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Garnet Hill Exemplifies Best of Holiday 2011 Marketing Strategies: Authentic, Customer-Focused, and Data-Driven

In this changing retail environment, Bazaarvoice today spotlighted Garnet Hill for its innovative, customer-focused holiday marketing strategies using Bazaarvoice for ratings and reviews. The clothing and home decor retailer, who is known for unique, original designs, has retooled almost every aspect of its holiday shopping experience to incorporate authentic opinions and testimonials from brand advocates and holiday shoppers. The holistic effort extends from catalogs and interactive Give Guides through the brand's Facebook and Twitter presences, and includes a long-term strategy to act on conversations and social data to drive true change.

"Garnet Hill has and always will be a customer driven business," said Betty Moody, Vice President of Customer Satisfaction at Garnet Hill. "We thrive on customer feedback and do everything we can to turn our customers into brand advocates. Their opinions are our most powerful marketing - especially around the holiday when gift-buyers rely on the experiences of people who have used our products."

Garnet Hill Holiday Innovations with Bazaarvoice

With a strong history in catalogs, Garnet Hill knows how to create the copy and images that grab customers' attention and create desire. This holiday, Garnet Hill is combining its incredible merchandising expertise with authentic customer opinions, experiences, and comments to create Voice of the Customer marketing messages that get real attention and stand out from the pack in every channel:

• Garnet Hill has reworked its popular interactive Give Guides around the customer voice, using product reviews to help guide merchandisers in selecting the right products to feature in each category. Shoppers can simply click through the interactive Guide, promoted through both email and the retailer's Facebook page, for customer feedback that helps them find the right present for the people on their holiday lists.
• Garnet Hill is also enhancing its Facebook page with a totally new holiday product category within its Facebook Store, created around its top contributor, who has posted nearly 100 reviews to date. Garnet Hill also posts customer content to Twitter and Facebook, and introduced a Facebook photo album that showcases some of their top-rated gift ideas.
• Product feedback along with the contributor's location is included in the company catalog as well as top-rated gift emails that go out to the entire Garnet Hill list - and is incorporated in several other holiday promotions and deal notices.
• Nearly every category on the site - from Bedding & Home to Children's apparel - has its own top-rated section that is constantly refreshed with cool products rated 4.5 stars or higher.

Turning Data Into Doing - Through the New Year and All Year Long

Garnet Hill is also using social data, collected through Bazaarvoice, to proactively surface customer insights to improve its products and its business. Information on low-rated products is communicated across the organization, and the customer service team is tasked with reaching out to customers who provide low ratings in order to understand their concerns and reinforce the retailer's commitment to quality. Reviews also provide Garnet Hill with an early warning system for product and marketing copy flaws, allowing the company to resolve issues quickly and continuing its long history of building the Garnet Hill brand around customer feedback.

"Garnet Hill is known for its tremendous customer-centricity, and Bazaarvoice is helping the company keep this brand promise in the face of changing consumer expectations," said Erin Nelson, CMO of Bazaarvoice. "Its approach to marketing and merchandising - and their embrace of social data - offers important lessons for any brand that wants to stand out and compete in the new marketplace. Garnet Hill shows where retail is headed and the tremendous opportunities for new approaches in 2012."

Additional Resources

• Bazaarvoice data study on Holiday 2011 impression of user-generated content and mobile shopping can be found here
• Follow @Bazaarvoice on Twitter or visit www.bazaarvoice.com
• Follow @GarnetHill on Twitter or visit www.facebook.com/GarnetHill and www.garnethill.com

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice's Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions have powered more than 260 billion customer conversations on brand web sites like Best Buy, Blue Shield of California, Costco, Dell, Macy's, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, and USAA. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Through syndication, analytics, partnerships, and consulting, Bazaarvoice brings the voice of the customer to the center of their clients' business strategy, proving "social" can drive measured revenue growth and cost savings for manufacturing, retail, travel, and financial services companies. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in Amsterdam, London, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, and Sydney. For more information and access to client success stories, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarvoice.com/blog, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.

About Garnet Hill

Renowned for superior quality, fine fibers and original design, Garnet Hill has provided distinctive merchandise and services of the highest caliber for over 30 years. The company began as an importer of English flannel sheets and has grown into a distinguished brand and multichannel marketer, offering unique bedding, home furnishings, sleepwear, shoes, women's apparel and children's clothing online and in its catalogs. Garnet Hill searches the world for exceptional items and inspiration for its extensive line of exclusive products. For more information, visit garnethill.com.

for Bazaarvoice
Emily Brady, 650-692-6107
emily@bradypr.com