Social Commerce Platform Overview: Venpop – Straightforward Social Commerce, Pure and Simple

by Paul Chaney
in Social
— 24 Nov, 2011

Visit the Venpop website and it’s readily apparent the company’s interest lies solely with social commerce, and its approach to the sector is very straightforward. Marketing managers can sign-up, complete the Venpop set-up wizard, and in a few clicks have everything set up to synchronize thousands of products across all social channels.

Compared to the other social commerce platform providers that we have reviewed it’s obvious Venpop – a division of social shopping service Wishpot - is an up-and-comer. Everything about the company, including the fact that it uses an off the shelf WordPress theme for its website, has not itself received venture capital funding and was founded only this year, says that it is a startup.

That has not stopped brands like Guess, Bestbuy, Bulgari and more than one thousand retailers in both North American and Europe to use the product. In fact, Venpop has become so popular that its social commerce engine now processes more than 10 million products per day.

Venpop Products

The term “straightforward” applies to Venpop’s product lineup as well, which looks like this:

Facebook Commerce – Allows fans to shop directly on a retailer’s fan page and includes a Facebook Store, Wall merchandising, flash sales and social group deals.

Twitter Commerce – Enables retailers to publish Twitter posts that highlight price changes, new product arrivals, and popular products from their catalog. They can also setup a dedicated Twitter Outlet channel to promote sale items from the catalog.

Social Commerce from the Website – Not only does Venpop’s technology place the cash register next to the water cooler, but the other way around, as well. Venpop provides retailers with the ability to integrate social commerce on their own website with a social wishlist and registry, flash sales, social group deals and more.

Venpop also provides retailers with analytics, demographics, and statistics on how and where users are interacting with products. Clicks are tracked through internal reporting, affiliate networks and third party solutions.

Additionally, Venpop offers retailers social media optimization strategy analysis, recommendations on key steps, creation of key elements (profiles, fan pages, etc.), and even training of key employees. And, if that’s not enough, Venpop also provides social marketing campaigns and even a Facebook custom landing page creation component!

Venpop Competitors

Thanks to its product lineup, Venpop’s competitors come from a variety of quarters:

Groupon, RueLaLa and Gilt qualify as competition for Venpops social group deals application.
Since the company offers a Facebook Store, everyone from Buddy Media to Payvment could be considered competitors.
Venpop provides Facebook marketing campaigns using special promotions and contests, so you could say that companies like Wildfire and North Social are also competitors.
Oh, and let’s not forget the custom landing page component. That opens the door to even more competition from companies like Lujure, PageModo and similar providers.
Lastly, according to a Venpop spokesperson, at the enterprise level the company also considers adgregate and 8thBridge to be competitors.

Why Use Venpop

Given the breadth of competition, why should brands (especially large brands) consider using Venpop?

Straightforward (I used that word again) and simple are its calling cards. The company asserts that its product is easy to use and can be set up in minutes with the few clicks of a mouse.

That may provide evidence as to why its popularity is increasing so rapidly. Since no development resources are needed to deploy the technology, less financial expenditure is required than comparable solutions. That is not to suggest web developers can’t be involved – Venpop’s platform provides APIs and tools to enable a variety of social shopping enabled applications – but just that none are required to get the product up and running.

Cost to Use Venpop

Another calling card is Venpop’s affordability. In an economy where even large brands are cutting back on marketing budgets, Venpop’s pricing comes as a welcome relief as compared to others who occupy this space.

Enterprise pricing ranges from $100 to $750 per month and includes use of all the social commerce and social marketing apps. A dedicated account manager is also supplied to help with campaigns, reporting and more.

Sample Screenshots

Amanda Pearl Social Deal Product

Karma Kiss Social Deals Product

Venpop social marketing campaign

Venpop custom Facebook landing page

Venpop Facebook Store

Company Information

Funding

To date, Venpop itself has not received venture capital. However, its parent company, Wishpot, has recently closed a round of financing led by Monster Venture Partners and H-Farm to the tune of one million dollars.

Management Team