Overview
With 76+ retail locations across Australia and New Zealand, Swimart is the country’s leading pool and spa specialist, a subsidiary of the listed company Waterco (ASX: WAT).
As a retail franchise, Swimart recognised that their customers frequently searched for the kinds of products and services they offer, and often make buying decisions based on who shows up first in search results and how well they are reviewed.
Proving the process: our pilot test
For 30 days from late August through September 2021, we ran a controlled marketing experiment alongside Swimart’s team and a small group of keen franchisees, integrating Cloutly with their point of sale software.
46% of all Google searches are local, and as a retail-first business, Swimart’s Google listings were central to its local SEO strategy. The cornerstone of local SEO is customer reviews, and that is where Cloutly came in.
Google gives enormous real estate to local business listings, weighted by three factors: relevance, distance and prominence.
By increasing the volume of reviews you drive for local listings, you improve not only your prominence but your relevance too, because Google crawls review keywords to get a better understanding of the products and services you supply.
What we hoped to demonstrate was that driving consistent Google reviews with Cloutly, even during a COVID lockdown, could measurably improve online visibility, searches, calls and maps views for local businesses. The “near me” search experience, in other words.
In just 30 days across the initial 5 pilot locations, Cloutly helped Swimart achieve:
- 90 new reviews
- Average 52% lift in calls
- Average 47% lift in Maps views
- Average 41% lift in Search views
What the reviews did
To verify how much the reviews mattered to those results, we charted Swimart’s Google reviews from 2020 to 2021 for the 5 pilot stores only. The chart below shows an upswing of 350% in like-for-like September months. The difference was using Cloutly to automate reviews.
Automating review campaigns
Cloutly’s review campaigns helped Swimart ask their customers for reviews easily, effectively and, most importantly, reliably. When a customer bought something in store and opted in to communications, Cloutly’s integration enrolled them in a multi-step review invite campaign that reached out over time by email and text.
Each step of a campaign was customised, so Swimart could use language that appealed to their customers while prompting them on what they would like to hear about, specifically.
On average, the pilot across 5 Swimart stores achieved the following messaging results in 30 days:
- 37.4% open rate
- 12.6% click-through rate
- 90 reviews
Rolling out Cloutly to all 76+ Swimart retail locations
Following the success of the 30-day pilot, Swimart began rolling out Cloutly’s review system across all 76 stores in Australia and New Zealand.
We then tracked the reviews they collected over the next 3 months against the same months of the previous year.
