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Fashion and Apparel Ecommerce Trends, Strategies, and Examples

Revolutionizing Style for Long-Term Success

As a brand in the fashion and apparel industry, it can feel like you’re in a world of glamour and opportunity. But behind the scenes, this space is fast-paced and competitive, where success requires more than just great products — it’s about building lasting relationships with your customers.

How do fast-growing brands stand out in a market filled with endless choices? They do more than just keep up with trends — they create unforgettable experiences that keep customers coming back.

Adapting to evolving technology, reducing high return rates, and meeting sky-high consumer expectations can seem overwhelming. But with the right approach, you can turn these challenges into opportunities. By leveraging tools like reviews, loyalty and referral programs, and product recommendation quizzes, you can connect on a deeper level with your audience. Add in surveys throughout the customer journey, and you’re not just selling products — you’re building trust and loyalty that will fuel long-term growth.

This article dives into the current state of the fashion and apparel industry, the latest trends shaping the industry, and real-life examples of fast-growing brands that are creating smarter, more sustainable strategies. You’ll gain actionable insights to help your brand not just survive, but thrive for years to come.

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Key takeaways

The State of the Fashion and Apparel Industry 

Fashion and apparel is a rapidly changing industry that requires evolving marketing strategies. With global revenues surpassing $350 billion in 2024 — and the United States and China leading the charge — it’s a sector full of opportunity. Understanding the industry is essential for both being competitive and successful. Consider the following:

Acquire New Customers Through Social Commerce

Engaging with customers on social media is crucial, particularly for fashion and apparel brands. Social commerce offers an additional way for customers to purchase your products across popular platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, expanding your brand’s reach by connecting with shoppers where they already spend their time. The time to jump on this growing channel is now, with social commerce sales predicted to triple in 2025.

Selling on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram are key platforms for fashion brands. As consumers scroll for trends and styles, these channels are a goldmine for your brand to connect and convert customers.

With a platform like Okendo, you can automatically syndicate ratings and reviews to your Shops on Facebook and Instagram. As customers leave reviews on your site, Okendo will send a review feed to Meta so the product listings on your Shops are always displaying the most up-to-date and relevant customer content.

Facebook and Instagram Shops make it easier for customers to browse and purchase products at the moment of discovery, and these syndicated reviews build more trust, boost shopper confidence, and drive conversions for these marketplaces.

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Social Proof in Organic and Paid Content

Incorporating user-generated content (UGC) and reviews in social media content, whether organic posts or paid advertisements, is a creative way to boost brand awareness and shopper confidence. Customers are much more likely to place greater trust in the experiences and recommendations of other customers than in highly produced advertisements.

Ninepine is a great example of a fashion and apparel brand that includes reviews in their social media ads, showing the viewer a scroll through of their reviews in addition to highlighting a sentence from a real review: “They feel like joggers, but look fancy.” This powerful social proof lets shoppers know that they can trust the brand.

Personalization Throughout the Customer Journey

There are many ways to leverage tools and data to enhance and personalize the customer journey. The more you know your customer base, including their preferences and styles, the more you can create personalized experiences and ultimately drive more sales.

Acquire New Shoppers with a Quiz

With so many style, color, and size options, building a product recommendation quiz can be an impactful way to help your customers combat decision fatigue and increase conversions.

These quizzes serve as an interactive tool to offer personalized product suggestions, such as the right t-shirt or best-fitting pants. The quiz engages customers by guiding them through a series of questions to collect their preferences, requirements, behaviors, and demographics. Shoppers are then automatically matched with products that best align with their profiles.

By matching shoppers with the perfect products for them, not only can you boost customer engagement, but you can also reduce your return rate. Without a quiz, shoppers are left to compare products across your store on their own, which may encourage them to purchase multiple products with plans to return one. With a quiz, driving them to the right product for their individualized needs helps ensure their first experience with your brand is a positive one.

Collect Zero-Party Data

Surveys, reviews, and quizzes are powerful tools to gather zero-party data (ZPD) directly from your customers. Why does this matter? Zero-party data is increasingly becoming one of the most valuable assets for brands in today’s privacy-conscious landscape. Zero-party data can not only be used to help you create a continuous customer feedback loop, but you can also use the data to personalize customer experiences that drive continued loyalty.

Imagine learning that your customers love running or yoga through a post-purchase survey. You can use this data to create a marketing campaign for these customers with personalized product suggestions like breathable yoga pants or high-performance running gear.

When used in the right ways, zero-party data can help fashion and apparel brands continuously refine their personalization efforts, ultimately driving customer loyalty, increasing lifetime value, and making it less likely for customers to switch to one of your competitors.

Increase Conversions with High-Quality Reviews

Reviews are crucial as they help provide validation for new customers that they’re going to make a sound purchasing decision. But standard reviews on your product details page that say “great shirt” don’t cut it anymore with consumers. To build trust with consumers, you must showcase high-quality reviews that include descriptive, rich content and include a star rating, photos and videos, product and customer attributes, and come from a verified buyer.

With a platform like Okendo, you can feature your most robust reviews at the top of your widget so shoppers can easily see the most detailed, first-hand information or quality videos and images about the product.

Additionally, you can enable a filter or free text search that allows shoppers to find reviews that address specific needs or from customers who share the same characteristics as them. By combining robust reviews with more personalized search results, you can drive shopper confidence and conversions.

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Influencer Marketing: Customers as Influencers

Influencer marketing extends far beyond social media personalities. When you build strong relationships with your normal customers, you can turn them into highly engaged brand advocates who help grow your brand by leaving reviews, referring your product to their friends and family, and more.

To successfully foster a community of these Superfans, ensure that your most loyal customers (those in your highest loyalty tier, for example) receive similar incentives to your social media influencers. For example, SKIMS sent custom PR packages to micro-influencers to promote their wedding shop, but also made sure to send the same package to their top customers who were getting married. This surprise and delight gifting moment ensured their “normal” loyal customers felt equally seen and appreciated by SKIMS.

Focus on Retention

As the global fashion industry continues to grow, continuously standing out from new competition is imperative to retain your customers. Customer marketing strategies like referral programs and loyalty programs, or utilizing post-purchase surveys can help you deliver the experiences that encourage customers to remain loyal to your brand.

Stand out with an Engaging Loyalty Program

According to research by Okendo, 72% of customers say they purchase from a brand more often if they’re part of the brand’s loyalty program. Loyalty programs work especially well for apparel brands, as larger catalogs and changing styles are ripe for repeat purchases. Thoughtful tiered loyalty programs built to engage your unique customer base are key to driving that higher lifetime value.

For example, the SABO Resort program offers customers exclusive perks like priority shipping, early sales access, and bonus entries into their monthly competitions as they spend more and earn their way through the tiers- cleverly named “Weekender”, “Member”, and “Resident” in line with their resort theme. They also offer an exclusive “Secret Tier” that unlocks even more mystery VIP perks for their top customers and drives engagement across the loyalty program through gamification.

Uncover Preferences with Post-Purchase Surveys

Post-purchase surveys are an easy way to gather high volumes of data from your customer base.

One of the most impactful use cases for fashion and apparel brands can be product development surveys. For example, with a short micro-survey (3-5 questions), you can learn if customers who purchased a specific shirt would like to see it in another color, or a different neckline, or if they have any preferences for cashmere or lighter materials in the fall versus the spring. This data can help influence the styles you design for future collections to ensure your customers will want to make a purchase.

Rather than hiring an expensive marketing agency to conduct the research, surveys can be sent via email or SMS with a shareable link, ensuring a larger portion of your customers feel heard and driving stronger brand loyalty.

Drive Brand Advocacy

Referrals let you acquire more customers, at less cost and, most importantly, at scale. Instead of allocating your budget toward costly advertisements or paid sponsorships, your brand can leverage your highly engaged customers by turning them into brand advocates with a referral program.

Consumers of fashion and apparel often ask one another where they bought an item of clothing. For example, if a customer’s friend asks where they bought their running jacket, they can send them a referral link with a coupon for a discount when they purchase from your brand. The referrer, or existing customer, also gets an incentive for the successful referral, so they are likely to make another purchase from your brand. Incentivizing current customers also nurtures the relationship, boosting lifetime value.

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Fast-Growing Apparel Brands Harnessing Customer Marketing Strategies

Discover how thriving fashion and apparel brands are leveraging these trends and strategies to foster loyalty and fuel lasting growth.

Conclusion

The fashion and apparel industry lends itself to new trends with constantly emerging innovations. By understanding evolving customer needs and the customer marketing strategies to meet them, brands can build stronger connections with their customers, fostering loyalty and driving long-term success no matter the challenges this industry brings.

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