Beverage Flavor Pioneer, Torani, Finds the Right Ratings & Reviews Formula with PowerReviews
Torani has grown an average of 20 percent year-over-year for the last three decades, transforming from a family-owned local business to a category-defining market leader.
With the advent of the Covid pandemic and work-from-home orders, Torani saw tremendous growth in online sales and in its direct-to-consumer business. Additionally, it saw growth in user-generated content.
“People were at home recreating drinks they previously ordered at their favorite restaurant or coffee house, and they were very active on social media showing off their creations,” said Dana Amaku, Torani’s Ecommerce Marketing Manager. “Our social channels were chock full of customers posting images and testimonials.”
Torani's Recipe for Success: Over 35,000 Reviews Collected and Counting
Amaku explains the company’s ratings & reviews program, powered by PowerReviews, has given Torani a simple vehicle for customers to tap into this type of sentiment, which in turn provides other consumers added confidence to try its products.
To date, the company has curated more than 35,000 reviews, with an average star rating of 4.7 stars — far exceeding the industry benchmark for the food and beverage category.
PowerReviews Analytics Enables Multiple Teams at Torani to Do More with UGC
PowerReviews analytics and reporting tools make it easy for multiple teams to benefit from UGC. Customer feedback from reviews is used extensively to guide Torani’s Customer Experience team as well as their product development, sales, and marketing efforts.
Additionally, their Research & Development group uses the feedback to understand how customers are responding to its flavors and other requests. “Being able to understand the voice of the customer, across channels, and all from one application is very convenient,” said Amaku.
Brand Health Benchmarking Brings Customer Insights into Focus
Torani uses PowerReviews’ Brand Health Benchmarking to analyze customer sentiment across the internet, scraping ecommerce sites, marketplaces, and categories to understand performance against their competitors. Amaku says this is particularly beneficial for Torani to gauge customer sentiment for sales through Amazon. “It’s clunky to try to get this information from Amazon, but with PowerReviews’ benchmarking we can easily see how we are faring versus our competitors,” added Amaku.
“We have found the Brand Health Benchmarking tool to be a powerful resource to understand customer sentiment and key word trending in a visual format. This is super helpful especially when communicating to other groups outside of the Ecommerce team,” she said.
“For example, our food scientists and retail analysts can see how the product is performing across retail stores, our direct-to-consumer channel, and in our business-to-business and business-to-consumer online channels. And we can see how syndicated reviews are playing a role in driving sales within our partner organizations.”
Targeting Gen Z and Millennial Consumers with First Digital-First Product Launch
Torani is currently the number one coffee syrup brand at retail in the United States, with a 90 percent market share. Building on the brand’s familiarity, the company recently branched out with a new and exciting product category to add beverage variety and pizazz – its Puremade Squeeze Liquid Water Enhancer.
The Puremade Squeeze product would be distinguished from other water enhancers on the market via its “subtly sweet” flavor profile with no artificial ingredients and a hint of fruit flavor.
“Flavor-on-the-go in water was a trend we wanted to jump on,” said Amaku. “And many of our customers were using our syrup in water already. We wanted to see how the product was being perceived with our target market of Gen Z and Millennial consumers, in this, our first-time digital-first product launch.”
Product Sampling: Launching New Product with 225 Reviews
In July 2022, Torani embarked on a Product Samplings campaign. The goal was to understand customer sentiment and collect ratings and reviews ahead of launch. Encouraging consumers to “squeeze the day,” PowerReviews managed the distribution of 250 free samples, asking consumers to try the product and share their honest opinion by writing a review and including a photo or video.
“We had nearly a 90% review completion rate; this was an overwhelming response exceeding our expectations,” said Amaku. “We received very detailed feedback that was used to tweak the final flavor formula to ensure the product would be well received.”
After the product was finally launched, Torani collected a total of 225 reviews for the new product.
Guided by PowerReviews Best Practices
“We have a great relationship with the PowerReviews team,” says Amaku. “They have been amazing in helping us get up and running. When I have questions, they are always quick to hop on a call to help us navigate and find things. The quarterly business reviews provide great insight on milestones hit and recommendations to improve and mature our reviews program.”
In the last 12 months, by following PowerReviews best practices, Torani has boosted its native review collection efforts by 167 percent year-over-year, while new review request prompts have boosted email open and conversion rates by over 50 and 30 percent, respectively.
After nearly 100 years in the business, Torani continues to demonstrate its innovation and go-to-market prowess – continually bringing forth new flavors for consumers to savor and keeping close tabs on evolving tastes and preferences. Its secret recipe? Ensuring it has all the right tools in place to understand this vital voice of the customer as it charts its next century.
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