July 30th, 2008 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
With the sudden passing of my father a month ago, this has been a tough Summer on the personal front. And since Friday, I have been grieving for a great friend and mentor that has been in a deep coma. Tragically, last night Keith Benjamin passed away. Debra, Rachel, and I knew Keith and his wife and children. We recently had dinner with them at their new San Francisco home in June on our way to Hawaii to celebrate our 12-year anniversary. I made a point to call Keith to catch up over lunch on almost every visit to the Bay Area. He was even kind enough to invite me and my co-founder, Brant, to stay at their home on our fundraising trips to the Bay Area when starting Bazaarvoice.
Keith’s partnership posted information on his passing on their home page today.
As a friend and mentor, Keith was a truly amazing person.
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July 25th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
This is the fourth in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.
Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder of FutureNow and author of bestselling books Call to Action and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, challenged summit attendees to design sites that meet the needs of different types of visitors.
As an example, Bryan discussed how your different shopper modalities (or Personas) would prefer to shop for movies.
- Spontaneous (hip, stylish customers) – would be drawn by new and popular titles
- Humanistic (relationship-oriented) – most responsive to customer reviews and top-rated products
- Methodical (categorical and detail-oriented) – would likely shop by genre and read full descriptions
- Competitive (those who know what they want) – shop directly by actor, title, director, etc.
With customer profiles, you can help reviewers establish credibility amongst other members in the community and can further employ ratings and reviews to help your shoppers find the products that will most appeal to people like them.
Read more from Bryan about personas here.
July 21st, 2008 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
This blog is guest written by Heather Lippincott, Bazaarvoice Community Manager.
In April, Sally Beauty Supply launched Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews as part of their first-ever eCommerce site! They also recently partnered with Paris Hilton, who created “Clipin-Go by Paris Hilton,” a collection of chic-yet-affordable hair extensions that are only available through Sally Beauty stores or at www.sallybeauty.com.
Sally Beauty’s Senior Director of E-Commerce, Richard BenBassett, instantly thought Paris would be a great celebrity reviewer, and Bazaarvoice helped him create a customer “Celebrity Review” badge to let celeb reviews stand out from the rest!
As a business woman, fashion icon and entrepreneur, Paris was involved in creating the product, so she was excited to be able to give her personal endorsement on sallybeauty.com product reviews, which you can read here.
We used to see celebrity endorsements in commercials or magazine advertisements, but now celebrity endorsements have invaded a new channel – social commerce!
Sally Beauty is our first client to feature a celebrity’s review. Who will be next?
July 18th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
This is the third in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.
Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing, keynoted at our Social Commerce Summit, encouraging brands to give customers a reason to talk about your stuff. As Andy highlighted, marketing is what you do, not what you say.
To jump-start those word of mouth conversations on your site and beyond, Andy recommends the following 5 steps:
- Talkers – find the people who will talk
For each brand and product, your talkers will be different people. For the launch of the renowned Wynn in Las Vegas, the hotel invited the city’s cab drivers to stay free of charge for a weekend in order to spur conversations amongst Vegas’ most evangelical workforce.
- Topics – give people a reason to talk
Ask yourself: “Would anybody tell a friend?” It is your job to make customers happy, and remember that happy customers are the best ads.
- Tools – allow your talkers to share
Whether you deploy Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories, or some other social media tool, be sure to equip your customers with an easy way to share ideas and collaborate.
- Taking Part – join the conversation
Reach out to your community, and participate and respond when necessary.
- Tracking
No word of mouth campaign is worthwhile unless it can be measured and improved. Understand to what extent you are engaging your customers, and critically evaluate how you can continue to amplify those conversations.
July 14th, 2008 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Last month, ATG, Bazaarvoice, Forrester Research, and Multichannel Merchant hosted a webinar on personalization using user-generated content. I can’t speak for our partners, but this webinar was one of our best attended, so I decided to draft off its success by interviewing Cliff Conneighton, SVP of Marketing at ATG. Bazaarvoice and ATG share a number of high profile customers and with each additional deployment of our joint solution, we discover new opportunities for leveraging user-generated content and customer word of mouth to drive richer and higher performing personalization and merchandising experiences. Enjoy the interview with Cliff and please comment if you have any follow-up questions or thoughts!
1. ATG is well known for its personalization capabilities. How would you grade US online retailers, overall, on the quality and efficacy of their personalization strategies? What are the key obstacles these companies must overcome to implement more sophisticated personalization approaches?
I think we need to start with a quick definition of personalization, as it is a term that has been used in many different ways. At the highest level I define personalization as presenting the most relevant information to each customer during each interaction through each channel. In my view it doesn’t mean an individual plan for each individual visitor but rather a refinement of the content presented – images, messages, assortments, promotions, etc. – where appropriate, based on your knowledge of the customer and the reason she’s in your store. I believe the “1 to 1” view of personalization in itself overwhelmed many retailers and stalled adoption.
Based on this definition, I would give online retailers as a group a “C” for their personalization strategies to date. There are a few notable exceptions – and of course ATG clients would rate higher – but in general, industry personalization strategies haven’t moved much beyond a segmented email and a welcome back on the corresponding landing page. However, we’re seeing lots of momentum in the market and many of the obstacles holding retailers back have been removed. Retailers have traditionally been held back by either a lack of actionable knowledge of their customer base or a limitation in available resources or tools to act on the knowledge once gathered.
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July 11th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
This is the second in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Bazaarvoice 
Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.
Josh Bernoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, is one of Forrester’s most senior and most frequently quoted research analysts. Josh joined Forrester in 1995. In 2007, Josh began work on a book, Groundswell, which describes how people with social technologies like blogs, wikis, MySpace, and YouTube will threaten institutions of all kinds, and how companies can succeed in the face of this change.
Josh’s research, analysis, and opinions appear frequently in publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Broadcasting & Cable, and on national television news programs. Josh has spoken at conferences including the executive summits of both the National Association of Broadcasters and the Consumer Electronics Association. He also testified before the Gore Commission on Public Interest Obligations for Digital Broadcasters.
Turning Social Technology Groundswell to Your Advantage: Josh Bernoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Conquer approach-avoidance syndrome regarding UGC using “POST”: identify your people, objective, strategy, and technology.
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July 9th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Opinion Research Corporation released the results from a new study that (again) supports the fact consumer reviews play a major role in the decision to purchase products and services.
In their own words, “A whopping eighty-three percent of respondents polled indicated that online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on purchasing decisions.”
They also found…
- 70% of respondents seek out information for a particular brand of goods and services.
- 32% reported posting their own online feedback on product or service experiences.
See more of the study here.
Now I say this study “again” supports the demand for reviews because we have been tracking and fielding studies for three years on this topic. See our comprehensive overview of over 100 statistics and case study results here.
