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.

Why do we so badly want to separate science from art? Why can’t observation spark innovation? Consider Dutch artist and scientist Theo Jansen’s beautiful kinetic sculptures — his walking creatures that “live” on the beaches in Europe. He “evolves” his new creatures by carefully observing the success of existing ones —how long they “live,” whether they “survive” the wind, and if they strand themselves in the surf. He then constructs new creatures based on those observations. Does the fact that he measures imply his work lacks vision?

We always encourage our clients to measure the effects of our solution for a return on their investment. But the most interesting client success stories we collect present data around unexpected findings that sparked further investigation. For example, in a recent blog we outlined how eSpares found that the traffic to the site from persons clicking to “Read Reviews” link on an e-mail’s featured product out-weighted that of the “Buy Now” button in the e-mail by 2.5 times. And eSpares is not the only client who reported unexpected, incremental sales this quarter…

• An apparel/accessories manufacturing client sent an e-mail requesting reviews. The incremental revenue from the traffic returning to the site was $13,123.
• Orvis launched a post-purchase e-mail requesting review volume. In just 10 days, this lead $2,057.00 in additional sales from persons returning to the site.
• A consumer electronics manufacturing client sent an e-mail announcing the launch of Ratings & Reviews and soliciting content. The traffic returning to the site to leave reviews had a 3.48% sales conversion rate, which generated $8,396 of revenue.
• An apparel/accessories retail client launched a post-purchase e-mail requesting reviews. As a result of incremental sales from that traffic, each e-mail is generating an average of $0.25.

What assumptions about e-mail does this potentially challenge? For one, this shows that transactional e-mails can generate sales. Look at the structure of your transactional e-mails. Could a subtle change to your primary call-to-action help generate incremental sales? And is your proposed “subtle” change appropriate so as not to lose the transactional flavor of the e-mail?

eSpares.co.uk

The online retailer, which sells over half a million products from 500 manufacturers, sent its regular e-newsletter to subscribers on 20 November 2009. The email, titled “The most annoying dishwasher faults and how to fix them,” was meant to drive traffic to eSpares’ Advice Centre, featuring links to online articles and videos.

They featured one product: limescale remover.  This section featured a photo of the remover, a few sentences about its use, a text link that read “Limescale and Detergent Remover customer reviews,” and a “buy now” button.

While buttons – particularly “buy now” buttons – generally garner higher click-through rates, eSpares was surprised to see that the “customer reviews” delivered 488% more click-throughs than the “buy now” button.

Even better, they sold a high volume of limescale remover based on this link. The reviews link delivered more than 2.5 times the orders and revenue than the buy now link did.

This was eye-opening for eSpares, proving to them that customer opinions are very impactful in consumer purchasing decisions.

Matthew Henton, Marketing Director at eSpares, said, “We were so impressed at how well the UGC link performed that for our last email, where we didn’t really have room for both a UGC and a Buy Now call-to-action, we just went with ‘Read all customer reviews’ for the 3 featured products.”

Going forward, eSpares plans to incorporate user-generated content and customer reviews more heavily in their marketing campaigns, in order to highlight community activity for the brand and increase sales.

If you are a sport enthusiast, a bike nut, or an off-road junkie in the UK, you know about Wiggle. A bike emporium that sells top riding gear and quality bikes, Wiggle has been an innovator in the world of cycling, and an equally original UGC pioneer. From rich media video reviews by the dozen, to the review-specific blog, the most avid English cyclists come to connect on Wiggle. Not to mention that the community is built by the customers themselves – they contribute content, give product improvement recommendations and continue to ask for more Wiggle. Here are just a few ways that Wiggle optimizes UGC:

Video Reviews

Wiggle’s video reviews allow users to submit videos of products in action, illustrating what they like, dislike, and would change about the product. The result is a fresh way to review that engages both the reviewer and those shoppers who watch. Wiggle’s active use of new media results in interesting and entertaining review content, with reviews like the one below getting hundreds of views.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bloggle

The Wiggle blog, dubbed “Bloggle,” has a category devoted entirely to customer reviews. Wiggle uses the voices of their customers to build a community around the brand and its use of UGC – check it out for yourself! Posts showcasing particularly helpful or funny reviews encourages Bloggle readers to become contributors.

Each month hosts a review contest to find the best review submissions, “Good, bad or indifferent.” Different suppliers co-sponsor the contests, offering reviewers the chance to win prizes ranging from £250 vouchers to a Focus mountain bike worth £749. The contest and prizes are displayed in banners all over the site, building awareness for both Wiggle reviews and the sponsoring brand – another way that Wiggle is building a community around its own image.

Winners’ stories give a face to the devoted Wiggle shopper. “I’m really happy about winning one of the three prizes Wiggle put up for their August customer review competition!” writes the most recent winner. “And the £250 is just what I need for my autumn run gear shopping @ Wiggle.” Real voices, real stories – a growing tribe of connections and innovations is brewing on wiggle.co.uk.

Product Improvements

Wiggle recently launched a brand of cycling gear, dhb. In a press release announcing the 2010 line, they cited how reviews have helped them make their products even better. “Feedback from wearers of the 2009 Merston Bibs suggested changes were needed to the ankle zipper, so the latest version now features an even sturdier lockdown ankle zipper.” This reactive attitude not only agrees with customers, but helps build superior quality in dhb products which furthers the Wiggle brand as a leader in the cycling space. Consider how UGC is changing your business – Bazaarvoice offers a multitude of advanced reporting tools to help you understand, at the product level, the quality and satisfaction your customers feel.

Email

As Community Managers, we drive home the need for a review-generating email that encourages customers to go back on the site and review the products. We have a myriad of best practices and examples of these emails, as well as showcase the clients that have seen it be successful. Wiggle has employed the best practice of using post-purchase emails to solicit review content from the very beginning, to excellent results.

• Open rate for review emails is 47%.
• Click-through rate to write a review is 24%, and the response rate stays fairly consistent around 10% reviews received to emails sent.
• Some reviewers even cite these emails in-review as their reason for reviewing.

Practices like these are helping Wiggle drive great customer loyalty among a very passionate customer base. UGC connects this passion to the Wiggle brand, creating brand loyalists who influence others on Wiggle’s site. Wiggle-on!

But the complete value of user-generated content – your customers’ direct input – lies beyond just e-commerce results. We’ve seen UGC have an impact everywhere from the customer service desk to the CEO’s office. In this series of blogs, we’ll explore how Bazaarvoice clients have seen real value across their organizations. You can read more on the “cross-functional impact” area of our site.

Directors of Marketing think daily about their brand’s positioning and messaging, how to best reach target audiences, and how to best promote – and measure – products and services. Collecting customer input on your site gives marketing directors insights into what is most important to them, and we’ve seen user-generated content improve advertising content and results throughout the channel – email, catalogs, online advertising, and more.

Providing authentic content for all marketing and advertising channels

Customer input creates great ad copy. QVC featured top-rated products on their broadcast, and business-to-business marketer Treatment Abroad, which matches surgeons around the world to UK prospects, created a compelling marketing piece. Samsung featured customer reviews in their pre-Super Bowl email campaign.

And UGC drives online advertising, as well. When they tested review content in their Google ads, Office Depot saw a 196% increase in their paid search revenue. Intuit prominently featured customer reviews in the largest online promotion of customer reviews – ever. And there are multiple case studies showing how reviews improve email results.

Improving partner and media campaigns

BrandVoice allows manufacturers to syndicate their customer reviews to retailer sites, increasing results for both parties. By syndicating reviews to OfficeDepot.com, Kingston doubled conversion, and review volumes exponentially increase for branded products on retailer sites.

Bazaarvoice’s new sponsored Stories campaigns enables brands to engage with consumers on targeted media sites, sharing content across the media site and the brand’s site – and retailers can get involved, too.

Impacting offline purchase decisions

Not all purchases are made place online, so Bazaarvoice products extend beyond the web. Recent analysis with Cars.com showed that product reviews help Cars.com drive "intent to buy". Our newest solution, MobileVoice, lets customers read online reviews on their mobile phones, allowing them to get customer reviews from anywhere – in the store, in the mall, or even in transit.

There are dozens of ways user-generated content impacts marketing – and the rest of your business. Customer oxygen can impact your entire organization – and we can prove it.

This blog was guest-written by Jen Renola, Bazaarvoice Community Manager.

PETCO “Tails” save lives…and the next life may be my own!  PETCO recently launched Bazaarvoice Stories by inviting its customers to share “The Moment Your Pet Changed Your Life.” Now I’ve been tossing around the idea of getting a pet for quite some time, and reading PETCO’s “Sentimental Tails” may be just the motivation I need.  These stories are incredible!

Stories about how people’s pets saved their lives…figuratively:

“I would like to tell you a story about a wonderful dog who saved my life in so many ways…So here is the introduction.”

Stories about how people’s pets saved their lives…literally:

“He helped me to get back into my home and then proceeded to walk me very slowly and carefully inside to a bed. I sat down and used the phone. I believe he saved my life, as I was otherwise alone and I would have been stuck there in the freezing, zero degree weather without anything to keep me warm.”

Stories about the tremendous role that PETCO has played in their lives:

“We buy all of Mercury's food, treats, (his Charlee Bears, yum!) toys, and supplies from PETCO, and although he comes with me everywhere and is welcome in every store, PETCO is, by far, his favorite place to go! He even gets to make new doggie friends sometimes. Thanks, PETCO for supporting Mercury and all service animals, and for opening your doors to animals to become a dog's social ‘hot spot!’”

These Stories have to make all of us non pet owners wonder if there is indeed something missing in our lives. And if the Stories themselves aren’t enough to make us think twice, all the photos of these adorable pets certainly are.

Once again, PETCO has proven to be a leader in leveraging user-generated content to meet the needs of its customers at every level. And as we’ve come to expect, PETCO launched Stories by incorporating Bazaarvoice’s recommended best practices: a contest promoted through a homepage banner, category page banners, and email marketing, resulting in over 80 stories submitted in the first four days of the campaign.

I can’t wait to see what’s next.  If I read many more of these, I may find myself at PETCO soon, shopping for supplies for my new pet.  Maybe by then they’ll have Stories with helpful tips for new pet owners…or suggestions for fun toys!

This post was guest-written by Anna Skaya, Bazaarvoice Community Manager in the UK.

Argos, our largest European client, released an email campaign last week to all customers who had either purchased or reserved a product during December. They had postponed sends during the month of December due to the high level of gift purchases and a possible lower level of response, and this strategy really paid off.

The Argos decision to hold all email until January was an important one from a level of return perspective. It also ensured that fresh reviews were received ahead of their January Catalogue launch, a key milestone in their trading calendar. We were under pressure to process and moderate the content quickly and accurately – Argos requires the highest degree of moderation so no drop in SLA or quality would be acceptable!

Result: Argos set a Bazaarvoice record by amassing more submissions in a 24 hour period than any other Bazaarvoice client, plus it doubled the previous highest number, set by a large US client. Way to go, UK!

The epic success of this campaign is not only based on the sample size. The internal Argos team followed our post-purchase email best practices: send out the email on a Tuesday or Wednesday between 10am and 4pm when most people are at the office as this is when review submissions seem to be most prolific. We also recommend waiting to send Christmas post-purchase emails until after the holidays, to help ensure a better return of high quality reviews. This not only generates more relevant content as the gifts have been opened and the returns have been made, but it will also increase review volume, since most people are now back in their ‘normal routine.’

Community Managers help our clients hone their post-purchase emails all the time – we have seen small tweaks to marketing campaigns equal huge changes in email open rates and review volume.

How did the Argos email do in numbers? See for yourself:

1. Total reviews submitted in one day (11am to Midnight): 63,232 reviews
2. Total reviews collected in 24 hours: ~70,000 reviews
3. Total reviews since email launch: 90,000+ reviews
4. Total reviews that might make it out of SLA: NONE!

This was the single biggest spike we have seen from our hundreds of clients. Argos sets a new record on number of reviews gathered in a day, beating out the previous record of 40,000 reviews set last fall. As our case studies show, more reviews equals higher sales conversion.

I love seeing a UK retailer drive such results! Look to Argos to being a key player in the online social commerce market – with a solid internal team, the right initiatives and innovative ideas, this is a true partnership!

Click on each image to see it full-size.

Williams-Sonoma has quickly realized the value of UGC. This holiday season they used customer reviews in several emails to promote holiday foods and merchandise top-rated cookware.

Beauty products purveyor philosophy re-styled the look and feel of Ratings & Reviews for the holidays. They also used top-rated gifts as one way to merchandise products in their holiday shop and promoted this on their homepage.

 Throughout the holiday shopping season Best Buy featured three different homepage banner ads with pop-up URLs to direct the consumers to various shopping categories. One of their favored merchandising categories was top-rated products.

Levenger featured top-rated products as “Customer Favorites” in their holiday gift guide and highlighted this in an email.

Land of Nod gave away a $1,000 gift card in return for reviews…just in time for customers to do some holiday shopping and for the Land of Nod to collect some great content to help indecisive shoppers.

This holiday season saw a huge reflection of the customer voice in retail. We’ll keep you posted on other unique holiday promotions this year!