Humour and irony boost sales by a gazillion percent

Well maybe not, but i think these two post from eConsultancy and BazaarVoice make some really intersting points about the role CGH (Consumer generated humour - yes, finally, my own acronym!!) can play in sales.

now go out and buy a really crappy shirt because we all love taking the piss... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NZW3IY






Thanks Econsultancy -http://econsultancy.com/blog/3876-ironic-user-reviews-boost-t-shirt-sales-by-2300
User reviews come in many shapes and sizes, but typically people either love or hate a product. It’s normally a simple black and white issue, as few people bother to leave reviews for mediocre products.

It turns out that this either/or thinking is plain wrong, and there is a third factor to consider: irony. And tongue in cheek reviews stand a better chance of going viral, at least judging by the success of the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt.

The t-shirt, which features three wolves and one moon, has become one of the top sellers on Amazon, thanks to some classic one-liners and other more detailed reviews, with most written with an industrial-sized dose of irony.

Here are a few of my favourites (there are 455 to choose from):

• "Unfortunately I already had this exact picture tattooed on my chest, but this shirt is very useful in colder weather."
• "Every night, for the past 6 weeks, I have been visited by 3 wolf sprirts. And every night, they bestow upon me endless amounts of knowledge and offerings of imitation crab meat."
• "The Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt gave me a +10 resistance to energy attacks, +8 Strength, and added 30 feet to my normal leap. I cannot list the specific effects involving the opposite sex as I am still discovering these. And they are many."
• "I had a two-wolf shirt for a while and I didn't think life could get any better. I was wrong. Life got 50% better, no lie."
• "The second that these 3 Wolves touched my chest I benchpressed 5 meth labs and wrote an essay about moonlight. When I wear this shirt as pants I can run to Canada in only 42 days."
• "I once ran into Chuck Norris at a bar. He noticed I was wearing this shirt and he ran away."

Not all reviews were positive…

• "They SAY it's three wolves, but how do we know it's not the same wolf from three different angles? We cannot assume they'd be above airbrushing or the use of creative lighting just to save on wolves..."
• "I'm beginning to believe that some of the benefits ---- as described by other reviewers ---- are exaggerated. For example, not ONE supermodel has approached me."

In response to that one-star review the company that created the t-shirt responded in kind:"We at The Mountain do not guarantee that you will become a magnet for super models. There is no governing the fate of one man to secure the kindred love of a like-minded mate for life while baying at the moon on a warm Summer's night; to the man who wears not the 3 Wolf Moon and stumbles through life on a path of loneliness of one forgotten by the mortals he walks among… we feel we deserve at least 3 stars from you."

The company did however take issue with some of the comments, saying that “We appreciate humor as much as the next company, but we don't approve of some of the Classist remarks that are being generated here… some say ‘Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all’. We however disagree if it's at the expense of others in a Classist, Racist or Prejudice manner.”

So there it is. Ironic reviews are a winner.

And there I was thinking that the rise in popularity of animal t-shirts was linked to The Flight Of The Conchords…

---------

“H” is for Humor

May 25th, 2009 by Brant Barton | Co-Founder and VP of Business Development

In addition to tagging reviews, questions, answers, stories and other customer-generated content with descriptive codes like “CR” for references to competitors and “CS” for customer service issues, I am starting to think that our content moderators should apply “H” to content that could dramatically boost a product’s conversion rate (because after a fit of uncontrollable laughter and the delirium that follows you simply cannot resist the urge to buy the product that is the subject of the “H”). That’s some actionable business insight for merchandising teams.

The inspiration for this post is the now infamous “Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt”, currently the #1 selling Apparel product on Amazon.com. No, that’s not a typo. I could efficiently end this post by just telling you to read a few of the reviews for this product. That would more than accomplish my goal of demonstrating the value of not taking yourself (or your brand) too seriously. But I have a minimum length requirement to meet, so I’ll go on . . .

Our good friends at Econsultancy in the UK beat me to the punch with an entertaining blog postThe Washington Post published an article on the same day. No matter who you trust, that’s one damn funny t-shirt. If you trust me and took my advice above to read a few of the reviews, I bet you are now making your way through the checkout process while you finish reading this nailbiter of a post. That’s impressive multi-tasking. on the t-shirt.

We see our share of humorous reviews and many of those are just too inappropriate to post, but as reviews of the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt aptly demonstrate, there is a very fine line between inappropriate humor and pure genius, not to mention a word of mouth marketing bonanza. I won’t speak for my colleagues at Bazaarvoice (you know who you are), but this t-shirt is responsible for a major drop in productivity last Friday because I was personally contributing to the millions of word of mouth “impressions” that the product received. While it may be difficult to put a dollar value on each of those impressions, you can most definitely put a dollar value on lost productivity.

In closing, if you offer customer reviews of your products and services, whether you are a Bazaarvoice client or not, I urge you to evaluate whether your definition of inappropriate is too strict and your tolerance of humor too low. Millions of dollars and an immeasurable wealth of customer word of mouth could be at stake!

Bazaarvoice CEO stresses the importance of the customer’s voice

Bit cheesy, but i really rate this company and like there apporach to tapping into the consumer

Digital Industry Statistics

Thanks Bazaarvoice for this great online stat rundown (mixed markets, dates, etc)

Power of Word of Mouth

• "Person like me" still most trusted source for information about a company and, therefore, products. (Edelman Trust Barometer, November 2007)
• Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to ZenithOptimedia. (AdAge, April, 2008)
• Recommendation is the number one reason for choosing a particular site. (Royal Mail's Home Shopping Tracker Study, September 2007)
• Users who contribute product reviews or post messages visit sites nine times as often as noncontributors do. Contributors also make purchases nearly twice as often. (McKinsey & Co./Jupiter Media Metrix study, January 2002)
• Review users noted that reviews generated by fellow consumers had a greater influence than those generated by professionals. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)
• Adult Internet users surveyed chose recommendations from friends as the one type of promotion they consider most worthwhile. (DoubleClick, May 2007)
• Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations (65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities). (Yankelovich)
• Consumers say that word of mouth is still the number one influencer in their apparel (34.3%) and electronics (44.4%) purchases (Retail Advertising and Marketing Association/BIGresearch Study, November 2008)
• According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study's respondents. (Nielsen, "Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool", October 2007)
• The two leading reasons people contribute content to social shopping sites are the need to feel part of a community (31%) and recognition from peers (28%). (IBM Institute for Business Value, August 2007)
• Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. ("Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," JupiterResearch, March 2007)
• 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend's recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)
• Two thirds of UK social networkers (66%) are more likely to buy a product as a result of a recommendation, compared to 52 per cent of non-social networkers. (Royal Mail's Home Shopping Tracker Study, September 2007)
• Tech decision makers give user-generated sites equal importance to traditional media sources when considering tech purchases. Decision makers consider their personal experience (58%) first when short-listing tech vendors, followed by word-of-mouth and industry analyst reports, tied at 51%. Advertising (17%) and direct marketing (21%) were listed as the least important information sources when short-listing possible vendors. (Study: "Tech Decision Maker," Hill & Knowlton, January 2009)

Consumer Demand for Ratings and Reviews

• Online reviews are second only to personal advice from a friend as the driver of purchase decisions; user reviews are more influential than third-party reviews. ("Web users and web community," Rubicon Consulting, Inc. October 2008)
• 81% of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (Nielson Online, December 2008)
• 86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchasing decisions; 90% of whom say they trust these reviews. (Kudzu.com survey of 600 users, December 2008)
• The Trust in Advertising survey of 26,000+ found that Consumer Recommendations are the most credible form of advertising. ("Social Media Marketing: The Right Strategy for Tough Economic Times" Awareness, 2008)
• Nearly 49% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media property; respondents most relied on the following sources when making a purchase decision: 60.53% user reviews; 20.48% comparison charts; 15.41% editorial reviews; 3.58 shared shopping lists. (Razorfish, October 2008)
• Almost two-thirds (62%) of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet. (Deloitte & Touche, September 2007)
• When asked what sources of information they are "very likely" to consult before making a decision about their entertainment options, 62% named Web sites with user reviews as their top choice, even beating out a knowledgeable friend (59%). (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)
• 46% of Britons now read online reviews or recommendations on a specific product before buying it and 32% are willing and able to publish a review online - but only 19% would be prepared to write a letter to a retailer. (1&1 Internet survey of 1600 consumers, December 2008)
• Seven in 10 (69%) consumers who read reviews share them with friends, family or colleagues, thus amplifying their impact. (Deloitte & Touche, September 2007)
• As of October 2008, almost half of US online adults read ratings and reviews at least once a month, and 19% post them. Nearly twice as many read reviews compared with 2007. (The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption, Forrester, October 2008)
• Nearly half (49%) of shoppers intend to do their holiday gift buying online (versus in-store), and 72% are planning to research products online prior to purchasing (vs. 65% in 2007). ("Mindset of the Multi-Channel Shopper Holiday Survey," e-tailing group, October 2008)
• 74% agree-including 14% who strongly agree-that they choose companies and brands based on what others say online about their customer service experiences, the survey shows. (Society for New Communications Research, May 2008)
• 58.7% of shoppers said they used product reviews to make decisions. Reviews rated higher than clearance sale pages (56.4%) and featured sale pages (51.3%). (Shop.org, November 2007)
• Compared to a base group that didn't read or contribute product reviews at all, people who read a review were 30% more likely to purchase a product and visitors who wrote a review were 80% more likely to convert, based on analysis across several Coremetrics clients. (Coremetrics, reported in BtoB, March 2007)
• Among the 46% of respondents who had posted or planned to post reviews about their online shopping experience, 88% said those reviews either were, or would be positive. (Nielson, 2007)
• More than eight in ten (82%) of those who read reviews said that their purchasing decisions have been directly influenced by those reviews. (Deloitte & Touche, September 2007)
• 55% of surveyed Internet users consulted other people's opinions online, making reviews the #1 resource for product research. (Avenue A/Razorfish "Digital Consumer Behavior Study," October 2007)
• In a study of 2,000 shoppers, 92% deemed customer reviews as "extremely" or "very" helpful. (eTailing Group, 2007)
• 59% of their users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews. (Bizrate, October 2007)
• 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews. (Major consumer electronics retailer/iPerceptions study, January 2008)
• 81% consider the availability of customer reviews to be "very important" (33%)"somewhat important" (48%). (Major consumer electronics retailer/iPerceptions study, January 2008)
• 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend's recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (MarketingSherpa, October 2007)
• 84% of consumers earning more than $150,000 annually visit sites where customers review and rate products and services including restaurants. (The Luxury Institute, April 2007)
• 71% of UK online shoppers seek out ratings and reviews. (NetExtract, 2007)
• 70% of online consumers said they use the Internet to research everyday grocery products. (Prospectiv, January 2008)
• 67% of UK consumers research products via the Internet before shopping in a store. (Accenture, April 2007)
• 91% of millionaires say they always or often look at reviews before buying luxury goods; 68% of ultra-affluent shoppers use consumer reviews. (Unity Marketing/Google study, reported in AdAge, October 2008)
• Mobile user-generated content will generate $5.7 billion worldwide in 2012, up from $576 million in 2007. ("Mobile Social Networking: Opportunities & Forecasts 2008-2013," Juniper Research, October 2008)
• Satisfaction for those who recalled customer reviews on the retailers' site is 10% higherLoyalty increases, too: 7% higher likelihood to purchase online, 8% greater likelihood to purchase from the retailer next time they're buying similar merchandise and 11% greater likelihood to recommend the site to others. (30 UK Online Retail Satisfaction Index, ForeSee Results, January 2008) than those who said there were no reviews offered.
• 83% of shoppers said online product evaluations and reviews influenced their purchasing decisions. (Opinion Research Corporation, an infoGROUP company, July 2008)
• In an online survey of 4,000 consumers, 70% said they had done internet research on "everyday grocery products," and 63% said they had done so for health and beauty products. (Prospectiv, 2007)
• 57.2% of U.S. toy purchasers are influenced by product reviews online. (Ad-ology Media Influence on Consumer Choice, Fall 2008)

Marketer Demand for Ratings and Reviews

• 79% of online UK retailers surveyed reported that the main benefit of consumer-generated rating and reviews was that they improved site conversion rates. (eMarketer, 2007)
• 68% of online marketers believe "media is in big trouble and will lose dollars to user-generated content." (iMedia Connection, February 2008)
• 58% of the E-Commerce Guide 100 retailers implemented ratings and reviews in 2008, up from 50% in 2007; 24 percent sell by top-rated products. (e-tailing group's 11th Annual Mystery Shopping Survey, January 2009)
• 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing's primary objective (1to1 Media survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel, April 2008)
• 43% of retailers have reviews - double in one year. (Marketing Sherpa, February 2007)
• 76% of US retailers said user-generated content would have a greater impact on their marketing goals in the near future. (SLI Systems/Zoomerang, November 2008)
• Of merchants who adopt customer reviews, 58% said improving customer experiencecompetitive advantage was the most important reason for adding reviews to their sites, followed by building customer loyalty (47%), driving sales (42%), and maintaining a (37%). (eTailing Group, June 2008)
• By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing's primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing. (1to1 Media survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel, April 2008)
• 11% of retailers reported a 20% or more overall increase in conversions as a result of adding reviews to their sites, 21% reported an 11% to 20% increase and 5% reported a 1% to 10% increase. (eTailing Group, June 2008)
• 81% of marketers surveyed say that their social media spending will meet or exceed their traditional advertising spending within the next 5 years. (TWI Surveys/Society for New Communications Research, November 2007)
• 56% of UK website owners say that user-generated content lifts conversion levels; 77% say it increases traffic; and 42% say it increases the average spend on site.(eConsultancy survey of 360 website owners across all sectors, November 2008)
• Dave Seifert of Bass Pro Shops noted at a Shop.org round table discussion that Top Rated Products were "the #1 merchandising technique ever utilized on their site." (Bass Pro Shops, June 2008)
• After their order, PETCO asked customers, "What online tool most influenced your purchase decision?" The #1 answer was product ratings and reviews, with site search coming in a distant second. (PETCO, June 2007)
• The Shop.org State of Retailing Online study, conducted by Forrester Research, found only 26% of the 137 top retailers surveyed offered customer ratings and reviews, but 96% of them ranked customer ratings and reviews as an effective or very effective tactic at driving conversion. (Forrester, 2007)

Consumer Demand for Ask & Answer™

• 76% of online shoppers surveyed report that content is insufficient to complete research or purchase online "always, most often or some of the time." (eTailing Group, June 2007)
• Online businesses lose as many as 67% of consumers due to a lack of online product information. (Allurent, January 2008)
• 83% of online shoppers would make purchases if sites offered increased interactive elements. (Allurent, January 2008)
• One in four (24.5%) shoppers said they left a store because of a lack of assistance. (Shop.org, November 2007)
• 90% of UK shoppers surveyed said they wish they could communicate directly with businesses - using live chat, forums or call-me-back facilities - via their websites; one in three require it from the UK businesses they currently use. (1&1, October 2007)
• 42% of consumers said they prefer being able to find the answers they need online on their own if they had a question or wanted help while shopping online. (Harris Interactive, May 2007)
• The share of traffic to question-and-answer Web sites has more than doubled from 2007 to 2008 (HitWise, 2008)
• Yahoo Answers had 25.3 million visits in February 2008 (comScore Media Metrix, March 2008)
• 68% of consumers trust "people like me" first for product advice. (Edelman Trust Barometer, January 2007)
• 42% of 1,179 online consumers surveyed have left a site without purchasing multiple products because they couldn't get a question answered about one of the products in their shopping cart; 41% decided not to make a planned purchase because they couldn't readily find a piece of information about the product or service. (JupiterResearch, September 2007)

Conversion Results

• MarketingExperiments tested product conversion with and without product ratings by customers. Conversion nearly doubled, going from .44% to 1.04% after the same product displayed its five-star rating. (MarketingExperiments Journal, July 2007)
• 79% of online UK retailers surveyed reported that the main benefit of consumer-generated rating and reviews was that they improved site conversion rates. (eMarketer, 2007)
• Online shoppers who look at TripAdvisor reviews on the Hayes & Jarvis site book trips at double the rate of online shoppers who have not seen the TripAdvisor reviews, based on first four months after launch. (TripAdvisor, January 2008)
• Shoppers who browsed the site's new "Top Rated Products" page, which features products rated most highly by customers, had a 59% higher conversion rate than the site average and spent 16% more per order than other browsers of products. (Bass Pro Shops, June 2008)
• Shoppers who browsed the site's "Top Rated Products" page, which features products rated most highly by customers, had a 49% higher conversion rate than the site average and 63% more per order than other site shoppers. (PETCO, June 2007)
• Giving shoppers the ability to sort products within a category by customer rating led to a sales increase of 41% per unique visitor. (PETCO, June 2007)

Average Order Value Results

• Consumers were willing to pay between 20 to 99% more for a 5-star rated product than for a 4-star rated product, depending on the product category. (comScore/Kelsey, October 2007)
• Top-rated products site navigation path featuring 4- and 5-star products in each category delivered 35% higher conversion and 40% higher average order value. (Bazaarvoice, June 2007)
• Reviews usage drives higher spending: 27% of users report an increase of 5-10%; almost 7% report an increase of 20%+. (Avenue A/Razorfish "Digital Consumer Behavior Study," October 2007)

User-generated Content Beyond the Web

• 64% of Social Researchers (those who refer to user-generated content when shopping) research products online more than half the time, no matter where they ultimately buy the product (store, Web, catalog, etc.). (eTailing Group, June 2007)
• Online consumers are becoming precision shoppers. For every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales. (eMarketer, 2007)
• 90% of those surveyed say they have a better overall shopping experience when they research products online before shopping in-store. (Harris Interactive, October 2007)
• 92.5% of adults said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying them in a store. (BIGresearch, November 2008)
• Nearly one out of every four Internet users (24%) reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)
• More than three-quarters of review users in nearly every category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase, with hotels ranking the highest (87%). (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)
• 97% of those surveyed who said they made a purchase based on an online review said they found the review to have been accurate. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)
• Consumers who shop online for digital cameras and TVs spend 10% more on in-store purchases than consumers who do not search online. (ChannelForce for Yahoo Search Marketing, July 2007)

Email Campaign Results

• Email study: PETCO realized a 5X increase in email click-through rates by including relevant ratings and reviews content in the campaign promotion. (PETCO, June 2007)
• Top rated product email drive 46% higher revenue per email in A/B test. (Golfsmith, June 2007)

Search Engine Optimization Results

• In a study of a major electronics retailer site of 30,000 monthly natural language search visitors, converted 60% more often, spent 50% more, and viewed 82% more pages than search visitors to other pages. (Bazaarvoice case study with major electronics retailer)
• In a study of online UK retailers, 59% reported that the consumer-generated activity leads to better search engine optimization. (eMarketer, 2007)

Return Rates and Customer Satisfaction

• During the 2007 holiday season, consumers who recalled seeing customer reviews on a Web site reported 9% higher customer satisfaction levels, were 9% more likely to make a purchase and 8% more likely to purchase the next time they came to that site. (ForeSee Results, January 2008)
• Reviews drive 21% higher purchase satisfaction and 18% higher loyalty. (Foresee Results Study, January 2007)
• Online UK retailers reported improved customer retention and loyalty by 73% once they implemented consumer-generated rating and reviews. (eMarketer, 2007)
• Products with reviews have a 17% lower return rate than those without reviews. (Bazaarvoice PETCO Case Study, 2007)
• Products with 50+ reviews have a return rate that is half of those with fewer than five reviews. (Bazaarvoice PETCO Case Study, 2007)
• One study from IBM Institute for Business Management shows that while those adults in the UK who use social networking do so to attain a feeling of community, 17% of the adults surveyed say they do so because they like to participate with brands they favor. (IBM, August 2007)

Evolution of Advertising and Media

• 75% of people don't believe that companies tell the truth in advertisements. (Yankelovich)

Search

• SearchVoice study: of 30,000 monthly SearchVoice visitors, they convert 60% higher, spend 50% more and viewed 82% more pages. (Major electronics retailer case study, August 2008)
• The ability to refine site search results by customer rating led to 22% more sales per unique visitor on a same-session basis and 41% more sales per visitor on a multi-session basis. (Bazaarvoice)

Syndication

• RSS study: Burpee measured a 43% higher click-through on RSS feeds with reviews than without. (Burpee, December 2007)

Industry Articles

Positives About Negative Product Reviews. Worried about opening your company to consumer reviews? Don't be. (iMedia Connection)

Getting a Handle on Customer Reviews
These days, what the customer thinks is hardly a secret. Consumer reviews and ratings are popping up on a growing number of Web sites, sites on which users treat brands like contestants on American Idol. (Brandweek)

Online Influence Tied to Search, Social Media Use
According to a new research report by Yahoo! and Comscore, not only is social networking's influence on marketing growing, but particularly vocal individuals are having more of an effect than ever. (ClickZ)

CGM Changes Minds of Online Auto and Travel Buyers
Consumer Generated Media not only influences online consumers, it can get them to change their minds. (ClickZ)

Voice Of The Consumer Not Leveraged

Thanks - Media post

According to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, with Satmetrix, 58% of the 480 executives surveyed said their companies do not compensate any employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics. 38% said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers, and only 29% said their companies rate highly in their ability to handle and resolve customer problems or complaints.

Senior marketers admit their companies are failing to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate customer voice and experience into key business and marketing processes, says the report. The study underscores critical deficiencies in the way companies measure, optimize and leverage customer experience to drive loyalty, improve brand value and increase business performance and growth, including:

Insufficient availability and aggregation of real-time customer experience data across touch points that should be shared across the organization
Poor use of customer interactions to collect insights and intelligence or maximize up-sell and advocacy opportunities
Lack of Internet processes and systems to track online word of mouth and drive customer advocacy
Intermittent or deficient monitoring of customer experience that fails to provide true and timely insights into problems and opportunities
Too few compensation programs tied to customer experience, loyalty and satisfaction gains


CMO Council executive director, Donovan Neale-May, says "Customer experience is one of the most critical determinants of brand strength and business growth... we are missing a major opportunity to turn customer pain into competitive gain... through better use of web and contact center technologies and processes."

Survey data shows that most companies are not taking advantage of opportunities to drive company-wide performance improvement and business growth:

Only 38% of companies gather customer insight from customer engagement situations
Just 32% look for ways to turn problems into new sales opportunities
Only 15% introduce new products or services to further monetize the relationship
Merely 17% use the opportunity to identify and cultivate potential customer champions and advocates


Although 34% of respondents said their companies have made no changes to the way they track and analyze customer experience in recent years:

45% of respondents say their companies have taken steps to better integrate and analyze customer data
39% said they have increased personalization and intimacy in their customer communications
20% say they have embraced intelligent Internet analytics


18% are capturing real-time information at the "point of pain."

Nearly two-thirds of companies do not have a formal Voice of Customer program in place, and other key findings of the study include:

13% of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback
74% say they receive customer feedback via e-mail, only 23 percent say they track and measure the volume and nature of these messages.
14.5% track word of mouth on the Internet
12% are using a word-of-mouth marketing platform to drive online customer advocacy


Laura Brooks, Ph.D. and vice president of research for Satmetrix, concludes that "Companies must become more... committed to leveraging... customer experience as a key business metric... but measurement is not an end in itself... companies need to commit... to understanding the key determinants of their score... to improve their customer experience competitiveness."

For more information about the Giving Customer Voice More Volume study, please visit the CMO Council her

5 brands that gave 'em something to talk about

Thanks imediaconnection for this post with some interesting word or mouth case studies

By Leah Messinger

Word-of-mouth marketing has become something of an art form. Check out these successful campaigns, and discover the secrets to replicating their results.

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) -- in which one consumer provides product or brand information to another -- has certainly been around for a long time. It's only in the age of TV, blogs, social networks, Twitter feeds and mobile texting that WOM marketing has become something of an art form

The trick is to give consumers accessing all of these media a reason to talk about a product and promote it themselves. Successful WOM marketing, according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), is marketing that "empowers people to share their experiences. It's harnessing the voice of the customer for the good of the brand. And it's acknowledging that the unsatisfied customer is equally powerful."

Now is an especially hot moment for WOM marketing for three key reasons, says John Bell, president of the board of directors of WOMMA. First, people increasingly trust their peers more than they trust advertisers. Second, newly available social media tools mean more and more voices for WOM marketers to target. Third, and perhaps most important, social media tools make WOM measurable.

Take a look at a few examples of campaigns that did a great job of planting the seeds of conversation.

Company: Lenovo
Campaign: Voices of the Olympic Games

Computer-maker Lenovo armed 100 Olympic athletes from 25 countries with Lenovo laptops and Flip video cameras so they could blog about their experiences at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Participating athletes recorded their experiences prior to arriving in Beijing, during the games and from home after the games ended.

"The goal was to raise awareness about the new consumer platform and strengthen Lenovo's overall reputation," says Bell, whose company -- Ogilvy's 360º Digital Influence group -- worked on the campaign.

The campaign piggybacked on the popularity of a global event and relied on a variety of social media tools, including blogs (Blogspot), videos (YouTube), photo galleries (Flickr), mobile tweets (Twitter) and mobile widgets (Zumobi) to popularize the brand. The Voices campaign resulted in 1,500 blog posts with more than 8,000 comments.

Company: Fiskars
Campaign: Fisk-A-Teers

The "a-fisk-a-what?" link on the Fiskateers homepage gets right to the point:

Fiskateer. In other words, an ambassador for crafting. And for Fiskars. Why do we need ambassadors? Because we want to open the lines of communication -- to know the people who use our products. You are the ones who keep us in business. And we want to hear what you have to say about current and new products... We want to know about being a crafter/mom/working woman, and what you like about us and what you don't. We can take it, we promise.

Fiskateers is an ongoing campaign by the Fiskars company, traditionally known for its scissors, but more recently a maker of tools to meet the growing demands of rabid scrapbook hobbyists. The project relies on blogs and message boards to engage users with what Andy Sernovitz describes as "a fundamentally boring product." Sernovitz is CEO of GasPedal and adjunct lecturer in integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University.

Perhaps most importantly, through the campaign, Fiskars breaks the fourth wall by talking directly with its customers, including opening itself up to criticism. Fiskars also hosts real-world scrapbooking conventions as part of the campaign. Fiskateers.com brings in an estimated 353,000 visitors a week, according to Alexa traffic rankings.

Company: Duck Brand Duct Tape
Campaign: Stuckatprom.com

The Stuck at Prom campaign offers a prime example of how a brand can use WOM to capitalize on a trend it had nothing to do with creating. For years the DIY crafting community has been fashioning accessories and clothing from duct tape -- duct tape bracelets, duct tape wallets and eventually even duct tape prom dresses.

In 2001, Duck, a manufacturer of duct tape, decided it might as well get some publicity from the trend, so it started sponsoring an annual competition. Couples who fashioned their prom garb purely from duct tape could enter to win $3,000 for themselves and their schools.

Nineteen hundred couples have entered the contest since it first started seven years ago. Stuckatprom.com also allows users to email their friends and create T-shirts and flyers promoting their contest entries. Beyond WOM publicity, a variety of newspapers and magazines also cover the contest each year.

Company: McDonald's
Campaign: What Came First?

Many well-established brands also rely on WOM marketing, both online and off. This year, in an effort to get its customers to consider chicken a breakfast food, McDonald's rolled out its "What Came First?" campaign.

Visitors to Whatcamefirst.com (Quienfueprimero.com, for its Spanish-speaking customers) could help determine whether the chicken or the egg came first via a simulated chicken-egg dance-off. Users selected the player (chicken or egg), music and series of dance steps and watched the ensuing dance-off to see which animated character would win. Users could email their dances to friends, as well as challenge friends to a dancing duel. The campaign's web component also targeted key bloggers.

Offline, the campaign included a product sampling day, man-on-the-street interviews and live street dancing. "What Came First?" resulted in nearly 11,000 blog, video, messaging and Twitter discussions, and the free chicken sandwich sample was the "13th most Googled search term on the May 15th sampling day," according to WOMMA, which awarded the campaign its Wommie award this year.

Company: Intuit
Campaign: The Tax Rap

For a WOM campaign last year, financial software company Intuit turned to the incongruous pairing of TurboTax and has-been rap star Vanilla Ice. Ice and 500 others submitted raps about doing their taxes with TurboTax to a YouTube channel set up by Intuit for the contest. (The YouTube channel included the tagline "Just because we're experts in tax code doesn't mean we can't bust mad flow. Ahem.")

The participant with the best video was awarded $25,000; second- and third-place winners also received cash prizes. Winners of five Viewer's Choice awards received coveted cubic zirconium TurboTax bling. The combination of a celebrity spokesperson and user-generated content -- along with graphics and other media that gave consumers a sense that Intuit was in on the joke -- resulted in more than 3 million page views, more than 900 incoming links and 700 blog mentions, according to WOMMA.

So, how do you make WOM marketing work for your brand? Sernovitz advises that you stick to his 5 Ts:

Talkers. Identify the people who will do the talking for you. And remember, these people aren't always going to be your customers. They might be the mothers-in-law or the friends of the customer. Either way, they're going to be the ones starting the conversation about your product.

Topic. Unlike slogans and marketing messages, which no Joe Six-Pack is going use in real-world conversation, develop a broad topic your talkers can talk about. Lenovo's talkers could focus on how easy the company's tools made on-the-go communication; Fiskars customers can talk about how the company's products help with their favorite hobby or how much they like the community spearheaded by Fiskars.

Tools. Make sure the tools you select for spreading your message are ones that are likely to be used by your talkers. If your target audience is middle-aged bowlers, then Facebook and MySpace might not be the best places to start.

Taking part. Sernovitz warns that this T tends to scare marketers the most because it's the least familiar. "Most marketing departments are set up for one-way, outbound marketing," he says. But to get WOM to work, brands must participate in open-ended conversations on blogs and social networking sites. As the conversation grows, says Sernovitz, marketers must be willing to devote more resources to keeping it going.

Tracking. Marketers should also remember to build trackability into their campaigns. Secret discount codes in emails are extremely trackable, Sernovitz says. He adds that pretty much any action step that requires clicking or notifying others of an opportunity at the end of a WOM discussion will lead to the kinds of numbers marketers love.

Matt Moog, founder and CEO of Viewpoints Network, whose consumer review site is a WOM-based business, says it's important to keep campaigns simple and targeted. If a campaign "is barely related to your brand and doesn't do anything to reflect the product that you sell, that's not practical and sustainable," he says.

A recent example of a somewhat misguided WOM campaign comes via Ivanka Trump. Trump teamed up with Healthy Choice to promote its Fresh Mixers line, which essentially consists of MREs that can last up to a year in your desk drawer. Because when you think of eating a quick lunch at your desk, you think of... a Trump?

The campaign involves in-person appearances with Trump along with a blog she supposedly maintains at blog.alunchtrade.com. Though the campaign uses tools typical of WOM marketing, "It isn't really word of mouth," says Sernovitz. "Just because it's a blog doesn't mean it's word of mouth." Sernovitz suggests that Healthy Choice would have made a better marketing investment by focusing more on its message boards. He points out that thousands of visitors have posted on Healthy Choice's message boards, but that the company didn't get involved in those conversations. "They got the theory right, but the taking part was missing," says Sernovitz. "It just sort of faded away."

Leah Messinger is a freelance writer.

5 Simple Ways to Start Tracking Word of Mouth Traffic

These tips are thanks to Endless Plain by Serengeti Communications:

Word-of-mouth traffic can be some of the best, most qualified visitors to your site. But, how do you actually know if you are getting traffic from word-of-mouth? PPC and SEO efforts are easy to track because you can segment out traffic based on the specific referrers or entry pages (PPC). You have to be a bit creative to find the word-of-mouth traffic.

1. Check out your direct traffic (no referrer)
2. Check out your branded keyword traffic
3. Check out the blogs
4. Check out the blogs and other conversations
5. Ask your customers
See the full article by Joy Brazelle for more detail:
http://endlessplain.com/2008/06/17/5-simple-ways-to-start-tracking-word-of-mouth-traffic/