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Macala Wright Lee is the publisher of FashionablyMarketing.Me. Wright Lee is a retail consultant who specializes in marketing consulting for fashion, luxury and beauty brands. You can follower her on Twitter at @FashMarketing.

Facebook commerce is the topic at the front of every brand marketer’s mind, and retailers are starting to explore how they convert “Likes” into actual purchases. Here’s a look at five ways retailers have had success with Facebook commerce.

1. Pop-Up Shops and Insider Shopping Events

In August, Rachel Roy launched a pop-up store on Facebook. The insider shopping event gave the brand’s Facebook fans early access to Roy’s new jewelry line — a collaboration with British R&B artist Estelle. The pop-up store, which lasted three days, boosted Rachel Roy’s fan base by 25% in the first day and 100% by the end of the campaign. The Facebook Page was acquiring 1 fan every 1.5 seconds. The collection featured an exclusive, limited edition piece that sold out in only six hours.

The Rachel Roy pop-up shop was built on a software-as-a-service solution created by Fluid Social Fan Shop. Peter Goldie, the vice president of marketing at Fluid Agency, an ecommerce firm whose clients include Diane von Furstenberg, Nine West, Theory, Vans and Coach, believes that retailers need to create engaging social merchandising experiences that increase a brand’s fan base while driving transactions.

“Marketers are always looking for ways to drive customer purchases,” Goldie said. “Having limited edition, time sensitive sales helps retailers drive sales without having to discount.” Goldie added that pop-up shops are a great way for brand manufacturers to test the ecommerce waters without going into full-scale website development.

“Few retailers are delivering premium Facebook shopping that not only rewards fans but pulls them into a deeper relationship with the brand,” Goldie said. “Slapping a store on Facebook doesn’t deliver. Fan Shop enabled Rachel Roy and Coach to create immersive brand experiences that fully integrate shopping as well as the shopper’s wider social network.”

2. Private, Fan-Only Sales

In August 2010, Philadelphia-based Kembrel launched a private shopping community for students that sells clothing, books and computer gadgets at 40-75% off — and they did it entirely via Facebook. Kembrel’s summer beta period successfully attracted more than 20,0000 registered student members. This initial growth was mostly organic through word of mouth, with little reliance on traditional marketing.

“The total market is 17 million students and every year, they spend over $300 billion. Now two-thirds of that $300 billion dollars [goes toward] school, housing, food and essentials; there’s $100 billion dollars spent on apparel, shoes and accessories and that’s the market we’re going after,” said Cherif Habib, Kembrel’s CEO.

What makes Kembrel’s private sale model unique is that the marketing strategy completely relies on the social behavior of participating college students to drive consumption. The product assortment is tightly curated by young buyers who understand the student market. The day-to-day student activities are also student-run. To date, there are also more than 250 brands that have signed up to reach students through the Kembrel platform.

“College students spend two to there hours a day on Facebook. By bringing our store to where our customers spend the most time online, our goal is to provide them with the most convenient and relevant shopping experience,” Habib said. Kembrel is taking student relevance a step further by launching an internship matching service for fashion students who sign up for the site, connecting the shopping experience to the community.

3. Wish List Features: Bulgari

Rapportive brings social media alive in Gmail

Browser add-on shows contacts' social media profiles, activity

By Tom Flanagan, Tuesday, March 22, 2011.

Inman News™

Rapportive is a free browser add-on developed for Firefox, Chrome and Safari that allows you to view your contacts’ social media profiles and activity right inside Gmail. The add-on works with both Gmail and Google Apps. Give it a try! It’s quick and easy to set up and it truly enhances your traditional mail client.

There are a handful of popular social CRM (customer relationship management) tools available that integrate with your mail client.

Last month, RIM (Research in Motion) announced the acquisition of Gist, one of the more widely used applications that enhance email contacts by displaying profiles that includes blogs, social networks and more. The future of Gist and how BlackBerry users will utilize the product remains to be seen.

The well-established Microsoft Outlook add-on Xobni will finally be releasing the tool for Gmail and are now accepting registration for a private beta preview.

However, since making the transition to Google Apps at Residential Properties Ltd, I have been enjoying Rapportive.

What is Rapportive?

Rapportive was launched in January 2010 by three developers: Rahul Vohra, Martin Kleppman and Sam Stokes. The successful venture capital firm Y Combinator, whose portfolio also includes Dropbox, reddit and Posterous, funds the company. Interestingly enough, it is also funded by Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail.

Unlike other similar services, Rapportive streamlines your contacts’ social profiles directly in Gmail without having to leave the mail client and access a separate CRM application. Having one less site or service to log into is always refreshing.

After a quick installation of the extension, connecting social networks is super easy, and all of the major networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are supported.

After your networks are added, just open an email and your contacts profile is displayed in the side bar with a wealth of information including a profile picture, Twitter user name with recent tweets, the latest Facebook activity and links to other social networks.

I also found the add-on to be an extremely useful discovery tool as well. You can follow a contact on Twitter or send a Facebook request right from the mail client. Editing your own profile can be accomplished right in Gmail as well. Also, one of my favorite features of Rapportive is the ability to assign a "note" to your contact, which is private and can be viewed only by you.

How does Rapportive obtain its data?

Rapportive states on their site that they "combine information from several sources; at the moment, these are Academia.edu, Bitbucket, CrunchBase, Econsultancy, Facebook, Flickr, GitHub, Google Profiles, Gravatar, LinkedIn, Plancast, Posterous, Rapleaf, Stack Overflow, Tungle.me and Twitter, as well as thousands of organisations’ public websites." You can learn more about this and their privacy policies here.

Raplets

Another feature that differentiates Rapportive from other services is the ability for vendors to build extensions, which are called Raplets. There are few good extensions that can easily be added, including BatchBook, MailChimp and Klout. Raplets can easily be added or removed right from inside Gmail.

Rapportive is a handy little tool that brings social media right to your inbox. The add-on is lightweight and fast loading — I would love to see a mobile app. Those who spend a fair amount of time in Gmail will appreciate having everything integrated in the mail client without having to access a third-party CRM application.

Tom Flanagan is the director of information technology at Residential Properties Ltd. in Providence, R.I. You can contact him at tflanagan@residentialproperties.com or @tflan on Twitter.

Contact Tom Flanagan:
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