Holidays are approaching and so is the buzz about the holidays approaching. Every year it seems like we’re talking about gift giving sooner than the year before. Shoppers start asking one another about what will be hot this season and how they can get their hands on it.

Toys are already selling out and that perfect gift for that special someone seems unattainable yet again this year.

What has TurnTo Found Popular Among Clients this Year?

By now, businesses have long buttoned up their plans for making this holiday season better, so brands and retailers that want to get ahead are gearing up for what’s to come post-holiday. A top priority on many of their lists is ramping up their current customer-generated content on their eCommerce sites.

Our suggestion? Let Community Q&A work for you!

41% of shoppers prefer to receive answers from a customer who has already purchased the product.

Shoppers feel more confident in their buying decisions after asking their peers for the answers. Customers provide more influential answers to shopper queries than brand experts ever can—they’ve spent their money purchasing a product and have a personal experience to relate, as opposed to someone who is perceived as “on the side of” the seller and can only tell you the facts. Although shoppers often have specific questions about a product, they’re more trusting of the subjective details that only a previous customer can provide.

The proof is in the numbers…

TurnTo’s current customers can attest that social answers using Community Q&A have yielded incredible conversion results.

Jeff Kitchen, Online Community Manager from Crutchfield says, “On average, 85% of questions sent to past customers received at least one social answer and most received 3 or more!”

Customers are happy to give their opinion on a product and shoppers are genuinely interested in the answers

People who ask questions are 25x more likely to purchase

Scott Ekman of Rockler Woodworking has found the most compelling part of using Community Q&A is not that “askers” are more likely to buy—these customers are already highly engaged—but it’s the data he’s found amongst the customers who answer shopper questions.

“People who answer questions for shoppers are 8 to 10 times more likely to purchase again. In fact, we generate nearly 100 orders per month from people who bought something after getting an email to answer a question,” Scott says.

Those customers that are willing to answer a question for a shopper are actively engaged with the site community. When they’re reminded of their good experience within that community, they’re encouraged to go back to the site and often make another purchase.

In Scott’s case, these customers are sharing their DIY projects and become inspired by the questions they’ve answered to keep creating—often using more supplies or tools from Rockler.

Regardless of the reason why the answerers end up buying something else, it’s remarkable that sending questions to previous buyers can make such a huge impact in turning them into repeat customers.

Active Outreach Model

Only TurnTo Q&A provides unmatched features to maximize the number and speed of answers, like language filtering and automatic routing to accelerate moderation. Advanced logic ensures questions are sent to the right people, and that a customer isn’t pestered by too many questions. Similar item groupings increase owner pools and distribute content accordingly. Clients can even send their customers multi-item questions then display the best answers on their site.

TurnTo retains content on clients’ sites which powers the search feature. Shoppers can use the search functionality in reviews with question, and if a similar question has already been asked, or if their question appears in a seller’s FAQ or knowledgebase, the answer is displayed instantly. This way they can discover their answers quicker and move on to their purchase with that hurdle removed. TurnTo is the only reviews platform that provides this unique ability inside of the review widget.

To start strategizing today about your post-holiday plans, give us a shout! We’ll walk you through it.

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