Did you have a chance to attend the Bazaarvoice Summit 2024?

If so, then we hope you had the chance to catch an amazing presentation from our client, Army & Air Force Exchange Service, aka The Exchange. Both Monetate and Bazaarvoice have the honor of working with The Exchange.

At Monetate, we work closely with their team to provide personalized experiences and relevant content for their customers shopping at their online store at shopmyexchange.com.

During the Bazaarvoice Summit, Shane Binion, E-commerce Marketing Manager, The Exchange, shared with attendees how his team is leveraging Monetate Personalization to build personalized experiences for active military, retirees, veterans, their families, and other personnel across the entire customer journey.

We’re proud to play a role in helping The Exchange to make the customer journey easier and more personalized, featuring trusted information from other shoppers when making purchases online.

Here we’re going to talk about The Exchange’s mission and how we support them in their endeavor.

Chapters:

1. What is the customer journey?
2. Why personalization matters for the customer journey
3. How to serve up personalized content
4. The impact of personalization on The Exchange’s customer journey

What is the customer journey?

The customer journey encompasses all the experiences customers undergo while engaging with your company and brand. Rather than focusing solely on isolated transactions or encounters, it captures the entirety of the customer experience.

In essence, it’s the series of steps a shopper takes to them becoming a customer. Optimizing the customer journey through personalization provides a better shopping experience, which leads to more purchases — personalization can increase revenue by up to 15%. For example, let’s look at The Exchange.

Why personalization matters for the customer journey

Serving an eligible customer base of 33.4 million shoppers worldwide, The Exchange is the US Department of Defense’s largest retailer.

The Exchange provides goods and services for the Army, Air Force, Space Force, Navy, Marines, and the Coast Guard. If you’ve ever been on a military base, then you might be familiar with PXs and BXs – The Exchange operates those locations too.

Their website features goods and services from top brands, including Nike, Graco, Disney, Lego, The Home Depot, Lego, Samsung, and more. All purchases are tax-free, feature exclusive military pricing, and 100% of The Exchange’s earnings support the military community.

For Shane Binion and his team, they use automated personalization and product recommendations to provide a superior user experience when shopping online.

When it comes to an e-commerce strategy, the following initiatives are important to The Exchange:

• Build and maintain trust and loyalty in a highly competitive retail environment
• Deliver on customer expectation of personalization when shopping online
• Serve dynamic product recommendations depending on where the customer is on the site or in the sales funnel

Just how do they accomplish these e-commerce and personalization goals?

How to serve up personalized content

It’s important for The Exchange to provide the most personalized and smoothest experience for every customer across the whole shopping journey. Shane and his team use personalized content in several different ways to serve their customers.

First, it’s important to note that only active military, veterans, their families and other military personnel past and present can shop on The Exchange’s website. Therefore, to shop, customers have to login as members.

What makes this shopping experience unique is that The Exchange has a wealth of first-party data about each customer. By the nature of their business, they know who their customers are, their location, their military branch, and more.

Here’s how this data, alongside Monetate Personalization, leads to personalized content.

Branch specific banners

Thanks to first-party member data, The Exchange knows what branch of the military their customers belong to. Therefore, they can serve products by branch – Army, Air Force and Space Force, etc., for a truly customized shopping experience.

Weather specific banners

Are members expecting rain? Snow? Cold temperatures? With geolocation from Monetate, The Exchange knows where their customers are located and what the predicted weather forecast is for their region.

For customers expecting stormy weather, The Exchange serves targeted banners promoting rain gear. For regions expecting snow and cold weather, customers see banners promoting winter gear.

The banners are scheduled to start appearing two days before the predicted weather situation, giving members time to purchase umbrellas, coats and other supplies to prepare for the weather conditions.

Become a military star

Another service provided by The Exchange is the Military Star credit card. Thanks to customer data, The Exchange knows which customers have the credit card and who does not.

For customers that don’t have the Military Star credit card, they’re served with a promotion to sign up, increasing the number of members to get the credit card.

Testing web banners

As any marketer and merchandiser can tell you, testing is important and necessary when building out the customer journey online. With Monetate, you can continue to experiment and build out your findings for refinement.

The Exchange leveraged Monetate to test whether placing “Story Elements” above “Shop By Category Elements” would end up increasing customer engagement and the depth of the customer drive.

But what The Exchange found is that this theory only worked for Patio, Garden & Garage, where placing “Story Elements” above “Shop By Category” resulted in a boost in average order value by +13%.

For all other categories results were flat, suggesting that customers tend to respond better to “Shop By Category” being higher up on the page.

The Exchange also conducted some tests around their homepage banner.

They felt their current style was too cluttered and distracting. They wanted to test whether a new banner that would take the visitor to a PLP (product landing page), featuring multiple CTA banners would be more effective and result in more clicks.

But what The Exchange found was that the metrics between the two experiences were flat. Customers responded to the complex banner the same as the simpler banner. Armed with these findings, The Exchange can keep refining the UX and customer journey on the website and impacting key metrics.

Product recommendations help customers find what they love

The Exchange has also done some incredible work in product recommendations leveraging Monetate.

They currently have 10 containers that are live and expanding. They also target both new and returning visitors, with trending items and actively promote cross sell items towards the end of the conversion funnel. On top of that, they’re even working on building a Deal’s Page to recommend sale items to help customers get a great deal.

As we discussed earlier, The Exchange honors the individual military branches customers belong to when shopping online. This strategy also rolls over into product recommendations, with The Exchange targeting various product recommendations based on branch of service.

One other fun example is how The Exchange leverages product recommendations and sports fandom. The Exchange has a Fan Shop where sport items, like team jerseys, are recommended to shoppers based on their team preferences.

The impact of personalization on The Exchange’s customer journey

Through working with The Exchange and with Shane and his team, Monetate has been key in helping the team to deliver success.

In 2023 alone, the team delivered 53 million personalized experiences, influencing 7.1% of revenue. Shane and his team also launched 104 digital experiences through the Monetate platform. So far, in 2024, The Exchange is on track for even more growth, delivering 4.8 million personalized sessions in January alone, influencing 4.4% of revenue.

We look forward to our continued work with The Exchange as they continue their personalization of the customer journey. Eager to hear more? Watch Monetate and The Exchange’s full on-demand Summit session right here.

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Marketing personalization gets the second date — or in this case, clicks and conversions.

Why’s that? Because personalized marketing is all about tailoring your campaigns to provide a customized experience for your e-commerce site visitors. And in the modern market, the majority of customers expect it, which means brands that design the same messaging for all their customers are so last season.

This is why Bazaarvoice partnered with Klaviyo — to help brands elevate their personalization strategies. It all starts with gaining knowledge about your customers and using it to provide them with an exceptional, tailored shopping experience.

Chapters:

1. What is personalized marketing?
2. Why is personalized marketing so important?
3. How to build a personalized marketing strategy
4. Personalized marketing examples
5. How to get started with personalized marketing

What is personalized marketing?

Personalized marketing uses information about your customers to create individualized, relevant messages and offers. For e-commerce businesses, this data-driven approach matches consumer demographics and behaviors with tailored website and marketing content.

There’s many applications of personalized marketing, from geo-sensitive push notifications that send discounts when you’re near a coffee shop, to abandoned cart emails that remind you of products you looked at but didn’t buy, to product recommendations based on order history. Just to name a few.

And personalized marketing is growing at a rapid pace. Nearly 40% of marketing decision-makers ranked personalization as the most important consumer experience. And a recent survey revealed that 33% of marketers in the US and UK devote over half of their online marketing budgets to personalization projects and initiatives.

The report predicts this trend will continue, driven by advancements in technology, data, and analytics that make personalization more widely available, as well as the rapid rise of generative AI tech.

Why is personalized marketing so important?

Personalized marketing allows you to gain extensive knowledge about your products and customers. You can learn what products, services, features, and messaging attracts customers and leads, then adapt your marketing and product strategy accordingly.

Customers receive marketing materials they actually want and make them feel connected to your brand. This leads to purchases in the short term and brand loyalty and customer retention in the long term.

Valuable information like this lets you focus on what works and scrap what doesn’t. If you only have blanket messaging and offers on your website and in campaigns, you’re missing out on opportunities to target visitors with effective content. According to McKinsey, personalization can

• Increase revenues by 5 – 15%
• Lower customer acquisition costs by up to 50%
• Increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10 – 30%

Increasing online privacy regulations makes user activity more secure and protected, but targeted marketing — like personalization — more challenging. The restrictions prohibit third-party data tracking that has historically helped marketers target campaigns to their website visitors.

This is why it’s extra important to know how to implement personalized marketing in the wake of new obstacles and a changing marketplace. Without the third-party tracking data that gives a broad view of users’ search behavior on various websites, marketers will need to rely on their own data and create campaigns based on that to reach their customers.

How to build your personalized marketing strategy

The basis of personalized marketing is having comprehensive and organized data about the people you’re trying to target.

Once you’ve assembled all your relevant data, you can use it to segment customers based on preferences, demographics, or order history. Then, you can identify the primary channels where customers engage in order to focus your distribution. Either your website, email, social media, live chat, or a combination.

1. Gather customer data and insights

Collect all the pertinent information on your customers that will be useful in serving them personalized content. This includes demographic data, like gender, age group, location, and income level.

Another big piece of the puzzle is shopping behavior, like purchase history and spending habits. With the advent of third-party tracking restrictions, this means relying heavily on collecting first-party data.

There’s different routes you can take to collect these insights, which require varying levels of oversight. Customer data platforms (CDP) are a primary resource for aggregating data from across multiple customer touchpoints. CDPs record when a customer visits your e-commerce website, is shown an ad, or opens a promotional email. And then how the customer interacts with each. CDPs then combine all this information into a single, data-rich customer profile.

A good example is our Bazaarvoice homepage. It appears slightly differently depending on whether you’re a social media manager or e-commerce manager. Each page is tailored to suit the relevant persona.

A personalization engine is similar to a CDP but with AI and machine learning that can assist in designing data-based, targeted campaigns.

Individual data sources also offer insights into your customers. These include social media and SEO management software, e-commerce and retail point of sale (POS) systems, and Google Analytics. These platforms will give you insights on customers who visit your website, engage with your brand on social media, and purchase your products or services.

2. Create customer segments

Next, you can create customer segments based on your data. Look for demographic and behavioral patterns in the data to determine how to segment your audience. Personalization engines and CDPs can combine and organize this data for you, or it can be done manually.

Some examples of customer segments to use for marketing personalization include age groups, occupations, spending amount tiers, product interest categories, and date of the most recent purchase. Once you have your different customer segments set up, tailor your messaging and offers according to the qualities and characteristics of each segment.

Segmentation is a planning tool for personalized marketing. To personalize content, you need to take it a step further. Personalized marketing takes customer segments and then individualizes content for the members of that segment.

For example, a segment could be a group of customers who regularly purchase higher-priced items. To create personalized content for a customer in that segment, you could send an email with product recommendations for luxury items in their size.

One brand who knows segmentation well is Little Sleepies. Wanting to boost their Black Friday sales, the apparel brand leveraged Klaviyo’s segmentation capabilities. Little Sleepies sent two campaigns in a day: the first to their full nurture list and the second to the segment that engaged with the first email but didn’t make a purchase.

They also targeted specific segments with personalized features like a countdown timer. Using Klaviyo’s segmentation paid off with a 138.2% year on year growth in revenue from email during Black Friday.

3. Personalize experiences based on UGC interactions

Leveraging the insights you find from consumer interactions with user-generated content (UGC) — like reviews and frequently asked questions — can be a powerful way to identify and segment audiences for win-back campaigns for unhappy customers. Or for surprise and delight campaigns for your biggest fans. 

Some example use cases include:

• Send review requests: Integrate flows to send post-purchase review request messages to your customers from Klaviyo. This ensures that any email communication is configured and managed within the Klaviyo platform, giving your teams a singular view of the communication with your customer
• Powerful segmentation and flows: Create flows within Klaviyo to thank your customers for writing a review, or segment based on review submissions to contact customers after they leave a positive or negative review
• Personalize your messages: Leverage past review data to notify satisfied customers of an upcoming promotion on a product they love or trigger a refer-a-friend invitation following a positive review submission 

Businesses can now incorporate Bazaarvoice data into their Klaviyo platform to drive additional intelligence to their marketing strategies and personalization triggers. Through the Bazaarvoice and Klaviyo integration, customers can leverage real-time UGC interaction data within email and SMS to create relevant shopping experiences for each customer and influence more purchases.

This integration enables brands to unlock the full potential of UGC while leveraging Klaviyo’s robust marketing automation capabilities to deliver personalized and impactful messages at scale.

Personalized marketing examples

Collecting and organizing customer data is only half the battle. The next step is putting that data to use with different types of personalized marketing tactics and campaigns.

Personalized email marketing

Only 8% of brands think email is important, which is surprising. Because not only do nearly a third of shoppers think personalized emails are important, but email is the top digital channel used for personalized marketing because it’s fairly easy to create customized email content for individual recipients.

After all, consumers have been getting promotional emails with their name in the subject line for years.

There’s multiple different types of email marketing campaigns that brands can personalize. Review request emails are the perfect opportunity to personalize content. They’re a direct response to a customer’s action, whether that’s a website visit, a cart abandonment, or a purchase.

Other types of emails, including product feature announcements, out of stock emails, newsletters, and special offers, can all be personalized. The most basic method is to simply include the customer’s name in the subject line or body of the email. Emails with personalized subject lines improve open rates by 26%, but this can also come off as heavy-handed. Product recommendations based on the customer’s preferences and order history are a more advanced way to appeal to the customer’s personal interests.

Enhance these emails with customer reviews and visual UGC of recommended products. UGC provides consumers with the social proof they need to learn more about products, and ultimately the confidence to make a purchase. You can go the extra mile and personalize the UGC itself. Example: If an email is going to someone in an older age bracket, include reviews or a photo created by someone close to their age that corresponds with the brand or product.

The way in which you collect UGC also plays an important role in personalization. One of the top recommended personalization campaigns is to send emails asking customers to review a recently purchased product. You can then use that UGC to display on your website, giving shoppers more details and insights from verified customers who have first-hand experience with products.

In this email example from Hulu, the streaming platform does a great job of using customer data to create a personalized campaign. It uses the customer’s demographic information (their date of birth) and purchase history. In this case, the customer was a previous subscriber who hadn’t renewed their subscription.

So, Hulu offers them a birthday gift in the form of a one-month free trial with the goal of winning back the customer.

SMS marketing

Often considered an extension of email, SMS marketing is an often overlooked but equally powerful tool — the average text open rate is 98%.

Much like with email, SMS works wonders for personalization because it’s easy enough to create custom content for specific segments. All you need to write is your customer’s name at the start and include messaging like “Exclusively for our text subscribers” to get going. 

There’s multiple types of personalization opportunities in SMS marketing:

• Promotional SMS include special offers like holiday sales and customer acknowledgement like a birthday message
• Post-interaction texts are usually sent post-purchase and post-delivery or even for abandoned cart notifications
• Customer service messaging can consist of shipping updates and delivery notifications

The key is to segment before you send. Types of SMS segment include loyalty program customers, engaged subscribers, or subscribers who’ve yet to make a purchase from you. And it works.

One brand, Fast Growing Trees, discovered this firsthand after they implemented a more personalized SMS strategy, using Klaviyo’s segment level campaign reporting. The brand started sending SMS messages to a more specific segment of subscribers — 60-day engaged as opposed to 180-day engaged — with the aim of increasing engagement and growing their SMS channel.

Since June 2023, their revenue per SMS message has already grown 35% quarter over quarter.

Website or app optimization

For e-commerce companies, your website or app is the ideal space for personalization. This is where you can deliver relevant calls to action (CTAs) for further browsing and exploration. Things like product recommendations of products similar to what’s in the shopper’s cart, or based on order history.

Some examples are “people also bought,” “you might also like,” “finish the look,” and “don’t forget to accessorize.”

Enabling your website search feature to produce relevant results and recommendations is another important aspect of website personalization. For example, if a website visitor searches for a black dress, everything that fits “black” + “dress” should populate.

And if you don’t carry a black dress, provide them with alternatives that closely match. That could be a navy dress or a grey dress, for example. If a search term is misspelled — like “black dress”— your technology should be able to understand that and produce results instead of no results.

Special offers tailored to different types of customers is an enticing website personalization tactic. Offer promo codes to first-time customers to use on their first order. Increase basket sizes by offering discounts on products or free samples that align with customers’ repeat purchases or interests.

Customized content is another way to provide a personalized experience for each website visitor. Create dedicated landing pages to include in emails that highlight personalized product updates and recommendations. Another way is to include the customer’s name and order history when they visit your website.

Netflix is an expert in the art of personalized marketing, particularly with its in-app recommendations. The company uses its subscribers’ viewing behaviors to create TV and movie categories based on their unique tastes. Examples of this in action are its “Because You Watched” and “Gems for You” lists.

Spotify does the work for you and curates recommendations into instantly consumable playlists. Some of its personalized playlists based on listener data include daily mixes, genre mixes, top artists mixes, Discover Weekly, and Release Radar.

The company’s highly anticipated annual Spotify Wrapped is a shining example of personalization in action. With this feature, they literally create a neatly packaged overview of each individual listener’s data and use it to make fun, shareable content and custom playlists.

Augmented reality

The use of augmented reality (AR) is a growing marketing trend that enables real-time personalization. The number of mobile AR users is expected to reach 1.73 billion this year. Some customers using the AR platform Adloid reported seeing up to a 200% increase in sales conversions.

AR is an example of advanced personalized marketing, where customers can see products superimposed on their own bodies, in their living spaces, or in other real-life settings. Some top retail and e-commerce industries that have quickly adopted AR include automotive, beauty, home goods and decor, and apparel.

On its website, L’Oreal’s Live Try On gives shoppers the opportunity to virtually apply its products from wherever they are using their mobile or desktop device.

And Target’s See It in Your Space feature is a great way to see how furniture and other products look in your home or office. Customers can accurately visualize these products and if they fit where they live and work.

Saying sorry

Elton John famously sang, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.” (Or Blue famously sang it, depending on the era you grew up in. Both are bangers). Either way, apologies can be tough. Not just for people, for brands too. But it really doesn’t have to be!

They’re the perfect opportunity to use personalization to turn a negative shopper experience into a positive one. 45% of consumers actually consider a brand apology to be the “coolest” personalization tactic they’ve seen.

Whether apologizing for an item being out-of-stock or following up on an abandoned shopping cart, there’s often a reason a brand needs to apologize. So if you have to do it, do it properly.

Take this tailored example from ZocDoc above. Not only does it provide a form of compensation to entice the customer to stay with the brand, it also uses the opportunity to gain customer feedback. This feedback can then be used to improve the service going forward, making sure it doesn’t happen again.

Product sampling

Launching a targeted sampling campaign creates a personalized experience for customers because you are sending products directly to them to try out for themselves. To maximize the personalization of each campaign, tailor the samples according to the individual customer.

For example, you can reward customers you consider high value because of their repeat business with pre-release samples of new products. You can target customers who have interests in specific product types with samples of new or similar products. You can include samples of relevant products along with order shipments.

With product sampling, not only do customers get a free gift based on their interests or customer history, but samples often create impactful UGC for brands.

In exchange for product samples, brands can ask recipients for feedback in the form of an online survey or a review, making sampling another valuable data-gathering tactic.

Conversational commerce

We’ve left the best til last. Knowing how to win at conversational commerce is a business necessity. Conversational commerce uses messaging apps and voice-activated technology to sell products and services, with help from artificial intelligence. Think of it as an online version of talking to a sales assistant in a store.

Whether shopping bots that aid a customer through the buyer journey, or customizable chatbots for customer inquiries, there’s a multitude of conversational commerce delivery methods. And each one provides a different personalization in its own right.

Take this example from our own Bazaarvoice website. You’ll have seen an iteration of it pop up in the bottom corner. Through some simple tweaking, our own lovely chatbot (Bazaarbot!) differs in messaging depending on who visits the site.

Let’s say a user has tried out our marketing ROI calculator tool. On their next site visit, our bot will encourage those with an ROI calculation to get in touch. As demonstrated below.

Using this example almost feels like spilling state secrets or insider trading. But you know what, it’s one of the multiple, successful customizations on our website. And you have to lead by example.

How to get started with personalized marketing

Personalized marketing is a proven way to win over customers, and it’s surprisingly simple to implement. But there’s a disparity between brands and shoppers when it comes to personalization — while retailers believe they’re excelling at personalized marketing, consumers disagree.

There’s multiple ways to solve this though — you already have most of the resources to do it. As it is, you can start personalizing with the data you already have and refine your strategy through more sophisticated collection and segmentation. But key areas of opportunity for brands include:

1. Focus on delivering the right content through the right channel at the right time
2. Use tailored offerings and purchasing incentives, like discounts, in exchange for personal information
3. Utilize the Bazaarvoice + Klaviyo integration to leverage real-time UGC within email and SMS in an automated way to create relevant shopping experiences for each user and influence more purchases

Over time, you’ll increasingly notice the impact it has. And your bottom line will thank you for it. Learn more on our dedicated Klaviyo + Bazaarvoice integration page or get started right away below.

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Let’s take a look at each and find out which are best suited to your goals.

Chapters:

1. Customer care and support integrations
2. Marketing automation and personalization integrations
3. Customer experience optimization integrations
4. Brand loyalty integrations
5. Choose the right Bazaarvoice integration for your business

Customer care and support integrations

Your customers have come to expect exceptional experiences at every touchpoint, whether they find you on social, your website, or in ads. Keeping a customer first mindset and learning from the outside in is a powerful tool for brands and retailers that want to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Customers engage through a variety of channels that include social, ratings & reviews, email, chat, call centers and support boards. Keeping and logging all of this information into your CRM system can take loads of time. Enter four integrations that connect your CRM data to your help desk platform. 

These integrations allow brands and retailers to integrate their Bazaarvoice Data (Ratings & Reviews and Questions & Answers) into their help desk platform so that customer support agents can more efficiently manage customer interactions through one unified interface.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk’s mission is to simplify the complexity of business and make it much easier for companies and customers to build better connections. Their customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers. 

The Bazaarvoice Zendesk integration makes responding to customer reviews and questions more streamlined (particularly if you have a high volume of reviews), helping you create better customer experiences, improve workflows, manage brand reputation at scale, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

2. Sprinklr

Sprinklr helps the world’s biggest companies and the most beloved teams make their customers and fans happier. Across 30+ digital channels, their industry-leading AI creates insights for deeper and more real-time customer and fan experiences.

Sprinklr Connector — the integration with Bazaarvoice — allows you to leverage the response management tool you’re already using to answer questions and respond to reviews on your own site. This allows you to drive online sales by turning negative reviews into a positive, identify the high-priority customer questions to answer first, and save time by including this data in your existing Sprinklr reports. 

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is a customer relationship management software juggernaut But they also have applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development making them a perfect fit for Bazaarvoice.

If you’re a Salesforce user, you can now integrate your Bazaarvoice review data into your Salesforce Service Cloud. Not only does this provide a wealth of data to glean insights from, but it also enables CSMs to easily respond and interact with customer reviews left on the client’s website.

After implementing the Bazaarvoice Salesforce Connector, which allows the customer engagement team to respond to consumer questions, reviews, and other inquiries within one tool, the Nestle Canada customer service team saves on average eight minutes coding cases.

“We previously didn’t have the capacity and had to let go of engaging with as many of the reviews as we wanted. It would have taken eight minutes to open a case and transfer all of that content. Now, it’s all automated,” said Kristina Rapljenovic, Website Manager at Nestlé Canada.

4. 1440 Reputation Studio

1440 Reputation Studio is an all-in-one review management platform, designed specifically to work with Salesforce Service Cloud. That means you can generate, monitor, respond to, and analyze reviews from dozens of channels in a single place, giving you an omnichannel approach to your review management.

Now, instead of wasting time logging into multiple sources, simply manage Bazaarvoice reviews directly from the 1440 app in Salesforce. The Bazaarvoice 1440 integration means brands and retailers alike can facilitate effective follow-up action to all customer feedback they receive.

Marketing automation and personalization integrations

In addition to excellent customer service experiences, consumers expect personalized and contextualized touch points throughout their buying journey — regardless of what channel they’re on.

These types of integrations allow Bazaarvoice user-generated content (UGC) data to be pulled into marketing automation platforms to deliver truly personalized, real-time email or SMS messages that captivate your customers, driving higher engagement and conversions.

Smart marketers leverage this data based on recently browsed, abandoned, purchased, recommended, or pre-selected products. By meeting your customers where they want to be met, you’ll encourage more UGC creation and create meaningful connections with customers that enrich the customer’s shopping experience. 

5. MovableInk

MovableInk is a marketing automation platform that helps clients send customized emails to their customer base to help drive conversions.

The Bazaarvoice MovableInk integration lets you incorporate real-time UGC into email campaigns (customized per user that opens the email) and provide ratings and reviews, social content, and product sentiment for recently browsed, abandoned, or purchased items to inspire more shopper purchases. 

6. Attentive

Attentive is the leading conversational marketing platform, reinventing business to consumer communication. Their SMS-first software platform helps everyone from lean teams to enterprise brands strengthen relationships with their consumers in a new way.

73% of marketers say SMS drives incremental revenue for their business, but SMS is often an overlooked channel. Bazaarvoice partnered with Attentive to solve this by bringing authentic UGC into SMS campaigns, unlocking the power of customer advocacy.

By meeting your customers where they are, you encourage more UGC generation, driving more connections with customers and enriching their shopping experience.

7. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a unified customer platform that gives online brands direct ownership of their consumer data and interactions, empowering them to turn transactions with customers into long-term relationships — at scale. With Klaviyo, brands can combine customer data with over 220 native integrations to automate personalized email and SMS communications that make customers feel seen.

Klaviyo Marketing Connector allows clients to request reviews through Klaviyo flows, as well as segment users based on UGC data to deliver hyper-personalized campaigns that nurture customer lifetime value.

Customer experience optimization integrations

Shoppers crave experiences. According to our research, 98% of consumers value experience over price. Customer experience optimization is the process of using software tools that leverage customer feedback and data to deliver a frictionless, effective and happy shopping experience across all touchpoints — online and offline.

While optimization integrations overlap with CRM, the clear distinction is the heavy use of analytics tools and AI recommendations with optimization, as retailers evaluate buyer behavior in real time to continually improve experience and outcome.

Our main goal with the Bazaarvoice optimization integrations is to increase sales conversion, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty.

8. Contentsquare

Contentsquare leads the way in digital experience intelligence. Are you struggling to quantify ROI for your UGC campaigns? By integrating Contentsquare’s digital experience analytics platform with Bazaarvoice, you can better understand the impact that UGC has on your engagement metrics, conversion rates, and online revenue, helping you determine ROI of your campaign(s).

The integration also ptimizes the timing and placement of UGC to perfect your digital experience. For example, natural beauty product retailer The Body Shop increased average order value by 13% and enhanced the customer experience with Bazaarvoice Galleries and Contentsquare to guide product detail page optimizations.

9. Monetate

Monetate, a customer experience optimization platform, partnered with Bazaarvoice to join customer intelligence with content intelligence and drive rapid growth and digital transformation. Bazaarvoice provides UGC and data, Monetate optimizes when and where that content should appear in the shopping journey.

Leading brands and retailers are then able to understand, optimize and personalize their customer experiences at scale to deliver authentic, insights-driven personalized customer journeys. The integration means you can:

1. Control the display of inline ratings on product pages
2. Control the display of UGC on product pages
3. Utilize reviews data in Monetate Product Recommendations

Brand loyalty integrations

Every brand knows a retained customer is more valuable than an acquired one — you’re about 70% more likely to sell to a previous customer than a new one. But with a well-executed loyalty and referral program, brand’s don’t have to choose.

Brand loyalty programs allow brands to engage and reward their most loyal customers resulting in significant increase in lifetime value and retention, as well as acquire new customers through program referrals. 

10. Annex Cloud

Annex Cloud transforms customer loyalty experiences for organizations, ultimately making beloved brands. The integration with Bazaarvoice combines best-in-class loyalty management with powerful engagement and communication modules, enabling organizations to improve retention and drive growth on every level.

When you combine Bazaarvoice UGC with Annex Cloud’s loyalty solutions, you’re enabling brands to amplify the voices of its most loyal customers to accelerate growth. And in a time when third-party cookies are phasing out, the solution collects first-party data to build unique customer profiles for you.

11. TokyWoky

TokyWoky and Bazaarvoice have teamed up to allow brands and retailers to get even more of their top customers. TokyWoky’s Community platform technology rewards shoppers for taking specific actions (e.g. — receiving points to leave a review).

This helps make ratings and reviews and social commerce programs successful and turns reviewers into loyal customers. And given that 57% of shoppers spend more with brands they feel loyal to, this can have a noticeable effect on your sales.

Choose the right Bazaarvoice integration for your business

Every one of these integrations has the same goal in mind: to help you get even more out of 2024 and deliver the best customer experiences possible for your brand. But each integration can suit different business needs. Whatever your KPIs for 2024 are, Bazaarvoice has an integration that’s got you covered.

Make this the year that you can get more from the tools you are already using. Get in touch to learn more and discover the right integration(s) for you.

We’re better together. Interested in becoming a Bazaarvoice partner? Apply here.

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Navigating tomorrow’s commerce: The Bazaarvoice product roadmap for innovation

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But a substantial amount of marketers don’t feel confident they’re maximizing its potential and want to improve their strategies to further strengthen performance.

That’s why Bazaarvoice recently partnered with SMS experts Attentive — to help brands unlock customer advocacy and elevate their SMS marketing strategies.

If you’re one of the companies that want in on the SMS marketing goldrush but aren’t sure of the best way to do it, we have the answers to help you get the most out of this quickly growing trend.

Chapters:

1. What is SMS marketing?
2. Benefits of SMS marketing
3. Examples of SMS marketing
4. SMS marketing best practices
5. Getting started with SMS marketing

What is SMS marketing?

SMS marketing is a way for businesses to communicate with their customers who have opted-in, primarily through text messages. These types of marketing messages can include promotions, order and shipping notifications, new product alerts, brand updates, news, and more.

Because of the nature and capabilities of texting, brands can also utilize MMS — multimedia messages that include images, videos, GIFs, and other animated and visual content.

Benefits of SMS marketing

We’ve already established the attractive revenue opportunities of SMS marketing, but there’s plenty of other reasons to invest in this particular channel. These are some of the other incentives SMS can offer in a world that craves speed and brevity, and sometimes wit.

Deliver what customers really want

91% of consumers globally have already signed up for an SMS program, or are interested in doing so. And according to Soprano Design research, 85% of smartphone owners would rather receive text messages from brands than phone calls or emails. Their behavior confirms this, given that the average text open rate is a striking 98% and response rate is 45%, compared to 6% for email. 

And when it comes to customer service correspondence, 63% of global consumers engage with brands’ SMS programs at least twice a week. Consumer preference for texting comes as no surprise, considering that many of us are frequently fixated on mobile screens, and our devices are quite literally within reach at any given time.

Higher click-through and conversion rates

In a benchmark report that analyzed over 10,000 text campaigns, the SMS click-through rate (CTR) is 30%, meaning 30% of customers clicked a link in a text. If you’re wondering if that’s a high CTR, the answer is yes, insanely high. For comparison, the total average click-through rate of email campaigns across 40+ industries is 2.6%.

Conversion rates for SMS marketing are equally impressive. The average conversion rate based on a combination of sources is 29%, which is significantly higher than Facebook ads, digital ads, Google ads, and email marketing campaigns.

Examples of SMS marketing

Texting customers isn’t just like texting your friends or family. While the tone should definitely be conversational and friendly, it’s much more intentional and focused. Before launching an SMS marketing program, consider the most effective types of campaigns, how they apply to your business, and how to work them into your strategy.

Regardless of the types of messages you plan to send, make a great first impression and start off the relationship right with a strong initial welcome message. Automate your first message to send right after a customer signs up for SMS. Thank them for subscribing, and reinforce your brand by including your company name and what you specialize in. Include a call to action (CTA), like a link to explore your e-commerce site or to apply a first-time shopper promo code to their purchase for a discount.

Here’s the different types of SMS marketing, with examples for you to emulate.

Customer service SMS

Handling customer service-related questions and concerns is a popular and valuable form of SMS marketing for brands. SMS provides a quick and direct avenue to alert customers of purchase confirmations, shipping notifications and updates, delivery notifications, and any other pertinent information.

Beyond alerts and updates, texting is becoming consumers’ preferred method of communicating with customer service representatives about pressing issues. We’re all familiar with the nerve-wracking scenarios of being on hold with the customer service department for up to an hour or more or waiting days for a response to a customer service email. But with SMS, shoppers actually want to talk with brands.

When Attentive asked 8,000 consumers which of the following actions they’d rather do, from most to least, they said:

1. Text a brand customer service questions
2. Talk to a store representative
3. Do laundry
4. Exercise
5. Talk to a brand/customer service on the phone

In a consumer survey of over 2,000 adults, 44% of active texters would rather initiate an immediate text conversation instead of waiting on hold for a customer service agent. Conversational commerce via SMS — if done properly – can eliminate those customer frustrations and allow you to resolve problems quickly.

One way to offer customer service through your SMS program is with live texting with a real representative. This is an effective method that can satisfy the 88% of global consumers who would strike up a conversation to learn more about a product. Another approach is to automate customer service messages with prepared responses to frequently asked questions and concerns.

A successful SMS improves convenience, promptness, and accuracy in customer service experiences and can increase satisfaction and retention.

Promotional SMS

Promotional SMS is likely the most common type of text coming from consumer brands. These are the kind of texts designed to drive sales and strengthen brand loyalty. There’s plenty of use-cases for promotional SMS, including:

• Special offers: Special offers can include any kind of sale you’re running site-wide, for holidays, or for particular products. These can also include promo codes for first-time purchases, text-exclusive promo codes, or any other type of discount 
• Product launches: Using SMS for product launches will alert your text subscribers of new product releases and early release access before new products are widely released
• Product updates: SMS is a great tool for notifying customers when out-of-stock products have returned and when certain products are low on stock
• Customer acknowledgment: Another clever way to use SMS to strengthen customer connection is to send personalized texts on their birthday, anniversary, or other special occasions
• Educational content: For health and beauty brands, consumer electronics, or any industry that can offer helpful resources for its products, SMS can help distribute tutorials, tips, and how-to articles

One brand who sees success with promotional SMS marketing is clothing giant Monsoon. Monsoon creates and sends campaigns targeting loyalty members, with voucher reminders and early access to shop sales, to help increase engagement and spend.

Their lowest value voucher reminder (£10) resulted in a 13% CTR and 45% CVR, while their highest one (£40) resulted in a 16% CTR and 57% CVR — well above industry benchmarks

Post-interaction SMS

Similar to post-interaction emails, post-interaction SMS is a way to follow up with customers after they’ve made a purchase, are considering a purchase, or are otherwise engaged with your brand. 

Sending texts for abandoned cart notifications is an important function of post-interaction SMS. Current abandoned cart rates are at just under 70%. But the good news is brands can use SMS to recover abandoned carts by sending their customers encouraging texts to convince them to close the deal. 

Abandoned cart reminders should be friendly and personalized with the customer’s name. You can take it to the next level by including user-generated content (UGC) featuring products customers added to their carts. This can include customer reviews and visual UGC, like images and videos of customers with the products. To sweeten the deal, you could include a promo code for a discount if the customer finishes the transaction.

Post-purchase texts are an opportunity to send customers complementary information about their purchases, like useful tips, tutorials, loyalty points earned, and UGC to show how other customers use the products. You can also recommend similar products and accessories for future purchases.

Post-delivery texts are your chance to ask for valuable customer feedback. These SMS campaigns can be used to ask customers to leave a product review, share their own UGC on social media, and fill out customer satisfaction surveys. (You can collect 2x more UGC with Bazaarvoice SMS review collection).

Collecting and leveraging UGC and customer feedback has a direct impact on your business. Customer ratings and reviews are the top third factor that improves online shopping confidence for over 7,000 consumers surveyed.

Customer satisfaction surveys can also provide brands with feedback that helps improve their products and services. 

Communicating brand values and social responsibility

Expressing your brand values, including aligning with social causes you support, is an effective way to diversify your messages and instill your brand identity. This can include your thoughts on and participation in environmental sustainability, diversity and inclusion efforts, human rights, mental health, and more. 

These messages will particularly resonate with your younger audience, given that nearly a third of Gen Z have stopped buying from brands that don’t support social causes. By distributing this kind of content, you can also convey your brand story and background and make connections with customers. 

The above SMS example from fashion brand MATE the Label demonstrates its environmental values and commitment to using natural materials. MATE’s SMS program produces positive results in the form of high open rates and engaged subscribers.

SMS marketing best practices

Texting your customers may sound like a simple marketing task, but as you can see, it’s not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Just as there’s different forms of SMS communication with their own objectives, there’s different best practices you need to take when developing your SMS marketing strategy and launching campaigns to uphold quality and privacy standards.

Ensure compliance

Make absolutely sure that you only send SMS texts to opt-in subscribers. Conversely, stop sending messages as soon as recipients request to opt out. You should have clear instructions for how to opt in and opt out and explain the details of what customers can expect by opting in to receive texts from your brand.

Text sign-up prompts should be clearly separated from email sign-up forms and any other subscription options. With the opt-in prompt, include the kinds of messages customers will be receiving, like special offers, early access announcements, shipping notifications, etc. There should also be clear instructions for how to opt out on both the sign-up form and within the texts sent to customers. 

Last but not least, do not send or schedule texts during off hours, like early in the morning or late at night. Doing so can be disruptive and can be a quick way to frustrate your customers.

Segment before you send

Segmentation is a core component of effective personalized marketing and will greatly increase your chances of customer engagement. Instead of blasting out one general mass message to all of your SMS subscribers, you can meet the unique needs of different categories of customers with segments.

The qualities of each customer segment will determine the type and frequency of messages to send each one. Some examples of segments with tailored SMS approaches are:

• Engaged subscribers: This segment includes SMS subscribers who regularly click links in messages or respond to messages. You can include all general messages to this segment
• Subscribers who haven’t purchased: If a consumer opted in for texts but hasn’t made a purchase, you can send incentivized messages that include promo codes, UGC, or reminders of products and how they can benefit them
• Product categories: These segments can include customers who have a particular interest in certain product categories. You can send this segment price drops, new similar products, relevant sales, etc.
• Loyalty members: This segment includes SMS subscribers who are also members of your loyalty program. Strengthen the value of your loyalty program by alerting this segment of points gained, exclusive offers, etc

Menswear brand Mack Weldon leveraged the power of SMS marketing during the pandemic to reach different customer segments. They focused their SMS strategy on targeting customers interested in particular products and categories with custom messaging, including price drops and restocks. Based on its success, the brand plans to continue to invest in SMS as a retention channel and refine its strategy based on performance results.

Personalize your messages

At a minimum, add the customer’s name to the beginning of your messages, and you can do a lot more to personalize your SMS marketing. Your customer segments are a great resource for planning your messaging. Send special offers and content that aligns with the behaviors and interests of the customers in each segment. 

You can personalize messages to all of your SMS subscribers by promoting text-exclusive specials and sales. Make sure your recipients know it’s an exclusive offer by including “only for our text subscribers” or similar messaging. 

Make it conversational

The casual nature of texting is a draw for SMS subscribers, so you should avoid sounding like a robot or too rigid. Since texting is a primary form of communication for many, brands should treat it as an interactive exchange. Encourage recipients to respond by asking questions and inviting their thoughts and feedback. And allow your brand’s voice and personality to shine through to create authentic connections.

Promote your SMS program

Feature sign-up forms on your website and your mobile app if you have one. Be clear about the kind of communication customers can expect and what the value is for them to opt-in. Invite your email subscribers and social media followers to subscribe to texts for the full omnichannel experience.

Make it as frictionless as possible by allowing customers to text your brand to automatically opt in and begin the SMS relationship.

Measure campaign performance

As with any marketing campaign and initiative, you should measure the performance of your SMS marketing to decipher what’s working and what isn’t. Use the data from your SMS platform’s analytics to your advantage. Make sure you’re tracking the three key buckets of SMS KPIs: list growth, revenue growth, and message engagement.

• Revenue growth. How is SMS helping your bottom line? What’s your program’s return on investment (ROI) or return on ad spend (ROAS)?  
• Message engagement. What types of campaigns and triggered messages are your subscribers engaging with? Are they responding to your messages? Are certain message types or send times driving more opt-outs? 
• List growth. How many new subscribers are you adding? How many subscribers are you retaining, and how many are unsubscribing? Which sources are driving the most opt-ins?

And make sure to frequently assess any underperforming campaigns and optimize your strategy for better results.  

A/B testing is a helpful way to utilize the best elements of top-performing SMS campaigns for future success. Different components you can test are text copy, CTAs, timing, frequency, and multimedia, including emojis, images, GIFs, and video. Users have different tastes and lifestyles, so their preferences will vary, making it even more important to pay attention to your campaign performance.

Getting started with SMS marketing

SMS marketing is a relatively new addition to the e-commerce marketing toolkit that customers have latched onto, but not all brands are practicing it yet. Or at least not to the extent they could be. Now’s your opportunity to adopt this powerful channel or improve how you’re currently using it.

To do that successfully, you need to dedicate the necessary resources, and this may require buy-in from the decision makers. Consider this guide your pitch to go all-in on SMS marketing and take your brand to the next level.

With the Bazaarvoice and Attentive integration, you can unlock the power of customer advocacy. By meeting your customers where they want to be met, you can encourage more review generation and other types of UGC, driving more connections with customers and enriching the customer’s shopping experience.

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People spend a lot of their time shopping online. And, they need your help along the way. Shoppers seek inspiration, good-quality information, and the perspectives of real people to help them feel comfortable making purchases. 

The best way to improve customer service and offer the level of support shoppers crave is by responding to ratings, reviews, and other user-generated content (UGC). When you respond to UGC, you help your consumers feel confident they can get the help they need. Having a strong UGC response strategy helps you build relationships with consumers, which can improve consumer confidence in their purchase decision.”

To help you build impactful UGC programs (and create deeper and more efficient customer engagements in the process), Bazaarvoice and Zendesk have partnered for a new integration. 

As the leading UGC provider, that works with a large network of retailers, brands, and shoppers, Bazaarvoice offer Ratings & Reviews, Questions & Answers, and other UGC solutions. While Zendesk is a customer service platform connecting over 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers across email, social channels, review sites, and more. 

“Bringing together the power of Bazaarvoice and Zendesk, we are making it easier for our clients to be customer-centric,” says Mark Drosos, SVP of Global Partnerships at Bazaarvoice. 

“This integration is a game-changer, enabling businesses to seamlessly gather and harness valuable customer insights while delivering exceptional support. By uniting two industry leaders, we empower brands and retailers to build stronger relationships, drive growth, increase lifetime value, and elevate the customer experience to unprecedented heights.”

How the Bazaarvoice + Zendesk integration improves customer service 

The Bazaarvoice + Zendesk integration enables you to build an efficient, effective UGC program that delivers high-quality customer experiences and improve customer service across the shopping journey.

You’re easily able to integrate your Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews and Questions & Answers data into the Zendesk platform. Here’s how the Bazaarvoice + Zendesk integration can help you improve workflows, enhance your brand reputation, and improve customer service: 

• Build robust customer profiles: The UGC you collect helps you keep tabs on what consumers are saying about you and your products. You can also discover new customer profiles that aren’t already in your CRM 

• Manage brand reputation at scale: Whenever a shopper leaves feedback or asks a question, thousands more are paying attention. You can prioritize high-impact reviews and questions with alerts and deploy a response interface that your team already knows well 

• Increase productivity: The integration lets you centralize customer interaction through your Zendesk platform. This helps maximize the workflow management your response team has already built, which drives efficiency and saves valuable time

• Learn about your customers: Reviews (negative and positive) provide a wealth of information about your shoppers. You can learn about their pain points, where customer service is lagging, and any issues they’re having with your products. You can also identify gaps in the market, where you could innovate and improve

• Drive top-notch customer experiences and retention: Leverage your UGC to create informed, personalized customer support and increase the lifetime value of your customers. Improve customer satisfaction by responding to reviews and questions quickly and seamlessly tracking consumer correspondence in the Zendesk platform

• Give consumer voices a boost: UGC is a true asset. Consumers who interact with UGC are 2x more likely to convert. Bazaarvoice’s Ratings & Reviews tools let you collect authentic ratings, reviews, photos, and videos from consumers 

Helping you respond to negative and positive reviews

UGC plays a huge role in consumers’ purchasing decisions, with 89% always or mostly consulting reviews before buying anything. Shoppers value any and all reviews, both negative and positive. They also expect you to respond to their reviews and answer their questions. 

Review management is a key part of a successful UGC strategy. Letting reviews simply flow in isn’t always enough. But, your response to all those reviews is everything when it comes to boosting your brand reputation, gaining consumer trust, and just giving shoppers what they want. 

While negative reviews might seem like a turn-off for shoppers, they’re actually much appreciated. 60% of shoppers consider negative reviews equally important as positive feedback, as they can provide just as much (or even more) information about your products. However, most shoppers expect you to respond and address the issues that they mention. 

Responding to reviews makes shoppers feel valued. Even replying to positive reviews — which can be easy to take for granted — establishes trust and shows your customers that you care about what they have to say and are dedicated to ensuring the highest level of customer service. 

The Bazaarvoice + Zendesk integration makes responding to customer reviews and questions more streamlined, giving you the opportunity to join the conversation with the native content on your own site. It’s as simple as logging into our portal, where you can track and manage questions and reviews across the Bazaarvoice Network. You can choose how and when to receive notifications, so you can respond to consumers at the right moments.

Improve customer service with the Bazaarvoice + Zendesk integration 

Our integration with Zendesk enables you to easily and efficiently respond to customer reviews and questions at scale, helping you turn customers into repeat buyers. 

Ready to boost your UGC strategy, build smarter shopping experiences, and take your customer service to the next level? Learn more about the Zendesk integration here. Or get in touch directly below to get started.

Interested in becoming the next Bazaarvoice partner? Visit our partner page to learn more.

Thanks to its ease of use, over 1.75 million retailers use Shopify to sell their products, fulfill orders, and stay in touch with customers. 

To stand out from the pack, you want to make sure your Shopify site is optimized to attract search engines’ attention and build trust with shoppers. 

Enter product reviews.

Chapters:

1. Why Shopify product reviews matter
2. How to collect reviews on Shopify
3. How to add reviews to your Shopify store
4. Finding the right Shopify reviews app
5. Take reviews beyond your Shopify store

Why Shopify product reviews matter

Sure, it’s important to feature high quality photos and detailed product descriptions on your Shopify store. But today’s shoppers seem to be more interested in what actual customers think about your products. 

According to a global survey on why reviews matter, almost 90% of consumers read reviews when shopping online and 78% say reviews are the “most influential” factor in their purchasing decisions.

Whatever you sell online, adding product reviews to your Shopify store can help boost buyer confidence, sales, and SEO. 

Building shopper confidence and increasing sales

Today’s consumers are more likely to whip out their credit cards for brands that listen. Reviews are a tangible way for retailers to see feedback and show that they care about what their customers think.

And don’t worry about getting some negative reviews — they actually build consumers’ trust in your positive reviews. According to research, 60% of shoppers value negative reviews just as much as positive ones. People know that even with an incredible product, there will inevitably be some criticism in your Shopify store’s reviews.

Whether a customer sings your praises or expresses disapproval, it gives you the opportunity to respond. Nearly half of consumers say seeing a brand reply to a review would increase their likelihood of making a purchase.

Customer feedback can also highlight potential problems and opportunities to improve your Shopify store’s offerings. Through a consumer survey we’ve found about 4% of reviews describe manufacturing issues and 2% point out possible tweaks or additions to products.

Improving SEO performance

Adding reviews is also an effective way to boost your Shopify store’s SEO. 

Search engines rank sites that have new content higher. And with a steady flow of reviews, customers do the content generation work for you.

How to collect reviews on Shopify

No matter what you sell on Shopify, collecting reviews should be one of the key instruments in your e-commerce toolbox. So how do you get more reviews for your Shopify store?

One method is to ask customers to submit reviews directly on the product page. That’s easy to do with our new app for Shopify. 

Beyond collecting feedback on your website, there’s more strategies you can implement to increase product reviews. Consider sampling programs or reaching out via email and social media.

1. Product sampling

Almost 90% of shoppers say that they enjoy receiving free samples. After all, who doesn’t like free stuff? That’s the basic premise of product sampling programs — retailers give customers free samples to increase product reviews.

And it works. Take global food company Kraft Heinz, for example. The brand sent out free samples of its new Kraft dressings. By the end of the sampling campaign, they’d ended up with 2x the number of reviews they expected — a whopping 20,000 reviews. Not to mention, the added benefit of 369,000 likes, shares, comments, posts, and follows on social media.

2. Ask on social media

Speaking of social media. Want more reviews for your Shopify store? Try going straight to the source — directly ask your customers on social media. Or look for branded hashtags and tagged posts.

For example, when customers tag your brand in social media posts, you can comment or message them to ask for reviews. Over a quarter of shoppers report that companies have done this — so you’re not alone.

3. Email requests

You can also simply send review request emails to customers who’ve recently purchased your products. A rule of thumb is to give them enough time to try the product, but don’t wait so long that they’ve forgotten what they first loved about it. 

We’ve seen that when brands send these requests via email, they can grow their reviews by as much as 50%. And one brand, MeUndies, grew review volume 218% year-on-year with review request emails.

You can also opt for SMS review collection, and collect roughly 2x the amount of reviews.

Both options are also the perfect opportunity to thank customers for their purchase and retain customers through build brand loyalty.

How to add reviews to your Shopify store

Ready to start boosting your sales, SEO, and shopper confidence? Here’s how to find an app that will help you collect and showcase customer reviews.

1. Navigate to the Apps button on your Shopify dashboard

2. Click “Apps.” A search bar should pop up

Then type in “reviews” or “product reviews.”

3. The search bar should say, “Search for ‘reviews’ in the Shopify App Store.” Press the search button or click enter

Now, Shopify shows you all of the apps that can allow you to add reviews. You can also search directly via App name (for example: Bazaarvoice Reviews & Photos) if you already have a preferred partner.

4. After you click on your preferred partner, click the green button that says “Install App”

If you choose a different app, these same instructions still apply. (We’re just using Bazaarvoice as an example because we have the screenshots, obviously).

5. After you install your app, create an account

And that’s it! Now you can go and get started adding reviews for Shopify.

Finding the right Shopify reviews app

When looking for a good Shopify reviews app, you’ll want to make sure it’s built with SEO best practices in mind. This way, shoppers will be able to find you, and you’ll be able to make the most of the SEO benefits that accompany including reviews on your site.

Check that the app also has a mobile-first design. It’s important that your website loads quickly and displays properly on phones. About 80% of smartphone users say they’ve used their devices to buy something online in the past six months.

We also recommend that you choose an app with a questions & answers feature. For example, a sneakers shop can ask customers questions like, “Are these good for trail running?” These Q&As can help potential customers make purchasing decisions faster. And help you close more sales.

Take reviews beyond your Shopify store

Regardless of what app you use for your Shopify store, showcasing ratings and reviews will take your online storefront to the next level.  

But if you want to channel your customer reviews into improved shopper confidence, better SEO for your e-commerce store, and increased sales, you need to work with a review platform that gets your reviews in front of shoppers everywhere they are. Bazaarvoice’s best-in-class Ratings & Reviews technology can help you with that.

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How to build a winning review collection strategy

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1. Please tell our readers your name, role at BILT, and how you got involved in the organization?

My name is Jenny Tsao and I’m the VP of Demand Marketing at BILT.

I joined BILT in early 2022 and was looking to make a bigger impact with a smaller team of mission-oriented individuals, while stretching my skills as a marketing demand generation and operations leader. In the past, I’ve worked in the transportation/logistics and media research/advertising industries, but while networking with some friends, I stumbled upon this opportunity, met the leadership team, and was drawn to the strong culture in the middle of the DFW metro!

2. For those that may not be familiar, tell us about BILT and how the organization got started?

BILT was born out of a frustrating experience with assembling a children’s sandbox for a toddler. Having seen how 3D instructions are used in the aerospace industry, the idea of creating the same experience for everyday consumer goods was sparked. 

BILT is a mobile app that provides interactive instructions that help consumers and professionals get the job done right the first time. Brands and retailers love it because it reduces assembly-related returns, eliminates costly calls to customer support, and increases product ratings (which ultimately drives higher sales!) And manufacturers are drawn to it because it up-skills their field techs and improves assembly/repair productivity.

3. Product assembly can be challenging and can have an impact on a customer’s overall sentiment with the product and brand.

How does the app strengthen a customer’s post purchase experience? 

Too often, businesses think that the buyer’s journey ends with the sale of the product. But if assembly is required, then that journey continues until the product is in place and in use. 

BILT shields the customer from complexity and frustration. While it doesn’t make the assembly physically effort-free, it makes it cognitively effortless. Many consumers are embracing the DIY process today. So creating an experience that leaves a lasting positive impression will create loyal customers and encourage them to come back to buy more.

And in the age of social media and rating and reviews, they’ll find ways to share their experience and tell their friends.

4. How can BILT help differentiate a brand’s product line?

Two things. On the last step of the instruction set is a two question survey asking customers to rate the product or service and explain their rating. We’ve seen that products have 0.25 to 0.8 higher star ratings after adoption of the BILT instructions.

Additionally, if the user gets stuck during the assembly process, BILT’s analytics can  help brands drive future product design improvements. 

5. What is the significance of this partnership for your customer base?

Our partnership with Bazaarvoice enables our mutual customers to seamlessly syndicate their ratings and reviews captured in the BILT app. This ultimately helps consumers make more informed purchase decisions on the products out in the marketplace.

We’re happy to have BILT on board as a partner and we look forward to creating smarter shopping experiences together. Learn more here.

We’re better together. Our global partner program gives you access to the tools, resources, and insights you need to delight your clients and grow your business. Interested in becoming a Bazaarvoice partner? Apply now.

Our team recently sat down for a conversation with a thought leader from the Cohley team. Here’s what they said!

First off, can you tell readers your name, role at Cohley and how you got involved in the organization? And also, something you’re proud of but never get the chance to brag about 

My name is Casey Murray. I’m the Director of Partnerships at Cohley. I first learned about Cohley after being introduced to the co-founders, Tom Logan and Erik Graber, in February of 2020. From our first conversation, I was brought in on the mission to change the way brands generate and test content to help grow their businesses. I officially joined the Cohley team in January of 2021 to build up the partnerships function. 

Something I’m proud of but don’t get the chance to brag about… I’m not much of the bragging type, but I wrote an album during lockdown via virtual collaborations with other musicians. Will it be released? TBD.

For those who may not be familiar, tell us about Cohley

Cohley is a content generation and testing platform built for marketers looking to establish an authentic connection with both targeted new consumers and loyal customers. In today’s marketing environment, marketers need more content than ever, and even more data to back their decisions about how/when it’s used.

Cohley is changing the way that brands and agencies have traditionally generated and tested content. We connect them with a diverse and vast network of creators, photographers, videographers, and product reviewers to fulfill each and every marketing channel’s ever-growing content needs. Whether the goal is to improve conversion rates on e-commerce sites, click through rates in email or SMS, or improve engagement in ads and social — Cohley has you covered with its content generation and testing capabilities. 

How do you think user-generated content helps brands be competitive in today’s digital first landscape?

Today’s consumer demands authentic and relatable content, from real people, to establish trust in a brand and its products. First-time and life-long shoppers, they all rely on UGC [user-generated content] to make a more informed purchasing decision. UGC needs to be present in the start, middle, and end of their buyer’s journey to establish desired connections and conversions. Brands that actively generate, monitor, display, and test UGC in key marketing channels (website, ads, email, SMS, Social) will always have a leg up on their competition.

Why did you decide to partner with Bazaarvoice?

After countless integration requests from mutual customers it was an absolute no-brainer! Bazaarvoice has been a pioneer and trailblazer for nearly two decades. 

We’re so pumped to integrate and officially partner with Bazaarvoice to activate our mutual customers’ content to their site and associated retailer sites through the Bazaarvoice Network.

What does this partnership with Bazaarvoice mean to your business?

By establishing an integration partnership, our mutual customers can generate custom content (product reviews and visual UGC) at scale, and seamlessly send them to the Bazaarvoice Network to be displayed where their shoppers shop.

Cohley and our hundreds of customers know that content generation and activation is a never ending process. This integration partnership will be paramount for merchants looking to drive traffic, conversion, and sales, and make more informed content decisions 

We’re so excited for this partnership and we look forward to creating smarter shopping experiences together. Learn more here.

We’re better together. Interested in becoming a Bazaarvoice partner? Apply now.

Our team recently sat down for a conversation with a thought leader from the WhyteSpyder team. Here’s what they said!

1. First off, can you tell readers your name, role at WhyteSpyder and how you got involved in the organization?

And also, something you’re proud of but never get the chance to brag about?

My name is Scott Benedict, and I’m the Vice President of Partnerships for WhyteSpyder. While I’ve been employed at the company for just a few months, I’ve been a friend of (and a fan of) WhyteSpyder for many years. I actually first learned about WhyteSpyder at an industry event that I was invited to by a friend at Bazaarvoice!

I was responsible for the UGC [user-generated content] program at SamsClub.com from 2011 to 2014, and had the opportunity to work with and learn from the team at Bazaarvoice during that time.

2. For those who may not be familiar, tell us about WhyteSpyder

Our company was founded in 2010 and is based in Northwest Arkansas, because we believed there was an opportunity to serve the Walmart and Sam’sClub supplier community as they worked to grow and optimize their digital business performance with the world’s largest retailer. 

Today our company utilizes our powerful proprietary SaaS platform SkuNinja, along with the Walmart experts on our staff to help consumer brands, third-party sellers, and agencies to optimize their content, organic search relevancy, and paid search performance on Walmart.com.

In late 2021, we joined the Ascential Digital Commerce group, which allows us to bring the combined expertise of our sister firms with complementary skills and capabilities to help our clients win online across a number of retail platforms.

3. How did the SkuNinja platform come about and how has it evolved over the years? 

SKU Ninja was conceived of as a “practitioner’s tool.” In other words, it was developed to not only analyze and assess performance opportunities on a client’s product detail page (PDP), but enable the user to fix problems with content, imagery, and keywords. We also host rich media modules on the platform.

Although SKU Ninja was originally developed for internal users, we found that it could also be a powerful tool for our clients to manage their own PDPs if they choose.

4. E-commerce has gotten very competitive, how does WhyteSpyder give customers a competitive edge in the marketplace?

The retail market broadly has certainly evolved a great deal during the COVID-19 pandemic, and consumer shopping trends have accelerated toward online and omnichannel shopping experiences far faster than trends would have indicated prior to the Spring of 2020. As the pandemic subsides, omnichannel shopping has moved mainstream, particularly at Walmart.

Now, brands that want to win at Walmart have had to adapt their business strategies to make digital experiences and online marketing more effective to drive their business forward. WhyteSpyder offers our clients the tools, technology, and expertise that is proven to help brands win within Walmart’s unique omnichannel platform, offering our clients a competitive advantage that other firms simply can’t match.

5. What is the significance of this partnership?

WhyteSpyder and Bazaarvoice offer very complementary services to our clients and we’re both committed to enabling best-in-class consumer shopping experiences. We both provide support for elements of the PDP that help consumers make smart and informed purchase decisions while offering our clients and retail partners greater organic search rankings, and ultimately higher purchase conversions.

In short, we both improve the shopping experience for consumers as well as the business results of our clients and our retail partners.

We’re so excited for this partnership and we look forward to creating smarter shopping experiences together. Learn more about this exciting partnership here.

We’re better together. Interested in becoming a Bazaarvoice partner? Apply now!

Our team recently sat down for a conversation with a thought leader from the Annex Cloud team. Here’s what he said!

First off, can you tell readers your name, role at Annex Cloud and how you got involved in the organization? And also, something you’re proud of but never get the chance to brag about.

My name is Al Lalani, Co-founder and CEO. After realizing that a brand’s social customers are often their best customers, I co-founded Annex Cloud in 2011, starting in the social space knowing brands needed to be engaging customers where they are to be successful.

Over the years, with our commitment to over delivering for customers, we added more and more traditional loyalty components. The result is the Loyalty Experience Platform, the most modular and feature-rich solution available today.

I can’t say enough about our amazing team. Our success is really a direct result of our people, their passion, and their hyper-vigilance around our customers and their unique needs.

For those that are not familiar, tell us about Annex Cloud

For over 10 years, Annex Cloud has been the worldwide leader in technology and service solutions that transform customer loyalty experiences for organizations, extending valued customer engagements, ultimately making beloved brands.

Annex Cloud’s Loyalty Experience Platform collects first-party data at scale to build a unified 360-degree customer profile that allows brands to create unique, timely, relevant experiences across every touchpoint. In turn, keeping customers engaged across the entire journey. 

In such a competitive marketplace, why is customer loyalty important?

As brands have shifted to an online presence faster than ever before, knowing and rewarding your most loyal customers is essential to an effective digital marketing strategy. Loyalty is now an integral part of a brand’s growth strategy. Loyalty programs are proven to increase average order value, repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value — even new customer acquisition. 

Loyal customers are highly engaged, write in-depth reviews, and more frequently post content that improves trust and increases conversions.

What is the significance of this partnership?

Partnering with Bazaarvoice will allow brands to build true value-based relationships with their customers, to deliver unique, relevant experiences that build advocacy. Loyal customers post higher-caliber reviews, share more content, and refer others more often. So proactively rewarding them for these actions gives other customers valuable insights, while simultaneously building a powerful advocacy engine that drives higher conversions.

This partnership will provide Bazaarvoice clients with a seamless, omnichannel solution for giving consumers the social proof they need, and at the same time deliver unique one-to-one shopper experiences that build lasting customer bonds and drive growth. 

How will the joint solution work?

The partnership combines Annex Cloud’s best-in-class loyalty software with Bazaarvoice’s industry-leading user-generated content (UGC) solutions. This combination enables brands to engage customers across the entire lifecycle, generate and amplify more conversion-boosting content, and reward loyal customers for sharing their reviews, answers, and recommendations to accelerate growth. 

The Loyalty platform is integrated with Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews, Visual & Social Content, Questions & Answers, Social Commerce, and Sampling tools. Brands can now influence buying behaviors and engagement with incentives. All loyalty data is passed bi-directionally to the various conversion tools.

Additional modules can be added to your loyalty solution, including Refer-a-Friend, Influencer Marketing, Coupons & Vouchers, Gift Cards, Gamification, and Contests & Sweepstakes. 

We’re so excited for this partnership and we look forward to creating impactful UGC experiences together and establishing brands beloved by the world over. Learn more here.

We’re better together. Interested in becoming a Bazaarvoice partner? Apply now.