Innovative Social Commerce Offering Helps Leading Retailer Bring the Social Side of Fashion to the Shopping Experience on Talbots.com
AUSTIN, Texas, Jul 22, 2010—Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today announced that Talbots is using Bazaarvoice’s social commerce platform with Stories to power Pearls of Wisdom: Your Voice on Talbots.com. “Pearls of Wisdom: Your Voice” provides Talbots customers with a place to share their stories, opinions, and style—or simply play confidante. Customers are encouraged to address topics close to their hearts, including summer reading lists, embarrassing moments with moms, and their absolute worst Valentine’s Day gifts. Topics are promoted via email and Facebook, and top stories and authors are highlighted on Talbots Facebook fan page.
“The Talbots shopper is smart, stylish, and sophisticated. With Bazaarvoice Stories, our customers are encouraged to share their insights, advice, wisdom, and humor. This platform allows our customers to speak freely to us about who they are and what Talbots means to them,” said Kate Goodman, Director of E-Commerce at Talbots. “This allows us to create a broader, more relevant community by encouraging customers to share emotional experiences—within Talbots.com instead of some third-party site.”
“Pearls of Wisdom: Your Voice” also provides Talbots customers with opportunities to share their direct experiences shopping at Talbots and with the brand. Campaigns, such as the currently running ‘Great Takes: Stories about your one great Talbots piece,’ allow customers to share their real-life stories, aspirations, and expectations. As a result, Talbots can effectively increase brand involvement and interaction. In addition, Talbots can leverage the user-generated content to attract and influence new visitors to become loyal customers. Finally, the user-generated content on the Your Voice site can be used to achieve greater results from multichannel contests, campaigns, and promotions.
“Talbots is well known for classic women’s clothing and excellence in customer service. By adding the Bazaarvoice social commerce platform to its eCommerce site, the company can now build connections and community within the online shopping experience, resulting in higher conversion, decreasing returns, and increasing customer loyalty,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “These customer voices—or digital word of mouth—are an extremely powerful business driver and the basis for incredible business transformation. We’re very proud to be Talbots’ partner in leveraging the power of the social Web.”
About Talbots
Talbots is a leading specialty retailer and direct marketer of women’s classic clothing, shoes and accessories. Established in 1947, the company is known for legacy items like the perfect blazer, trustworthy trench, versatile white shirt, ballet flats and pearls, as well as its fine workmanship, gracious service and welcoming red doors. With a nod to tradition infused with modern flair, Talbots offers an array of timeless wardrobe options to flatter women of all shapes and sizes. The Company currently operates stores in 580 locations in 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. Its on-line shopping site is located at www.talbots.com.
About Bazaarvoice
Bazaarvoice’s Software as a Service (SaaS) social commerce solutions have served more than 125 billion pieces of customer-generated content on more than 850 brand web sites like Best Buy, Blue Shield of California, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, and USAA in 36 countries. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Through syndication, analytics, partnerships, and consulting, Bazaarvoice brings the voice of the customer to the center of their clients’ business strategy, proving “social” can drive measured revenue growth and cost savings for manufacturing, retail, travel, and financial services companies. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, London, Paris, Singapore, and Sydney. For more information and access to client success stories, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarvoice.com/blog, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.