• Increased brand awareness
• Attracting new customers
• Accelerating technological capabilities
• Driving sales

But what’s not obvious is what a successful partnership looks like to achieve these goals. We’re going to outline the tactics you need to focus on by demonstrating how retailers can collaborate with brands on marketing campaigns and showcasing retailer-brand partnership examples.

Chapters:

1. What are retail partnerships?
2. Types of retail partnerships
3. Benefits of retail partnerships
4. 6 examples of retailer-brand partnerships
5. How to make your retail partnership successful
6. Execute a winning retail partnership by avoiding pitfalls

Hershey’s and Betty Crocker: a combination made in heaven for chocolate and dessert lovers. When it comes to brand partnerships, these kinds of pairings are great for fueling growth thanks to cross-promotions and shared resources. But it’s not just grocery store megabrands. Retail can benefit from brand partnerships, too.

For example, the department store Kohl’s partners with Amazon to process Amazon returns in-store. Kohl’s then ships the package back to Amazon and gives the customer a $5 Kohl’s Cash coupon. That entices people to stay and shop — because who turns down $5 in free money? Not me. Kohl’s gets new business, while Amazon has a simple way to process its returns. And the customer wins twice.

So what can we learn from Kohl’s and Amazon? That a retail partnership brings you new customers, more brand awareness, and more sales. 

What are retail partnerships?

A retail partnership is an alliance between a brand and a retailer that have overlapping target audiences — but isn’t going to lose business to each other. Instead, they work together to attract a bigger, new audience. 

Think of GEICO and Helzberg Diamonds: neither competes with the other. You’re buying diamonds from one, insurance from the other. But it benefits GEICO because it wants to advertise to the consumer who is out there buying high-ticket items like jewelry so that it can get its business on larger umbrella policies. Meanwhile, Helzberg gets product placement in GEICO’s commercials, helping to keep its name fresh in people’s minds. 

Types of retail partnerships

There’s a few types of retail partnerships. The size of your business and your sales goals will determine the one that will work best for your brand. For example, shared ads and cross-selling are great for brands that share target customers, while a co-branded event may work better for a pair of local retailers. 

For already-established brands, like Target and CVS, sharing retail space might be the best option. The only rule when it comes to brand partnerships: both brands and the customer benefit from the collaboration. 

1. Co-marketing with other businesses

When you find a partner to advertise with — like GEICO and Helzberg Diamonds — you’re able to reach new customers while you share each other’s marketing campaigns. This is great for companies that need to be careful with their marketing budget, like small businesses. Brands can afford more ads with pooled resources. However, a shared campaign also benefits larger companies because they get their names out to each other’s target audiences. Customers of each brand transfer their trust in one brand to the other because their brand has endorsed it. 

Joybird and Sherwin-Williams recently partnered for a campaign featuring interior design ideas. Joybird sells furniture for living rooms, home offices, bedrooms, and more. Sherwin-Williams sells paint. The duo collaborated to come up with furniture and paint colors that complement each other. They advertise on each other’s sites and work together to sell their products. The customer gets unique ideas to help them create a trendy new space in their home.

Or have you ever ordered a subscription service? Monthly deliveries contain products and discounts for related brands. For example, HelloFresh sends its customers coupons from other businesses, like a $100 Naked Wines card, that relate to HelloFresh but don’t directly compete with it. It’s an easy way to create brand awareness with an audience that appreciates the convenience of home delivery.

2. Co-sponsored events or pop-up shops

A limited-time event, like a pop-up shop, is another way to share audiences. In 2015, Target sold designer brand Lilly Pulitzer’s dresses, sunglasses, tumblers, and other products — the collection sold out online almost immediately. 

Of course, not every business has the advertising power of Target or the brand reputation of Lilly Pulitzer. But even SMBs or local stores can partner with other local brands for an event. Maybe a wedding dress shop partners with a local photographer and other vendors for a wedding expo. Or create a town art walk with nearby businesses willing to co-host the event. Together, businesses create events that provide value for the consumer and also bring new business to your stores.

3. Branded products 

Walmart carries Better Homes & Gardens products, including furniture, bedding, hand towels, and more. Their partnership began in 2008 and is still going strong. 

Take a page out of Walmart’s book and reach out to some direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. Walmart also sells various D2C brands, like Dollar Shave Club products and Billie razors, through its store, which means customers don’t have to leave Walmart’s site. Reach out to your favorite D2C brands. They might be interested in partnering with your store and selling their products with you.

Again, this brings in new business to your store through their customers and helps you get your name out to people who use that brand. Your partner gets valuable retail space that their e-commerce shop otherwise wouldn’t have.

4. Share space with another retailer

Yes, we’re using Target a lot as an example — but emulating a big-box store isn’t a bad thing when it comes to partnerships. After all, Target is the king of shared retail space partnerships. Inside a Target, you’ll find a CVS as the pharmacy. These two retailers work together to offer an overall better customer experience. Plus, Target saves on operating costs because CVS manages the pharmacy. And while you’re in Target waiting on your prescription, you might head over to the in-store Starbucks to grab some coffee or browse the Ulta mini-shop in the beauty department. 

Shared spaces might not work for every business, but if you can find a retailer that’s on the same level as your store and complements the products you offer, it could give you more foot traffic.

5. Cross-selling with online businesses

If you’re strictly an online retailer, then partner with other online retailers to advertise and sell your items. This works great for smaller businesses that don’t have as much of an online presence. For instance, a company that sells cat toys could partner with a company selling customized cat food or kitty litter subscriptions. 

Cross-selling campaigns often feature bundle pricing or discounts for new customers. These brands benefit from each other and can help each other cross-sell their products to the same target market. You can also use the opportunity to promote your loyalty program. 

6. Loyalty programs 

Let’s say a customer is redeeming their American Express rewards and sees a gift card for your store on the list. You’ve boosted your brand name. With each redemption, you’ve got a chance to upsell.

You’re also able to share valuable insights with other businesses — and then you benefit from theirs as well. It gives you another chance to get your name out there and expand your target market. 

Benefits of retail partnerships

Partnering with another business may take some extra work to get going — especially if you have creative differences or vastly different products — but there’s lots of benefits, including brand awareness, new customers, increased sales, and fewer returns. Consider how to use these advantages as you choose potential partners.

1. Increased brand awareness 

For both brands and retailers, a partnership can lead to increased brand awareness. OLIPOP, a soda that boasts probiotics and other health benefits, saw huge benefits when it partnered with Target. Yes, we’re seemingly obsessed with Target, but with good reason. A small test program in around 170 Target stores during a three-month test period exceeded OLIPOP’s goals, and it expanded to 1,500 stores across the nation.

“Almost every Target in the country now sells our top-selling flavors. It’s the perfect partnership for us because it expands our reach. While you might not have headed to Target for a healthy alternative to soda, once you’re there, it’s easy to reach for one of our cans in their refrigerated section.”

Melanie Edwards, Senior E-commerce and Digital Product Manager, OLIPOP

Granted, Target already has brand awareness on lock. But if OLIPOP customers know that Target’s selling the soda they like, they might head there to get some. And then purchase other products along the way. You can work with companies like OLIPOP to increase brand awareness and also boost your shop’s presence and average order value. 

2. Attract new customers

Getting customers to your store isn’t as easy as it once was — they’re overloaded with marketing from other e-commerce sites and retail brands. But partnering with those brands means you have a way to bring their customers to you. If you know JCPenney is selling your favorite Sephora makeup, you can pop in and grab what you need and browse JCPenney’s sales while you’re there. 

3. Reduce shrinkage and product returns

Verizon is working with Walmart to upgrade its infrastructure with high-powered cameras that help it monitor shoplifters and even offer more medical services to its customers.

Of course, not everyone is Verizon or Walmart. But you can still find tech partners to help protect your revenue. Augmented reality (AR) uses technology that lets a customer see a virtual example of what your products will look like in their home. Companies that offer AR might especially benefit from a retail partnership. Advertise for them on your product pages with a caption that reads “AR powered by XYZ, Inc.” so that they get a shoutout and get business from your site. 

AR can be a big investment but can pay off in the long run. In 2020, customers returned over $420 billion worth of products. But when you find the right tech partner, you could reduce those returns. By using augmented reality or even virtual reality, you give customers a better view of what you’re selling. In a recent study, Shopify said product returns decreased by as much as 40% when 3D visualization was available.

6 examples of outstanding retailer-brand partnerships

While most of these brand and retail partnership examples are larger, they do offer inspiration for SMBs as they brainstorm possibilities for their partners. Maybe your indie shoe brand isn’t Adidas-level (yet), but you could find a company to help advance your goals — and vice versa.

1. GE and Google

GE and Google recently inked a multi-year deal to create next-gen appliances for homeowners that run on Google Cloud. GE will use Google’s resources in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more to inform the entire appliance-making process from ideation to the end.

Customers will be able to personalize their appliances on a whole new level using insights from their appliance data and can implement energy-saving tactics that the appliance recommends. Both companies recently also joined Princeton on a research project to help develop low-carbon innovation.

2. Harley-Davidson and Marvel

Back in 2016, two iconic brands combined their superpowers to create 25 different custom motorcycles that have superhero vibes: Marvel and Harley-Davidson. Marvel has also gone on to feature Harleys in its movies, including a custom motorcycle that was featured in “Captain America: Civil War.” The LiveWire motorcycle, which got hype in 2015 when Black Widow rode it in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” was finally available for sale in 2020. Harley built up some serious customer suspense for this electric, futuristic motorcycle. 

This partnership gave Marvel a chance to advertise to Harley-Davidson customers, and the motorcycle company got valuable product placement in blockbuster superhero movies, increasing its already-high brand recognition. 

3. Adidas and Allbirds

Popular footwear brands Allbirds and Adidas are working together to create running shoes with a low carbon footprint. On the surface, they may seem like direct competitors. But Adidas and Allbirds are using shared materials like Adidas’ PrimeGreen sustainable, recyclable materials and eucalyptus tree fiber from Allbirds for the shoe.

By using components from each company in the shoe, they’re able to create a sustainable shoe that also only weighs 5.3 ounces — perfect for a runner — that neither company could create on its own. Plus, both brand names are on the shoe, which gives both companies a chance to advertise. And it’s the perfect example of sustainable branding.

4. MAC and Disney

Makeup brand MAC and entertainment titan Disney partner to offer makeup based on different Disney characters. In 2019, MAC released makeup inspired by the live-action version of “Aladdin.” They’ve also released other makeup lines based on Disney films, like “Cruella,” to add hype for the film and give MAC customers more options when choosing makeup color palettes.

Also, the audience who likes Disney and likes makeup are likely to overlap, which gives these companies a stronger target market.

5. Coach and Disney

Disney also partners with luxury handbag and apparel company Coach, which uses Disney logos and characters on its products. Coach also created a special line for Disney World’s 50th anniversary, including a set of Coach Mickey ears that cater to Disney aficionados. Doing this helps Coach stand out from other brands in its space and, in turn, helps Disney to market to the “Disney adult” crowd that’s popular (even a bit infamous) on social media. 

6. Taco Bell and Doritos

Who hasn’t ordered a Doritos Locos Taco at 2am? If you haven’t, you’re missing out. Back in 2012, Taco Bell was looking for a new menu option to compete with Chipotle and other Mexican fast-food restaurants. It also wanted something that would cater to its target demographic of 20-somethings who needed a little boost after a long night out. Enter the Doritos Locos Taco. A decade later, it’s still one of Taco Bell’s top sellers.

At one point, it was also selling Cool Ranch Doritos tacos and now offers a fiery Doritos taco to keep catering to the crowd that loves these tacos. It also benefits Doritos since it gets its brand put all over the taco wrapper and into the mouths of its ideal customer.

How to make your retail partnership successful with brands

The path to successful retail partnerships starts with finding the right opportunity for your company. Do you want a partner who offers a similar product so that you can both up each other’s game? Or do you want a company with complementary products, like makeup and a women’s wellness vitamin? Once you do that, there’s other best practices you can follow to make sure your partnership is successful.

Optimize product pages for search and customers

Keep your product pages looking refreshed and new, especially the ones that relate to your brand partnership. If you have potential customers coming to your store from your retail partner’s site, you need to make a good impression with reviews and other content. And make sure to link back to their site, too — those backlinks only help increase your online presence (and your partner’s, too).

Plus, if your product pages are optimized for search, you’ve got a better chance of bringing in organic search engine traffic. A visual content solution (like the one from Bazaarvoice ) could help you out here. One brand, DSW, saw a 2x uptick in conversions after using this tool.

Solicit and syndicate user-generated content

To keep your new product pages looking fresh, you need to encourage your customers to leave reviews, whether they’re text-based or videos. 

Have your users review you and your brand partner if they buy from both of you. That helps to build up much-needed social proof. About two-thirds of shoppers prefer user-generated content (UGC) — like reviews — over professional content. You can even get UGC before your site launches when you look for customers who are likely to buy your products using a sampling community.

Another added benefit of having UGC on your product pages is that it also boosts your SEO. That, in turn, benefits whoever you partner with since they’re working with someone who ranks well. For example, Australian retailer Andi-Co leveraged syndication and gained 1,400 new reviews in a year, which boosted its products position in Google search results.

Focus on messaging to reduce returns

Returns happen. But you can tweak your product pages and messaging to help reduce those. With the right technology, you can show off your products using augmented or virtual reality to give customers a better picture of the item. 

Also, display that UGC on every product page and provide answers to your most frequently asked questions so that your customers get all the information they need before purchasing. 

If you do get returns, then engage with your customer feedback and use it to help improve products in the future. If there’s something that isn’t working with your product, you won’t know unless you listen to what your consumers are saying.

Use tools like Connections, pictured above, to easily track that feedback and respond to questions. 

Execute a winning retail partnership by avoiding pitfalls

Yes, there’s undeniable benefits to partnering with the right business. But there’s some pitfalls to watch out for too. First, make sure that you and your potential partner align on goals for your partnership. While you likely don’t have the same exact goals, you’ll need ones that help grow your respective businesses. 

Next, examine the value proposition of any proposed partnership. Does it make sense to partner with that brand? Will it bring relevant traffic to your retail store, or will it just be a fruitless endeavor? 

Finally, you need to avoid a partnership that could drain your resources or harm your business in any way. This can happen if you’re the weaker party in the partnership and the other brand starts to take over. But it can also happen if you’re the stronger party and you’re putting in more time and money. Examine all relevant data to make sure this is a partnership that will benefit you. 

Now you know how to implement a successful retail partnership, the next step is winning over shoppers. 98% of consumers value experience over price — so give it to them.

LEARN HOW

A retail marketer’s guide to satisfying experience-hungry shoppers

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When you’re ready to implement your partnership, we’re here to help you avoid potential pitfalls and optimize that opportunity. Contact Bazaarvoice to learn how our tools can help you.

The challenge facing retailers like Walmart today is how, and why, to best stay on top of these shifting trends. Here’s three tactics Walmart uses to successfully do so.

1. The evolution of the customer journey 

As previously mentioned, consumer behavior has shifted. That means so has the customer journey. The impact of the pandemic has accelerated e-commerce by as much as five years. It’s not just that consumers are making purchases online, which they are, but 1 in 3 shoppers don’t plan to return to in-store shopping as often as they used to. So not only is the mass online shopping trend here, it’s here to stay.

The launching of Ratings and Reviews for grocery follows the natural evolution of the customer journey, and Walmart’s overall strategy. Consumers today are increasingly omnichannel so it makes sense that businesses are too. If your consumers are turning to online shopping, then your website needs to catch up to this trend. These days, the homepage is the new store front.

Supermarkets all over the world are innovating to deliver a broader range of services that meet the needs of the evolved customer journey. Given that these behaviours look set to continue post-pandemic, retailers like Walmart know they will need to accommodate both in-store and online practices if they want continued success.

2. Surge in online grocery shopping continues to trend upward

As more and more consumers take an omnichannel approach to shopping, the percentage of customers who now shop for groceries online is increasing simultaneously. This was already a strong trend in shopping behavior, only amplified by the pandemic, which is why Walmart recently launched reviews for Walmart grocery.

It’s not just the shopping method that’s changing though, we’re seeing higher demand for different delivery and collection options: same day delivery, “buy online, pick up in-store”, and click and collect, to name a few. All these methods are seeing higher demand. And with that is a new challenge facing retailers.

Walmart was one of the first to introduce new delivery offerings. Walmart’s new Express Delivery service, for example, can get a purchase to a customer’s home in less than two hours. And the company’s new membership service, Walmart+, gives members unlimited same-day delivery from over half of its 4,700 stores. A prime example in evolving offerings to meet consumer demand. The retailer has even partnered with drone form Zipline for a new drone delivery service, to ensure it remains a step ahead.

3. Building a better experience

For retailers to succeed going forward, they need to understand the emotion that customers feel towards their brand. If you were to ask the average consumer, they’d likely say they shop based on logic. But more often than not, consumers are actually swayed by emotion. This is known as customer sentiment. And it’s increasingly having an effect on sales numbers.

If a shopper has a bad experience with a retailer they’ll simply turn to another retailer. The negative experience translates to negative sentiment, so they’ll turn elsewhere to find a positive sentiment. As many as two in five shoppers don’t return to a retailer after a negative experience. Once the trust is broken, it’s nearly impossible to earn back.

That’s why market leaders, like Walmart, are investing in new technologies that provide the best customer experience. 78% of shoppers globally trust online product reviews, according to our Shopper Experience Index. And, specifically, our research tells us that shoppers want reviews from friends, family, and social media communities when looking at new products. This user-generated content (UGC) influences consumer purchasing decisions which drives sales and allows retailers to track and respond quickly to shopper sentiment.

More reviews for your business means more trust, which means better customer sentiment, which means more sales. It’s a win win.

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How Walmart is evolving its e-commerce experience

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We explored Walmart’s top e-commerce priorities headed into the new fiscal year, shopper behavior trends shaping the future product page experience on Walmart.com, and insights into how brands can win at retail. Here’s our key takeaways.

1. Focusing on the growth of online shopping

Online shopping was already a growth area for most retailers pre-pandemic. Walmart, for example, was seeing consistent growth in online grocery shopping, mainly because of the convenience it brought to people’s lives. Busy Mom or Dad who doesn’t have time for a grocery shop after the school run? No problem — just order online.

Walmart predicted exponential growth in this area for the next three to five years. And then the pandemic hit. As a direct result of that, Walmart’s growth predictions occurred within a month’s time frame. So it’s safe to assume this growth is here to stay.

With this increased adoption in online shopping, customers are increasingly relying on social proof, aka the opinions of other customers, to filter through the millions of items available and to make confident buying decisions. Which brings us to trend number two.

2. Leaning into social commerce

E-commerce is great at selling you products, but social commerce is great at inspiring you to purchase products you never knew existed. Customers spend 3.7 hours a day on their phone, most of which in what Thomas likes to call the “infinite scroll.” Aka, content that is constantly being refreshed. These are apps that provide an endless stream of new content at your fingertips, with TikTok being the latest and fastest growing. Consumers scroll an average of 300 feet per day, in fact.

Because of this, Walmart is looking at how to meet the customer and allow social content to seamlessly integrate with the shopping experience. Walmart knows user-generated content (UGC) has a strong impact on shopping experience and purchase intent. That’s why ensuring all SKUs on Walmart.com have an abundance of UGC is top-of-mind for the leading retailer in the new fiscal year.

Brands will soon be able to display social UGC on Walmart.com to inspire Walmart shoppers like never before.

3. Keeping breadth, depth, and authenticity top of mind

Getting more reviews on more products across the entire e-commerce site is a priority for Walmart, so Walmart has focused on continuing to build programs that drive authentic reviews. “Authentic reviews” is key here. This is by no means a quantity over quality situation. It’s quantity and quality. According to our own consumer survey, once a customer suspects a product has fake reviews, 36% wouldn’t buy the product and 47% wouldn’t trust any other reviews on the site.

When it comes to ratings and reviews, one aspect that can’t ever be overlooked is review quality. Because once you lose that authenticity you lose consumer trust, which defeats the purpose of UGC in the first place. As Thomas puts it, “…we’ll continue to build our breadth and depth across our catalogue, one of the things that we are not willing to sacrifice is authenticity.”

Individual brands also play a key role in Walmart’s UGC success. While Walmart has its own strategies to collect UGC, brands with their own UGC strategies set themselves ahead of the rest. 

4. Ongoing approach of testing and learning

It’s not enough to just have “UGC.” As in, “we use lots of UGC on our site.” Walmart understands it needs to incorporate multiple types of UGC — ratings and reviews, visual content, and social content, etc — on multiple channels. Knowing the impact of all types of UGC and tapping into the highest opportunities is essential for a positive shopper experience on Walmart.com. 

For example, it knows that often it’s easier to look at a photo to get a sense of an item, rather than read 500 reviews. So consistently testing the effect of different types of UGC is important. Walmart will never make an update just for the sake of it — decisions are based on data.

To upkeep a high shopper experience, Walmart rigorously tests all forms of written and visual UGC to gain a deep understanding of the real-time impact on conversion, basket-size, in-store and online purchases, loyalty, engagement, and SEO.

Watch our full conversation with Alyssa below to learn more.

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NYX Cosmetics, Travelpro, Coach, and Kiehls are four brands on Macy’s website that understand the gravity of that metric and have leveraged a range of Bazaarvoice solutions to drive user-generated content (UGC) to Macys.com. 

From syndication to utilizing Macy’s retail managed sampling and VoxBox sampling campaigns, each of these brands has cultivated an ideal UGC strategy that helps them stand out on Macys.com and win at retail. 

NYX Cosmetics uses VoxBox Sampling to boost review volume

NYX Cosmetics supercharged their products to 87% coverage with sampling and syndication. 

The cosmetics company worked with Bazaarvoice to customize its own VoxBox sampling program for the NYX Professional Makeup Epic Wear Liquid Liner. Using Bazaarvoice’s product discovery platform Influenster, NYX Cosmetics sent out 500 boxes to a qualified audience: Aged 18-36, interested in trend-driven eye makeup looks, and who have previously used Maybelline, Morphe, Kat Von D, and L’Oréal Paris products. 

The results were no joke: NYX Cosmetics collected 420+ reviews from the campaign, giving its product an average star rating of 4.1 out of 5. They then syndicated these reviews, as well as other reviews collected from its own website and other retailers where it’s products are sold, to Macys.com. 

Travelpro successfully releases Macy’s-exclusive products using Review Squad

Travelpro has a jaw-dropping 90% product coverage with reviews, because they have a strong UGC strategy on at Macy’s. How do they do it? They’ve leveraged Review Squad, Macy’s retail managed sampling (RMS) program, to collect more reviews.

ICYMI: RMS programs allow retailers to build their own user communities of brand advocates that are rewarded with samples, which in-turn provides the retailer with UGC that is native and exclusive to its website.  

To date, Travelpro has collected 585 reviews across 26 products with Review Squad. In 2019, Travelpro used Review Squad to trial a Macy’s Exclusive Item and collect authentic reviews. Together they sent samples to 20 shoppers within Macy’s Review Squad sampling community—and 100% of the consumers left a review.  

Travelpro definitely covers all its bases. On top of partnering with Macys to collect native UGC, Travelpro also syndicates reviews from its own website and other retailers to supercharge its product coverage. 

Coach uses Review Squad to fill its product display pages with visual UGC 

Coach is another brand that leverages a syndication and sampling strategy to boast a 60% product reviews coverage on Macys.com. 

Since March 2020, Coach has used Review Squad to collect over 340 authentic and honest reviews across a range of products. For example, Coach sampled its Leather Shay Shoulder Bag to generate honest customer reviews — including the all-important visual UGC that consumers crave to see on PDPs. 

In fact, out of 555 sampling Review Squad reviews, 137 of them contained photos (nearly 25%!) In total, 321 photos have been collected for Coach via Macy’s Review Squad.

Kiehls collected targeted reviews with VoxBox sampling  

Kiehls boasts 80% product review coverage thanks to syndication and VoxBox sampling. 

They used VoxBox sampling to promote their Hydro-Plumping Serum Concentrate. Influenster sent 250 boxes to community members who identified as women aged 30-55, who said they had dry skin and/or fine line concerns, wanted to improve their skin, regularly used serums, and had previously tried either this product, or First Aid, Beauty, Drunk Elephant, the Inkey List, Innisfree, or Mario Badescu. 

The VoxBox sampling resulted in 210+ reviews that were then syndicated to retailers where the product is sold, including Macys.com. 

Win your Macy’s strategy with Bazaarvoice

Collectively, these brands show that when brands leverage a good UGC strategy—such as VoxBox sampling, RMS programs and syndication—they can supercharge authentic review collection and, in turn, drive greater content coverage to retailers. 

Start optimizing your UGC strategy on Macys.com by visiting www.bazaarvoice.com/macys.

That’s why the home improvement giant partners with Bazaarvoice to get more high quality reviews onto its website. Home Depot Canada launched several solutions and features that improve customer experience and help its suppliers optimize their user-generated content (UGC) on the Home Depot Canada website. 

It’s a win-win situation for everyone, creating a better experience for customers and boosting sales for both Home Depot Canada and its vendors. From launching its own tailored sampling program to syndicating visual UGC, here’s how Home Depot Canada successfully injected thousands of quality reviews and photos into its website. 

1. Home Depot Canada inspired more confident purchases by increasing UGC with Home Depot Seeds 

Bazaarvoice and Home Depot Canada partnered to help brands get more UGC with its Home Depot Seeds sampling program. The sampling program puts products in the hands of Home Depot Canada shoppers who are eager to try new products, in exchange for providing honest product reviews on the Home Depot Canada website.

Home Depot Canada vendors are encouraged to use the review-seeding sampling program strategically throughout the year for seasonal, exclusive, and new products, or any products that need new reviews, as reviews recency matters. Bazaarvoice helps Home Depot Canada vendors decide which products to sample, identify the perfect audience for your product, and guide the brand throughout fulfilment. 

Home Depot Canada invested in reviews collection because UGC drives sales. Customers who interact with UGC are 2X more likely to convert and 93% of consumers say online reviews do impact their purchasing decisions. Reviews help customers validate their purchasing decisions and feel more confident in products. 

The sampling program is a relatively low-cost, tangible solution that allows Home Depot Canada vendors to easily get feedback, and increase their ratings and reviews coverage on Homedepot.ca. It’s been so successful in fact, that Home Depot US vendor partners are now interested in using it to collect reviews for their Canadian exclusive items and new product launches. 

Click to watch Home Depot Seeds 101

2. Home Depot Canada expanded its reach with French translations 

Almost a quarter of Canadians (22.8%) speak French as their first official language, but 92% of Home Depot’s reviews are in English. As many as 40% of customers won’t buy if they can’t read content in their language, so it was imperative for Home Depot Canada to enable French translations on its site to make its UGC more accessible for its French-speaking customers.

Luckily, turning on Bazaarvoice’s Review Translations feature was a quick way to expand Home Depot’s reach to French users and allow shoppers to translate UGC into their native language on-demand.

3. Home Depot Canada invested in more visual content on its site

Another simple and fast way Home Depot Canada enabled more engagement on its website was by launching photo syndication. 

Photo syndication is the collection and distribution of visual UGC for a brand to the websites of retail partners who sell the brand’s products. Brands, or third-party providers on their behalf, collect photos taken by customers using a variety of methods, including post-interaction emails, sweepstakes, social media, and sampling programs. For our clients, Bazaarvoice authenticates the collected photos and then matches brand content to the product catalogs on retailer websites. 

Photo syndication helps retailers deliver an exceptional shopping experience by showcasing plenty of content on all of their products. But it doesn’t just help retailers. Brands can leverage photo syndication to ensure their most inspirational content is available wherever consumers are shopping. 

A majority of consumers (62%) are more likely to buy a product if they can see photos taken by other customers, according to Search Engine Journal. The surveyed consumers said photos help them make purchasing decisions for a myriad of reasons, including helping them see the quality of a product and seeing the product in action. 

After enabling photo syndication, Home Depot Canada saw a big return: there were over 900,000 photos available within the Bazaarvoice Network to instantly syndicate to Home Depot Canada. Now, 937,472 syndicated reviews have photos attached, 1,398,076 total photos have been syndicated, and 109,481 products have syndicated reviews with photos.

Home Depot Canada made a name for itself in the retail industry with its innovative—yet simple—approach to collecting more UGC for its vendors on Homedepot.ca. 

Get in touch with us here to learn more

From proactively asking for ratings and reviews, to optimizing your product display pages (PDPs), these are the nine best practices for retailers to build a leading ratings and reviews program on their e-commerce site. 

• Define KPIs

Identifying your key performance indicators (KPIs) is a great place to start building actionable goals for your UGC program. Often these KPIs revolve around your conversion rate, average order value, or your RPV. You can also create custom KPIs, like establishing an ideal engagement rate or return rate for products. 

Once you’ve established your KPIs, don’t forget to regularly monitor progress toward these goals and share results with the business. 

• Proactively ask for ratings and reviews 

Most shoppers don’t naturally leave a review unless they’ve had a negative experience. That’s why it’s important to proactively ask for ratings and reviews from customers. Shoppers with a positive experience are far more likely to share it if asked than if left to their own devices. This helps your products to attain a more accurate and authentic rating. 

Ask shoppers for reviews after they make a purchase. Optimize post-interaction emails (PIEs) with features like In-Mail Submissions and Multi-Product Submissions. Ensure you’re sending PIEs to your in-store shoppers, as well, and using as many touch points as possible. For example, use their order history and app notifications to ask for reviews. 

But take note – before you ask for a customer to share content, make sure your request sequence takes into account giving the shopper time to use your product. You don’t want an accurate review, after all. 

Psst – want some help? Bazaarvoice would be more than happy to start you on your ratings and reviews journey!

• Collect visual content 

More than ever, shoppers rely on visual content from reviews to make their purchasing decisions. In fact, 62% of shoppers say they are more likely to buy a product if they can view customer videos and photos. Make sure you’re asking shoppers to include visual content with their reviews. 

There’s other ways to collect more visual content, too. Bazaarvoice makes collecting photos and videos from social media easier than ever. You can also have a sweepstakes competition and give added entries to shoppers who upload multiple photos to their reviews.  

• Syndication 

Set your PDPs up for success by collecting as much UGC as you possibly can. This includes receiving syndicated content from all potential sources, including brands and other sites. Ensuring your Product Feed is up to date with all important syndication data points — like UPC, GTIN, EAN, ISBN—is the clearest path to get the most content in an automated way. You don’t want to end up going through the hassle of manually collecting syndicated content. 

• Supplier and seller enablement

Activate your vendors to co-market with you. Are you regularly talking to your vendors about how they should be contributing to UGC? Hold them accountable to collect as much UGC as possible with sampling, syndication, and by responding to reviews and questions. 

Set KPIs for your vendors so they know what they are accountable to accomplish. The strongest co-marketing relationships happen when retailers give their vendors specific guidelines that help both brands and retailers create a great on-site experience for customers. 

• Share consumer sentiment back to the business 

Once you’ve analyzed your customer sentiment insights, share the knowledge with the rest of your business. Your merchandising teams and finance teams need to see how their products, brands, or categories are performing. It’s especially important to ensure internal teams monitor sentiment highlights and lowlights for your private label products.

• Customize submission forms by category 

Get specific on your submission forms when you’re asking consumers for reviews. Ask relevant questions by category that provides your colleagues or your shoppers with necessary decision-making data. By tailoring your forms, you’ll get tailored data relevant to specific product pages. 

For example, for your products in the apparel category, it makes sense to ask customers what size they usually wear and whether or not the clothing or footwear they bought from you fit them well. 

• Optimize PDPs for shopper ease 

Think about the kind of experience you want to drive for your shopper on your PDP. Make it easy for consumers to sort through ratings, reviews, and questions and answers that are relevant to them. 

By using Review Highlights or Product Sentiment Insights to display product highlights and lowlights for shoppers, you can save them time. You can also share reviews across like products to ensure shoppers have the content they need. Display the additional ratings and reviews you collected in your submission form, as well. 

• Optimize category and search pages with ratings and reviews 

Your PDPs aren’t the only web pages on your ecommerce site that need optimizing. You can also optimize your category and search pages with ratings and reviews. 

Make sure all of the content a shopper needs to confidently make a purchase is easily surfaced. Display inline ratings (average rating and the number of reviews) to help shoppers move down the purchase funnel. It’s also helpful for your shoppers if you allow them to filter the category by average star rating and products by themes from reviews. 

By following these nine best practices, you’ll build a solid foundation of a stellar ratings and reviews program on your e-commerce site. 

To learn more, check out our ratings and reviews e-book!

About 80% of consumers worldwide said their shopping habits changed because of the pandemic and stay-at-home orders, according to an Influenster survey conducted in August 2020. Most have been browsing and purchasing more online. E-commerce sales grew 32.4% in 2020, reaching $794.5 billion, much more than predicted, according to eMarketer.

In a digital-first retail environment, shoppers expect a personalized and seamless shopping experience. Retailers that focus on delivering on these expectations and providing the highest level of convenience for their customers have proven to be more resilient, earning 3x higher returns, according to McKinsey. To meet the new customer expectations, brands and retailers must double down on digital.

One retailer that’s quickly becoming a leader in delivering convenience with a digital-first retailing strategy is Sam’s Club. In a recent webinar co-hosted with Robelle Mancilla, Director of Site Merchandising & Site Operations for Samsclub.com, we uncover quick pivots over the past year, new developments, and priorities moving forward.

Here are key takeaways from the webinar, highlighting Sam’s Club’s secrets for user-generated content (UGC) success and notable developments.

1) Delivering convenience for Sam’s Club members through UGC

Providing value and convenience for members is at the epicenter of everything Sam’s Club does. One way suppliers help the retailer achieve this is by optimizing the content on their product pages. Written UGC, such as reviews, provide invaluable feedback about products.

70% of all UGC on Samsclub.com is syndicated directly from brands who are proactively collecting reviews from their shoppers. Bazaarvoice solutions help with this process. Brands typically see a 112% median increase in reviews per product when they distribute content via the Bazaarvoice network.

2) Elevating product description pages with real-world visual content

Sam’s Club will soon be integrating more visual UGC across its digital touchpoints, including the brand’s social and visual content on product pages. Shopping is becoming more social, so adding more visual UGC gives brands the opportunity to provide shoppers with real world, relatable content that will inspire them to buy products and feel confident in purchasing the brands they choose.

3) Helping brands optimize the collection of UGC on Samsclub.com with Star Reviewer

Sam’s Club recently co-created the Star Reviewer program in collaboration with Bazaarvoice. This program enables suppliers to sample their products among the most loyal Sam’s Club shoppers in exchange for authentic, honest reviews, which will be posted on Samsclub.com. Star Reviewer lets suppliers collect ratings, written reviews, and customer photos.

4) Offering more transparency and actionable insights for Sam’s Club suppliers

High-quality product pages drive sales. To help suppliers improve the performance of their product pages, Sam’s Club is committed to providing guidance on which content is doing well and what needs improvement. So, the retailer is developing a new tool to help. The content scorecard, which will be released in the near future, will give suppliers greater visibility and actionable insights into how their UGC is performing.

E-commerce is expected to continue its acceleration. So, digital-first retailing is an essential strategy for capturing the influx in online shoppers. Integrating and upgrading UGC will optimize product pages, which will increase purchases and build loyalty with shoppers.

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Ready to get started? Click here to connect with the Bazaarvoice team and begin optimizing conversions on SamsClub.com with UGC. 

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The popularity of social networks, especially the visually focused Instagram, has created a need for Instagrammable spaces to attract visitors and entice them to spend. These selfie-worthy retail spaces inspire customers to share photos and videos of their shopping experiences, creating invaluable word-of-mouth marketing on behalf of the brand.

And with more than a billion Instagram users — 83% of whom use the social network to discover new products — that’s a powerful motivator to make your store worthy of the gram.

A nonselling space devoted to selfies may be out of the question for some stores. But creating even a temporary Instagrammable area or setting up an irresistible photo opportunity in one store per region can excite customers, increase foot traffic, and be a boon to sales. So check out nine ways your space can inspire shoppers to snap pics and share them.

1. Know your brand identity

You want to create a space that prompts shoppers to get out their phones, but it’s important not to stray too far from what your brand is known for. Have fun, and mix things up while still maintaining brand colors, fonts, and tone.

Take botanical beauty brand Aesop, for example. It’s known for its minimalist design and reliance on natural ingredients, so its retail stores reflect this. Visit any of its locations worldwide and you’ll be met with bare walls, wood accents, and meticulously placed products.

However, the brand finds ways to get creative within its brand parameters, such as when it celebrated the changing seasons by dumping bags of autumn leaves on the floors of its shops.

Atlanta streetwear boutique Wish was Instagrammable long before the social network even existed.

The edgy shop has been compared to an art gallery, and its basement display of well-lighted sneakers surrounded by hardback books has even inspired celebrities like Jeezy to snap a selfie.

The store was redesigned in 2020, and every angle of the space is ’grammable, from its staircase of books to its underground sneaker gallery.

2. Create an experience

If you’ve ever walked into a shop and been immediately inspired to snap a photo, you know how important it is for the overall aesthetic of a space to work together to create an experience. It’s why so many people pause the second they step into Ladurée’s Georgetown location.

And today, that’s exactly what consumers want. 74% of Americans value experiences over products. And that number is even higher among millennials, who also value the experience of shopping — and sharing those Instagrammable moments with their audiences.

“Consumers want to discover and be immersed in the story of a brand,” said Melissa Gonzalez, founder of retail strategy company The Lion’esque Group. “And brands are doing this with beautifully designed environments that further extend their voice through color and material choices. These are used to create moments that inspire user-generated content.”

Take Glossier’s Los Angeles location, for example. Although not a large space, every inch of it is pretty, pink, and undeniably Insta-worthy.

So consider the overall look and feel you want your space to convey. Look for ways to communicate this in every aspect of the store so that customers feel transported as soon as they enter and can experience your brand as a whole.

3. Remember that less is more

Clutter doesn’t make for ’gram-worthy photos, so ensure there’s space between displays and around merchandise.

You may have limited room to work with and can’t quite pull off the super-minimalist aesthetic of an Apple Store. But you can still create artful product displays. Place premium merchandise in noticeable locations at eye level, and give it status by displaying a single product or a small selection of items instead of an entire collection.

Be subtle but strategic with branding. Include a logo or hashtag in the display so ever photo that’s shared on Instagram features your company’s branding.

And you can still get creative when displaying only a few products, such as Vans did in the example above.

4. See what’s trending

Pay attention to what’s happening in popular culture, and find ways to integrate those trends into your space.

While the look of your store should be unique to your product and your brand, you can still indulge in some of the fads that inspire many of the selfies you’ll spot on Instagram.

For example, millennial pink, neon signs, succulents, and walls of plants are all the rage these days and are inherently Instagrammable, but they can also be easily overdone. So pick the fads that work for your space, and look for opportunities to make them your own.

Here, both Washington, D.C.’s Crumbs & Whiskers cat cafe/retail store and Waterloo’s bar Tonight Josephine jumped on board with the pink neon-sign trend, but they’ve each made it distinctly their own.

5. Get interactive

Lure shoppers inside, and keep them entertained by offering interactive aspects to your retail space, such as photo booths with props, classes, product demonstrations, and influencer events.

These can be temporary installations, like the virtual reality water slide that Topshop installed at its flagship store in London in 2017.

But they can also be permanent fixtures that shoppers are willing to shell out cash to see. Cosmetics brand Winky Lux, for example, knows what its young audience wants in addition to vibrant makeup: an Instagrammable experience. And that’s exactly what it delivers at its store in New York City.

The retail outlet is built specifically for the ’gram, and visitors shell out $10 each to pose for pics in seven different rooms designed to match the ambiance of a Winky Lux product. So it’s clearly a very different experience than walking into a Sephora. At the tour’s conclusion, customers can put that $10 toward an in-store purchase.

6. Provide an Instagrammable backdrop

When there’s an eye-catching mural or stunning backdrop, people line up to snap a photo in front of it. It’s why every time a friend travels to Austin, they share a pic of themselves in front of the iconic “I love you so much” wall, and it’s why you can’t enter Atlanta’s Krog Street Tunnel without stumbling upon a photo shoot.

While an original mural is certainly Instagrammable, you can also simply opt for unique wallpaper or a brightly colored wall and a branded hashtag to tempt customers to pose in front of it.

At Revival Body Care in Lakewood, Ohio, customers can’t help but pose for a winged pic in front of the natural skincare company’s living art. And the brand expertly included its hashtag and social links so that every shared selfie is also an advertisement.

San Diego gift shop Pigment features a selfie station with a new backdrop each season. Once a photo is snapped, shoppers can enter their phone number and get a link to their pic, making it a cinch to instantly share the image on social media.

7. Add mirrors

Mirrors are already commonplace in apparel stores because they enable shoppers to see how they’ll look in items. But strategically placed mirrors can also be a great way to easily take pics of themselves modeling merchandise while also featuring your space.

Place mirrors not just in dressing rooms and bathrooms but also beside product displays and in entryways to create selfie opportunities.

Add a branded hashtag to the mirror, like GU STYLE Studio does, to turn every pic into user-generated content.

8. Invite shoppers to lounge

The longer consumers spend in a store, the more they’re likely to spend. So give them the opportunity to sit down, pose for a photo, and take in your beautifully designed store — and its products.

Set up a lounge area that fits with your aesthetic, like Filson in Seattle, where customers can get cozy on a couch and sit beside the fireplace.

The Citizenry Bunkhouse, a home-furnishings pop-up shop, was designed with “speed bumps,” or spots for customers to sit and relax. The lounge areas were designed to look like “beautiful New York City apartments,” with hardwood floors, exposed brick, and comfy chairs, and they were such a draw that the pop-up shop extended its stay.

9. Don’t forget lighting

Great lighting doesn’t only showcase your products — it can also entice customers to snap a pic.

So determine the areas where customers are most likely to pose for shots, and ensure that the lighting is top-notch. You can even go the extra mile, like San Francisco restaurant Bellota did.

The Spanish bistro installed 25 lamps with customizable dimmers, so visitors can get the ideal selfie — or the perfect shot of their craft cocktail.

An Instagrammable store means more user-generated content

Making your retail space Instagrammable can increase foot traffic and even turn your store into a travel-worthy destination. Plus, it keeps people in store and entices them to spend more.

But there’s another big benefit to having an Instagrammable store: user-generated content (UGC).

UGC is any type of content created by unpaid contributors, and it’s one of the most effective ways to promote your brand because it essentially involves other people marketing your brand for you. This kind of marketing is more authentic and engaging, and it drives sales.

In fact, featuring UGC, such as a selfie a customer snapped in your store, increases web conversions by 29%. So designing an Instagram-worthy space can pay off — both in-store and online.

Check out the rest of our Instagram content for more best-practices.

The social media marketer’s guide to Instagram analytics

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Smart marketers are increasingly turning to product sampling as a way to drive brand awareness, increase sales, and build customer loyalty. That’s because it does something that no other marketing effort can: it puts something physical in a consumer’s hands.

And it works.

In this guide, we’ll give an in-depth look at what product sampling means in the world of e-commerce and how smart marketers in the retail industry are using it to reach more consumers — and sell more products.

This guide will cover:

• Why product sampling is so important in e-commerce
• The most common and successful product sampling strategies
• How to get your samples into shoppers’ hands
• Case study: How one marketing team made product sampling work for them
• Additional resources

Why product sampling is so important in e-commerce

Free samples have long been a touchstone in the shopping experience at the grocery store and the makeup counter.

Even with the rise of e-commerce, product sampling has become an integral strategy for marketers that want to reach and engage their audiences, particularly on social media. From consumer-packaged goods (CPG) to technology to apparel, brands across a number of industries are turning to product sampling to show results fast. There are a number of advantages to running product sampling campaigns: identifying and rewarding your most loyal customers, getting helpful feedback on products from real customers, and building excitement and demand for a product launch are just a few.

But perhaps the biggest advantage of sampling in e-commerce is how it can be used to quickly generate ratings and reviews and other key user-generated content (UGC).

Simply put, product sampling works by asking consumers if they’d like to experience a product in exchange for their honest feedback, whether through a review or on social media (or both). This allows brands to collect and amplify content from real customers in the hopes of influencing new buyers.

According to Pew Research, online reviews and other customer content are crucial in buying decisions. In our own research, we found there is a 140% conversion lift when shoppers read reviews and interact with other UGC. Even just one single customer review on a product corresponds with an average 10% conversion lift. By the time you hit 50 reviews, the average conversion lift jumps to 30%.

And when it comes to social media, we’ve found that 57% of respondents say they bought a product they first heard about on social media, and 66% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product if the website has social media posts with pictures and videos from real customers. In 2020, shoppers are just as likely to be inspired by customer photos on social as they are to make a purchase directly from your Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok page – 1 in 3 shoppers say they have bought directly from social media.

The bottom line: Getting people talking about your products online is a great way to influence sales — and product sampling is a great way to help start those conversations.

The most common and successful product sampling strategies in e-commerce

At the end of the day, there are a lot of ways to give people free stuff — just think back to the free AOL floppy discs and CDs everyone used to receive in the mail as part of AOL’s $300 million direct marketing campaign. But your objectives should inform how you design and plan out your sampling campaign.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when designing a sampling campaign:

• What are we trying to accomplish? Brand awareness, brand affinity, or bolstering our sales figures?
• Do we have a clear objective for what we want from people who try our product?
• How many people should we include in our sampling group?
• How do we identify the right people to include in our sampling group?

That last question is important. You want to make sure you’re getting your products to the right people — you know, the people who actually care about what you’re selling.

There are services that will help you identify the right people to include in your sampling group, but here’s a good tip: Start with your best customers – we call them your brand advocates. Your return customers, the people who already get fired up about what you’re doing — these are the ones you want to reward. Not only does it help build brand loyalty, but it puts the right people in the right position to tell others about what you’re doing.

With that in mind, here are three common and successful sampling strategies for e-commerce.

Sampling for reviews: We know that reviews are crucial when it comes to selling products and beating out competitors. A sampling campaign is a great way to quickly collect more reviews fast and increase your competitive advantage. In our own experience, we’ve found that for every 50 samples we send out, we get about 45 reviews in return. And that’s enough to sway someone’s purchase opinion.

Releasing a new product: A lot goes into a product launch, but people often forget that getting the word-of-mouth machine going is a huge — and often missing — component to a successful launch. Involving customers from the beginning can pay off in a big way. Once your product or service is ready to launch, seed it out to customers, brand advocates, or even industry influencers — invite them to test it out in exchange for their feedback and product review. By doing this, you foster brand loyalty, receive critical product feedback, and build buzz in the marketplace around your new product.

Sampling for social love: The rise of social media has given everyone a microphone to share their experiences with friends, families, and strangers. And that’s a powerful tool in e-commerce, if you tap into it the right way; just look at the $1 billion industry of social media influencers.

You can identify which influencers appeal to your target audience and then provide them with free samples, so they can share the word. You don’t even have to go to the influencer route, you can provide product samples to your best customers in exchange for them sharing their opinion on social media. Take the route that makes the most sense for your business, just don’t forget about the power of social.

The three strategies above aren’t the only strategies out there. You’ve got everything from in-person sampling, direct marketing (where you send products out in the mail), and product bundling (where you throw an extra product in alongside the thing you’re selling), among other options.

But the three strategies above feature the best return on investment for brands working in the e-commerce space. Moreover, these three strategies can be combined in countless ways to produce different campaigns with different goals.

How to get your samples into shoppers’ hands

No matter which e-commerce strategy is best for your brand, you still need to get your product in people’s hands for them to trial and provide honest feedback. We’ve helped brands sample hundreds of thousands of products, and we have not seen a one size fits all approach yet. Depending on your product, you might consider the following options. 

• Ship samples using common carriers: This is the most common use case. Using partners working with common carriers is the easiest, and most cost effective way to get your product to shoppers. This is best fit for smaller items, such as CPG, and health and beauty products. 
• Coupon: Perishable or frozen foods can rarely be shipped using most common carriers. For these types of items, a coupon that can be redeemed for full value at one or multiple locations yields the best results. You are still asking users to take an additional step to pick up the item, but If the community that you are sampling to is actively managed and engaged you could see review conversion rates that match those of shipped samples.
• In-store pick-up: If you control the distribution of your product and have a physical store shoppers can visit to pick up a sample, you remove the complications of the “last mile” and getting the product to a shoppers’ doorstep. This might make things easier for you, but could also complicate sampling for the community and might affect participation. This is the best option for items that are heavy or bulky and hard to ship.
• White glove delivery: For products that can’t be shipped using common carriers or picked up at a store, white glove delivery is necessary. This is especially true if the product requires installation. Appliances or furniture are often not thought of as easy to sample, but we’ve seen brands have a lot of success generating new reviews for these types of products when they also chose a white glove delivery option to pair with the program. 

Before you start your sampling campaign, consider the complexities of working with multiple shipping and fulfillment providers to find the right solution – and consider working with a sampling provider that can remove this burden and manage the process for you. Bazaarvoice partners with multiple partners to handle multiple different types of fulfillment end-to-end, so you can focus on the more strategic elements of your reviews program.

Case study: How one marketing team made product sampling work for them

Product sampling isn’t just for small brands or brands that are trying to get their name out; it’s a powerful strategy for established brands as well.

One example comes from a sampling campaign run by TTI Floor Care North America, which owns iconic brands like Hoover, Oreck, and Dirt Devil.

Despite this, TTI Floor Care had a problem: Most people don’t take great care of their vacuums, and only end up writing reviews when something goes wrong. In other words, TTI had a lot of bad reviews that weren’t doing them any favors when it came to moving products.

To counter those bad reviews, TTI sent out free samples to Hoover and Dirt Devil brand loyalists. With an 86% response rate, TTI ended up picking up more than 700 reviews in a short period of time, and these reviews appeared on their own website, as well as being syndicated to dozens of major retailer sites where a majority of their sales occur. On Dirt Devil products alone, the average rating jumping from 2.8 stars to 4.5 stars.

“We’re pleased with the increased review volume and higher ratings, because we know they have an impact on sales,” said Jim Deitzel, the director of digital marketing at TTI. “When you start with more reviews and higher-quality reviews, you start seeing more people buy, which leads to more good reviews, which in turn generates more sales.”

In addition to boosting review volume, sampling provided the company with an effective way to engage with and reward its best brand advocates and gather valuable insights. By targeting demographic and interest parameters for each product, TTI ensured that only the right consumers received each sample and that feedback was used to inform potential product changes, packaging, and marketing messaging.

“It’s not just the sales organization that benefits from having more reviews and higher-quality reviews,” said Deitzel. “We’re able to share content from reviews with other departments across the organization that benefit from knowing what customers are thinking, what they like, and what they don’t like.”

TTI Floor Care had a problem with a disproportionate amount of negative reviews, and product sampling allowed them to solve this issue by using the authentic voice of their own customers.

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Want to learn more about how product sampling can elevate your user-generated content and increase conversion for your business? Connect with us here. 

Want to see what behavior changes will stick with consumers even after the pandemic? Download our e-book to learn more. 

As trends continue to shift, insight into which will stick in the long term which may be fleeting will be necessary for brands and retailers to adapt their business models and services accordingly. In order to find out what shoppers will do going forward, we surveyed over 8,000 consumers in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States. Here’s what we found out: 

E-commerce adoption has accelerated, but shoppers will also return to physical stores

There is no doubt that e-commerce has been the MVP during COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns. Out of necessity, convenience, and safety precautions, shoppers have turned to online shopping, many for the first time, especially in verticals such as grocery. In fact, experts think that the pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce by 5 years. And even though many physical stores have reopened, consumers are continuing to shop online. Almost a third (30%) of global respondents to our survey said that they still are shopping online once or more than once a week. 

However, this does not spell the end of in-store shopping. Almost half (40%) of the survey respondents answered that they would be comfortable or very comfortable visiting a non-essential store in the next three months. Nevertheless, our Influenster community members made it clear that brick-and-mortar stores need to take serious steps to keep shoppers and store employees safe. Those respondents expect to hear about the precautions brands have taken in-store to ensure the health of their consumers (61%) and also their employees (60%). They indicated that in order to feel comfortable shopping in-store, they want masks to be mandatory for employees and consumers (69%), hand sanitizer stations available (70%), and for the store to implement social distancing (62%).

Consumers tried new brands due to product shortages and will keep using them

Over a third (39%) of global respondents purchased from different brands during pandemic shutdowns. This often was due to lack of availability of the products they would normally purchase, as many brands and retailers experienced massive product shortages, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. 

Regardless of why they tried it in the first place, 83% of shoppers will continue to buy from a newly discovered brand going forward. However, there was a stark generational gap between those who were most willing to try a new brand, with 55% of 18-24-year-olds purchasing from a different or previously unknown brand, compared to only 27% of those aged between 55-64-years-old. Independent retailers will also benefit from this trend, with 72% of respondents saying that they are likely or very likely to continue to shop at independent stores, either locally or online, above larger retailers such as Amazon. 

Aside from availability, our Influenster members (44%) indicated that they have started using a new brand because of the way they responded in the crisis. More than half of respondents indicated brands play a very crucial role in the pandemic, 74% agree/strongly agree that how a  brand responds in a crisis will impact their brand loyalty or likelihood to purchase from that brand in the future.  

Consumers’ priorities have changed which is changing how they want to experience retail

Shoppers are looking for convenience, now more than ever, evidenced through the uptake in subscription models. Not only has this been beneficial for consumers, but brands and retailers get the benefit of locking in repeat revenue. In fact, almost a fifth (19%) of all global respondents confirmed that they had signed up to a subscription service during the pandemic. And, it appears that this on-demand payment model will become a long-term change to behavior as 83% of those respondents are willing to continue to pay for their subscriptions. Respondents said that the key deciding factors to keep subscriptions post pandemic is convenience (43%), quality of the product (44%), and reliable delivery (35%). 

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Insights into the current shopping behaviors that are likely to become long-term habits, from developing subscription models to meeting an on-demand shopping habit to creating loyalty from a new customer base, enables brands and retailers to build valuable customer relationships and thrive in the new normal. If you want to learn more about our research findings, download our e-book.