Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Leading clothing and home décor retailer uses Bazaarvoice to create, listen to, understand, and act on authentic customer conversations in critical retail season.
Retailers continue to keep pace with shoppers who are turning to each other for product information and opinions – both online and in store -- as the 2011 holidays move into the final stretch. On Black Friday, Bazaarvoice served consumers nearly 730 million impressions of consumer-generated content – and nearly 789 on CyberMonday.
In this changing retail environment, Bazaarvoice today spotlighted Garnet Hill for its innovative, customer-focused holiday marketing strategies using Bazaarvoice for ratings and reviews. The clothing and home décor retailer, who is known for unique, original designs, has retooled almost every aspect of its holiday shopping experience to incorporate authentic opinions and testimonials from brand advocates and holiday shoppers. The holistic effort extends from catalogues and interactive Give Guides through the brand’s Facebook and Twitter presences, and includes a long-term strategy to act on conversations and social data to drive true change.
“Garnet Hill has and always will be a customer driven business,” said Betty Moody, Vice President of Customer Satisfaction at Garnet Hill. “We thrive on customer feedback and do everything we can to turn our customers into brand advocates. Their opinions are our most powerful marketing – especially around the holiday when gift-buyers rely on the experiences of people who have used our products.”
Garnet Hill Holiday Innovations with Bazaarvoice
With a strong history in catalogues, Garnet Hill knows how to create the copy and images that grab customers’ attention and create desire. This holiday, Garnet Hill is combining its incredible merchandising expertise with authentic customer opinions, experiences, and comments to create Voice of the Customer marketing messages that get real attention and stand out from the pack in every channel:
• Garnet Hill has reworked its popular interactive Give Guides around the customer voice, using product reviews to help guide merchandisers in selecting the right products to feature in each category. Shoppers can simply click through the interactive Guide, promoted through both email and the retailer’s Facebook page, for customer feedback that helps them find the right present for the people on their holiday lists.
• Garnet Hill is also enhancing its Facebook page with a totally new holiday product category within its Facebook Store, created around its top contributor, who has posted nearly 100 reviews to date. Garnet Hill also posts customer content to Twitter and Facebook, and introduced a Facebook photo album that showcases some of their top-rated gift ideas.
• Product feedback along with the contributor’s location is included in the company catalogue as well as top-rated gift emails that go out to the entire Garnet Hill list – and is incorporated in several other holiday promotions and deal notices.
• Nearly every category on the site – from Bedding & Home to Children’s apparel – has its own top-rated section that is constantly refreshed with cool products rated 4.5 stars or higher.
Turning Data Into Doing – Through the New Year and All Year Long
Garnet Hill is also using social data, collected through Bazaarvoice, to proactively surface customer insights to improve its products and its business. Information on low-rated products is communicated across the organisation, and the customer service team is tasked with reaching out to customers who provide low ratings in order to understand their concerns and reinforce the retailer’s commitment to quality. Reviews also provide Garnet Hill with an early warning system for product and marketing copy flaws, allowing the company to resolve issues quickly and continuing its long history of building the Garnet Hill brand around customer feedback.
“Garnet Hill is known for its tremendous customer-centricity, and Bazaarvoice is helping the company keep this brand promise in the face of changing consumer expectations,” said Erin Nelson, CMO of Bazaarvoice. “Its approach to marketing and merchandising – and their embrace of social data – offers important lessons for any brand that wants to stand out and compete in the new marketplace. Garnet Hill shows where retail is headed and the tremendous opportunities for new approaches in 2012.”
Additional Resources
• Bazaarvoice data study on Holiday 2011 impression of user-generated content and mobile shopping can be found here
• Follow @Bazaarvoice on Twitter or visit www.bazaarvoice.com
• Follow @GarnetHill on Twitter or visit www.facebook.com/GarnetHill and www.garnethill.com
About Garnet Hill
Renowned for superior quality, fine fibers and original design, Garnet Hill has provided distinctive merchandise and services of the highest caliber for over 30 years. The company began as an importer of English flannel sheets and has grown into a distinguished brand and multichannel marketer, offering unique bedding, home furnishings, sleepwear, shoes, women’s apparel and children’s clothing online and in its catalogs. Garnet Hill searches the world for exceptional items and inspiration for its extensive line of exclusive products. For more information, visit garnethill.com.
