T2 sees a 75% conversion increase from user-generated content

In the past year, more traditional sampling (in-store or in-person) hasn’t been possible. Brands like T2 have had to find another way to help customers make confident buying decisions about products they physically couldn’t taste. How did they do it? With a comprehensive user-generated content (UGC) program that amplifies the voices of their advocates from social media.

“Our aim is to create a community of tea lovers,” said Sally Lennox, head of digital at T2. “UGC is a way for us to embrace our customers by hearing their unique perspectives and displaying that word-of-mouth content on our digital screens. It provides such powerful social proof when customers can see that others are loving our products.”

Putting the product in the hands of the right customers

T2 was founded in 1996 with the goal of turning the traditional art of brewing tea on its head. Their first store opened in Melbourne 25 years ago, and in 2013, the brand was acquired by Unilever and expanded internationally. T2 now has physical stores in 5 countries and customers worldwide can’t get enough of their tea. In 2020, the brand launched a new limited edition tea. But, with their physical stores all over the world closed due to COVID-19, customers couldn’t sample this new product.

The brand understood that there was a hesitation among customers to try something new that no one was talking about yet. So, they came up with a way to get the latest tea to their most loyal customers, like top review contributors and members of their loyalty program.

“We saw an immediate increase in reviews just after products went live. That gave other customers confidence to buy the new teas.” said Lennox.

What’s next? The brand is looking to expand this sampling strategy to engage community members of the Bazaarvoice Influenster community.

“The idea of getting the products into the hands of people who have the ability to share their voice with many others is a really powerful tool for us and something we plan to leverage further,” said Lennox.

Seeing is believing

T2 products are sensationally stylish and well-loved, which results in a ton of amazing content being shared on social media. T2 celebrates its fans by capturing and posting customer social images on its home and product pages using Bazaarvoice Galleries. Seeing visual content from Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest helps to build customer confidence. That’s why T2 sees conversion rate increases by up to 75% when visitors interact with images displayed in galleries. T2 has also implemented Bazaarvoice Like2Buy, making Instagram shoppable and driving traffic to its website too.

Amplifying the voice of the customer across all channels

T2 took advantage of customer-created content from social media. The brand not only used social content and images on its product pages, but they also displayed them on digital screens in-store, hero banners on their website, and incorporated customer quotes into their email campaigns.

“We’re really proud of the amplification of our reviews,” said Lennox. “This has all been very successful for us and is an always-on program. We can draw on this content consistently.”

Harnessing insights for future

Besides giving them ample content for their website and marketing materials, reviews also gave T2 actionable insights. For example, they found that while people were trying the new teas and writing reviews, they expressed that they missed one of the brand’s older, discontinued teas. After reading these customer comments, the brand decided to bring that tea back.

While T2 has internal strategies to handle quality concerns or issues, reviews have given them a wealth of firsthand information straight from the customers’ mouths, letting them identify trends and problems.

Since implementing their UGC strategy with Bazaarvoice, the brand has achieved the following results:

• Its Australian site has seen a 75% increase in conversions and a significant increase in revenue per visitor.
• Its U.S. site has seen a 174% increase in conversions and a significant increase in revenue per visitor.
• Its European site has seen a 77% increase in conversions and a significant increase in revenue per visitor.

“Being able to showcase our customers’ views of our products on our website is something we’re really looking forward to doing more of in the near future. It’s exciting to see what customers are willing to share with us,” said Lennox.