Working with the social Q&A system from TurnTo Networks, InkJetSuperStore has achieved impressive increases in customer engagement during 2012.  Retail TouchPoints recognized them for this achievement at the NRF Big Show in New York City with their 2012 Customer Engagement Award in the Social Media Marketing category.  George Eberstadt, CEO of TurnTo, accepted the award on behalf of InkJetSuperStore as their President, Ilan Douek was unable to attend the event.

InkJetSuperStore’s use of TurnTo’s social Q&A dramatically increased customer engagement, which in turn improved conversion and average order value.

• Questions about popular items received 4-5 social answers each (i.e. from past customers, not store staff), on average, with the first one arriving within 3-4 hours.
• 95% of these questions received at least one social answer.
• 16% of all purchasers answered the question “Why did you choose this item?” following check-out (through the TurnTo Purchase Sharing function).
• Sentiment on these check-out answers was 99% positive.
• The Q&A system generated dramatically more UGC than Inkjet Superstore’s customer reviews system.  For example, this item has 6 questions, 23 answers, and 60 check-out comments, but only one customer review.
• Shoppers who asked questions or read Q&A from others converted at a rate 80% higher than those who didn’t – an especially significant lift since Inkjet Superstore is a replenishment business with a high repeat customer rate and a very high conversion rate.
• The average order value of shoppers who interacted with TurnTo was 14% higher than the AOV of those who don’t.

Other Retail TouchPoints’ 2012 Customer Engagement Award winners include: Foot Locker, Moosejaw, Tasti D-Lite, and Urban Outfitters

Due to a previous commitment, Ilan Douek, President of InkJetSuperStore was unable to accept the award in person but shared his enthusiasm, saying, “It is a real honor to win this award. We are very pleased with the results we have had with TurnTo and look forward to continued success in the coming year.”

TurnTo’s CEO and Founder, George Eberstadt, said, “We heartily congratulate Ilan and the InkJetSuperStore team on this award.  They’ve built a loyal customer base by providing excellent products and outstanding service, and we’re delighted our Social Commerce tools are helping them release the value of that good will.  It just shows that even in a replenishment category like inkjet cartridges, relationships and engagement still matter a lot.

About TurnTo
TurnTo provides Social Commerce applications for online merchants that enable shoppers to get advice directly from stores’ real customers. By enabling authentic dialog between shoppers and customers right on the merchant site, TurnTo increases conversion rates, generates fresh content for SEO, drives traffic from Facebook and Twitter, brings past customers back, and delivers insights to inform merchandising strategies. The TurnTo Social Commerce Suite is a white-labeled SaaS product that can be integrated in a few hours. Top online retailers including Adorama, GoJane, and KitchenwareDirect, use TurnTo to convert visitors into buyers. More information about TurnTo is available at www.turntonetworks.com.

About InkJetSuperStore:
Inkjetsuperstore.com, established in November of 2000 and the 2012 winner of Retail TouchPoints’ Social Media Marketing award, is a reseller of printer consumable products with its two warehouses in California and Tennessee. Inkjetsuperstore.com’s services are to provide printing supplies and accessories at discount prices, while offering the best shopping experience possible. Inkjetsuperstore.com carries ink and toner cartridges of most major printer brands and other accessories, including printer ribbons, drum units, Rollers, fuser/maintenance kits, MICR toner cartridges, photo paper, cables, media/data tapes/disks. The company attributes their success to staying committed to their vision — “Our vision is to be the best, the easiest, the cheapest and friendliest place to buy printer supplies.”

You can read Retail TouchPoint’s article here and download the complete Customer Awards Report from there, but in a nutshell it was through a nomination process, the winners were selected based on, but not limited to, four specific criteria:

1. Unique shopping/promotional offerings
2. Customer engagement strategies
3. Customer analysis
4. Technology innovation

Using the TurnTo technology, InkJetSuperStore has increased conversion, AOV, and loyalty.  Here are some of the results from the past couple of months.

• Shoppers who asked questions or read Q&A from others converted at a rate 80% higher than those who didn’t – an especially significant lift since Inkjet Superstore is a replenishment business with a high repeat customer rate and a very high conversion rate.
• The average order value of shoppers who interacted with TurnTo was 14% higher than the AOV of those who don’t.
• 16% of all purchasers answered the question “Why did you choose this item?” following check-out (through the TurnTo Purchase Sharing function).

You can see from the complete list of winners below, InkJetSuperStore is sitting in good company:

• 8ta
• Casual Male Retail Group (CMRG)
• David’s Bridal
• Foot Locker
• Hot Topic
• Inkjet Superstore
• Moosejaw
• Rutter’s Farm Stores
• Tasti D-Lite
• Urban Outfitters

And if winning the award was not exciting enough for InkJetSuperStore and TurnTo, George and I were at the Retail TouchPoints booth @ NRF on Monday as he accepted the award on behalf of ILan Douek, President of InkJetSuperStore, as Ilan was unable to attend.

Here is a pic of me with the Inkjetsuperstore.com award

Over here we like to say “When you connect your shoppers to your customers, good things happen!” and apparently that not only means conversion, loyalty and SEO for our customers, but now includes industry recognition…again, congratulations to InkJetSuperStore!

To learn how TurnTo can improve the metrics that mean the most to you and your business, give us a shout @ 908.752.9658 or email sales@turnto.com (yes, a shameless plug from me).

The findings are straight-forward: Online, as in the physical world, people are more likely to buy things that they see other people bought.  There’s no word of mouth here.  This isn’t about customer ratings and reviews.  This is just about seeing the purchases of other people.  The merchandising lessons are simple:

1. You can improve conversion rates by showing shoppers that other people have really bought a product (on the product detail page)
2. You can encourage consideration by showing the purchases other shoppers made (in your product discovery/recommendation/cross-sell merchandising)

The study looked at a period when Amazon put up and took down the “what other people bought” section on their digital camera products to see what effect having/not having this information had on sales.  Using these data,

The authors observe a herd behavior among consumers when the OL or sales information is positive, but surprisingly, they observe no herd behavior when consumers face negative OL or sales information.  [OL stands for "Observational Learning", which in this case means "seeing what other people bought".]

In other words: when shoppers saw that other people were buying a particular item, they became more likely to buy it.  But if an item didn’t have peer-purchase information, that absence didn’t hurt sales.  So you don’t need sales coverage for your whole catalog – show purchase information where you’ve got it, and don’t worry about it where you don’t.

Here are a couple examples of stores using tools that deliver the OL effect.  For lesson #1 (on the product detail page, showing shoppers that other customers are also buying the item), have a look at the 98 check-out comments on these shoes at GoJane (scroll past the Q&A).  For lesson #2 (showing products that other customers are buying to encourage consideration and cross-sell), have a look at the “See what your friends bought” tab on the right edge of the window here at emitations.  What effect do these tools have on you?  Does this sort of merchandising make you feel like buying?

If you want to take advantage of the OL effect to improve your sales, give us call.

Background

Adorama is one of the leading ecommerce sites in the photography and electronics industry and is also a major producer of original content for photo enthusiasts and professionals. “There are a slew of options—both online and offline—for consumers looking to buy photography gear. But there are far fewer options when consumers seek expert advice,” says Glen Holman, who manages Adorama’s new website. Glen felt that the next step in providing the richest possible resources to photo gear buyers was to enable customers to share their expertise alongside Adorama’s in-house experts.

“Customer reviews are simply not enough.”

Adorama was an early pioneer in the use of customer reviews, which have proven to be a valuable source of information. However, Adorama recognized that reviews can require a shopper to search in hopes that his question is answered, and sometimes the answer just isn’t there. Unfortunately, this sometimes left customers with unanswered questions. “The last thing that an ecommerce vendor wants is for a curious yet motivated customer to need to go elsewhere,” says Glen. “The gap between customer reviews and our phone sales team led us to seek a complementary product.”

“How to make sure customers get the right product?”

Because consumers often have questions when they look to purchase photography equipment, the retailer decided it should add a question-and-answer tool. “We want to ensure that people get the right product,” he says. The only problem was Adorama didn’t think it could keep up with the volume of questions it was likely to receive.

“Until TurnTo, we couldn’t find a solution that allowed us to respond to customers’ direct questions without hiring an army of writers.”

Glen thought that a customer question-and-answer system could address their needs, but he had tried them in past and found that either too many questions went unanswered or else store staff ended up providing most of the answers. That failed to deliver the social value he was looking for, and it created additional customer support workload.

The Solution

Finally, Adorama found TurnTo’s “Ask Owners” product, a social model for ecommerce Q&A. Unlike other Q&A systems, TurnTo’s Q&A product ensures that shoppers get real answers from real customers, and that the answers come fast and often – typically within the hour. That delivered a broad range of tangible benefits: higher conversion rates, engagement of past customers, and a mountain of UGC.

The key to success lies in TurnTo’s message-based approach. According to Glen, “Sending questions to people who actually own the item gets fast, credible answers. Because these answers come from consumers who have bought the product, the quality of the responses is high. They’re often the expert because they own the product.”

A consumer can access the tool to pose a question on any of the site’s product pages by clicking on a button that says “Ask a Question”. When a consumer clicks the button a window appears that features a box where he can type a question. Typical questions include “I’m trying to decide what to get. Why did you pick this one?” and “How well did it work? Were you happy with it?”

Results

Adorama ran a 3-month trial with TurnTo to see the results before committing. At the end of the period, there was unanimous agreement among the management team to move ahead.

Adorama was confident from the beginning that social Q&A would have a positive impact on conversion rates and on SEO. “That was never a question for us. We understood the value of this sort of UGC before we met TurnTo. Our question was, ‘Can we make social Q&A work on an ecommerce site?’ TurnTo significantly beat our expectations.”

• On average, each question on a popular item at Adorama receives 6 social answers, and 95% of these questions receive at least 1 social answer.
• The median time from when a shopper submits a question until they receive their first social answer is under an hour (including moderation).
• Adorama’s AskOwners e-mails had a 12% click through rate and an 8% answer rate.
• The number of questions asked daily is more than 2X greater than the number of customer reviews received.
• Including answers, in the short period of time since Adorama started to use TurnTo, customers have submitted almost 20,000 pieces of user-generated content.

“We were very impressed by the high response rates to the Q&A emails, especially without an incentive,” Glen says. “TurnTo simply provides our customers an opportunity to share their expertise, and they’re happy to do it. We’re very proud to have earned that sort of loyalty, and TurnTo enables us to tap into it.”

The essential idea of “social commerce” is: connect your shoppers and customers directly to each other. Not only does this help turn your shoppers into customers, but it strengthens your relationship with your customer base. Sounds obvious, but for most brands it’s a deep paradigm shift. Most brands still think in terms of a hub-and-spoke model of communication; the brand is at the center managing a dialog (or monologue) with customers. Sure, customers talk to each other about the brand here and there, but the brand really wants to dominate the conversation.  The metaphor is brand-as-teacher; customers are the class. But there’s another approach in which brands actively facilitate dialog between their community members without dominating it.  These connections don’t just help bring new people into the brand fold, they also deepen the affinity existing customers have with the brand.  The metaphor is brand-as-party-host; shoppers and customers are the guests. Maybe the guests get a little interaction with the host during the party, maybe none, but either way, they are primarily interacting with each other.  The brand doesn’t get the same opportunity as in the classroom model to drive home its officially-approved message, but instead the brand earns a more powerful, social type of influence – by having the guest list stocked with loyal supporters.

Though more subtle, the influence of the party-host approach can be both deeper and farther-reaching.  Mikołaj Jan Piskorski has just published an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “Social Strategies that work” taking a rigorous look at the online social efforts of 60 businesses in a broad range of verticals.  He concludes:

What the poorly performing companies shared was that they merely imported their digital strategies into social environments by broadcasting commercial messages or seeking customer feedback. Customers reject such overtures because their main goal on the platforms is to connect with other people, not with companies. That behavior isn’t hard to understand. Imagine sitting at a dinner table with friends when a stranger pulls up a chair and says, “Hey! Can I sell you something?” You’d probably say no, preferring your friends’ conversation over corporate advances. Many companies have learned that lesson the hard way.

In contrast, the companies that found significant returns devised social strategies that help people create or enhance relationships. These work because they’re consistent with users’ expectations and behavior on social platforms. To return to our dinner analogy, a company with a social strategy sits at the table and asks, “May I introduce you to someone or help you develop better friendships?” That approach gets a lot more takers.

To make this concrete, take a look at the Facebook presence of a handful of your favorite brands.  See what page they have set for you to land on.  Is it a crafted brand message, or does it have customers and fans talking to each other?  Go to the brand’s wall. Are customers posting, or is it dominated by posts from the brands, with customers generally addressing their replies back to the brand?  I just went to the FB page for the Gap.  I landed on a high production values spread called the 1969 Denim Studio.  No customer voice there.  Then I went to their wall.  There are 18 posts showing.  All 18 of them are from the store.  Here’s the dialog responding to the first one:

It’s not that this sort of brand marketing is bad.  It’s just that it’s not SOCIAL.  It’s missing the opportunity of providing a forum for shoppers and customers to engage with each other.  In contrast, on Sephora’s Facebook wall, two minutes ago, 26 out of 26 posts  were from members of the Sephora community.  It’s not as tidy as the Gap’s – not all the posts are positive or interesting – but the approach does produce exchanges like this:

and this:

Another another place where you can see the difference in approaches in action is the social question-and-answer applications on ecommerce sites.  If the Q&A dialog is primarily between the shopper and the store staff, that’s not social, that’s customer support.  Hey, we love good customer support as much as the next person, and if that’s the goal of Q&A, fine.  But most stores find that channels like live chat and phone/email are optimal for support, while Q&A is uniquely positioned to enable dialog between shoppers and customers.  So if the store dominates the Q&A dialog (or if the Q&A system is not built to effectively produce shopper-customer exchanges), then the store is missing all the value that a social approach can generate: the credibility (and generally positive sentiment) of truly social answers, deeper shopper engagement, and stronger bonds with past customers.

Check out the difference between the Q&A dialog here on the product page for a camera at Staples.com, where most of the dialog is with staff, and on the page for a camera at Adorama.com, where most of the dialog is social.

So as you sit down with your team to map out the next phase in your social commerce strategy, ask yourselves this: are you teaching a class when you should be hosting a party?

Ecommerce merchants began preparations for the holidays over a month ago; some even started mid-summer. To prepare for the big holiday rush that most e-tailers experience, ramping up design, development, staffing, inventory, etc. is all part of the normal prep. list. But what about social media marketing?  Do the upcoming holidays mean e-tail merchants should multiply their messaging 800%, and wrap it neatly in a holiday promotional hum-along? Try that approach, and watch customers avoid you like the winter flu. But, you can’t be blasé about it either.  Tis’ the season to ring-in the sales, and no matter what kind of sleigh you’re driving, it takes social media mouthpieces to announce the Ho-Ho-Hos.

Here are three social media marketing tips to keep in mind as you build your holiday marketing campaign:

1)     Social media marketing isn’t just about the holidays. It takes time to build a following on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, or wherever your target market is. If you don’t have anything in place by now, go ahead and start, but don’t do it just for this year’s holidays— Social marketing should happen throughout the year.

2)     Customize your messages for different channels, and avoid being repetitive with posts. While you may have spent hours writing a holiday sales blog, and want to post dozens of links to it to fans and follows, remember to at least change the text around the link each time you put it out there. Make sure to stir in a little seasonal cinnamon too. Some programs, like Tweet Deck, won’t allow duplicate Tweets anyway. Keeping it new won’t just get you new followers and more traffic, but it will keep your existing network from yawning—which is a prelude to ‘unfollowing’ or ‘defriending’ you. Also remember not to be a loner out there—and chat it up with others as you push your own messages.

3)     Ideally you want social fans to come back to your site to interact. Along with using on-site social engagement tools, like TurnTo’s best-in-breed Social Q&A product, take the time to develop custom on-site contests to encourage your fans to be ecommerce shoppers (not just social media lurkers). Check out the one-of-a-kind social media contest FastPivot recently built for ecreamery.com: http://www.fastpivot.com/social-commerce-success.html

While there are literally dozens of strategies to keep your social media marketing healthy and cranking for the holidays, it’s important to start with the basics. For many Yahoo! Store merchants, launching social means creating accounts on the top platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and adding corresponding social media buttons to your site. This part is easy and convenient– It’s keeping it up and forever optimizing that becomes the challenge. It’s also important to distinguish between the social buttons that link to your account, and those that allow your customers to click the “like” button associated with products and pages so all their social network friends can check them out too.

Visit FastPivot.com to learn more about how to best position and manage your brand on social:  http://www.fastpivot.com/social-media-packages-ecommerce.html

“In addition, [LightingShowroom.com] has integrated social hooks that fascinated me. Their “ASK others” button allows a person to direct questions to past customers about the product or to pose any kind of question to the staff or to Facebook contacts.”

Then, they brought up our Social Merchandising application which allows customers to “see what your friends bought here”:

“If this isn’t enough, they incorporated a slider on the right that displays things other clients bought and includes social hooks where you can engage in a dialog about the product purchased. It can also select from zip codes if you would like to ask local buyers what they thought…”

We love to be reminded that our work at TurnTo is having benefits for both our customers, and especially for their shoppers. Thank you to everyone at KitchenDesigns.com for the shout-out!

What’s the best online shout-out that you’ve ever given or received? Tell us in the comments below.