Bazaarvoice is a partner of ours and has helped a number of our clients combine the power of user-generated content with email marketing. As I told a number of colleagues at the event, the real beauty of combining email marketing with ratings and reviews is that the numbers speak for themselves – according to a recent article by Mary Wagner of Internet Retailer, fifty-three percent of shoppers “prefer to see recommendations based on top ratings by other consumers” compared to only twenty percent who prefer to see best sellers. Likewise, Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research recently stated that “two in five online shoppers are partial to retail sites that offer customer ratings and reviews,” and that “tactics like adding a link to write a customer review in the order confirmation email are the new standard.”

A few high-level takeaways I gathered from the event include:

• Product review submission/confirmation emails perform exceptionally well across the board, especially when it comes to open and clickthrough rates.
• User-generated content (UGC) not only drives sales, but also functions as a product development and inventory tool for some of today’s biggest brands, including Dell and Sephora.
• While it is difficult to predict which content will become truly “viral,” marketers can help guarantee ROI by ensuring that viral campaigns are initially distributed to a large enough group of people. That way, even if the campaign is only forwarded at a 50% rate of decay, the campaign reaches close to double the size of the initial recipients — half of which were essentially sent for free.

And if you’re looking for some cool examples of our clients putting word-of-mouth marketing to good use, I’d highly recommend having a look at these links:

• Zales Love Stories – a slick micro-site dedicated to user-generated engagement and jewelry gift stories, with links to purchase online.
• Aveda Top Rated Winter Essentials – an elegant email promotion featuring top-rated products from Winter 2008 with actual reviews from real customers.
• Urban Outfitters 5-Star Reviewers – a slick email campaign highlighting the reviewers themselves (lifestyle branding using social media) in addition to their reviewed items.

With all of this being said, why wouldn’t a marketer want to elevate the customer voice and include top rated picks or UGC in their email programs?