Intu the void. Could the shopping centre owner have leveraged social media to keep customers engaged?

Last week shopping centre giant Intu announced it was entering administration. It's a sad and frightening time for the people employed by the group as well as the businesses and staff operating in those places. Despite owning 17 centres and welcoming 35 million customers through its doors, it has been unable to attract footfall pre and post-lockdown. We take a look at how two of its flagship centres - Manchester Trafford and Lakeside Centre in Essex - have used social media to engage shoppers, we measure the sentiment towards the centres since their re-opening as well as comparing their digital activity to that of two successful online players, ASOS and Boohoo.

By sharing this insight,  Maybe* hopes to help more shopping centres understand how they can future proof livelihoods and businesses through customer engagement.

Meanwhile Trafford’s sentiment score is  3% positive and the conversation about it, is driven by the brands not customers. Lakeside receives only 73 social media posts about it.

In Manchester, Selfridges’ sweet treat favourite, Borough 22, led the conversation about the Trafford Centre. While in Lakeside, all but four of the 73 conversations about it were created by brands and businesses in the centre. Where Intu believes their tenants should be marketing the centres, it appears that the brands and businesses are in this conversation more than customers.

On the other hand, the big flagships they play home to such as Primark or John Lewis have not posted to support the centres they occupy space in. These brands have huge followings, and in the case of Primark have such influence over their customers, that queues formed outside some stores as early as 4am on re-opening day. 

If the retailer is talking about their website, and the shopping centre is not talking about the retailer, who is inviting customers to turn up stores? Brands seldom talk at a local or place level to support interest in the centres they pay rent to, when they could be collaborating more to achieve mutually beneficial footfall KPIs.

Why Maybe* for UK shopping centres

Key takeaway

Where Intu is citing they’ve lost ground to online players, they are correct. Not just in sales, but in customer engagement. But Intu could have done more to bridge that gap. By appealing to an online audience, engaging them and demonstrating relevance, they potentially could have held shoppers’ attention and translated this into footfall.

Above all else, this is devastating news for jobs, local economies and retail as a whole. Maybe* certainly is not here to apportion blame, Intu has not fallen because of a poor social media strategy alone. There will be myriad factors at play, none more crippling than a three-month lockdown followed by almost half of the nation’s shoppers being too anxious to return to the shops now they’ve re-opened. 

We are here to use the insight within our platform to spot clues and shed light on social media patterns that can help other retailers navigate these turbulent times. So please take from this sad situation that engaging with your customers, not just at a time of a crisis, but all the time, should be your number one priority on your social channels. Engaging keeps them close to you and you front of mind to them. Listen to their wants and needs. Serve them on social media and you just might have a shot at serving them in-store again too. 

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