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The success of an omnichannel strategy thanks to UGC

Heytens grew their community and improved their engagement by leveraging inspirational User Generated Content in their omnichannel strategy with Flowbox.

The Story

As an expert in tailor-made blinds and curtains, Heytens has provided their customers with window decorations for more than 50 years. The brand has a network of stores across Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland, and are involved in each stage of projects, from design to completion.

Challenge

When they noticed that their customers were posting high-quality content on their own, Heytens decided to rethink their content strategy, starting by reposting a few of their customers’ pictures on social media.

“We wanted to bring our customers closer to the brand and build a stronger community, while promoting our products. We quickly realized that our UGC was far too valuable to simply be used in one of our channels.”

Anaïs André – Digital Marketing Manager at Heytens

Heytens was looking for a tool to gather all of their content in one place to be easily able to redistribute it across their channels. Their goal was to provide more visual content to their customers on the website, but also to their resellers through the Heytens Style app, an internal sales tool. This allows them to inspire clients both in shops and at home in order to help them to build their projects.

Solution

The brand started using Flowbox in early 2019, and has been consistently developing its communication objectives ever since. Implementing User Generated Content (UGC) in their social media strategy strengthened their community and improved the customer journey.

“At Heytens, we’re always looking to inspire with visual content allowing our clients to imagine what our products will look like in their own homes.”

Anaïs André – Digital Marketing Manager at Heytens

Since Heytens revamped their social media strategy, both the amount and the quality of UGC has been continuously increasing. By using Flowbox, Heytens learned how to manage and better engage their community with content that is popular with their customers at a lower cost. Moreover, the brand has made its network of franchisees aware of the use of social networks, and in particular hashtags.

“The information goes from Heytens’ headquarters through our resellers who communicate across their own teams and then, it reaches the customer. The greatest advantage of Flowbox for Heytens is being able to centralize all of the content we need while leveraging it easily and quickly. It’s a real time saver.”

Anaïs André – Digital Marketing Manager at Heytens

Moderating new content, sending rights requests and scheduling posts using Flowbox’s publish and library tools only takes Anissa Baroudi about one hour per week.

Heytens are using UGC on both their website as well as in their app, and it’s proving to be a successful omnichannel strategy for them.

Results

Although Heytens didn’t set up a community hashtag prior to actively working with UGC, when Flowbox entered the picture, #myheytens was launched and their community is consistently growing and is more engaged than ever.

“Our objective wasn’t necessarily to increase our sales, but to inspire our customers with their own content. Our resellers have also adhered to our UGC strategy as they have created their own Instagram accounts through which they share their client’s achievements. This allows us to promote our products and services and create visibility for the stores. Everybody wins!”

Using UGC at Heytens has been and is a great opportunity for the brand, but also for their resellers, as well as the customers. With the help of Flowbox, Heytens reached their goal of leveraging inspirational content through all their channels, while also strengthening their community.