Sean McDonald from Ant’s Eye View started out by having every brand track themselves along the Social Commerce Maturity Curve, where the majority of brands indicated they’re still in the infancy of their social media strategy.

Ant’s Eye View’s Ben McConnell gave specific advice about building a social media strategy based on goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. He’s seen that many brands fall down by getting confused about terminology – i.e., confusing goals with objectives (objectives are measurable) – and making it longer than one page. Social media is new – to gain buy-in, your strategy must be easy to understand and share across any department. Most important? Align your goals with business goals – the bottom line – and set realistic expectations for the timing around reaching these goals.

John Lazarchic, PETCO’s VP of E-Commerce, shared how PETCO has experimented with and measured a variety of social programs, including customer reviews, sponsored stories campaigns, and a variety of Facebook pages focused on specific types of content (such as pet owners who focus on all-natural products at the Generation Natural Pet Facebook page). He also shared how he integrates customer comments and feedback into email and other channels, and built out a team and a new community strategy – and how he got the executive team to buy in. He’ll be sharing his insights on a webinar on May 4 – the details are at the end of this post.

Two diverse brands – a new network marketing company, EvolvHealth and Nationwide Insurance – shared their views on Facebook. Key takeaways include sharing relevant information, avoiding promotional-ism, and thinking beyond your products. For example, Nationwide’s three Facebook fan pages don’t focus on insurance, but on topics that relate to Nationwide. Both brands use Facebook to keep the conversation going, but not necessarily to close product sales.

Dell may be one of the largest brands known for being open to, listening, and taking action on customer feedback. They contact customers that give products low ratings, use customers’ own words in marketing (“Never hire another marketing copywriter,” says Dell’s Senior Manager, Global Community & Personalization, Stuart Wallock). Alex Gruzen, SVP of Consumer Product Group at Dell shared that their product team uses reviews to inform new product development, setting high goals for ratings for new and future products.

Bill Stephenson from Nielsen advised brands to use social networks to listen to what consumers are saying about your brand, then use that information to build real credibility for your brand. He suggests protecting your brand by listening in advance. An explosion via social media can happen at any time – are you prepared to deal with it? Know where you stand before something blows up.

As the Director of Social Media for USAA, Tom Vaughn estimates he works for one of the most conservative industries: a financial and insurance company whose customers all work for the U.S. military. But he tested, measured, and proved the impact of social commerce so much that he now manages a staff of eight and a large social media budget. He aligns social goals with company goals and tracks the same metrics used to show ROI, and listens for trends as well as individual issues. It’s usually fairly easy to solve individual problems, but harder to see the big trends. These trends, however, can deliver big wins – helping you solve big issues before they become large issues for customers in general.

It was an energizing day, full of great questions and engaging conversations. Attendees said they plan to create their social media plans, work to gain buy-in using the insights they gained today, and make better use of the customer content they’ve already gathered.

How to keep customers engaged – and buying.

Want to hear more from PETCO's presentation at the Social Commerce Summit Executive Boot Camp? Register for our free upcoming webinar with John Lazarchic, VP of E-commerce for PETCO. He'll share how communities can (and should) track directly to bottom-line corporate goals, and how to get there.

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!

I’m extremely bullish on Bazaarvoice, as I have been all along. We have always spent judiciously and balanced between high growth and cashflow neutrality, and our current investments have enabled us to rapidly grow our Client Services team to best serve our more than 280 clients globally. We are 375 people strong and will continue to hire engineers to continue our development of ROI-driving products, features, and programs. You won’t find another company that has consistently developed as many new offerings – we have consistently delivered new features every seven weeks across 6 (soon to be 7) products in 20 international languages, and this will not slow down. Our culture is stronger than ever. It is truly humbling (and exciting, every day) to work at such a special place.

In the midst of the global economic uncertainty, I want you to know that we will continue to thrive as a financially viable, rapidly growing organization by staying focused on our most important job: effectively and passionately servicing our clients to deliver measurable results. You will see many companies with unproven business models fold over the next year, as I witnessed happening around us at Coremetrics during 2001-2002. But our business, and our business model, are very solid:

• In our most recent quarter, we saw a 148% increase in signed clients and a 229% increase in revenue, compared to the same quarter a year ago.
• We now serve more than 280 clients globally.
• Currently, 90% of the Internet Retailer Top 50 and 80% of the National Retail Federation’s Top 100 who outsource reviews choose Bazaarvoice.
• We have served over 17 billion product reviews to date, across 20 international languages.
• We were voted one of Austin’s Best Places to Work this year for the second year running.
• This week, we won the 2008 Marketing Excellence Award from ClickZ for our Ask & Answer solution.

To us, user-generated content must deliver a real impact to our clients. Here are some recent benefits they have seen:

• Ask & Answer drives 72% higher conversion rate for PETCO.
• Customer reviews drive 196% increase in paid search revenue for Office Depot.
• Large French retailer, Mistergoodeal, sees 40% conversion increase.
• Reviews help Cars.com drive “intent to buy”; 16% lead conversion increase.
• Want more? Read 23 case studies here.

Now, more than ever, social commerce can have the greatest impact on the bottom line, including reducing support costs and product returns, and increasing site traffic, conversion, advertising ROI, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. In this economy, consumers will scrutinize their purchases more than ever, driving an increased need for user-generated content. They will reward businesses that help them make more informed and satisfying purchase decisions. Businesses that step up their pace of customer centricity will emerge as even stronger leaders after these challenging times turn.

We will continue to be the leader in social commerce. Our entire company is focused on our clients, and it excites us to see so much innovation and success from the smart people that choose to partner with us. Please let us know how we can help your business.

As always, keep an eye on this blog for more real-world ideas from our clients about how user-generated content works for them.  Here are a few of my favorites from just this month:

• French retailers drive ROI and Loyalty
• Reviews impact Boden's sales and their future product designs
• Ratings & Reviews boost sales for Europe's top retailers
• Scott Cook (co-founder of Intuit) on the Contribution Revolution

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

John Lazarchic, VP of eCommerce at PETCO (a Social Commerce Achievement Award winner), has always been a pioneer in making the most of user-generated content. As one of Bazaarvoice’s first clients, PETCO has continued to innovate with new ways of amplifying their customer voice.

John recommends incorporating customer feedback and opinions into every facet of the business, from the website and email campaigns to in-store signage and printed weekly circulars.

Below is a list of PETCO’s newest UGC initiatives:

1. Brand Shops – these mini-sites on PETCO.com feature brand-specific customer reviews to build loyalty and engagement (see the KONG shop).
2. Top Rated Banner Ads – the inclusion of UGC on these ads resulted in 10% better performance
3. Fully-integrated customer review contest – using Bazaarvoice’s ReStyle technology, PETCO was able to launch a multichannel Valentine’s Day campaign that spurred participation and engaged customers at every touch point in the PETCO experience
4. The Answer Den – using our Ask & Answer product, PETCO developed a Q&A section on their site that resulted in 100% more orders per session
5. Top Contributor Loyalty Program – giving incentives and rewards for your most active community members
6. Mobile Reviews in the future – give customers access to PETCO.com review content in the store or on the road

And of course, watch this space to learn about PETCO's latest innovations!

This post was guest-written by Matt Hawkins, Senior Marketing Analyst at Bazaarvoice.

When it comes to leveraging customer content in innovative and revenue generative ways, no one out-performs PETCO.com.  With the sleek branding of the Answer Den thoroughly engaging their pet-loving online community, PETCO has received over 5,000 answers after being live with Ask & Answer for only a few months.

To fuel community participation, PETCO recently launched the “Answer This!” contest to gather even more answer volume and further increase the sales benefits they were already seeing from The Answer Den.

On top of the existing results from The Answer Den, after their "Answer This!" contest ended, PETCO saw an additional…

• 69% increase in its conversion rate
• 172% more views per visit (on top of already-elevated page views due to The Answer Den)
• 150% more orders per session

…as a result of the additional content.

Ask & Answer has proven to be yet another great addition to the suite of social commerce products PETCO currently has deployed. PETCO adopted Ratings & Reviews in 2006 which has produced lower return rates and higher conversion rates. By adding Ask & Answer, PETCO has further made customer centricity a #1 priority with Bazaarvoice’s social commerce technologies. PETCO has truly demonstrated Metcalfe’s Law of Social Commerce which says: the more (in number) and more varied the uses of your customer-generated content, the greater the return for your business.

Even prior to launching The Answer Den it was no surprise to PETCO that more questions and answers would result in an increase in sales (see: Shoes.com case study). PETCO was already seeing phenomenal results from the Answer Den and the contest only magnified its effect on boosting sales.

Before PETCO ran the contest aimed at driving volume and boosting sales, they saw that those who visited the Answer Den had…

• 100% more orders per session
• 90% more page views per session
• 72% higher conversion rate
• 28% more items/order
• 9% higher average order value
• -6% item abandonment rate
• -6% shopping cart abandonment rate

…compared to shoppers who visited a category page (which is where the Answer Den is implemented).

You can read all the details in our latest Ask & Answer case study. Excellent work, PETCO!

The key finding is that US and UK shoppers have more trust and respect for Brands that enable product reviews. In fact, 8 out of 10 shoppers trust and respect brands more if they have authentic, user generated reviews on their site. So, not only do reviews help improve conversion, average order value, returns, satisfaction, natural search traffic, RSS feed click through, email revenue, and offline impact (ask us for any of these case studies)…they also improve brand perception! 

Another finding: US shoppers consider ratings and reviews to be the most useful eCommerce site feature (44 percent). Product comparison (15 percent), product navigation (12 percent), and privacy information (11 percent) followed in the distance. We knew this already from site surveys with PETCO and CompUSA, but it's always helpful to get another data point! We're sort of maniacal about data

Now, I have nothing against Sprint. But I find it fascinating that in this day and age the way we consume information is so dependent upon Web search results. We spend more time consuming media online than in any other medium. If you are considering Sprint as a customer and searching for "Sprint customer service" on Google to learn about the experience you may have with them, 30% of the first ten matches are negative and 20% are about them firing high maintenance customers.

This highlights a modern day challenge. Firing bad customers deserves more consideration in today's "global village". I'm guessing that Sprint made this decision on an almost purely financial basis. Some of these customers were calling them 24 times per month. Perhaps these are just high maintenance individuals. We all know them – no matter what you do, they are never happy. If I called my mobile provider's customer service department every time I had a dropped call, I would be calling them often – maybe even 30 times per month. And some customers probably do call every time there is a dropped call. I don't know if these 1,000 customers fall into that category or not. That is why I put "bad" in quotes for the title of this post. Only Sprint knows how bad these customers truly are.

But did anyone at Sprint consider the reputation impact of this cost-cutting action in today's networked world? If not, I'm sure they will next time. This story has been everywhere. First, I heard it on the radio. Then I saw it on CNN at the gym. And now it is literally all over the Web!

One of my most memorable classes at Wharton's MBA program was Dr. Eric Clemons' class on using information as a competitive weapon. He taught us about how credit card companies had used their superior customer database systems to identify and fire their worst customers (e.g., those that would have the highest debt write-off) by enticing them to transfer their balances to competitors. As bad customers transferred in droves, it almost put their competitors out of business as they didn't have the same type of customer forecasting capabilities and therefore couldn't proactively address the issue until it was too late.

So, I think back to what I learned in Dr. Clemons' class and Sprint's recent action. Perhaps Sprint knew that high maintenance customers would tell other high maintenance customers thus sending these bad customers to other mobile providers. Perhaps they calculated the word of mouth cost of this action before taking it. Perhaps they thought that this story would actually educate high maintenance customers not to come to Sprint in the first place. But given the way Sprint seems to be playing defense with the press instead of offense, my guess is that they didn't – it was probably a purely financial decision, a cost-cutting move.

In any case, I'm sure Sprint and other companies are now thinking about how networked the customer has truly become so that future cost-cutting actions take this issues into consideration. However, you can't satisfy everyone. This logic may seem outdated – it may run counter to some of the recent word of mouth practices. But it's true. Businesses are still in business to make a profit, and not all customers are a good fit.

At Bazaarvoice, I have learned that knowing who is writing a review is sometimes as important as the actual content. Is the review written by your best customer? Your worst? This puts into context the information. Not all word of mouth will be positive. That's a given. But when you are a merchant deciding on the actions to take from either highly positive or highly negative reviews, it is important to know who those customers are. One of our clients, PETCO, proactively contacts high-value customers when they write a negative review. The bottom line: digitally-archived word of mouth will be married with the time-tested methods of information strategy taught by Dr. Clemons.

Update 7/12: One of our Community Managers sent me this story at The Consumerist. There may be more to this than Sprint's PR people were willing to speak about publicly.

We've covered the topic on this blog and elsewhere. Over a year ago we discovered the Ratings J-Curve across our clients which still holds true today: 80% of reviews are positive. One of our first branded manufacturers, Burpee, commented that negative reviews actually help conversion. And I've written an article explaining other benefits of negative reviews in iMedia.

The topic came up again in a great article from Joan Voight in adweek, titled "Negative Reviews are Really Positive". The article reports several of our branded clients carrying reviews:

The surveys come as many brands are joining Amazon.com and review sites such as yelp.com, tripadvisor.com and consumersearch.com in offering reviews on their web sites. In May, Toshiba joined Dell and Hewlett Packard in offering online reviews "to enhance the buying experience." Levi's will join Fair Indigo and EMS in the apparel space, offering customer reviews by the close of 2007.

Bill Blass, formerly of Sears and Lands' End wisely explains:

"If all reviews are good, customers question if the ratings are legitimate," Bill Bass, CEO of Fair Indigo, told Adweek. "Not only will people ignore the reviews, but it will hurt their trust in the brand. It would be better to have no reviews at all."

And John Lazarchik of PETCO has predicted:

"In two years customer reviews on branded sites will be more common," said John Lazarchic, Petco's vice president of e-commerce. "A few years after that if shoppers don't find reviews on a site, they'll just go shop somewhere else."

There were interesting and useful comments on the article in Retail Wire. Here are some of the highlights:

Consumers have a significant appreciation for the reviews because right or wrong, consumers tend to trust other consumers, more than they trust the advertised message. Advice to retailers and product manufacturers:

o Don't fight it. Reviews are a major factor in e-commerce. You will need to deal with it.

o Resist the temptation to write a review "from the company" because more times than not it comes across defensive and corporate.

o Read the reviews carefully and consider what criticisms are worthy, and take it to heart. Act accordingly. The online review process isn't scientific but in many ways, you are benefiting from a free focus group.

o Don't act defensively if a review knocks your product. The review might be real, or it might have been submitted by one of your haters or competitors. Let the review process take care of itself. In the end, if your product is attacked unfairly, others will come to your rescue. It happens almost all the time.

David Biernbaum, Senior Marketing and Business Development Consultant, David Biernbaum Associates

+++++++++++++

Having customer reviews or feedback on site is just plain common sense. In some of the focus groups I have held, I found that most online shoppers have done their research before making the purchase and, therefore, if they can't find reviews of products on the store's site, they will go elsewhere for information. The biggest concern for online retailers is keeping customers on their site until the purchase is complete. Having reviews and feedback ensures the customer stays within that particular website…

Doron Levy, president, Captus Business Consulting

++++++++++++++

Frank is right–companies need to listen to negative comments by customers. If customers are unhappy about something; especially if it appears to be widespread, then you know exactly what needs to be changed about your product to make it more attractive to customers. Research on persuasion indicates that people are more persuaded by by arguments if positive and negative points are presented. Word of mouth has always been an important part of customer decision making. Having customers post reviews is another form of word of mouth marketing. Ignoring what customers have to say about your products or trying to manipulate what customers say would be a dangerous move.

Camille P. Schuster, Ph.D., President, Global Collaborations, Inc.

++++++++++++++

Regarding response to negative internet feedback, I think the retailer needs to respond as professionally as possible, speaking candidly and respectfully to those who criticize. It is also a great opportunity to learn; find were there is a misunderstanding of the intent or use of products and services, or gain an greater view of how the site (retailer) is doing a dis-service to the customer. I will admit that feedback is more available from online sources as the internet offer a great deal of anonymity.

Jerry Gelsomino, Vice President of Marketing and Brand Experience, Pratt Corporation

In short, we don't expect this question to go away, however I think over our nearly two years of experience serving reviews for retailers and branded manufacturers the evidence is overwhelming to suggest that negative reviews should not be feared.