Family-owned jewelry retailer James Avery experienced a 28% increase in online sales in May over the previous year after implementing the BazaarvoiceStories social commerce application.
The unique Love to Share campaign, inspired by James Avery’s “Mother’s Love” jewelry collection, invited people to share touching stories about their moms, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, and children; contributors who shared the best stories of a mother’s love were rewarded with a $1,000 gift card. During the month-long campaign, which concluded on Mother’s Day 2009, James Avery published nearly 1,000 user-generated stories and recorded nearly 30,000 visits to the Love to Share site.
“People come to James Avery to purchase special gifts for cherished loved-ones, and we wanted to allow our loyal customers to share their real-world stories about the amazing moms in their life this Mother’s Day season,” said James Avery’s Sr. Director of Marketing, John McCullough, who spearheaded the campaign. “With Bazaarvoice Stories, our customers shared nearly 1,000 heartwarming stories about a mother’s love – driving deep engagement on our site and contributing to a 28% online sales increase in May over the previous year.”
James Avery launched the Love to Share campaign on April 1, creating a special splash page on its website that invited visitors to share inspiring stories about the moms in their life and promoting popular Mother’s Day gifts such as charms, engraveable jewelry, and heart-shaped pendants. Visitors could also post photos and rate each other’s stories.
The company promoted the Love to Share page in several ways. First, the campaign was promoted via in-store signage, bag stuffers, and by sales people. Secondly, James Avery promoted the campaign by sending an email to its entire subscriber list inviting people to share stories, as well as through box stuffers in all Internet and phone order shipments. What’s more, people who submitted stories were automatically sent a follow-up email encouraging them to create an eCard with their story to send to loved ones and friends.
“James Avery has built a very successful hand-crafted jewelry business on the strength of its deep relationship with its loyal customers,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “With Bazaarvoice Stories, James Avery has proved once again that engaging directly with customers online – and allowing them to share real-world stories with one another – successfully drives sales. Bazaarvoice Stories helped the company boost annual Mother’s Day sales by 28% during one of the toughest economic times in history. Emotional stories sell.”
Bazaarvoice Stories, part of the leading Bazaarvoice software-as-a-service (SaaS) social commerce platform, allows companies to create a compelling online destination within their own site where customers and visitors share their real-life experiences related to a product, service, or brand, including how and why they purchased and what happened next. As a result, Bazaarvoice Stories helps companies effectively increase brand engagement and creates new opportunities to leverage user-generated content to attract and influence new visitors to become loyal customers.
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