0:00 Hello, everyone. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining today's presentation. For those of you who have joined, please go ahead and drop into the chat, say hi, and get oriented with the messaging tools. 0:14 We're gonna be using those a little bit later on for an interactive poll as well as live q and a. As we get started today, I'll do a brief introduction. My name is Christine Lee. 0:23 I'm the vice president of our global retail accounts here at Bazaarvoice. For many years, I've worked with both brands and retailers, and I've seen firsthand what separates those really good partners from the great ones. 0:36 And we're here to talk about one of the most critical yet often most misunderstood tools in a partnership between those brands and retailers, which is the vendor scorecard. 0:45 For many brands, getting that scorecard email feels like a final exam that they didn't study for or not quite sure what they're gonna do. 0:54 But today, I'm gonna show you how the top brands would see this not as a test, but as a playbook for growth. So over the next twenty five minutes, we're going to break this down into three parts. 1:07 First, we'll cover the strategic shift and why scorecards have become so central to how retailers evaluate their brands. Then we'll dive into the anatomy of a modern scorecard, focusing on the user generated content metrics that we are now seeing is taking center stage. 1:24 And most importantly, we'll give you concrete actionable plays to improve your performance. And make sure you stick around to the end because we have an offer to help you get a personalized look at your own scorecard health. 1:38 But before we dive in, let's talk about a clear definition. At its core, a scorecard is exactly what it sounds like, a report card from your retailer. 1:49 And in the past, this might have been based on sales numbers and the strength of your relationship with your buyer, but the game has changed, and we're here to help you get an a on that scorecard. 1:58 Scorecards are optimized to make sure every product has the best chance to convert. They are customized even down to specific categories and are prioritized based on what moves the needle most for conversion. 2:11 Retailers have built these scorecards as a road map to make sure that you are as successful as possible in achieving your sales targets. It breaks down the content that's most important to the customer to help them to have the confidence to choose your products. 2:26 So if that wasn't compelling enough, maybe you might be asking yourself, why should this be a top priority for you? Well, because the stakes have never been higher. 2:35 A strong scorecard is your leverage in every conversation you have with your buyer. It's the proof that you're not just selling products, but you're actively helping them to grow their category or even to help win that coveted spot of category captaincy. 2:50 And this isn't just about maintaining the relationship. It shows that you understand these components and are invested in performing the best in the retailer's channel. 3:00 You know this is what it takes to win, and brands with top tier scores get considered first for inclusion in promotions, pilot programs, and premium marketing placements. 3:11 A poor score on the other hand, it's not great, and it can put you at risk of losing that shelf space, whether that's physical or digital, and potentially even being delisted if you're that poor for performing. 3:23 And that's critical, obviously, to your success. So before we get started, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen for a second so we can have a moment to just see where everyone's at today. 3:35 I wanna get a sense of where everyone is on their journey. So please take a moment to answer the poll that you'll see here on your screen shortly. And remember, there's no wrong answer. 3:46 It's just here to help us understand what's going on with the room, who's here. So as a reminder, the poll that we're gonna be looking at is how would you describe your current relationship with your vendor scorecards? 3:56 Are you experts? You know the data inside and out. You might be a captain. Do you look at them but would really love kind of, like, better understanding of how to act? 4:05 You only use them as, a detention slip when you see the problem, or this might be, like, a brand new space for you. Honestly, that's also okay too. 4:16 So it looks like we have a number of votes that are we look at them, but aren't sure how to act. Okay. And then honestly, very sure how to get one. 4:26 That's great. The reason being is you guys are in the right spot so that we can help you understand how to be successful and then ultimately be able to succeed going forward. 4:37 So with that, let's get on with it. Let me go back to sharing my screen. Perfect. So I think those results are interesting because everyone wants a little bit of that, like, refresher, but maybe some of you are a little bit more mature than others. 4:52 So what we know is that for years, these scorecards were dominated by more operational KPIs. Did you ship the product on time? Was the order accurate? 5:02 And those are still certainly table stakes. Like, you have to get that right to be successful, but that's not the differentiator. The battleground for retail is now that digital shelf. 5:12 And retailers know that user generated content is one of the top things to consider when it comes to improving your scorecard after price and images. 5:21 So, like, think about that again. After having the price of your product and images, user generated content is oftentimes, if not always, the most important next content type. 5:31 So that's really important for thinking about how you're showing up in that digital self shelf. So outside of those other KPIs, the first KPI we're gonna cover today, that first metric is coverage. 5:43 And this is pretty simple. It's what percentage of your products on the retailer site have at least one review. So if you were to think of a product with zero reviews as an empty shore storefront, that's probably not that great. 5:56 Shoppers need that validation and social proof or they walk or rather in this example scroll by, and not considering it. So coverage is super important. 6:06 Secondarily is you wanna think about that coverage metric paired with volume. A product with two hundred reviews is going to instill far more confidence than one with two reviews. 6:17 High volume tells the retailers and the customers that your product is popular and that you have a mature content collection strategy. Think about your own shopping experiences, or think about it like picking a restaurant. 6:29 I'm based in Austin, Texas, so would you rather go to Franklin Barbecue with a line down the block or maybe Green Mesquite? Okay. 6:37 On second thought, let's not necessarily start like a Texas barbecue fight. For those of you who have a favorite, please drop it in the chat, and we'll discuss later. But I hope that you get my point. 6:47 You're gonna go with what is validated by peers and what is known to be good. So second KPI we wanna look at is the one that we all know, average star rating. 7:00 This is the ultimate indicator of product quality and customer satisfaction. But what many brands miss is their partner metric. 7:08 So it's not just average star rating, but it's freshness. So a review from two years ago is practically ancient history to the modern shopper. 7:16 Retailers are wanting to see a steady stream of recent reviews because it tells them that your product is still popular and that the feedback is still relevant today. 7:25 A high rating from last month is far more valuable than a high rating from twenty twenty three. And, certainly, this can vary by category, but especially if you think about, like, a technology category, consumer electronics, or seasonal items, this is even more critical of an aspect to consider from a freshness perspective. 7:44 So the last KPI is a secret weapon, and it's your response rate. A lot of brands ignore this, but retailers are watching. 7:53 When you respond to a negative review or a customer question on a retailer site, you're doing three things. One, you might actually save that one individual sale and make sure that that customer has what they need to convert. 8:05 Two is that that documentation of responding gives you the ability to show every future shopper that you stand behind your products. 8:13 And lastly, you show the retailer that you are an active, responsible partner in managing their customer experience. This is one of the fastest ways to build trust with your buyer. 8:23 Okay. So now that we understand the KPIs, let's get into the playbook. Improving your score isn't just about luck. It's about running the right place consistency, and we'll break it down into three core strategies. 8:36 So going back to that strategy one, if your coverage or volume are low, your first job is to build a reliable collection engine. 8:45 The backbone of this is soliciting for the feedback of reviews. We have a program called the review response email at Bazaarvoice where you're going to send an email to solicit for a review based on someone having purchased that product. 8:59 And what we see is that's the single most effective way to get a steady stream of authentic reviews from those verified purchasers. 9:08 But there might be a number of you today that don't have the ability to send a notice out to people who have purchased your product. You might not have a d to c site. 9:18 So what would you do with products that you can't do that for or even new products that have almost no reviews, which becomes even of a harder challenge? 9:26 And that's where sampling can come in. So you're able to use a community like our Influenster network. You can get products into the hands of hundreds of eager consumers and generate dozens of reviews before the product even launches or hits peak season, and that solves that, like, empty shelf problem from day one. 9:44 Across all products and categories, the most convert important review for conversion is going from zero to one reviews. That's gonna be the biggest lift you can drive for your sales. 9:54 So don't let that chicken or the egg problem of not having sales or not having reviews yet keep you from being successful. You can proactively take advantage of a tool like sampling to be successful in this category. 10:08 So next, if your star rating is the issue, you have two powerful levers that you could do. The first is syndication. 10:16 Chances are that you already have fantastic high ratings and reviews on your own website if you have a d to c site. And syndication lets you push that content out across your entire retail network, instantly lifting your volume and average rating everywhere you sell. 10:32 You've done a lot of hard work to collect that content, so make sure it's showing up where it matters. The second lever is to treat your negative reviews not as a problem, but as free product research. 10:43 Our customers consistently complaining about unclear instructions or damaged packaging. All that is gold. Use that to help. You can take that feedback directly to your product and operations team to fix the core issue, which is the most sustainable way to improve your rating over time. 10:59 And you're probably thinking, yeah, Christine, but that sounds like a really challenging complex thing to do to rerun a product with new manufacturing. I hear you. I wanna share a quick story. 11:09 There was actually a customer we worked with a long time ago, a consumer electronics retailer that had a, supplier that was selling an HDMI cord. The HDMI cord was marketed at being six feet long. 11:19 Why you would need a six foot long HDMI cord? I don't know. But what was happening is there was a number of people that were rating it as a five star product and a number of people that were rating it as a one star product. 11:32 And when the brand and the supplier dug into those one star reviews, they understood that the HDMI cord was actually just shy of six feet. So people who really needed it to be that long and they got it and it showed up and it wasn't that long were extremely dissatisfied. 11:46 So instead of rerunning the entire product, remanufacturing the entire product, they just updated the product description with an accurate length and measurement, and they were able to turn that product around from a poorly performing product to a high selling and highly performing product. 12:01 So sometimes even the insights, there are simple ways to fix some challenges that can help improve those sales, and reviews can be a gold mine for those insights. 12:11 Okay. Finally, the quickest win is engagement. Improving your response rate is simply about building a process. 12:20 Using our platform, you can get notified as soon as critical reviews or a question comes in on our retailer site. A timely empathetic response shows everyone, the unhappy customer, future shoppers, and the retailer that you are actively listening. 12:36 This transforms a brain a potential, like, brand damaging moment into a trust building opportunity. We have so many cool stories of brand engagement and how this can move the needle, but I do have kind of a silly story here to share, which is we actually had a, manufacturer who who was making grills, and they were selling through a DIY supplier or, excuse me, retailer. 12:58 And what they were realizing is a lot of consumers kept on asking questions about the dimensions. And rightfully so, the vendor was somewhat frustrated because they're like, we have the dimensions on the product detail page. 13:10 It's, you know, the appropriate number of inches. But I'm not sure about you guys, but I don't ever, like, get out my tape measure. I just know that things are about this big, this wide. 13:19 And so that vendor actually did something interesting because most of the time, the people were asking the size not necessarily for, like, installation guides, but more to understand how big the grill was. 13:29 And a really easy way for consumers to understand how big the grill is is to tell them how many hamburgers, how many hot dogs, and how many chicken breasts can fit on the grill. 13:39 And so that brand decided to change their answer strategy from dimensional responses to also include how much food fits on the grill, and they saw a huge performance boost for their sales. 13:51 So, again, thinking about it from a customer lens and using that rich and relevant user generated content to help inform a better process is a really underutilized resource that shows meaningful gains if you implement it in the right way. 14:06 Thanks for letting me share some of those stories. Okay. So to recap, scorecards have shifted from a simple report to a strategic road map for your retail partnerships. 14:19 The UGC program is your most powerful lever to have control over your performance, and the first step is always to get clear data driven baseline of where you are today. 14:30 And to help you do that, like I mentioned before, we have an exclusive offer for everyone attending today. We're offering every brand on this webinar a free personalized scorecard grade. 14:42 My team will take a look at your presence on a major retailer of your choice that's in our network and give you a snapshot of your user generated content health, including your coverage, volume, and average rating. 14:53 It's really a no obligation way to get that baseline, that rich relevant data that you need to start to identify your single me. 15:02 Single the single biggest opportunity for improvement. So we'll be dropping a code, to be able to claim your free grade. 15:10 And just so you know, we will be taking these requests for the next twenty four hours. So with that, I do think we have some time left for some q and a. 15:20 So I'm gonna go ahead and jump into that. Please leave your questions in the chat box if you haven't yet or in the q and a box. 15:28 And let me go ahead and flip over to our questions. Okay. One question that I'm seeing here is a really great one. 15:37 So they say, how do you prioritize which products to focus on first? Should you target the ones, excuse me, target the ones with the worst scores, the best sellers, or the newest launches? 15:49 Okay. Really great question and really important. What I would say is if you're evaluating where you're going to focus, obviously, you wanna see where you can boost that, like, grade on your scorecard the first. 16:03 So where are the ones that are maybe the worst performers? But, also, you wanna measure, are those products that are maybe those underperformers the ones that are gonna drive the most sales. 16:13 I tend to like to think about not all reviews are created equal as not all products are created equal. So, potentially, using a more organic strategy of native review collection through an email campaign might be better for those poor performing products, whereas investing maybe a little bit more into a sampling program on your new products that might be responsible for a higher level of sales will be more important to drive the needle on those conversion driving metrics. 16:40 I'd say having a mix of volume and coverage strategies is always your best bet. But in my mind, at the end of the day, it's about driving that ultimate conversion and finding how it's gonna improve both your and the retailer's bottom line the most, so prioritize those. 16:56 Great question. Okay. We have another question here that says, it used to be considered a negative to have syndicated reviews for a retailer for SEO, etcetera. 17:06 Has this changed? This is a really, really good question. So I think this person, might be familiar with, like, the SEO attribution. 17:16 So what that means for those who might not be as familiar is anywhere content originates tends to give greater SEO attribution. 17:25 So if you are a brand that has your own d to c website, you would have the content attribution on your own website, and you would get the SEO credit because of that. 17:36 Retailers still benefit from having the syndicated content sent to their websites as a way to help consumers have that social proof and have that validation. 17:46 And what we do at Bazaarvoice before we syndicate that content is we do hold any content on the brand site for a delay. Typically, it's seven to ten days to make sure that the appropriate SEO attribution is given to the site where it originated before we send it to the retailer. 18:04 And, certainly, I'm not a, an SEO, kind of algorithm expert, but from what we understand with our partnerships with, the search engines is that it's oftentimes looking at the aggregate content on a page. 18:19 So even if there is content that lives on a branch d to c product page in that same content that is distributed to the retail product page, in aggregate, all of the content there is uniquely different. 18:31 And so they would still get SEO benefit. But to your point, it's not as impactful as it would be on the d two c site. 18:39 While SEO is certainly important, I will say from a syndication content perspective, it's really just making sure about you're having that rich relevancy and the wealth of content on the retailer site so that you, the brand, are chosen over all the other brands that could be chosen by the retailer's consumer. 18:57 It's a really great question. And you didn't specifically ask about this, Candace, but I wanna touch on it too because it's just it's the topic du jour, and it's super hot. 19:07 But we're also seeing the the rise of agentic shopping. And what we're finding is within those AI shopping assistance, product ratings and reviews is a key component for what they might determine is the right product recommendation. 19:21 So in addition to product reviews kinda satisfying search criteria for consumers, it's also helping on-site shopping engines as well as retailer search if you're populating your reviews there. 19:33 I hope that helps. Alright. We have a question from Andrew Hurley. So does Bazaarvoice work with the Target Marketplace reviews import program? 19:43 We are working with a brand, and Target is moving very slowly. So we do work with Target Marketplace, and we help them with review generation. 19:51 So I'm not specific or I'm not sure what specific brand you're working for, but certainly please reach out to us afterwards to see how we can help accelerate that program because we wanna make sure that you are probably having big goals to hit for your, holiday season, and we can certainly help to make sure you're doing that. 20:10 We had a similar question from Alyssa on do we work with Walmart Marketplace? And, yes, we do work with Walmart Marketplace as well. Marketplaces, I think we have content, in another webinar coming up talking about our marketplaces. 20:24 They are a great strategy for a lot of our brands, and it's a lot of focus areas for our retailers to make sure that they have that great assortment for their product or for their end consumers and to help round out those product catalogs. 20:36 Great questions. Okay. Let me see. We have a question from Randall that says, how do you address when a review challenge when you have a large quantity? 20:48 Think like thousands, due to a large number of teams, product, and sizes and products. So this is a really great question. And, Randall, what I think you're asking about is maybe you have, like, an appliance that's sold in multiple finishes. 21:04 So you might have a stainless steel. You might have a matte black, and you might have a white appliance. There's reviews that are submitted on the individual variants, and then they roll up into the ultimate parent. 21:15 We call that a parent and child relationship for reviews. And depending on the retailer, how they structure and orient their site, they might break it out to where it's down to that child level of product, so the color, or it might be broken out to the product level. 21:30 So working with your retailer to understand what's most important to them is hugely important. And if you have products that tend to fall into those variants or child level, definitely let us know because we can help you with strategy to make sure you're optimizing your review volume and coverage to make the most impact for those products. 21:47 Alright. We have a couple minutes left. So let me see what else we have. We had a couple other questions. 21:57 Okay. Can you integrate reviews from TikTok onto retail ecommerce sites and onto our website? So we do have partnerships for how we can integrate within social capabilities. 22:09 For your specific website, I would wanna make sure that I don't misspeak, but that was a question from Alyssa. Great question. We'll follow-up with you afterwards for your specific brand. 22:20 And then Alyssa also had a question of do you collect reviews for Amazon? So Amazon has their own ecosystem where they're collecting their own native reviews, so we do not impact the native review collection for Amazon. 22:33 You guys have so many fantastic questions. Okay. Candice had a question. For your sampling program, is it up to the retailer how they communicate that this review came from a promotion or free tile? 22:44 Do you have a best practice you recommend? Wow. I love this question so much because there is a lot of, visibility and scrutiny on making sure that any reviews that are incentivized, whether that be through a promotion or whether that be through a sampling process, like we talked about, are badged appropriately. 23:07 So through a Bazaarvoice sampling program, what we would do is we would make sure that within the review submission, it would be flagged as an incentivized review. 23:16 And then the retailers have two ways that they can do this. One, which is the recommended best practice, is they can badge that review as incentivized so that it shows very clear to the end consumer that that product was left in exchange for or that product review was left in exchange for a free product and that it is incentivized. 23:38 And we don't see that as a bad thing. Consumers just want transparency and the visibility to make their unbiased choice. But you also can do that where it's left in the review text description. 23:50 That's less of a recommendation because there's more room for error from the actual reviewer to not leave that disclosure appropriately. So within our sampling practices, we really like to flag it in the submission form so that we can validate it and have it be applied in a more manual or technical process with the badging. 24:09 But really, really good question. Authenticity is paramount for everything that we do here at Bazaarvoice and with our retail partners. Okay. I think let me just check to make sure that I've answered your questions, but I think let me see if there's any that I have not gotten to. 24:24 I think that today we have answered all of your questions. Wait. One more is coming through. Okay. One more. 24:32 We have, how often should a brand be monitoring its response rate to critical reviews? What internal processes do you find the most effective to ensure a timely response? 24:42 Great question. So the cool thing about the program that we have for review response or responding to questions on retailer sites is you don't necessarily need to proactively go and monitor to see if there's reviews that you need to respond to. 24:57 There's an alert and a report set up that can proactively let you know when there's, reviews that need to be responded to or questions that need to be answered. 25:06 So I would say just making sure that you have a team, whether that's one person or kind of a round robin approach from your team to be able to respond to those. 25:15 And I would say that typically a good SLA is within forty eight hours. But, certainly, if you can get to them faster, that's great. But having that documented response is huge to be able to make sure that the customer has that confidence and that you show up as a really strong brand partner. 25:31 And then Cara asked, have you dropped the code for the free scorecard playbook? And then yes. So that's what I was going to transition to because I think we are nearly out of time today. 25:41 But in the right hand side of your portal, there should be a tab that says messages and a tab that says docs. There's two things that you will have access to. 25:50 One is the code for that free scorecard playbook. And then secondarily is we're gonna send you a documentation of this this, presentation that's a one pager that reminds you about those three KPIs and what are the levers that you can do to move that. 26:04 So please take that as a handout and a takeaway that you can share with your teams and just kinda keep as a reminder walking into those next scorecard reviews. 26:13 We really appreciate everyone's time today. And, certainly, if you have anything else that you need from us, please feel free to reach out, and we'll be following up with all of these materials as a follow-up. 26:26 Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks everyone for joining, and I hope you enjoy today's session.
