The theme of the Summit was “The New ROI: Return on Influentials”. Executives and managers from top retailers, manufacturers and financial companies came to the new AT&T Conference Center in Austin (on UT’s campus) for 3 days to learn how to build and show the impact of customer voice in their business. See the agenda here.

In the coming weeks we will blog cliff notes from the sessions. But you can also see the stream of Twitter notes here.

I didn’t hear everything (I was running around emceeing the event), but here are some of the biggest takeaways I had:

• Anyone can be an influencer. You can unearth them by facilitating their contribution and amplifying its impact.
• Measurement and marketing impact is easier than most think. Measure the impact of UGC on existing marketing campaigns (examples from Helzberg, Sephora, others)
• Getting C-level buy-in dramatically accelerates the evolution of transforming the business with the voice of customer (ex: Sam Taylor, CEO of Oriental Trading pulled together cross functional team to leverage reviews in supply chain and strategy)
• Brands realize that the voice of the customer is transformational, but are challenged to accelerate organizational change.
• We are all working on a comprehensive way to operationalize and measure all the impacts of social commerce initiatives.
• There’s a big opportunity in merging social content and data with email strategy. Bazaarvoice Social Alerts with JCWhitney had 100% open rate and 50% click through!
• We’re scratching the surface on the database marketing opportunities with influencers. Those who contribute can help identify others who contribute. Some thought leadership discussed with our partner, Merkle.

And we had fun too…

• We were in Austin…so we’ll start there!
• During the sessions, Sunni Brown drew graphic recordings on each session (will post soon).
• Tuesday night we took buses out to the Salt Lick Pavilion (best BBQ in TX, in my opinion) and hosted the Bazaarvoice Bull Ride contest again.
• Leslie from Williams Sonoma took the prize this year (Omare from Geico won last year).
• We had live music from Jeff Hughes and Chaparral
• We played Chicken Shit Bingo (sorry…that’s just what it’s called!)
• Attendees grabbed their beverage from the backs of Beer Donkeys!
• As an unorthodox way to evangelize our message to clients, last year we debuted the video “More than Words”. This year we created two videos, “The Influencer Abduction” and “Freedom! ’09 (Let Their Content Free!)”. Share them with colleagues that need to ‘get’ social commerce!

Abduction of Influencers

Click here to view the embedded video.

Freedom! '09 (Let Their Content Free!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

To give you a Bazaarvoice “inside perspective” on the event…

Last year’s event received a Net Promoter score of 9.3 out of 10. We were excited to get such positive feedback on our first event, but it also meant we had a high bar to jump over. We want to continually improve. We’re tallying the on-site surveys now, and we’ll be sending out an additional email survey, but just based on our experience and comments from clients, we were thrilled with the results. The majority of the event experience was based on the presentations and interaction between clients, as we learn from each other. One of my favorite quotes “the Summit is an amusement park of ideas.” And because so many clients came, our community management, support, implementation, and sales team members were able to put faces to voices. The entire Bazaarvoice team worked on making this successful. It takes a lot of work and requires juggling a lot of details. I want to give special thanks and recognition to the three folks on my team who were the producers of the event: Sarah Loyens, who quarterbacked the invitations and logistics to get folks there; Chris Wellington, our designer who took the event experience to the next level and tied it all together (including the Polaroids in the notebook!); and Amber Quist, who was the overall Producer of the event with RedVelvet Events. And of course, thank you to our partners who added to the content and made the event possible.

Stay tuned for cliffnotes of the content! For those who attended, stay tuned for presentations and conversations posted to the SCS Community.

p.s. If you're in Europe or the UK, register for our Social Commerce Summit London on September 22!

The focus of my presentation was on user-generated content (UGC), and how to measure social initiatives. As you are aware, Bazaarvoice provides social commerce solutions to a variety of organizations across many different industries. The hypothesis for engaging in social commerce is to get more visitors to the site, have them convert at a higher rate, spend more money, increase brand engagement, and return their products less frequently. But don’t stop there. It’s important to look beyond your hypothesis to determine the total impact of your assumptions (allowing you to both secure and defend your budget).

So where are the other areas of impact for UGC? Customer satisfaction is one. During his keynote at eTail in Phoenix last week, Larry Freed, President and CEO of Foresee Results, discussed the importance of measuring customer satisfaction. His hypothesis was that satisfaction drives conversion. This makes sense. Happy customers are more likely to buy your products. So how do you create a happy customer? By providing them the information they want, when they want it, and where they want it. According to Neilson Online, shoppers are demanding UGC as part of their shopping experience; 81 percent of online shoppers read online customer reviews over the holidays. If you give them the chance to read peer reviews, you have met their expectations. They will be happy. And, as Larry points out, if they are happy, they will be more likely to buy your products.

Let’s expand the hypothesis further. Are consumers in the store just as hungry for UGC as online shoppers? The answer is yes. The Web is a great mechanism for research and has a direct impact on in-store sales. According to BIGresearch, 92.5 percent of adults said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying them in the store. Furthermore, eMarketer reports that for every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales.

So how do you marry the ease of research online and the demand for peer reviews with the comfort of purchasing in the store? Through mobile applications. Though in its infancy (according to ForeSee, only 29 percent of consumers have used their mobile device as part of their shopping experience), consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile phones to research products online while shopping in the store. ForeSee reports that 15 percent of surveyed shoppers used their mobile devices to go online to check product reviews. This is not insignificant, seeing that the number of smart phones is growing exponentially, and demand for UGC is over 80 percent. This is why Bazaarvoice recently launched MobileVoice; a solution that allows consumers to read peer reviews through their mobile devices.

But MobileVoice isn’t solely for the benefit of the consumer. As Joyce Hrinya, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Customer Service at Helzberg shared with me, Helzberg is excited to have their associates use MobileVoice in the store. The associate can share their expertise of a product and inject UGC from their mobile device to drive more sales for a better shopping experience, without the infrastructure costs associated with many POS terminals.

Helzberg is a great example of the proper way to continuously collect, measure, and analyze visitor behavioral data for the purpose of optimizing their business and their brand.

When it comes to multi-channel promotions, Helzberg truly shines. They have seen such success with ratings and reviews online that it was a no-brainer to incorporate them with in-store promotions as well. When I walked into a Helzberg store in Austin, the Associates couldn’t stop raving about reviews and showing me the great signage that helped them spark conversations with their customers. Helzberg is definitely leading the pack with their multi-channel initiatives, and we wanted to get the story on their vision and strategy.

We sat down with Maureen Hultgen, Interactive Marketing Coordinator, and Tracie Charvat, Creative Director, both with Helzberg, to get their insights.

Why is Helzberg interested in promoting product Ratings & Reviews offline?
We think it is important to communicate the brand and product experiences of our existing customers and brand advocates into conversations with new customers and prospects. In addition, we understand that our customers are making a big purchase decision and trusting us with that purchase so we wanted to ensure that trust with reinforcement from other customers. We want our new customers to be able to connect directly with our existing customers.

What types of multi-channel promotions do you currently utilize?
In-store signage, in-store (display cases), direct mail catalogs, in-store digital displays, website and email campaigns

What immediate effects have you seen?
We have seen an increase in product and brand engagement. Ratings & Reviews provides customers the opportunity to engage with the company outside the store. There is also an added dimension of personalization. Reviews help illustrate how purchasing a product can truly create a personal moment that sparkles for our customers. It reinforces market position. Reviews reinforce product selection by providing word-of-mouth proof of quality and value in their selection. Finally, it provides feedback. Our buyers now have an opportunity to see how consumers perceive our product.

How do the store employees respond to Ratings & Reviews?
It provides Associates talking points and product focus. It also exposes our Associates to online conversations about products. Ratings and Reviews could potentially act as a support to training – letting Associates know what specific benefits appeal to customers, so they can focus on those attributes when communicating to new customers.

How do customers in the store respond to different promotions?
We have not done any research to determine this, but we do know that a customer has brought the catalog into the store with the reviewed merchandise circled telling the sales associate, “I want this.” (while pointing to the merchandise).

Your ideas are very innovative. What's the inspiration?
We are sticklers for authenticity and this offers us an opportunity to communicate a REAL, modern version of the testimonial. Again, going back to the connection one customer can make with another – we want people to feel like they are buying from a company that other people just like them are buying from as well. We want them to know that we value what our customers think about our merchandise and that we carefully consider their opinions on our merchandise.

What can we expect to see next?
Further integration into offline media; we are trying to think of creative ways to get our ratings and reviews out to all of our customers.

Visit a Helzberg Diamonds location near you to check out ratings and reviews today!