Posts Tagged ‘participation’

Marketing Strategy, Multichannel, Social Commerce Summit, User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker Bazaarvoice Summit Cliffnotes #17: Feeding the Voice—How to Increase Participation

October 27th, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

This is the seventeenth in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.

Joel Knight, Marketing Services Manager, spoke about how to increase participation to increase UGC volume.

With these 10 best practices, a company can establish a new UGC-based marketing program, foster its success, and then take it multi-channel.

1. Launch an Engineered UGC program

  • Have a launch announcement, and keep it simple!
  • Use past-purchase e-mails for purchases up to six-months past (Send them on Tuesday mornings)
  • Always provide a direct call-to-action
  • Provide an incentive
  • Connect your message to the brand (i.e., include the CEO’s signature in e-mails)

2. Build on Critical Mass

  • Develop loyalty programs, giving contributors early access to products, badge consistent contributors, offer rewards, etc.
  • Make internal contributors, such as your staff — especially for providing answers to customer-generated questions. Always remember to badge these folks
  • Always send post-purchase e-mails.; include a direct link to where the customer can contribute their content (review, story, answer, etc.)

3. Take it Multi-channel

  • Use cross-promotions to promote UGC and use reviews to prompt more purchases. Use box stuffers, catalogs, receipts, in-store signage, etc.
  • Encourage reviews through warranty registrations from manufacturers and other packaged goods
  • Use your customers’ words in all types of advertising – see how Office Depot got great results from their online ads featuring “reviews”
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Marketing Strategy

Sam Decker Scott Cook (Co-Founder of Intuit) on the Contribution Revolution

October 2nd, 2008 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Harvard Business Review published a fascinating article (free) written by Scott Cook, the co-founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee for Intuit. In it Scott explains his trepidation at user contribution, but now fully embraces the impact it has on business. The title of the article is “The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business”. [Interesting Note: the Bazaarvoice tagline is “Help  Customers Build Your Business”].

Cook gives several examples of businesses who are benefiting from [what he calls] a user contribution system, such as Honda, Procter & Gamble, Hyatt, and Loblaw. He also cites experience Intuit has had with it’s forum community and the reviews platform that we power for them.
He describes the user contribution system in this way:

The users can be customers, employees, sales prospects—or even people with no previous connection to the company. Their contributions can be active (work, expertise, or information) or passive and even unknowing (behavioral data that is gathered automatically during a transaction or an activity). The system is the method, usually internet-based, by which contributions are aggregated and automatically converted into something useful to others. Although the company retains control of the system and may choose to modify its design, the system converts inputs into useful outputs in real time with little or no intervention by the company.

Such a system creates value for a business as a consequence of the value it delivers to users—personalized purchase recommendations, connections between buyers and sellers of hard-to-find items, new personal or business relationships, lower prices, membership in a community, entertainment, information of all kinds.

He also cites the revolutionary potential of business benefits from user contributions:

  • Cost advantage
  • Scalability advantage
  • Competitive advantage
  • Customer service
  • Marketing
  • Employee support
  • Capital resources
  • Design and development

I encourage you to forward this article to your CEO, CFO and senior executives of your company who need to be informed of the benefits and impact of user contributions. In a world where companies succeed on word of mouth, where marketing and advertising are largely ignored, and where customers (90%) actively seek out recommendations from people like then, tapping into contributors (influentials) should be THE priority, especially during difficult times. It’s no longer a nice to have.

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New at Bazaarvoice, Research

Sam Decker Why Customers Write Reviews

November 28th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Because reviewers want to help others…that's the short answer.

We just announced the results of a study we executed with Keller Fay Research to understand the intentions and motivations behind reviewers. Overwhelmingly, the survey found, reviewers are motivated by goodwill and positive sentiment. The summary of the findings:

  • Fully 90 percent write reviews in order to help others make better buying decisions
  • More than 70 percent want to help companies improve the products they build and carry.
  • 79 percent write reviews in order to reward a company
  • 87 percent of the reviews are generally positive in tone (self reported, but matches our actual findings of the J-Curve where 80% reviews are positive)

Why is this important?

  • To understand the motivations behind customers’ taking the time to post user generated content is to understand how to reward them and encourage others to participate.
  • It confirms why reviews are so positive – customers believe they help others more by sharing products they loved.
  • It tells us that these reviewers have positive feelings towards the companies that created products they love. And it says that companies can benefit far more than just a review from these influential, participatory customers.
  • There are great opportunities for CRM / segmentation strategies and loyalty programs for both retailers and manufacturers.

And a surprising finding:

Prior to writing the review preceding taking this survey, only 19 percent of reviewers had posted on independent product review sites such as ePinions or CNET, while 66 percent had posted to a retailers’ site after an OFFLINE purchase, compared to 34% who had previously posted due to an online purchase. This underscores that customers are more apt to post reviews from the retailers from which they buy. Further, customers are likely to return to the retailer's site to write a review from an offline purchase. Evidence of these results: from some of our clients we've found as much as 30% of all reviews are from in-store customers.

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