How Andrew Martin benefits from UGC | Case study

This case study explores Andrew Martin’s implementation of user generated content (UGC) marketing within e-commerce using the Flowbox platform for managing UGC.

Andrew Martin, a UK-based furniture brand, has implemented UGC for the main use of increasing engagement in an authentic and inspirational way. They have included live flows in their home, community, category and product pages. Additionally, they have included a UGC flow in their email campaigns to keep their audience engaged with their products.

Their UGC management through the Flowbox UGC Platform has helped them reach an increase in uplifts within a year. This is a 49% rise in the probability of a visitor completing a purchase after clicking on Flowbox content compared to a visitor who has only viewed Flowbox content. proving the positive impact of Social Proof on the buying behaviour of a website visitor.

The brand also saw a 280% increase in the Average Order Value Uplift in a year which indicates the average amount spent each time a customer places an order (assisted by Flowbox). This metric shows how much the value of orders has increased after interacting with Flowbox content.

The Numbers

The Story

Andrew Martin is a UK-based International furniture and Interior design brand founded in 1978. The company offers high-quality furniture paired with experienced and inspired interior design/designers who build on the full experience that furniture can create in the most stylish ways without veering away from quality.

You can find their showroom in London but they have global influence, allowing their products to be available to a large audience. Andrew Martin has been successful from the start, building a vast number of loyal clients over the years. This is due to their unique design philosophy and eclectic, global-inspired aesthetic that appealed to diverse tastes, remained timeless and stood out in a competitive market.

As described on their website, «Andrew Martin International is the go-to place for tastemakers in search of individual interiors with a twist. The brand aesthetic draws inspiration from a kaleidoscope combination of cultures and eras. Its ideology is to surprise, stimulate and entertain; it aims to bring its multilayered, multicultural, easy living style to everybody who likes it.»

Their curated, innovative collections captured the attention of the design world elevating the brand’s status. A major catalyst for the brand’s early success was the creation of the Andrew Martin International Interior Design Review.

This annual publication, often called the “Oscars of the Interior Design World,” showcased outstanding work from designers globally, giving the brand cultural significance and influence.

The Challenge

Unlike other products, furniture is difficult to imagine when shopping for it. The sizes and disposition of furniture in the customers’ homes can be tricky, especially if they are not professionals on the matter. They never look as good, as when featured in the designed photoshoot, away from the right lights and design combinations.

Andrew Martin acknowledged that one of the main difficulties for them was displaying content in a more authentic, reliable and cost-effective way to create an easy, time-efficient and satisfying shopping experience for their customers. Professional content in the furniture industry is quite expensive and problematic compared to the cost of managing user generated content.

“When we do our photo shoots, they do look quite staged. They don’t always look like someone lives there. It’s all very neat. It’s very polished. But when you see UGC, you can see that they’re actually in the room and lived in. I think, for furniture, it works particularly well for that reason”

Gary Evans – Chief Marketing Officer at Andrew Martin

They felt their professional content, although more professional and of higher quality, created a detachment between their products and customer experience. They needed a way to include happy and new customers with their social media presence, which would also lead to more conversions.

In addition, they knew that providing relatable content about their products to their users was effective for converting them and that a well-known international company such as Andrew Martin would greatly benefit from UGC.

Due to their unique designs and the Andrew Martin Interior Designer of the Year Award, the brand was already prestigious in the luxury furniture industry. Despite their influence, they wanted to create a seamless shopping journey for their customers to create an even more loyal customer base.

This is where UGC came in as the perfect marketing strategy. By prioritising content generated by users instead of complex and expensive content, such as professional photoshoots, Andrew Martin could leverage the fact of being a big and well-named brand within the furniture and interior design industry.

However, manually managing user generated content -collection, moderation, distribution, etc.- was inefficient. They required a UGC platform and decided to choose Flowbox as their partner.

The Solution

Andrew Martin started to collect their UGC through the Flowbox UGC Platform in 2022. They managed to merge their infamous event with the use of UGC to showcase products and connect with designers. Creating a community of trusting consumers as well as a community of loyal interior designers; which could give their products a professional use, with a higher budget and motivation to create high-quality content.

By collaborating with interior designers, who create content around their brand when using the featured products, they get a lot of high-quality user generated content that they manage through Flowbox.

“The interior designers are buying furniture and fabric for their clients’ projects, and they want to be featured on our website. Within the interior design world, we’re extremely well known. Our Interior Design Awards are a bit like the global Oscars for interior design, so it’s a very prestigious site if you’re an interior designer”

Gary Evans – Chief Marketing Officer at Andrew Martin

Their reward system of giving rising interior designs a mention and highlighting their content within their website, and their Awards event, has allowed interior designers to receive recognition and influence. Simultaneously, they created content for their portfolio and Andrew Martin with the bonus of highlighting the product.

Key features of the platform utilised by Andrew Martin

The company uses #myandrewmartin and photo tags as sources of collection. They have integrated UGC flows into their website – homepage, community, category, and product pages. These flows add a realistic feature to their website while connecting users.

“A main benefit of Flowbox UGC flows is that you can get a higher engagement rate than our staged photo shoots”

Gary Evans – Chief Marketing Officer at Andrew Martin

The brand has also been leveraging the power of UGC in paid advertising to increase the authenticity of the brand in an inorganic marketing method.

“When we use UGC in our paid advertising, we get a higher click-through rate versus our fancy little lifestyle shots. I think a lot of that is down to the authenticity of it. It looks real; it looks like people who use this product in their real homes”

Gary Evans – Chief Marketing Officer at Andrew Martin

Another Flowbox benefit Andrew Martin uses is the possibility to collect and distribute user generated content through their social media channels.

“With our organic social, we tend to get a better response from UGC than we do from some of our professional content. We share a lot of our behind-the-scenes when we do reels for our showrooms or we’ll do behind-the-scenes at a photo shoot or our factory. That tends to be well, but UGC generally have a higher engagement rate”

Gary Evans – Chief Marketing Officer at Andrew Martin

Overall, their integrated UGC got them higher engagement within their organic socials and their paid advertising.

The Flowbox Experience