Background
Natori is a 45-year-old design house with East-meets-West collections across a number of different categories. To support the family business’s vision of creating products and experiences that enhance women’s lives and make them feel important, fashionable, and good about themselves, the company has prioritized giving to help empower and educate women, fight against racism, and stand against structural inequality around the world — all powered by their “Natori Gives” initiative.
Opportunity
Natori wanted a way to create a bigger impact and involve their customers in their charitable efforts, so they partnered with ShoppingGives to elevate their existing social impact strategy. Through their partnership with ShoppingGives, Natori is able to create flexible giving campaigns to support not only the causes that are important to their brand, but to also adapt and support causes as they arise in real time.
Strategy
Supporting Causes as They Arise in Real Time
When the Australian Bushfires arose, Natori donated 50% to the Friends of the Australian Bush Heritage Fund to provide aid towards the relief efforts. For GivingTuesday in 2020, they donated 10% towards Covid-19 relief causes like Feeding America and the United Nations Foundation, and during the Stop Asian Hate Movement, Natori donated 100% of all weekend proceeds to Stop AAPI Hate. On GivingTuesday alone, Natori was able to generate enough funds towards Feeding America to provide over 1,900 meals to families in need.
As a company who is rooted in impact, Natori is always quick to shift their social impact efforts to support the causes that are in most need. They also empower their customers to get involved with their giving efforts by enabling them to search and select a cause of their choice. By enabling their customers to support the causes that mean the most to them, Natori is able to create more engaging and meaningful interactions with their customers.
In support of their giving initiatives, Natori consistently integrates social impact in their marketing strategies to better engage their customers and keep them up-to-date on their latest social impact initiatives. Whether it be a social media post or through a hero banner on their website, Natori always informs their customers of their latest giving activation and encourages their customers to get involved by either supporting one of Natori's set featured causes or to search and select a cause of their own choice.
To honor Betty White on what would have been her 100th birthday and to commemorate the iconic figure and her achievements, Natori made an announcement on Instagram to share that they were committed to donating 5% on all orders that were placed that day to nonprofit organizations in honor of Betty White. These organizations included the Los Angeles Zoo, American Humane, Guide Dogs for the Blind, and BraveHearts.
Outcomes
On this post, Natori saw an increase in post reach and an increase in post likes compared to their average Instagram posts.
65%
Increase in Post Reach
113%
Increase in Post Likes
GivingTuesday Email Campaign
For GivingTuesday 2021, Natori sent an email to their customers to inform them that Natori would be donating 20% of every order made on GivingTuesday to the cause of the customers’ choice.
Within this email, Natori created unique links for their four featured causes that when clicked, would take the customer directly to Natori’s website with that specific cause pre-loaded into the donation widget to be supported on the purchase. From the email, Natori also informed their customers that they could choose to search and select a different cause to support with their purchase instead of supporting one of the four featured causes as well.
Outcomes
After sending the GivingTuesday email, Natori saw a significant increase in revenue from the GivingTuesday email compared to other emails that were sent during the same time period.
2,500x
Growth in Revenue
Impact-Focused Paid Ad Campaign
Natori took their impact efforts even further by creating an impact-focused paid ad campaign to test how impact messaging performs against their traditional paid advertising efforts. In testing this campaign, Natori wanted to see if impact-focused messaging in paid advertising efforts resulted in higher click through rate (CTR) and return on ad spend (ROAS) when compared to their general paid ad campaigns that focused on products or sales. In the impact-focused ads, Natori informed their customers of their partnership with ShoppingGives and highlighted the fact that every purchase they make can have a positive impact for a cause of their choice.
Outcomes
After running the impact-focused ad campaign, Natori discovered that the impact-focused campaign far outperformed their general ad campaigns and resulted in a higher conversion rate, CTR, and ROAS.
2.5%
Increase in CTR
109.8%
Increase in Conversion Rate
136.5%
Increase in ROAS
Natori has historically integrated corporate social responsibility throughout their brand and with the rise of conscious consumerism, Natori was able to utilize impact-focused advertising to create authentic synergy between their brand values and the values of conscious consumers. In aligning with their customers’ values, Natori was able to see that the impact-focused ad campaign outperformed their traditional product focused campaigns. A recent study shows that nearly 60% of consumers in the U.S., along with nearly 75% of younger age groups, said they want businesses to be vocal about important issues. This means that these younger consumers are seeking value-alignment in the brands that they choose to support and will continue to choose purpose-driven brands, even despite previous brand loyalty to another brand.
After the year of 2020, consumer expectations for brands to get involved with corporate social responsibility (CSR) shifted and consumers are more critical than ever before of a brand’s impact on communities. Consumers want to know what brands are doing to make social change, and this goes beyond donating dollars. They want to see brands getting more involved with doing good and integrating social impact through their entire brand.
Looking ahead, consumers are going to continue to pay attention to a brand’s CSR efforts and will continue to choose brands who engage in authentic social impact. Brands like Natori who integrate social impact throughout their customer journey will continue to attract conscious consumers through authentic value-alignment. As the competition between eCommerce brands expands, engaging in social impact can be the differentiator for conscious consumers.
“The company and my family have always tried to be as charitable as possible with our time and resources, but we never felt the need to discuss our initiatives. As customers came to demand more transparency and accountability, we knew we had to adjust course. Working with Shopping Gives has helped us organize, facilitate, and communicate our charitable efforts. We have been thrilled to be able to more easily give, and to see how positively our customers have responded.” - Ken Natori, President at The Natori Company