This blog is guest written by Heather Lippincott, Bazaarvoice Community Manager.

In April, Sally Beauty Supply launched Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews as part of their first-ever eCommerce site! They also recently partnered with Paris Hilton, who created “Clipin-Go by Paris Hilton,” a collection of chic-yet-affordable hair extensions that are only available through Sally Beauty stores or at www.sallybeauty.com.

Sally Beauty’s Senior Director of E-Commerce, Richard BenBassett, instantly thought Paris would be a great celebrity reviewer, and Bazaarvoice helped him create a customer “Celebrity Review” badge to let celeb reviews stand out from the rest!

As a business woman, fashion icon and entrepreneur, Paris was involved in creating the product, so she was excited to be able to give her personal endorsement on sallybeauty.com product reviews, which you can read here.

We used to see celebrity endorsements in commercials or magazine advertisements, but now celebrity endorsements have invaded a new channel – social commerce!

Sally Beauty is our first client to feature a celebrity’s review. Who will be next?

This is the third in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.

Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing, keynoted at our Social Commerce Summit, encouraging brands to give customers a reason to talk about your stuff. As Andy highlighted, marketing is what you do, not what you say.

To jump-start those word of mouth conversations on your site and beyond, Andy recommends the following 5 steps:

1. Talkers – find the people who will talk
   For each brand and product, your talkers will be different people. For the launch of the renowned Wynn in Las Vegas, the hotel invited the city’s cab drivers to stay free of charge for a weekend in order to spur conversations amongst Vegas’ most evangelical workforce.
2. Topics – give people a reason to talk
   Ask yourself: “Would anybody tell a friend?” It is your job to make customers happy, and remember that happy customers are the best ads.
3. Tools – allow your talkers to share
   Whether you deploy Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories, or some other social media tool, be sure to equip your customers with an easy way to share ideas and collaborate.
4. Taking Part – join the conversation
   Reach out to your community, and participate and respond when necessary.
5. Tracking
   No word of mouth campaign is worthwhile unless it can be measured and improved. Understand to what extent you are engaging your customers, and critically evaluate how you can continue to amplify those conversations.

One of the Market Developers, Jeff Shoemaker, on our US Retail team sent me a link to something he knew I’d love.  He knows I’m a gadget guy and truly enjoy the insane cutting edge technology that gets released daily.  He knew I read Engadget, Joystiq, Dvice, Uncrate, XBOX360 Fanboy, PS3 Fanboy, and a few others religiously.  He knew I’d spend some hard earned cash on things that others might find to be a bit much.  So he knew I’d love a new product from Denon, the AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable. 

What is it?  For a cable you’d expect $500 to get you something amazing.  This is a five foot long Ethernet cable.  Generally available for free from your IT guy or maybe $2 on numerous sites.  Now your true audiophile friends will weigh in here and say “$500 for a cable isn’t that much, I spent $14,000 on bi-wiring my one ton Kharma Exquisites.”  Oxygen-free copper and multi-layer wrapping is just the beginning - Wikipedia says that exotic materials like silver and “long crystal” or high-purity copper will get the best possible frequency response.  Right.  Of course that same article will go on to say that digital signals get an even hotter debate because of the “its on or off” argument around digital signals.  Yes, the Wikipedia article also says that SP/DIF signals transmit just the same over a coat hanger as they do ultra-high end cables.  Wild. (read more…)

Last month, ATG, Bazaarvoice, Forrester Research, and Multichannel Merchant hosted a webinar on personalization using user-generated content. I can’t speak for our partners, but this webinar was one of our best attended, so I decided to draft off its success by interviewing Cliff Conneighton, SVP of Marketing at ATG. Bazaarvoice and ATG share a number of high profile customers and with each additional deployment of our joint solution, we discover new opportunities for leveraging user-generated content and customer word of mouth to drive richer and higher performing personalization and merchandising experiences. Enjoy the interview with Cliff and please comment if you have any follow-up questions or thoughts!

1. ATG is well known for its personalization capabilities. How would you grade US online retailers, overall, on the quality and efficacy of their personalization strategies? What are the key obstacles these companies must overcome to implement more sophisticated personalization approaches?

I think we need to start with a quick definition of personalization, as it is a term that has been used in many different ways. At the highest level I define personalization as presenting the most relevant information to each customer during each interaction through each channel. In my view it doesn’t mean an individual plan for each individual visitor but rather a refinement of the content presented – images, messages, assortments, promotions, etc. – where appropriate, based on your knowledge of the customer and the reason she’s in your store. I believe the “1 to 1” view of personalization in itself overwhelmed many retailers and stalled adoption.

Based on this definition, I would give online retailers as a group a “C” for their personalization strategies to date. There are a few notable exceptions – and of course ATG clients would rate higher - but in general, industry personalization strategies haven’t moved much beyond a segmented email and a welcome back on the corresponding landing page. However, we’re seeing lots of momentum in the market and many of the obstacles holding retailers back have been removed. Retailers have traditionally been held back by either a lack of actionable knowledge of their customer base or a limitation in available resources or tools to act on the knowledge once gathered.

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I am very proud that Rob Schmults joined our Advisory Board (announced this week).  I have know him for almost ten years, dating back to the beginning of Coremetrics (the company I founded and a Bazaarvoice partner) and Fort Point Partners (where Rob was responsible for their retail consulting practice).  Note: Fort Point Partners turned into Offermatica, which was recently acquired and repackaged by Omniture, another Bazaarvoice partner.

There are few in the industry that I hold in such a high regard.  Rob has been a huge contributor to Shop.org (where I serve on the Board of Directors) over the years.  Recently, his brother, Ed Schmults, the CEO of FAO Schwarz, stepped up when we were in a pinch to serve as our keynote speaker at our January Strategy & Innovation Forum (renamed and refocused this year).  Ed was awesome, by the way.  Recently, Sam Taylor, Oriental Trading’s new CEO and a fellow Shop.org Board member, told me that Ed’s presentation had a huge influence on him, as both Oriental Trading and FAO Schwarz are owned by private-equity firms.  But to just give that example of a recent Shop.org contribution wouldn’t be doing Rob justice.  He has spoken at many of our events at Shop.org over the years, and has consistently been rated as one of our best speakers.  In addition to serving on the Board at Shop.org, I also serve on the Executive Content Committee (a subset of their Content Committee) with Rob.  I can tell you firsthand that some of our best ideas for topics and speakers come from Rob and his network.

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This is the second in our series of key takeaways from some of the presentations and panel discussions offered at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit in May 2008.

Josh Bernoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, is one of Forrester’s most senior and most frequently quoted research analysts. Josh joined Forrester in 1995. In 2007, Josh began work on a book, Groundswell, which describes how people with social technologies like blogs, wikis, MySpace, and YouTube will threaten institutions of all kinds, and how companies can succeed in the face of this change.

Josh’s research, analysis, and opinions appear frequently in publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Broadcasting & Cable, and on national television news programs. Josh has spoken at conferences including the executive summits of both the National Association of Broadcasters and the Consumer Electronics Association. He also testified before the Gore Commission on Public Interest Obligations for Digital Broadcasters.

Turning Social Technology Groundswell to Your Advantage: Josh Bernoff, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Conquer approach-avoidance syndrome regarding UGC using “POST”: identify your people, objective, strategy, and technology.

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Opinion Research Corporation released the results from a new study that (again) supports the fact consumer reviews play a major role in the decision to purchase products and services.

In their own words, “A whopping eighty-three percent of respondents polled indicated that online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on purchasing decisions.”

They also found…

• 70% of respondents seek out information for a particular brand of goods and services.
• 32% reported posting their own online feedback on product or service experiences.

See more of the study here.

Now I say this study “again” supports the demand for reviews because we have been tracking and fielding studies for three years on this topic. See our comprehensive overview of over 100 statistics and case study results here.

Today’s blog is guest-written by Anna Skaya, Online Community Manager, Europe

Meet wehkamp.nl - the number one online retailer in Holland and one of the best and most personal online department stores across Europe. Wehkamp prides itself on turning products and services into smart, innovative solutions and exceeding their customers’ expectations.

“Innovation” was the resounding topic for the first-ever “Wehkamp Online Partner Day,” which Bazaarvoice attended, alongside our Radius partners Endeca, Coremetrics, and Responsys, plus Optimost and Scene7. These partners brought innovation to life, providing aggregated solutions on some of the most forward-thinking ideas of the industry. Discussions ranged from social shopping, viral marketing, advanced social networking, and taking ratings and reviews to another level. Exploring integrations with Scene7 (advance picture navigation on pictures submitted with R&R), Endeca (text mining reviews for relevant search criteria), Responsys, and Optimost (A/B tests on “Top Rated” emails with and without ratings or reviews) were just a few ideas that came of out the sessions. The leadership at Wehkamp clearly saw the need for the web of partners to come together and share ideas - the day was buzzing with thought leadership, creativity, and overall feeling of excitement and innovation.

What has made this unique online retailer number one in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world? According to Wehkamp, it’s a combination of innovation, early adoption, a strong personal brand, and an innate need to provide exceptional customer service to a marketplace they have served, cross-channel starting with catalogues in 1952, for over half a century.

I caught up with Alexander Van Slooten, Manager of Internet Strategy at Wehkamp, to learn more about their vision for the future of online retail.

1. INNOVATION
Two-thirds of the Dutch population have shopped online in the past year, and over 88% have access to the Internet (2nd highest in the world.) You have a great opportunity to be a creative thought leader in the online space. What are some of the ways you innovate?

Being the first online retailer in Holland (we launched our first site in 1995), we have an obligation to stay innovative. Over the years, we were the first to launch a customer self-service ‘chatbot,’ had the first Dutch viral marketing video on YouTube, were the first Dutch retail website that may call itself “Drempelvrij” (our site is also optimized for disabled people who use voice browsers and Braille media browsers). And we were of course the first Dutch website that allowed reviews on apparel.

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Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org, recently asked a provocative question on the Shop.org Blog on whether or not now was the time for online retailers to stress saving gas in their marketing message.  The short answer is “yes - it is definitely time!”.  The longer answer is that there are many word-of-mouth oriented reasons to do this now but I predict that it will be hard to make happen in most companies (to be explained below).

First, there has never been more of an emphasis on gas prices in my lifetime, and certainly not in the history of eCommerce (being a relatively new field).  On my flight up to Toronto yesterday, I was reading a NY Times article, “American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot“.  I was amazed to learn that oil was just under $10/barrel in early 1999.  It has increased 1450% since then, closing at a high of $145/barrel last Thursday.  Not surprisingly, most Americans are downsizing.  But what is surprising is how quickly.  Ford’s SUV sales are down 55% this year, and their sales of the Ford F150 truck, the best selling vehicle in the U.S. for 26 consecutive years, is down 40% this year.  Detroit is reeling from this - this is an unbelievably massive change in consumer demand.  To put it mildly, gas prices are dominating word-of-mouth conversations all over the country.

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AlwaysOn is one of my favorite sources for tech news and opinions, and I’m thrilled that we were named finalists of their Global 250.

This list just expanded from the Global 100 after six years, but they still have the same goal: to “find the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in the global technology industries. This includes private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology.”

I truly believe Bazaarvoice embodies this goal – whether we win or not. But we’re thrilled to be attending the upcoming AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford, where more than 700 technology entrepreneurs meet to discuss what’s new and what’s next in technology.

I hope to see you there, and congrats to all the other finalists!