Visitors who engaged a new promotional feature called Customer Stories on cosmetics brand site Philosophy.com stayed on the site longer and bought more in a recent promotion testing the new tool. The campaign produced 81% more page views and 20% higher average order value from visitors who used the new feature than from those who didn’t, the retailer reports.
Customer Stories is a new product release of social commerce outsource technology vendor Bazaarvoice. In the Philosophy campaign for Mother’s Day this year, it leveraged user-generated content with a program that asked site visitors to submit stories about their mothers. The promotion lured visitors with a $1,200 shopping spree for the winner, as judged by customer votes. The Customer Stories platform supports consumers’ text, photo and video uploads in submitting their stories. It also provides voting functionality to identify the best stories and user attribute questions that allowed Philosophy to segment participants.
The platform allows Philosophy’s customers to connect with one other at a brand level rather than over a specific product, as is the case with Bazaarvoice’s original product, ratings and reviews, according to the vendor.
The Customer Stories promotion on Philosophy, which ran for Mother’s Day this year, also produced 19% more items per order from customers who engaged the feature over customers who didn’t view it. The campaign, promoted through e-mail, paid search, and viral marketing, garnered high traffic for the Customer Stories pages on Philosophy.com. 39% of all site traffic for May originated on a Customer Stories page and 33% of all new site visitors for the month visited one of the promotion’s pages.
Sarah Superfon, director of interactive marketing and direct response, reports that Philosophy also saw a “substantial” lift in e-mail click-throughs related to the campaign. "Mother's Day was the perfect time to engage customers with Bazaarvoice Stories,” she says. “Women of all ages flocked to Yourmomsphilosophy.com to share stories about their mothers, the influence they've had on their lives and of course their 'mom's philosophy’. We had existing and new philosophy customers who participated.”
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