The people at eSpares, the UK’s largest electrical appliance spare parts retailer, today sent me a link via Twitter to a post about them on the blog of Bazaarvoice (isn’t social networking great for bloggers and journalists?).
It’s about an email campaign that integrated community-generated content (integration of email and social media marketing), and it paid off!
Now what did they do?
The online retailer sent an email newsletter on 20 November 2009.
The subject line said “The most annoying dishwasher faults and how to fix them” (nothing for me, I don’t know the difference between a screwdriver and a pair of scissors).
The purpose of the email: drive traffic to eSpares’ Advice Centre where people can find all kinds of useful DIY tips, if I get it right, including articles and videos.
In the newsletter one product was featured: some kind of detergent remover.
Customer reviews link in email: 488% more click-throughs and 2.5 times more revenue
The email contained two call to action links regarding the product (there were more links in the email of course, but we’re talking about the links for this one product, are you with me?). There was a “buy now” button and a “read reviews” button.
Now, here it comes: the “read reviews” link in the email outperformed all other links the email contained, and I mean all: text-based links, the “buy now” button, etc.
eSpares noted that the “customer reviews” link delivered 488% more click-throughs than the “buy now” button and the reviews link delivered more than 2.5 times the orders and revenue than the buy now link did (!).
A very interesting example of how including (links to) user-generated content (customer reviews in this case) can have great effects.
Read all about the case on the blog of Bazaarvoice.
Great job, I’d say!
Update: this morning I was thinking about this case. In fact, the beauty of it lies in the simplicity. Yes, you can integrate user reviews in the emails themselves. But adding a simple link shows great results too. It’s a simple yet effective way of linking user-generated content and email marketing. Furthermore, it’s not complex to track the whole thing if you have the necessary skills (as you should) to measure what happens after the click. But what’s most interesting thing, according to me, is that this case shows how you can easily use the fact that customers seek peer reviews prior to buying, by offering them the possibility to read them with one link. The result? Sales! It’s word of mouth, user-generated content, recommendation, sharing and email marketing with just one simple link.
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