Social Commerce Summit '09

Your Social Commerce strategy should evolve through four simple phases:

• Get Contributors
• Get Content
• Get more from Content / Data
• Get more from Contributors

Each phase holds an untapped well of value for your organization, including sales, margin, customer loyalty, and cost reduction. The key to unlocking this value requires new levels of organizational openness and innovation. It will require you to balance doses of operational and cultural strategies foreign to many of your managers, colleagues and employees. In this session, Sam Decker will discuss these four phases, how to unlock value from them, and achieve the new ROI…Return on Influentials.

Dell has over two billion customer interactions each year. Erin Nelson, CMO of Dell, will discuss how Dell listens, learns and communicates with its customers via social media and how Dell is empowering its customers to share their stories via ratings and reviews, ideas and technical solutions. You’ll hear how social media is organized, measured and, most importantly, what could be of interest to your company in the journey to enable customers to walk the hallways of your company.

A key measure of success for social commerce is the level of contribution you can get you’re your customers. How do you garner helpful, meaningful contributions from your customers? What are the best ways to encourage honest, useful feedback – both positive and negative? eBags led user-generated reviews before most retailers did, and Sean O'Driscoll reveals the secrets learned from years of customer interaction with Microsoft’s “MVP” program.

UGC has evolved beyond reviews with the advent and widespread adoption of Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer and Stories. This new realm of content brings boundless opportunities, and PETCO, a social commerce pioneer, has succeeded quickly with these new technologies. See how they implement, capture, amplify, and measurably benefit from community Q&A and shared experiences.

User-generated content: It’s not just for retail anymore. As the transparent, authentic voice of the customer permeates online sites, manufacturers are taking charge by capturing their own customer content and amplifying it to retailers. Retailers are partnering with manufacturers to improve and merchandise products, with UGC providing actionable data that helps retailers, manufacturers – and ultimately consumers – have the best shopping experience possible. This session explores how user-generated content is helping manufacturers and retailers speak a whole new language together.

Helzberg quickly took a 360-degree approach to using customer input across all their marketing channels – on store signage, in email, on the pages of its catalogs, and even in their jewelry cases. MobileVoice even enables consumers to get reviews in the palms of their hands! See how retailers amplify trustworthy consumer content throughout the channel. You’ll leave with innovative ideas you can use immediately.

Now that social media are more mainstream than ever, how do you systemically combine traditional and social marketing efforts? Social marketing impacts and changes CRM, media planning, user experiences, and branding – connect these and discover your marketing superpowers. This group of experienced agency leaders share their adventures in bringing social efforts to traditional marketing efforts.

Even as social networks, instant messaging, and texting grow in popularity, email is still the Web’s original “killer app.” The addition of email to your Social Commerce strategy can multiply your ROI overnight. Bazaarvoice’s most successful clients effectively leverage email to keep their most influential customers (and most prolific UGC contributors) highly engaged. In this session, Responsys, a Bazaarvoice strategic partner, and JC Whitney, a Bazaarvoice and Responsys customer, will present email marketing case studies and tactics that help you maximize UGC contribution, drive return traffic and sales to your website, and increase shopper loyalty and satisfaction through closed loop email messages.

Traditional and word of mouth marketing have often been presented as irreconcilable. But given that word of mouth recommendations drive product choice across categories, marketers need to find ways to drive positive word of mouth—in ways that scale. The presentation will offer new data and strategies from The New York Times Customer Insight Group, helping marketers find ways to increase the impact of their marketing investments.

2009 has brought a whole new set of challenges and opportunities, and Bazaarvoice continues to innovate to keep you on the cutting edge of consumer-generated content that drives business. Take a front row seat as we discuss what’s new, what’s next for social commerce – and chime in on what’s most important to you. Our product management and development teams will lead this discussion where you will…

• Experience new and future products, services, and features
• Understand how we innovate, relating to our vision
• Check out how your feedback and responses have and continue to drive product innovation
• Present your own product ideas and service suggestions!