Meet Zmags, The Company Creating A Shoppable Content Revolution

When Godiva wanted to create a digital ad and shopping campaign around Valentine’s Day — probably the busiest shopping season for the chocolate maker — but didn’t have the time or resources to pull it off, it turned to a Boston-based company called Zmags and a tool called Creator.

Through Creator, thanks to its drag-and-drop functionality and easy-to-use features, Godiva was quickly able to build a fully interactive digital shopping experience and online lookbook that showcased celebrity spokesperson Eva Longoria’s top six gift picks for the holiday that resulted in a 380 percent increase in creative output, a 300 percent increase in conversion and saved Godiva’s creative team 50 percent of their time.

And Godiva was able to do this all without having to write a single line of code and in a manner of hours.

“Creator has enabled our small team to make a big impact,” according to Christine O’Brien, Godiva’s manager of web and digital. “We’re now delivering more elevated experiences for our customers online, while, at the same time, dramatically reducing the effort needed to create those experiences.”

Zmags says that Creator has allowed more than 1,500 brands — including Nike, Neiman Marcus, Whole Foods, Hyundai and more — to create “attention-grabbing digital experiences instantly” within minutes, thanks to an “effortless” drag-and-drop interface.

It’s the reason the company’s motto is “Create, Don’t Code.”

Through Creator, Zmags says clients typically receive a 600 percent increase in engagement, a 50 percent plus increase in conversion, a 400 percent increase in creative output and an 80 percent reduction of costs.

“Time is your most precious resource. Fifty-five percent of web pages get less than 15 seconds of attention, and people start abandoning sites after just two seconds,” Zmags said of Creator on its website. “We live in a fast-paced, instant gratification world, which means that marketers have just moments to capture attention with fresh and engaging content.”

Deborah Lippmann, the makeup retailer, reported similar success when it began using Creator in March, according to Zmags CEO Brian Rigney.

Within a day, according to Rigney, Deborah Lippmann was able to have fully shoppable, visually engaging digital content on its site, and since switching to Creator, Rigney said that the company’s mobile conversions have increased by 106 percent, while desktop conversion has gone up 244 percent.

“With Creator, we can commerce enable our rich content quickly and engage with customers in new, innovative ways,” said Mark Lippmann, cofounder of Deborah Lippmann. “Our customers can stay within the experience throughout the purchase process, reducing friction while increasing time spent onsite and conversions.”

Rigney said that Deborah Lippmann found an innovative way of using Creator after the Met Gala in May. Deborah Lippmann had done several manicures for the celebrities in attendance at the event, and through Creator, the makeup retailer was quickly able to “build a rich experience around the event as [Mark] received photos from the red carpet in near real time.” Within an hour, Deborah Lippmann had the same makeup and nail polish used by celebrities at the Met Gala live for sale on its site using photos of the celebrities themselves wearing the products at the Met Gala that customers could click through to purchase.

“This product is for retailers who want to rapidly create, easily deploy rich, shoppable content for their site without any coding,” according to Rigney. “Most retailers struggle. Regardless of their commerce or CMS platform, they struggle with how to get rich, engaging, shoppable content online easily.”

Traditionally, Rigney said the service that Creator offers to retailers typically takes weeks or months to create and would carry a much larger price tag than the cost of Creator.

“You’ve got to work with a third party, you’ve got to design it, you’ve got to lay it out, you’ve got to schedule it, you’ve got to code it, you’ve got to review the code and then you’ve got to schedule the deployment of that code,” Rigney said. “So, it’s a much more challenging process to a retailer.”