Using the power of reviews for good

About three years ago the world went ratings and reviews mad. It was the number-one website must-have and we couldn’t keep up with news of online retailers installing third-party reviews software on their websites or developing their own ratings systems.

Reviews hit the headlines again recently, with news of people trolling reviews sites like Tripadvisor intentionally leaving unfounded negative comments. But despite being in the news for all the wrong reasons, reviews can still be a force for good.

It’s widely accepted that consumers trust other people’s reviews, and for many online retailers, the content is already there, so why haven’t more direct sellers made use of the feedback in their offline marketing?

Muddy Puddles, a catalogue of outdoor clothing for children, is on what seems to be a very short list of cataloguers using their online products reviews in their direct mail. And I’m scratching my head as to why.

At Muddy Puddles, the company uses its online user-generated content in the form of testimonials: “Cosy and well designed. Perfect for playing in the snow and skiing”, says one customer of the Performance Mitt; “The fleece is so beautifully soft and snuggly, my son wants to wear it all the time”, says another of the Hooded Fleece. To validate the claims, Muddy Puddles publishes a logo of Feefo, the independent reviews system it uses, with its 99 percent service rating.

Industrial equipment catalogue Slingsby also uses Feefo to gather customer feedback online, and featured a spread of reviewed products on its Work It magalogue, while businesswear cataloguer/retailer Charles Tyrwhitt, which I know also uses the same provider, uses testimonials from satisfied customers in its catalogues, but doesn’t necessarily attribute them to the online reviews system.

In my opinion, cataloguers can leverage reviews to be even more practical than that. People read reviews because they are looking for advice on whether the product will meet their needs. To put this in context, I need a new hairbrush, but the one I have been buying at the Body Shop since I was 16 years old, is no longer on sale. The brush in its place is not quite the same: “I thought this was the same as my lovely old one with smooth pins--please bring those back”, pleads one customer on the Body Shop’s website. Another two-star review says the brush didn’t suit her thick curly hair. These two reviews led me to go back and look at a different brush, which had a higher customer rating and lots of praise on its detangling prowess. That’s the one that got the sale.

So how about incorporating advice from online reviews in your catalogues to guide customers to right purchase? For example, apparel cataloguers could use reviews that advise on size: “Sizes quite large, so if you’re in-between sizes, order the smaller one…” Or a for homewares title, a review that can be used to cross-sell an item: “I was devastated when the Classic Bath Towels were discontinued, but the Royale range makes a fabulous alternative.”

Another tactic is a twist on an old favourite. I flicked through a dozen or so catalogues while writing this blog and found lots that spotlighted their best selling products but none that gave the products a rating—how about, next to one of your best-selling lines, adding a relevant five-star review, or even just a five-star graphic to draw the eye?

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is that by carefully selecting your online reviews for use in your offline material, you’re putting user-generated content firmly back under your control.--MT

Slingsby magalogue works it

By now we’re all familiar with the magalogue format. Part magazine, part catalogue, the magalogue’s aim is to sell through engagement. As Sean King, chief executive of customer publishing agency Seven Squared once told me, “owning your own media—magazines, websites, blogs, Twitter feeds—is an effective way of reaching and engaging with customers, existing and potential,” something a catalogue alone cannot do.

By that token, there is no reason why a magalogue should be the preserve of consumer brands. DIY giant Kingfisher, for example, launched a customer magazine in January called Trade Talk. The publication, created by John Brown, is distributed to customers via Screwfix's trade counters and at TradePoint counters within B&Q’s stores.

Most recently I received a copy of Slingsby’s Work-it magalogue. Landing on my desk in April, Work-it combines the workplace equipment provider’s seasonal items, including spring cleaning items and outdoor equipment, with features and news articles.
Slingsby says it will produce the 64-page publication twice a year and feature supplier and customer interviews, buying guides, tips, ideas, news articles and, of course, product. The first issue contains six interviews, special offers, competitions, product reviews, and health and safety advice. According to Lee Wright, Slingsby’s marketing director, the first issue was circulated to a wide range of customers across a variety of industries. So far, he says, “response has been fantastic and we are delighted with the feedback we have received.”

Creating editorial content is much more than including a competition or publishing a recipe, something Slingsby seems to appreciate. It appears to have worked hard to create a publication that warrants a second and third flick-through. There are tips on site maintenance, a case study on Slingsby customer and engineering firm WFEL and an interview with the chief executive of the British Institute of Facilities Management. My favourite feature was the “To-do board”. Designed to look like a cork noticeboard, the spread on pages 24 to 25 has tips on the most important jobs of the season—pest control, road maintenance, outdoor furniture, and drains maintenance. A handy reminder for readers, it’s also a perfect way to showcase commodity products that customers may not have associated Slingsby with. I also liked the feature on health and safety in the workplace detailing all the regulations with which businesses must comply—a feature that can be kept for future reference.

Work-it is a very comprehensive magalogue, with plenty going for it but there are also improvements to be made. Slingsby uses Feefo to gather customer feedback online, and featured a spread of reviewed products. I would have liked more to be made of this as the idea seemed a little half-baked. For example, for the £97.05 air cooler, the Work-it magalogue included 103 words of descriptive copy, compared with only 11 words of customer review. For the next edition, I’d like to see Slingsby print the entire customer review. After all, it’s commonly accepted that people trust other people’s opinions more than they trust sales copy. I would also like more “good, better, best” features. Slingsby included a “compare it” column on the same spread as the feedback, which in my opinion could be much improved and used more often throughout the publication. I’d like to see real-life examples as to why a particular item costs £200 more than a similar model and some pros and cons so that users can make a truly informed choice.

Evidently, this is an ideal vehicle for Slingsby to demonstrate its expertise in facilities management. And if it can work for that sector, it could work for any business-to-business merchant. There’s plenty of scope for an educational supplies cataloguer, for example, to produce a magalogue with the latest on the curriculum, interviews with recognised professionals in the sector, and ideas on “back to school”. A supplier of hair and beauty products to salons could use the format to create seasonal magalogues, such as hair and beauty at wedding season, or a summer special with advice on tanning or waxing. An IT products supplier has the potential to feature hints, tips and tricks of the trade to get the most out of the hardware it sells, plus expert advice and how-tos for specific IT projects--the opportunities are surely endless. I look forward to seeing all your magalogues very soon.--MT

April Catalogue Log

Catalogue volume took a dive in April. The Catalogue Log tracked 83 catalogues last month, compared with 140 in March and 104 in February. I suspect the three bank holidays in April had something to do with it.

Nevertheless, the good news is that volume was almost double what we tracked in April 2009—when we logged a mere 42 catalogues—and more or less in line with April 2010, which recorded 96 catalogues.

The continuing trend for catalogues to feature more promotional front covers was evident in April. More than a third of catalogue covers promoted some sort of sale or discount. Although this was significantly lower than March and April, the figure is higher than we recorded in previous years—34.9 percent compared with 29.2 percent in April 2010 and 30 percent in April 2009. Among those using discounts to woo customers were apparel retailer Crew Clothing, which gave us 20 percent off everything, and vitamins and supplements mailer Higher Nature, which offered us 15 percent off our next order.

Free delivery was also marginally more popular in April 2011 than it was last year, with almost a fifth, or 16 catalogues, touting free shipping on the cover. Business-to-business marketers Staples Direct, Rajapack and Ironmongery Direct all offered their customers free next-day delivery. On the consumer side, clothing catalogues Hush and Pure Collection were among those to offer free delivery coupled with free returns.

Last month we also noted that 16.9 percent of catalogue covers offered a free gift with purchase. This is an appreciable increase on March, when only 10.7 percent of covers did so. Again, it was mostly offered by gardening and b-to-b catalogues, but we also saw sporting guns and shooting accessories cataloguer William Powell and apparel catalogue La Redoute use the tactic to encourage sales and/or higher average order values.

We noticed a trend for more magalogue-style mailings too. We’re getting quite accustomed to picking up customer magazines from merchants that have store networks, for example M&Co, New Look, Office or B&Q. Less common, as far as the Catalogue Log is concerned, is a b-to-b customer magazine. I think the reason we may not receive many b-to-b magalogues is that they are predominantly used as retention rather than acquisition tools. Because we’re less likely to purchase, say, building supplies on a regular basis, we probably don’t qualify to receive such a mailing. That said, we did receive a magalogue from industrial and commercial equipment cataloguer Slingsby in April.

The 64-page, glossy, perfect-bound magalogue titled Work-it features articles on health and safety in the workplace, a day in the life of one of its key staff, as well as product news and money-off vouchers. A more thorough review of the magalogue will be featured in an upcoming blog post. We’d love to know what Slingsby’s ROI is on the publication, because it’s certainly a great idea. Our favourite feature is the “To-do board”—but more on this later. --MT

January Catalogue Log

After receiving just 62 catalogues in December, it was somewhat of a relief (except for the poor soul who has to file all the catalogues away) that volume heralding the new year was back to a more respectable 131 catalogues. That’s just nine catalogues fewer than received in November, but still lags far behind the 184 catalogues we received and logged in October. And that’s despite the country almost being brought to a standstill by the snow and ice in the first few days of 2010.

Apropos the weather, of the catalogues we received in January, business-to-business merchants Slingsby and Seton get kudos for making the most out of the “big freeze”. While the rest of us struggled to make it into work due to heavy snowfall and ice, Seton and Slingsby had put together catalogues to promote de-icing equipment and grit bins. But back to the stats.

Less than a third of the catalogues we received in January made no mention of special offers on their covers. As expected, from the month traditionally associated with retail sales, the number of catalogues offering a sale or discount was high, with 57, or 43.5 percent, of the catalogues we tallied promoting a price-related special offer. That’s 8.1 percent more than we received in January 2009. Yet, it wasn’t the highest number of sales and discounts recorded since we began compiling the Catalogue Log. That honour goes to August 2009, with 43.7 percent of the catalogues logged offering price promotions. The next highest number of discounts was recorded in May (42.6 percent).

Among the offers we received, we liked Catering Warehouse’s effort in creating a recommend-a-friend scheme. Although the incentive is small--£10 credit to customers’ accounts when they recommend the company to others—it shows the company is thinking outside the box and employing consumer marketing techniques to attract business customers.

Free delivery was also a more popular offer than it had been in November and December, with 28 catalogues (21.4 percent) advertising it on their front covers or covering letters in January. In fact, the figure was second only to October 2009, when we logged 21.7 percent of catalogues offering conditional or unconditional free delivery.

In December we logged just 6.5 percent of catalogues offering a free gift; in January that figure more than doubled. We calculated that 23 catalogues, or 17.6 percent, offered a free gift with purchase. It was the second-highest figure since we started recording incoming catalogues--a marginal second to June’s 17.8 percent.—MT

Swine flu as marketing opportunity?

Rob Lake, a retail specialist and blogger for Australia's Business Spectator website, writes that if the swine flu pandemic turns out to be as severe as some fear, bricks-and-mortar retailers will be especially hard hit: "Shopping will involve far too great a risk of infection for many people. Mexican retailers are reporting deserted stores and restaurants already. Starbucks has closed 10 Mexico City stores."

This in turn could be a silver lining of sorts for cataloguers and online merchants. "Online retailing may have the opportunity to boom, provided capacity can grow fast enough. Fulfilment logistics will be stretched to breaking point. The companies that can expand their online capacity at short notice will do best," Lake continues.

No-one likes to profit from the misfortune of others, of course. (Or if they do, they certainly pretend otherwise.) So I doubt we'll be seeing marketing emails along the lines of "Don't risk your life by venturing out to the high street for a new pair of shoes! Order from the comfort of your home at http://www.shoesfromfearmongers.co.uk/" or "Since going out is too dangerous, you need some entertainment delivered to your door. Here's a selection of books and CDs we'll ship to you, picked and packed by workers in surgical masks and rubber gloves".

But Slingsby, a cataloguer of office and warehouse supplies, has found a way to take advantage of the swine flu in its marketing. "Safeguard your employee's [sic] health and reduce the risk of cross contamination and infection in your workplace," declares the headline of an email received on Monday. Below are links to hand sanitisers, cleaning fluids, and the like.

Slingsby is no stranger to using fear as a sales tool; see an earlier post, "Scare tactic of the week". And because its current email is circumspect--swine flu and pandemic don't appear at all in the message--it manages not to come across as unduly opportunist. I don't know if marketers of many other types of products could pull off the same trick.--SC

Scare tactic of the week

In a recession, desire isn't necessarily the best driver of sales. For sellers of workplace supplies, that's especially true. But fear is always a great motivator. Hence this email from Slingsby. "It's time to secure the premises," declares the headline. The copy proceeds to cite dire predictions of an increase in theft due to the worsening economy. What's a business to do? Why, buy security systems, cages, and cashboxes from Slingsby, of course. Who says the downturn is bad for everyone's business?--SC