When Poshmark’s ‘Promotional Closet’ Is Worth It for Sellers (and When It Isn’t)
I am an enthusiastic and cheerful person by nature. I claim to enjoy everything I encounter in my daily life, and I usually mean it. However, I have noticed that many people, especially those who regularly post on social media, are not like me. People who post their complaints online tend to do so because they have complaints, and few of them are valid. So I try to ignore the harsher comments I see on X and Reddit until I try something myself.
That’s exactly what happened this week when I decided to try out Poshmark’s Promoted Closet feature, which lets you promote your listings to potential buyers for a small fee. I visit a few resale forums and see people bashing the feature, but as usual, my initial suspicion that people were just being overly critical turned out to be correct: I actually like Promoted Closet. However, I quickly noticed that it’s not for everyone.
What is Promoted Closet?
Promoted Closet is a paid feature on Poshmark that shows your listings to potential buyers for a week-long campaign that automatically renews and can be canceled at any time. If someone searches for a specific brand or item, and you promote your closet and have something that matches their search, it will show up higher in the search results.
You get a free week trial before you start paying, which is what convinced me to finally give it a try. I already pay for third-party apps like Vendoo and PrimeLister , which help me cross-post my items for sale to various store apps and help me manage my store a little bit with automation, so the idea of paying for a third party was daunting. I decided to give it a try and see if it worked well enough to justify continuing to pay and maybe canceling my subscription to one of the other apps.
I made $115 in sales from the promotions in two days, but that was from one sale (I’ll talk more about that in a bit). Here are a few other important things to know: Signing up for Promoted Closet gives you access to a dashboard that shows you how many clicks you’ve received and how much you paid for each click. It also tracks listings you’ve sold and shows your return on investment. You’re charged your debit card, not your Poshmark balance, so you’ll be charged the regular amount.
After four days of running ads, here are my stats: 3,756 impressions, 96 clicks, and one sale for $115. My “cost” was $8.64 (not much since I’m on a free trial), which is $0.09 per click. The CTR is 2.56%, and the conversion rate is 1.04%. I wish the dashboard would show the “likes” I got from clicks on my ads, but it doesn’t.
I’ve noticed more likes on some listings over the last few days, but I can’t prove that it’s because of the promotion, although I think it is. When someone likes a listing, you can send them discount offers or bundle listings they like, making it easier to buy from you in bulk. So for me, likes are the most important part of selling on Poshmark. Seeing how many likes I got from the promotion, I’d be more likely to keep paying if I got a lot. Even if someone just likes something during the weekly promotion, they’re more likely to buy it in the future, making the campaign more profitable.
What are the criticisms of Promoted Closet?
The criticism mostly centers on the promotion being a ” shakedown ” for Poshmark, which already takes 20% of your sales. (However, in the post linked above, you’ll notice that the author mentions a “drop in sales” when Promoted Closet is cancelled, which hints at the fact that the promotion is actually working.)
Another criticism comes from those who have not seen an increase in sales despite paying for the promotion. I have a few theories about this.
Who should try Promoted Closet?
I actually sold one item within two days of promoting my closet. (To be fair, I make a lot of sales, but Poshmark’s promotions dashboard does a great job of showing which sales were specifically from promotion clicks.) I sold a pair of Gucci sunglasses for $115. That told me everything I needed to know about who was benefiting, but I could also see in the dashboard which of my listings were getting the most views. Gucci, Prada, Alo, Reformation, On Clouds, Nike, Fendi, and Skims were all listed. None of the SHEIN or fast fashion items I resell showed up. That all makes sense, and gives some clues as to which sellers might be promoting in the first place.
Promotions show up in search results, right? That means if you’re selling a lot of unknown brands or random items, chances are few people will search for them during the week-long campaign.
One of the reasons I like Poshmark more than other resale apps like Depop is that everything sells eventually, and it’s not just clothing, but it can take a while. I’ve sold bobbleheads, electronics, and laptops, but those sales take longer than, say, selling a Skims t-shirt because fewer people are searching for them. If I only sold odds and ends or clothing brands that aren’t very popular in search, there would be no point in paying for promotion.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t list obscure brands or trinkets, but if that’s all you sell, promotion may not be worth it. If you have well-known, popular brands, promotion is a much smarter idea.
Furthermore, how you value your items is important when making your decision. If you are selling because you want to clear out a closet and you don’t really care about getting the items back to their true value, I would not recommend advertising your closet. Many sellers set low prices to attract buyers, get rid of clutter, or increase the likelihood of selling multiple items at once. That’s fine, but if you are dealing with $10 and $15 items, it just doesn’t make sense to pay that much.
On the $115 sale, I made $92 after Poshmark took its cut. My promotional “expenses” are currently around $9, so if I hadn’t used the free trial, my profit would have been $83. All things considered, that’s still pretty good, but if my sale had been on something cheaper, I can see how promotional expenses could eat up a lot of your earnings very quickly.
I like this feature and will continue to use it, but only because I have a lot of listings for high-yield products that are frequently searched for. If you don’t have any of these, you might want to hold off, although it certainly doesn’t hurt to test out the free week.