. We make clean, natural and cruelty-free fragrances. One thing that really sets us apart is our commitment to creating scents for the mind, body, and spirit. For example, Sofia Isabel is all about confidence, Audry is all about self love. Our Crystal Series is infused with crystals that match the meaning of the scent – so it is all very intentional.  

Let’s jump right into the good stuff. What advice would you give to someone who is on the fence about doing Live Events on their website?

I would say, you really can’t overthink it – you just have to do it. The more you do it, the more you are going to be comfortable with it. When we first started, I had notes in front of me and was so nervous. But today, I am able to hop on and feel more confident. Sometimes I trip over my words, but it doesn’t matter – that is what’s real, that is what people want – me and Jennifer having a real conversation, chatting with people who are tuned in. Don’t get me wrong – have a plan, but don’t psych yourself out.

Were you doing video before on a different channel?

Around Q4 in 2021 we started playing around with Instagram Lives. We would try to do those once a week or once every other week. Sometimes it would be us talking about products or sometimes we would invite an influencer we work with and chat with them.

We sort of dove head first into it! We wanted to try it after seeing other people doing them and wanted to learn what worked for us. Around that same time, we were part of the 10.10 Shopping Festival, so that is when we started playing around with live streaming as a new way to engage with our community and our customers – to chat and share our product and put a face to the brand and communicate with them in that way.

The 10.10 Shopping Festival invitation happened coincidentally with the Instagram Lives. I remember hearing people say ‘this is so big in China and it’s going to move over here and everyone is going to be doing this‘ and I am seeing that more and more with brands going live. They were right!

I haven’t seen any other fragrance brands doing this, so we really had nothing for reference before starting. That was a big obstacle at first! If you are a makeup brand, you can do a tutorial, clothing brands can show off their clothes, and people want to buy it because they can see it. You can see our perfumes in a pretty bottle, but you can’t smell it through your screen. So going through the scents and describing the notes and the meaning behind it has been effective. We talk a lot about how scent is the strongest sense connected to memory, emotion, and well being. We just get in there, talk about our products, talk with our people, and figure it out as we go.

What were the conversations and considerations leading to your launch in Q4?

It has been something we have wanted to do more of, but because we are a small team, it got away from us and kept getting put on the back burner. But we really wanted to carve out time for it because we think it can become a valuable part of our marketing strategy.

How does it fit into your overall engagement strategy?

For us, our biggest channels are SMS and email and I think Live Shopping ties into it and social as well. If we have an event coming up I will send an email to our Goddess Gang. About 10 minutes before we go live, I will send out an SMS and we give people a special offer for tuning in, so it is really great to be able to communicate with people who have signed up for the live via email and SMS.

To promote our event on social channels, we have been going live on Instagram at about 5:25pm PT and tell people we are going live on our website in 5 minutes if you want to chat with us and get access to our exclusive offer for people who tune in.

At first I was notifying people a week out, but for us, the last minute outreach has been successful. Especially with our time of day – catching people who might be sitting on their couch, scrolling through their phone – they are going to click on it right then. A lot of our traffic comes from that last minute reminder. That is the strategy to get people to tune in.

In the future we are excited to try multi-streaming to Instagram and co-hosting so we can bring some of our non-local influencers and affiliates into the conversation.  

How did you come up with the time – both in duration and in day/time of week?

For us it has been a bit of trial and error – playing around with the times to go live. Last year, when we were doing Instagram Lives, we would do them at 12:30pm PT thinking that people could watch during their lunch break and we got some good engagement! But when we decided to pick it up again this year with Loup, we were reflecting on what worked and what didn’t and thought about maybe getting more viewership later in the day – after work – when people are relaxing and scrolling.  We have been doing them as ‘Happy Hours’ at 5:30pm PT, that is a better window for people.

We picked Thursday as sort of a pre-weekend, end of the week, chill-out where you could sit down and chat with us about fragrance.

Talk us through your process as you prep for an event and decide products.

The past few Lives have been talking about holiday gifts, our new bundles, or what to buy for certain people on your holiday shopping list. We have also done ones focused on our specific collections – the first Live we did was on the Crystal Series. Giving people information about our products – beyond what they can find on the website or featuring new product bundles – is where we are focusing right now.

How has it been so far?

It has been going well so far! Every live stream we are getting more and more RSVPs. More people are learning about it and the more we do the more it grows!

Last year, when we were doing it on Instagram, we didn’t have a great way of tracking sales from those Lives. We could see if people came to our website from Instagram or Facebook but we can’t see if they came from the Live specifically. That is why I love the Analytics in Loup because I can see if they tuned in and then if they made a purchase either during or after the Live.

I love that it lives on our website. I get it – people are busy and might not be able to sit down right then and watch a 30min live, but with it being on our website, you can still access the video and read the comments and make a purchase after it is over.

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