Our friends at The Home Depot did such an amazing job recently of designing and implementing a new email campaign for generating Bazaarvoice product reviews on their website that they got the attention of OMMA, the leading Magazine of Online Media, Marketing and Advertising, and are now a finalist for this prestigious award. You can read all about it here at MediaPost.
I was impressed to learn that this email, developed by The Home Depot’s marketing team, was so successful that “it’s now considered one of the most successful of The Home Depot's e-mail programs and continues on a biweekly basis.” Who would have guessed that an email campaign designed to promote customer ratings and reviews would be one of the most successful in their history! When The Home Depot launched with the Bazaarvoice solution in May, it marked the first time that user generated content in the form of customer product feedback was made available on their website. And since they’ve been promoting it through emails like this and various sweepstakes promotions, they’ve realized a significant ROI in the form of a higher conversion rates, site traffic and stronger customer loyalty. If The Home Depot wins the OMMA award in New York City next week on September 26th, it will be icing on the cake! We’ll be routing for you Shera, Julie and Andrew!
Archive for September, 2006
The Home Depot a finalist for OMMA Awards ‘Best Single Email’
The Anne Frank Tree and Word-of-Mouth
Debra, Rachel, and I are on vacation in Amsterdam and we visited the Anne Frank House today. We read her diary when we were young, as so many students around the world do. It was an incredibly touching experience to see the Secret Annex in person and will make this Rosh Hashanah an especially memorable one to us.
Photo of the Anne Frank House Museum
Given the focus of my current business, I immediately contrasted Anne Frank's diary to our current age of citizen journalism, user-generated content, or, simply, blogging. The main difference between a blog and a diary is that one is a public medium while the other is a private one. However, both beg to be read although their agendas may be different. I wonder how Anne Frank's diary would have been different had it been a blog. Would it express the same intense human condition that made her diary so famous? It certainly would be more widely read immediately (and commented on in real-time as the events unfolded). How would the world have reacted to it at that time? How would her father, who was so surprised to learn about the private side of Anne that he never knew? Would the Holocaust have even been possible in this age of the Internet and blogging? My guess on that last question is no – for the connected world. But, unfortunately, for the less connected, it happens all too frequently (as we currently see in Darfur).
At the end of the tour, there are two modern exhibits which evoked a sense of community.
The first is called "Freedom2Choose" and showed controversial media from all over the world about homosexuality, public marches, freedom of the press, and other current examples of issues. You then voted on your stance on the issue. The community part: everyone in the room voted with you and then the results were shown in real-time and compared with all previous visitors. On many of the issues, people were close to evenly divided and it made you realize how diverse the viewpoints were of everyone in the room. I searched for a Web component to this (wondering how they used the votes to further educate), but haven't been able to find it yet.
The second, the Anne Frank Tree, is Web-connected. Anne could view the chestnut tree from the attic window of the Secret Annex. This is an interactive tree that encourages visitors of the museum to leave their leaf, as well as a video message, that they can forward to their friends and family. Click around on the tree and you may be able to find our leaf. When leaving a leaf, you can also subscribe to receive emails from the Anne Frank Museum. This is a smart way to both connect visitors to the museum and also to spark word-of-mouth for others to learn about the museum. It also is a very tasteful way to do so (for example, the email is double opt-in).
Further visiting online, I found that the Anne Frank organization has recently become very modern and connected. Check out their photo contest, "Sources of Inspiration", with the accompanying MSN Spaces page. I was glad to see this as young readers from around the world (read the "IM Generation") will expect this kind of interactivity, and it will encourage them to further engage and learn.
Anne Frank, who died at 15 in a concentration camp (one month before the liberation), would be amazed to see the impact her diary has had on so many millions of people. It is currently available in over 60 languages. I think she would also applaud the way her message is being delivered at the Museum as well as online.
"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"
- Anne Frank, 1929-1945
Webinar on Social Computing and Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Last month, MarketLive kindly invited us to participate in their educational webinar series. The topic was "Social Computing and Word-of-Mouth Marketing" and the webinar is now available for you to download and enjoy here.
Our very own Chris Richter presented on the enormous growth and impact of user-generated content and provided specific examples of how leading online brands are leveraging customer content to increase conversion, customer satisfaction, and loyalty as well as open doors to new relationship marketing opportunities (take a look at Sheraton's "Our Global Neighborhood")
It's great to see social computing and word-of-mouth marketing on the radar of companies like MarketLive, a provider of e-commerce software solutions. In our view, no e-commerce platform is complete without robust word-of-mouth marketing capabilities, and we've reached out to the leaders in this industry to build the alliances necessary to bring integrated solutions to market. Judging from the attendance of the MarketLive webinar, there is no shortage of interest among online merchants in seeing this integration happen!
Many thanks to MarketLive for allowing us to participate and to all who attended. We look forward to launching our own webinar and educational programs in the future and will continue to work with partners to drive awareness of the power of harnessing customer word-of-mouth!
Can Customers Trust Online Reviews?
Are online product reviews relevant and credible? Another way you could ask this question is do you trust offline word of mouth from friends and aquaintances. And are online reviews as credible as offline word of mouth?
According to a study by MIT and University of Michigan they found a high correlation between offline word of mouth and online reviews for movies:
Another interesting finding is the higher correlation of offline word of mouth to online word of mouth compared to offline word of mouth to critics reviews.
This doesn’t surprise me. Usually when I talk to friends about a movie I hear similar feedback. Now a woman may give me slightly different ‘perspective’ on a romantic comedy than her husband ?, but the general recommendation is nowhere near as diverse as critics’ reviews. See the reviews on Invincible, from B+ to D+.
Ultimately, the question for authenticity is relevant for online reviews. There is the possibility of shills, fraud, and ‘astroturfing’. The truth is, with over 40 clients and hundreds of thousands reviews, we don’t see much fraud (and we’re getting pretty good at catching them). Of course, nothing is fool proof. With the growth of consumer-generated content, this will continue to be a focus for us to stay ahead. It’s also why our solution includes several fields to add context to the review. In usability studies we find that provides shoppers with review relevance as well as *reviewer* relevance.
The Edelman group found that ‘trust in someone like me’ has tripled over the last two years. The key phrase here is ‘someone like me’. Shoppers identify with the reviewer based on the content of the review, user attributes, and product attribute ratings.I would also assert the community of customers and shoppers are the best judges of authenticity and relevance. With helpfulness votes (which is sortable) and abuse reporting, shoppers themselves can ‘smell’ fraud. We find many of our clients' cutomers are compelled to jump in with their own review when a review that is ‘off’ is posted. So between our content analysts (we read every review and review several factors for fraud) and customers, we can maintain a high standard of authenticity.
Customer Reviews is #1 Feature at NewEgg
Earlier Wayne posted about PETCO's recent post-purchase survey of its customers which revealed ratings and reviews was the #1 feature helping them make a purchase decision.
Today we see NewEgg (not a Bazaarvoice client) posted a public poll (using iPerceptions) on what factors on the product detail page influenced their purchase decision the most. Like PETCO, Customer Reviews was #1 at NewEgg with 57% of votes, followed by detailed specifications at 32%.
FREE Snippets from “Word of Mouth Marketing” by Andy Sernovitz
My friend Andy Sernovitz (Director of Word of Mouth Marketing Association) was kind enough to send me a draft of his upcoming book (November 1) "Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking." Guy Kawasaki recently submitted a review on his blog and some snippets from his book. I'll follow that up with some snippets and a headline I thought would get your attention 
This book is broken into two parts: The Essential Concepts and How to Do it. Andy's writing style is very easy to read and follow. He brings in many examples (some presented in Guy's review). The most important aspect of this book is it clearly articulates why Word of Mouth is big now and what to do about it. Andy presents a clear case that can be presented to any CEO or CMO on why they should think differently about their marketing…and most importantly, their customers. And then it follows with practical tips and strategies (including "16 Sure-Thing, Must-Do, Awfully Easy Word of Mouth Marketing Techniques"). I can't think of anyone better to write this book than Andy, who is always passionate and practical.
Here are some of my favorite snippets from the book:
Definition of WOM: Giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for that conversation to take place.
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Earn the respect and recommendation of your customers, and they will do the rest. Treat people well; they will do your marketing for you, for free. Be interesting, or be invisible.
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Rule #1: Be Interesting
Rule #2: Make People Happy
Rule #3: Earn Trust and Respect
Rule #4: Make It Easy+++
When I was single, there was no better date restaurant than Otello’s in Washington, D.C. When I showed up with a woman, Introduction xxi the owner would come out before the meal with a big, “It is soooo good to see you again. We are soooo happy you are here.” (Of course, he had no idea who I was.) After dinner, he’d produce two glasses of cheap wine, on the house. This guy knew how to make sure you looked like a high roller.
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I love Mario’s Barbershop in Chicago. When I go in with my two-year-old son, they offer me a cocktail. They offer him a toy car. It’s a guy place. No one ever accepts their drinks, but it’s a blast to hang out with Mario, Zoran, and Bobby. Those drinks are a reason to talk. I tell the other dads at daycare. It comes up at parties. It’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions a haircut. The result: A line of dads and toddlers out the door every Saturday. (A Supercuts on the same block is deserted.)
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Seth Godin calls it being “remarkable” in his book Purple Cow. (Note: Federal law requires all new marketing books to mention Seth Godin at least once.) Remarkable means worth remarking on, worth saying something about. It’s the root concept of word of mouth marketing.
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Only about 20 percent of word of mouth happens online. When it does play a role, it usually sparks the 80 percent of word of mouth conversations that actually happen face to face.
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A lot of that talk is happening online. Research from Pew Internet reports that 32 million people are posting content to message boards, and Technorati reports that 13 million people blog weekly.
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Word of Mouth is "CtoC" Marketing. Actually, it’s BtoCtoC. Your job as a marketer is to put out an idea worth talking about. That’s marketing. When a real person repeats it, that’s word of mouth. It’s about the second hop (and the third hop, and the fourth hop, and so on).
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This is called organic word of mouth — word of mouth that springs naturally from the positive qualities of your company. Many experts would argue that this is the only legitimate form of word of mouth. The opposite concept is amplified word of mouth — word of mouth that is started by an intentional campaign to get people talking. I like the organic methods better, but I’ll talk about both.
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Word of mouth is the feedback loop that forces marketers to pay attention to the consumer. It brings advertisers out of isolation and forces them to confront the reality of the impact that their products and marketing have on real people. It puts the consumer at the head of the boardroom table. Word of mouth marketing protects consumers by giving them a voice. This kind of marketing gives a powerful platform to consumers, and makes marketers listen. It empowers consumers by engaging with them online and the real world. It gives people the power to voice their dissatisfaction and expose dishonesty.
We’re the marketers who have learned to listen. Word of mouth marketers don’t have a choice. We can’t do what we do unless consumers are happily willing to relay our message. So we’re getting good at making them happy. Word of mouth is on the rise because marketers have finally begun to understand that a happy customer is the greatest advertisement.
Google Snakes on a Starbucks’ Plane @!*$&#
A weird title to be sure, but it will make sense by the time you get to the end of this post.
First, Google has introduced an interesting application of crowdsourcing, Google Image Labeler. Given the size of Google's passionate user base, all Google images could effectively be labeled in only two months. This is a controversial initiative, with comments from sophisticated Internet users like Ryan W. who says,
"After about 2 days, when the novelty wears off, why would users do this? Especially enough users to label google’s entire image index of billions of images? No incentive."
to Orli Yakuel who counters,
"Ryan, It’s like asking why people writing in wikipedia, for example.
This is what we do when we spending so much hours on the Net,
we’re either consume or provide information and knowledge FOR FREE."
My vote is that this will work for Google (and it's users). Why? Because Google's user base actually cares about Google. When you use a service every day and get value from it, you become loyal to it. Not everyone can get their customers to work for them, and many fail trying, but Google is one of those rare companies whose business was built entirely by word-of-mouth (when was the last time you saw Google advertise their service anywhere?). Out of modern businesses, Starbucks can also make that kind of claim. Like Starbucks did with their stores, Google plowed millions that could have been spent on advertising on creating the world's best product for their category. The foundation of word-of-mouth success is a great product. You will hear this in almost every presentation at any WOMMA conference.
For more information on the power of crowdsourcing, check out my May blog post on the topic.
And that leads me to discuss a bad product, the movie "Snakes on a Plane". Although this movie has the widest distribution of any movie currently showing and had Web buzz galore, it has pretty much been a flop, only grossing $26 million to date. Why? Well, there a range of opinions on this topic. First, let's look back at history and look at what the word-of-mouth pundits predicted:
- "The Snakes phenomenon will probably go down as one of the most significant early events in this fledgling Buzz industry."
- "Why Will 'Snakes on a Plane' Be a Hit? It's the Internet, Stupid"
And it goes on and on. I could easily provide you with a list of 50 such articles, but why bother.
There are many predictions on why the movie bombed, including the fear of snakes, the film studios still don't get the Internet, and the fact that the movie is dumb. But the most plausible reason I found was in a discussion forum where JR wrote,
"A well-deserved end to this ill-conceived experiment in mass internet-marketing and over saturation TV-spot advertising. Word of mouth still counts. Real word of mouth… and despite the studio's best efforts and big bux, most people can still distinguish genuine word of mouth from studio-purchased word of mouth, even if it is being broadcast by bloggers."
At the end of the day, "Snakes on a Plane" may have faired better than it otherwise would have as a bad product. But no one should call this piece of trash a hit. "Snakes on a Plane" was viral online because people knew it would suck – it was fun to make fun of. At a low production cost, the movie will be profitable, which is more than you could probably say if it didn't have some buzz. But if it had been a great movie, it literally could have been in the top-20 grossing movies of all time. Because everyone knew about it (and, therefore, knew it met their low expectations when the initial reviews came in post release).
I am modifying the old adage, "there is no such thing as bad PR", to "there may be no such thing as bad PR when you have a great product".
And, to close, let's talk about word-of-mouth when you have a great product. A few weeks ago, Starbucks had to pull an email promotion because it went viral immediately due to the ease of email forwarding and the attractiveness of the promotion. Now that, my friends, is the power of real word-of-mouth!
Update: Caribou Coffee is honoring the voided Starbucks' coupons. I'm not sure if I view this as a brilliant or desperate move by a company that is worth 6% of Starbucks (on a market cap basis). I guess it all depends on whether or not Caribou Coffee has a great product (and that doesn't just mean the coffee, I'm also talking about the ambiance of the store).
Marketers, meet the ‘heavy users’
Earlier this week, eMarketer reported on the population size and online activities of "heavy users" – individuals that have accessed the Web at least 11 times in the previous seven days. According to Universal McCann, who conducted the research, as many as 100 million people fit this description in the US alone. That's one third of the population! This number, to me, is staggering. Sure, 11 times per week is par for the course for industry folks, including myself and most of the people that subscribe to this blog, but we "industry folks" don't number anywhere close to 100 million. This number means that the Web and, more importantly, online activities like instant messaging, social networking, and file sharing have long gone mainstream. And not surprisingly, online marketing spending is following the massive herd of "heavy users" as it swells in size and spends even more and more time, attention, and money online.
My favorite chartdata from the report is posted below:
The #1 online activity of "heavy users" is researching a future purchase online, an activity that is heavily – no pun intended! - facilitated by customer ratings and reviews and other forms of online word of mouth. #2 is actually purchasing online. Ditto. And #6, at an impressive 68%, is reviewing a product on a shopping or review site! So in addition to driving Web traffic and commerce, "heavy users" are an opinionated and communicative bunch as well. What a combo for marketers to address.
While devising campaigns to claim the attention and online spend of "heavy users", marketers must also address the group's substantial information, communication, and socialization needs as well. For instance, it seems logical that "heavy users" would prefer to transact on sites that offer peer reviews and other relevant forms of user-generated content, since they spend so much of their own time sharing their opinions.
Furthermore, the report states that 40% of respondents use price comparison sites, a finding that underscores the importance of a "beyond your site" strategy to customer ratings & reviews – something that Bazaarvoice is pioneering with our recent release of SyndicateVoice, which leverages two of the things that "heavy users" are most interested in – online reviews and shopping research.
In summary, the "heavy users" are big in size, busy with online activity, and will soon become the "normal users" as general Web usage and usage of social technologies/media continues to grow. As a rugged individualist, it's hard for me to say this, but marketers, you must follow the herd!
