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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Working in omnichannel retail can feel like building a plane while you’re flying it. It’s easy for brands to find themselves in a tailspin of uncertainty, trying to put their resources, time, and budgets to work with efficiency. But one of the consistent truths of omnichannel is simple: content rules all.

But not all content is equal. While having a mix of paid and branded content is important, it’s earned and shared media, aka user-generated content (UGC) — content like reviews and images created for you by unpaid individuals and brand fans — that’s really going to deliver results. For example:

Nowhere is this truer than Walmart.com, one of the world’s largest online marketplaces. From improving search rankings to increasing sales, leveraging UGC on your product detail pages (PDPs) and beyond is essential for omnichannel selling on Walmart.com.

What role does UGC play in the omnichannel experience?

As a brand selling products on Walmart.com or in-store, a key pain point is maximizing channel sales. To solve this, you need to amplify the voices of Walmart shoppers with authentic UGC that shoppers want.

Aside from providing authenticity and inspiring purchasing decisions across the shopper journey, UGC has a number of benefits.

It makes your products discoverable

You could have the greatest product in the world. But if shoppers can’t find it, few people will buy it. And given that Walmart.com is one of the largest marketplaces in the world, competition for key search terms is particularly fierce.

Content is the most important factor to ensure your products win that competition. Detailed product descriptions and reviews help search algorithms understand what your products are, rank them as high quality, and serve them up during relevant searches.

It educates and convert shoppers

Consumers are more cautious when shopping online, because they can’t physically try out the product. UGC helps soothe this uncertainty, providing plenty of detailed, trustworthy information that ensures shoppers know what they’re getting.

But simply including information is not enough to stand out in a crowded space like Walmart.com. Instead, brands need to provide unique, trust-building content that showcases their products in the best possible way, which is why UGC is so important. 

Whether ratings and reviews or high-quality images of real customers using products in real life, UGC helps create a distinctive brand experience and make shoppers trust your products. 

It enhances the in-store experience

UGC isn’t just for selling on Walmart.com — it impacts in-store sales too. The distinction between the physical and digital shelf is increasingly blurry. Plenty of consumers prefer to shop in-person, but they still check online reviews to see if products are available in-store and compare their options.

Your PDPs are therefore a pivotal part of the in-store experience. Not only can they help shoppers locate items, the UGC on your product pages helps persuade customers in the moment. Strong reviews, positive imagery, and trustworthy ratings all give customers confidence. Which ultimately translates to increased sales.

How to create excellent UGC for Walmart.com

It’s tempting to treat all marketplaces as fundamentally similar. But research shows that consumers behave differently on Walmart.com to other e-commerce sites. There’s also a different search algorithm, meaning brands must tailor their omnichannel content to maximize success on Walmart.

But how can you refine and optimize content so that it appears in the right non-branded search queries on Walmart.com? The key is understanding Walmart’s Content Quality Scores.

Walmart’s Content Quality Scores

Walmart’s Content Quality Score (CQS) sets a clear, objective standard for brands’ PDP content. Walmart has developed style guides for every category of merchandise they carry. The CQS measures your content against those guides, so you can see which elements your brand is missing and needs to improve.

This means you can systematically improve your content, instead of relying on subjective assessments and guesswork.

For example, WhyteSpyder has found that items with a CQS above 85 are 3x more likely to feature on Page one of search results, and 7x more likely to reach the Top 10.

How to develop a winning UGC strategy for selling on Walmart.com

UGC is a key factor in improving your CQS. But generating and deploying UGC efficiently and effectively requires a systematic approach to.

Establish your goals

The first step is understanding exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Do you have a new product launch coming up, or do your hero products need new content? This will help formulate timelines, establish what kind of content you need to seed and how to deploy it.

Walmart’s CQS is helpful here. Rather than coming up with a detailed strategy from scratch, simply consult the relevant style guides to understand what your campaign requires.

You can also create a benchmark based on how much UGC your direct competitors include on their Walmart PDPs.

Audit your content

Many brands overlook the volume of UGC already generated on social media. Before you start seeding content through sampling campaigns or other methods, thoroughly audit your existing content. Focus on three main areas:

1. Quantity

How much usable content can be extracted from organic user engagement? How does that compare to your direct competitors on Walmart.com?

2. Quality

Are your reviews uniformly positive? Do you have plenty of visual UGC and images of customers who are thrilled with their products?

3. Recency

Studies show that 47% of shoppers believe reviews are no longer relevant after three months. Is your UGC fresh and relevant to today’s customers?

Get a head start generating UGC

Authenticity is essential for effective UGC. It must be trustworthy and created organically because consumers are increasingly skilled at spotting through sponsored content and fake reviews.

Which means you can’t simply ‘order’ some UGC and ship it overnight.

It can take months to acquire and deploy really strong, trustworthy content from users and communities — and that means you’ll need plenty of ramp up time. If a campaign is planned for the holidays, you’ll need to start collecting UGC as early as March. Otherwise, you’ll be reactive — and limit the impact UGC can have.

Luckily, a number of solutions for easily collecting UGC already exist. Influenster is a product discovery platform where 7.5 million members are creating content daily. With Bazaarvoice, brands can tap into this community and activate them at scale.

Do it right, and reap the rewards. Best-in-class sites with UGC see a 190% revenue per visitor lift and a 145% higher conversion rate.

Leverage social media

Social media is often seen as a means of generating impressions and likes. Which it is. But it’s also a vital way to bolster your PDPs and showcase the kind of content that actually increases sales. Our research found that 76% of people are ‘very influenced’ to shop via social media.

Shoppers want to see fellow shoppers using, and loving, your products. Social media allows you to generate exactly that kind of content, using data analytics to really focus on key demographics and build 1-to-1 connections with the right users.

A case study in selling on Walmart.com: Unilever

Optimizing your omnichannel content for Walmart.com helps illustrate the foundations of a strong UGC strategy. But the very best brands take these principles and apply them across the full spectrum of their marketing efforts, which is exactly what Unilever did.

With over 400 brands across over 190 countries, Unilever is one of the largest consumer products companies in the world. Their innovative use of UGC is a perfect case study in how the right UGC strategy can elevate company-wide performance.

By amplifying their customers’ voices and recognizing the role of UGC beyond conversion, they have seen improvements across multiple areas of their business.

Boosting purchase intent

Unilever has Integrated UGC in everything from PDPs and social campaigns to print ads, inserts and in-store displays. This has led to a 20-30% improvement in display ad performance, while customers who read reviews on the Simple Skincare website have a 150% greater intent to purchase. They also use the store locator feature more frequently.

Improving search

As we’ve seen, organic search traffic and engagement are heavily dependent on quality content. Because UGC delivers such rich content, Unilever has seen increases in search traffic of 15-25%. And once users are on-site, they tend to engage with more product pages, spend longer onsite, and are more likely to revisit the website.

Deriving customer insights

Feedback is an essential source of data about how consumers interact with your products. Unilever understands this, and analyzes UGC to derive vital insights about everything from search intent to conversion optimization. Even bad reviews are a source of useful information, empowering brands to refine their messaging sound specific products or improve customer experience.

Start selling on Walmart.com with Bazaarvoice

Walmart partnered with Bazaarvoice, the world’s leading UGC provider (according to G2), specifically to help brand build UGC programs on Walmart.com, and beyond.

Purpose-built UGC collection solutions like product sampling, and the soon-to-be-available photo syndication, enable brands to collect the content that converts — we’ve found that just one review can increase sales by 10%.

Selling your products on Walmart.com can be tricky. But it doesn’t have to be. Learn more ways to optimize your UGC strategy and drive Walmart sales here. Or get in touch below to get started.

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Unlock the power of user-generated content to stand out on Walmart.com

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If you want to learn more about how Bazaarvoice and WhyteSpyder can help you build smarter shopper experiences across the customer journey, get in touch here.

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. 

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