Another client has found sales success in a UGC-powered email campaign. We’ve recognized Free People before for their innovative use of the customer voice in email – in a past campaign they recognized their Top Reviewers, and drove a 93% increase in review volume as a result.

This time the apparel and accessories retailer featured top-rated products, and saw conversion increases at both the product and category level.

The campaign

In late December, Free People launched a “Customer Favorites” campaign featuring seven top-rated products in an email to their subscribers. The email featured star ratings and review snippets for each of the products, with the tagline, “Gifts she’ll love… because she told us so.” A “See all top-rated gifts” button led readers to the Customer Favorites category page on Free People’s site.

The results

The email drove fantastic results at both the product and category level. On the day of the email, average sales for five of the featured products spiked to 71% above what they were the day before, with sales for one product increasing 150% over the previous day’s sales. And the results were even more dramatic at the category level, with sales in the Customer Favorites category 200% higher than category sales the day prior.

A recent video from GOOD magazine states that the highest performing businesses use customer insights in 80% of sales and merchandising. Infusing UGC throughout all of your marketing efforts – be they email, paid search, or traditional media – puts the voice of your customers to work for your brand to drive real business results.

SXSW fever hits Austin this weekend, and Bazaarvoice will be out and about at many events during the week of the conference. We’ve even got some free passes to give away! (Available to brand and retail marketers only, please.)

Below are the details on where we’ll be. If you’re interested in meeting up at an official SXSW event, or attending any other events with us this week, email our events team at rsvp@bazaarvoice.com.

Bazaarvoice Kickoff Gong
March 15, 10:30am
Bazaarvoice Headquarters

Special guests Ze Frank, Ted Rubin (former CMO of e.l.f. cosmetics), and Eric Qualman (author of Socialnomics) will meet up for a gong event to kickoff the week. Join us at Bazaarvoice headquarters to network with guests from P&G and other client brands, and to check out our new digs.

Get Ready to Live: A Conversation Beyond the Buzz
March 15, 1:30pm to 6pm
AT&T Executive Education Center

Chris Brogan (President of New Marketing Labs and author of Trust Agents) and our own Sam Decker will be among the featured hosts at this panel event. Join us to discuss the increasingly interdependent relationship between social interaction and online technology that is changing business as we know it. Regular registration is $125, but we have 35 complimentary passes to give away! For more info, talk to our events team.

Plutopia: The Science of Music
March 15, 7pm to 12am
Mexican American Cultural Center

This official SXSWi after party event is billed as “an exciting convergence of technology, DIY, music, art, and academics.” This year the event will focus on “the role of technology, sound and digital media in changing the landscape and narrative of music in the information age.” The entertainment will feature Bruce Sterling and DJ Spooky, and we’ve got 4 VIP passes to meet the artists! Contact our events team for more info.

Austin Social Media Club
March 16, 6pm to 8pm
Bazaarvoice Headquarters

This month’s Austin SMC meeting will feature Damien Basile of SMC’s New York chapter. Registration is open to all, and you can sign up online here.

We hope to meet up with you at some of these events! If you have any questions, we’re happy to help.

Matthew Lawson, Appliances Online

This post was guest-written by Matthew Lawson, Web & SEO Manager, DRL Limited (Appliances Online).

In selling UGC to your executives internally, proving ROI is crucial. Focussing only on the end of the purchase path – the final sale – doesn’t tell the full story of your UGC benefit.

While it can be difficult to do, understanding customers’ online shopping habits is highly valuable for brands. Studying search to determine how customers travel through hundreds of products and categories can reveal insights worth their weight in gold.

Shopping Stage

As consumers search for products online, they commonly fall into three main “buckets.”

Researchers – these searchers have a need, but they’ve only narrowed it down to the product category, such as “washing machines.”

Browsers – these searchers have narrowed their query to the next level, and have started to apply their desired product attributes, features, and maybe even brands. They might search for “black Hotpoint washing machine.”

Shoppers – these customers have done their researching and browsing, and have decided on the specific product model they want to purchase, searching for “Hotpoint WMD960K Black Washing Machine.”

Their Searches

Breaking your customers down into these groups tells you something about their specific needs and motivations. Searchers in the Research stage, for example, are less likely to buy during their visit than those in the Shopping stage. By examining the search queries driving traffic to your site, and categorizing them in the same way, you’ll find that conversion rates for and revenue generated by Shoppers is significantly higher than Researchers.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise. But traditional analytics attribute too much of the sale to that final Shopping stage, ignoring the work toward a purchase done in the Research and Browsing stages. Engaging searchers in these stages does the ground work, building the brand and making visitors more likely to return later as Shoppers and convert.

How can you do these early search stages justice, and show the ROI of UGC in every phase of the purchase path?

Attribution Modeling

The illustration below shows the click path a searcher may take in researching and shopping for washing machines. Traditional analytics would attribute all revenue of the final sale to the last click – in this example, a PPC ad. Attributing revenue in this way gives no credit to the hardest working traffic –searchers in the Research and Browsing stages, brought to your site organically by your UGC.

To show the true value of social commerce, this revenue should be split among the various stages of search.  Attributing 30% of revenue to the first click, 50% to the last click, and spreading the remaining 20% equally across the middle clicks, gives a more rounded and holistic picture of your search traffic and its value – and demonstrates the ROI of UGC on your site.

This model also opens opportunities to more cleverly target visitors in each search stage, allowing you to attribute value to previously unprofitable methods of marketing, such as generic PPC bidding.

Results

On Appliances Online’s kitchen appliance ecommerce site, we found that the majority of traffic generated by our customer review microsite were searchers in the Browsing phase of their buying cycle. Attribution modeling, compared to attribution based on the last click, attributed 18.4% more revenue to the review microsite.

If you’re having trouble selling the business value of UGC internally in your business, attribution modeling makes it easier to prove the ROI of customer feedback.

In the travel industry, we’ve witnessed a higher average number of reviews a day – understandable, since so many travelers book online, and want to share their travel experience with others. Edreams sees an average of 323 reviews a day, compared to the typical 65 reviews a day for retailers. The higher price point of travel creates more critical decision-makers and contributors, leading to more critical feedback. The travel industry stands to gain from these reviews in the same way restaurants benefit from negative customer feedback, as Derrek J. Hull, voice of the National Restaurant Association, writes in his blog post. Hull emphasizes that every business can expect a negative review at some point; smart business owners will take that review as an opportunity to start a conversation with the customer. The ball is now in their court.

Like travel, the entertainment industry has a higher price point than most online products. But there’s also larger price range – tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming Austin concert range from $91 to $682 on Razorgator. This leads to highly inquisitive and engaged shoppers viewing user-generated content. I know from personal experience; I check out what people say about the act, whether it’s worth the price, and any recommendations on seats. Who wouldn’t want to research a bit, especially with the choice between paying a few bucks, a few hundred, or not even going at all?

Another interesting and fairly new industry in the UGC game is the financial services industry. Our financial services clients like Geico are quickly gathering review volume from customers wanting to share their opinions, and are actually seeing many more of their reviews being served up on their websites than on typical retail sites. In other words, visitors to financial services sites click to “Read Reviews” more often, curious to see what customers are saying. This is expected, as much more research goes into choosing a financial services provider than the typical product; UGC helps meet the higher shopper demand for information.

Charlene Li (author of Groundswell) and Jeremiah Owyang, both leading experts in emerging social technologies, explained in their socialgraphics webinar that most consumers just “watch” social media – meaning, they read reviews, consume Q&A, etc., and fewer actually contribute. If travel, entertainment and financial services trend the same way that retail has, there will be a gradual but definite build in customers contributing content as user-generated content becomes more prevalent in all of these industries.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A few highlights:

• “Among people who planned to post reviews of their online shopping experience, 88% said the review would be positive.” At Bazaarvoice we call this the “J-curve.” Across all of our clients (even internationally) customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive.
• “Online social network users are three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising.” Capitalizing on this trust is key. With features like Facebook Connect, it’s now possible for shoppers to find out what their friends are saying about products. TurboTax’s “Friends Like You” feature not only allows shoppers to filter reviews by personal aspects like “bought a home” or “had a baby,” but also allows them to find reviews submitted by their connections on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
• “The highest performing businesses use customer insights in 80% of sales and merchandising.” We’ve seen clients infuse UGC into all of their multichannel marketing and advertising efforts with great success, from email to in-store, mobile and even paid search.
• “The 2009 holiday season set a new record: 79% of online shoppers were satisfied customers.” UGC not only helps customers find the right products for them, it also helps to set realistic expectations. Together, these two benefits lead to more satisfied customers, fewer customer support contacts, and decreased product returns.

These are just a few of the great stats in the video, pulled together by eMarketer, BIGresearch, and the NRF, among others. For more social commerce stats, check out our Stats page.

Our exec team took this chance to share their reactions to our biggest milestone to date.

The “hidden” impact of 100 billion: the new textbook. I shared my thoughts on the radically changing nature of marketing, and dedicated my post to some of the most dramatic changes I’ve seen clients make through UGC these past five years.

100 billion & climbing, thanks to our partners. Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer Brant Barton reflected on the role our Radius Partners have played in reaching this landmark.

B2B, B2C… 100 billion C2C (client to customer) interactions! Our Chief Operations Officer Heather Brunner shared an open thank-you letter to our clients.

10 reasons why 100 billion impressions matter to you. CMO Sam Decker explained the significance of our milestone for marketers and brands alike.

A behind-the-scenes look at hosting 100 billion impressions. Chief Technology Officer Andy Maag took this chance to thank the Bazaarvoice Engineering Team and our trusted vendor partners who’ve made our exponential growth over the past five years possible.

What are 100,000,000,000 impressions worth? Chief Revenue Officer Michael Osborne uses some slightly hyberpolic math to determine what this number could really be worth.

One hundred billion. That’s a big number, even for Congress. Our Chief Product Officer Mike Svatek broke down the numbers, reflecting on word-of-mouth’s incredible volume and reach in the digital age.

The short five years leading up to this milestone have been simultaneously humbling and pride-filled. As we approach our anniversary in May, we’re all looking forward to the next 100 billion.

To put it simply, it’s a lot. Let’s consider a few assumptions:

• There are probably about 20 impressions average per “decision” made online
• On average, user generated content influences a 20% lift in conversion
• The average spend per decision is around $45
• Returns are reduced by about 5% when user generated content is involved
• For every dollar spent online, about $5.70 is spent offline

Running a few simple calculations, this puts the value per impression at $0.56. Or in total, about $56 billion dollars of online value. If you use the stats published for offline influence, it goes up to $3.25 per impression, or $325 billion in value. Sounds incredible – and sure, there are some assumptions here, but when you think about the impressions we’ve served up in just under five years being worth $325 billion, it ranks as just above the 25th highest Gross Domestic Product. In another five years, it will eclipse the top 10.

Who’d have thought 100 billion user-generated content impressions would be worth more than the GDP of Austria? 

NRF interviewed Julie Bornstein, Sephora Direct SVP, for the post. Some of Julie’s comments really struck a chord with us, and we’d like to share them here.

Julie discussed the brand’s use of MobileVoice, allowing shoppers to access Sephora’s thousands of customer reviews on their mobile devices. “Have you ever tried to decide which moisturizer to use while standing in front of a wall of options?” Julie asked. “Our customers love to talk about beauty and they love to hear what others have to say.” Mobile access to authentic customer opinions helps shoppers in offline channels – in your stores, browsing your catalogue – find the right product for them.

Julie Bornstein, Sephora Direct SVP

On Facebook, Sephora strives to make sure there is value in being a fan. “We make changes as a result of [fan feedback],” says Julie. “Given that the people who tend to interact with us are our more serious beauty mavens, they really know what’s going on. It makes us realize how in touch our consumer is!” Customer feedback offers brands a chance to interact with their most engaged customers, learning from their feedback to improve products and services and generate effective marketing campaigns. “Use this audience as a focus group to help drive business decisions,” Julie suggests.

Integrating social networks like Facebook into UGC efforts offers brands the opportunity to make this content especially relevant for shoppers. “If the first generation of ‘user-generated content’ was Ratings & Reviews, I think the next will be around filtering that input by your own network and friends,” Julie suggests. TurboTax is doing this with its “Friends Like You” feature, which not only allows shoppers to filter reviews by personal aspects like “bought a home” or “had a baby,” but also allows them to find reviews submitted by their connections on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.

You can read NRF’s full interview with Julie here. To learn more about integrating your brand’s UGC with mobile and social networks, request a demo here.