McPherson's sees a 20% review volume lift with Bazaarvoice Sampling

McPherson’s Consumer Products has been around since the 1860s and is a leading supplier of health, wellness, beauty, household, and personal care products throughout Australasia. They own well known household brands such as Manicare, Dr. LeWinn’s, Lady Jayne, Swisspers, A’kin, Multix and many more.

The brand is predominantly a B2B manufacturer servicing about 10,000 retail outlets, including supermarkets, discount department stores, department stores, and pharmacies.

About five years ago, McPherson’s decided to develop an e-commerce platform for their products and knew that a good ratings and reviews program would be the key to its success.

“One of our main goals was to be able to get ratings and reviews and syndicate them to our retailers,” said Sharon Bottaro, Head of Digital at McPherson’s. “That’s a really important part of the process.”

Getting the word out about McPherson’s products

McPherson’s wanted ratings and reviews to be part of their e-commerce site because they understand user-generated content’s (UGC) role in the customer journey.

“The value of our website is that it’s providing more information to customers,” said Bottaro. “We believe that the ratings and reviews are providing confidence for people to complete their path to purchase.”

McPherson’s decided to partner with Bazaarvoice to implement ratings and reviews because of our syndication abilities.

“People are not just purchasing on our own e-commerce sites. They are also purchasing in-store and on the sites of our retailers, so being able to get those reviews out to more places is exceptionally important.” said Bottaro.

Building customer confidence through product sampling

Once Bazaarvoice Ratings and Reviews were up and running on McPherson’s site, they wanted to get even more out of the platform. They needed a way to generate reviews and create buzz before new product launches. Enter Bazaarvoice’s sampling programs.

They started with a face massager from Manicare called Nova Fit, which had a higher price point than Manicare’s other products. McPherson’s chose to send the product to customers who were already familiar with and engaged with the Manicare brand. Before sending out samples, they sent potential reviewers a questionnaire to scope out their writing skills and determine if they’d be a good review writer for the product.

“We knew that we needed to really build that consumer confidence in order to generate the sales and successfully launch into this new space. So that was one of the catalysts to actually start running these sampling programs,” said Bottaro.

Improved insights, more reviews, and better brand partnerships

Today, McPherson’s has two sampling campaigns live at any one time. They’ve found that 20% of new reviews for their products come from sampling campaigns.

“A lot of our brands are knocking on our door at the moment wanting to do these sample campaigns with the team here,” said Bottaro. “They’re definitely all seeing the value in it now, which is fantastic.”

McPherson’s uses the insights they gain from ratings and reviews to improve their product lines.

“If we’re getting negative feedback about a product, if we’re getting some really great feedback, or if we hear that some particular ingredient in a product is exceptionally popular, then we can develop a strategy around that,” said Bottaro.

For example, McPherson’s had been receiving a lot of reviews for a pair of sandals that only came in beige and black. Through Bazaarvoice Insights, the team learned that customers loved the sandals and wanted more colors, so they released a rose gold shade that has been extremely popular among shoppers.

They also use quotes from reviews in marketing materials, like landing pages and social media, for maximum impact.

As far as syndication, McPherson’s has been successful in syndicating reviews to their brands and retail partners.

“We’re working really closely with them. They know that we’re doing work to build reviews, and they’re getting the benefit of those reviews in terms of engagement and sales,” said Bottaro.

Use product sampling to generate Ratings and Reviews and create buzz for new product launches. Get started here.