Bazaarvoice Helps Companies Leverage the Customer Voice In Multichannel Marketing...

Bazaarvoice Helps Companies Leverage the Customer Voice In Multichannel Marketing Campaigns

Five practical strategies allow marketers to get the most out of
user-generated content to drive sales and build their brands
AUSTIN, Texas--(Business Wire)--
Smart marketers are already tapping the power of user-generated
ratings and reviews to drive unprecedented sales growth. Research
shows that eCommerce sites that allow consumers to share their
credible opinions on products and services experience dramatic lifts
in conversion and a significant reduction in return rates. Now a
growing group of companies, including Bath & Body Works, Cabela's,
Fair Indigo, Golfsmith, and Loblaw, are leveraging reviews generated
on their site and infusing them into their multichannel campaigns to
attract more customers and build brand value.

"The most respected analyst firms in the industry - Jupiter,
Forrester, Kelsey Group, comScore and Deloitte - agree that online
reviews have a significant positive impact on online and offline
purchases," said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice.
"Forward-thinking companies are increasingly taking user-generated
content offsite into email, catalogs, print, and in-store campaigns to
drive consumer engagement, trust, and brand consideration across every
marketing touch point. This is a very unique time in the history of
advertising, because companies are using their customers' word of
mouth as a digital marketing asset to create entirely new forms of
multichannel campaigns."

For marketers looking to harness the power of user-generated
ratings and reviews across all of their multichannel marketing
campaigns, Hurt offers a few practical tips that drive an immediate
lift in brand value and sales:

1. Integrate reviews into email. Follow the lead of Bath & Body
Works and bring user-generated ratings and reviews content into your
email campaigns. The retailer recently recorded a 10% lift in average
order value for customers who received emails with integrated review
content. Also consider highlighting your top-rated products. When
Golfsmith recently sent customers emails themed around top-rated
products, revenues per email soared 42.4%.

2. Use rating and reviews in catalogs. Consumers love to browse a
printed catalog - and even more so when it contains reviews written by
their peers. A nationwide outdoors chain recently published
user-generated ratings and reviews in holiday catalogs, helping their
customers make more informed purchasing decisions during the
gift-giving season. Including this valuable content in catalogs also
gives customers a compelling reason to visit the website, where they
can read more reviews to garner deeper knowledge before they make a
purchase.

3. Incorporate reviews into TV ads. Companies like Cars.com and
Golfsmith are taking user-generated ratings and reviews onto TV. In
its new television ads, Cars.com lists the availability of consumer
automotive reviews as a reason that shoppers should visit the site
when preparing for their next car purchase. Golfsmith also featured
review content in broadcast television ads - making the
commercial-watching experience more personal to great effect. When
consumers see and hear their peers' opinions on products, they are
much more likely to buy those products.

4. Put reviews into print. More and more people are shopping
online, but millions of consumers still flip through the nationwide
Sunday circular that appears each weekend in their local papers. One
client recently published examples of user-generated reviews in a
national newspaper circular, highlighting the digital cameras people
rated the most highly and directing readers to a website with
"thousands of camera reviews". The result was a dramatic boost in
sales.

5. Ratings in the store. There are dozens of ways to use ratings
and reviews for in-store promotions. Add them to shelf fact tags, at
the bottom of receipts, on product clings, on the front page of
in-store circulars, on posters and signage. Retailers like Fair Indigo
and Cabela's even place kiosks in their stores to let customers browse
and contribute ratings and reviews while they shop. Loblaw, Canada's
largest food distributor, has one the most imaginative in-store use of
ratings & reviews. Last year, it outfitted 135,000 employees with
t-shirts that read "Rate our products at pc.ca". The campaign was so
successful, that Loblaw now features review content prominently in its
seasonal Insider Reports, weekly flyers, in-store signs and on the
pc.ca site.

The Bazaarvoice Community Management team plays a key role in
helping clients implement these innovative multichannel best
practices. Every Bazaarvoice client is assigned a dedicated Community
Manager who acts as an extension of their internal team. A Community
Manager's responsibilities include: outlining and helping implement
marketing and operational best practices; tracking and measuring
success metrics; and developing strategic recommendations to ensure
each company is getting maximum benefits from the technology and
services.

Tracking and in-depth views of campaign performance data is
available 24/7 via the Bazaarvoice Workbench, as well as through
direct integration with leading analytics platforms. Bazaarvoice also
offers an open API and pre-built integrations with over 30 partners in
order to ensure marketers maximize the benefits of user-generated
content in their multichannel marketing campaigns.

"User-generated reviews are rapidly becoming one of the most
important multichannel marketing tools around because consumers trust
and agree with the opinions of 'people like them'," added Bazaarvoice
CMO Sam Decker. "Some 97% of consumers who made a purchase based on an
online review said they found the review to have been accurate,
according to comScore. By amplifying the voices of your best
customers, you can cut through advertising clutter to drive customer
satisfaction and sales."

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice offers outsourced technology, services, analytics, and
expertise to help companies enhance the online shopping experience
with social commerce applications that drive sales. Bazaarvoice
Ratings & Reviews(TM) and Ask & Answer(TM) deliver immediate success
by minimizing implementation risk and maximizing the strategic impact
of user-generated review content through complete customization, deep
integration, community management, advanced analytics, search engine
optimization, and syndication across the Web and to offline channels.

Bazaarvoice was named to the 2007 Red Herring Global 100 and 2006
Red Herring Top 100 lists and received the 2006 ClickZ Marketing
Innovation of the Year award. Bazaarvoice currently serves over 180
eCommerce leaders including Bass Pro Shops, Dell, Macy's, Office
Depot, Inc., Overstock.com, PETCO, QVC, Sears, and ZipRealty. The
company has headquarters in Austin, TX and offices in London, UK. For
more information, please visit the company's Web site at
www.bazaarvoice.com or email info@bazaarvoice.com.

For Bazaarvoice
Renee Newby, 757-651-6554
renee@bradypr.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008