PETCO Boosts Sales With Innovative Valentine’s Day Promotion Supported by Bazaarvoice ReStyle

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today announced that PETCO achieved extremely positive results from a recent multichannel marketing campaign that encouraged users to create ratings and reviews on products they buy for their beloved pets. The Valentine’s Day promotion offered reviewers the chance to win a $500 PETCO shopping spree and resulted in a tenfold increase in average daily review volume, a 19% site-wide conversion lift, and a 300% increase in revenue per contest participant.

“People love their pets – and they love to share their opinions on which products are best for their favorite animals,” said John Lazarchic, vice president of eCommerce at PETCO. “Our highly successful Valentine’s Day multichannel marketing campaign far exceeded our expectations. We were thrilled to see our review volume skyrocket during the promotion, helping our customers make better, more informed purchase decisions and dramatically boosting site-wide conversion!”

PETCO worked hand-in-hand with their Bazaarvoice Community Manager to maximize the impact of the promotion, which ran from January 18 through February 14, 2008. Following Bazaarvoice best practices for multichannel marketing, the contest was promoted through packing slips, Sunday circulars, and the PETCO home page. All contest participants were directed to a splash page at www.petco.com/love that featured a special Valentine’s Day message encouraging them to submit reviews of the products their pets love.

Bazaarvoice supported the promotion through their new ReStyle functionality that allows clients to customize how reviews are displayed and to seamlessly switch back and forth between different display formats at set times. Using this new capability, PETCO changed its standard “5-paws” ratings display to a “5-hearts” display for Valentine’s Day. This “5-hearts” ratings display enabled PETCO to synchronize its Valentine’s Day campaign with imagery used in other PETCO marketing materials such as packing materials, newspaper circulars, and the Petfinder.com customer newsletter.

“PETCO’s innovative Valentine’s Day promotion is an exceptional example of Bazaarvoice’s dedication to our clients’ success through personalized support for unique product implementations,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “The ability to provide a more flexible and dynamic ratings display was a high priority customer request, so we included this functionality as part of Bazaarvoice’s seven-week product development and enhancement cycle. We’re thrilled that PETCO achieved such staggering results as a 300% lift in revenue-per-contestant and a 19% overall lift in conversion with this promotion, and we look forward to working hand-in-hand with them to launch even more successful campaigns.”

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice offers outsourced technology, services, analytics, and expertise to help companies enhance the online shopping experience with social commerce applications that drive sales. Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews and Ask & Answer™ deliver immediate success by minimizing implementation risk and maximizing the strategic impact of user-generated review content through complete customization, deep integration, community management, advanced analytics, search engine optimization, and syndication across the Web and to offline channels.

Bazaarvoice was named to the 2007 Red Herring Global 100 and 2006 Red Herring Top 100 lists and received the 2006 ClickZ Marketing Innovation of the Year award. Bazaarvoice currently serves over 180 eCommerce leaders including Bass Pro Shops, Dell, Macy’s, Office Depot, Inc., Overstock.com, PETCO, QVC, Sears, and ZipRealty. The company has headquarters in Austin, TX and offices in London, UK. For more information, please visit the company’s Web site at www.bazaarvoice.com or email info@bazaarvoice.com.