From the CEO, Tom Stockham.

We hope our new name is easier for you to say, and we also hope it better communicates our core beliefs. You, our brand partners, want to grow your companies by selling more products and growing consumer loyalty. We want to help you do this by creating more of the recommendations consumers trust most when deciding what to buy. Expert voices matter — to consumers, to brands, and to us. We’ve always believed that a passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable voice creates better buying experiences, whether it’s found on the retail sales floor, on the mountain, or online. We’re committing to making the ExpertVoice experience better for you.

Here’s what’s we’re doing:

Adding more of the people you rely on to drive sales

We have one million experts in our community, and brands and experts have more than 250,000 unique interactions each week through ExpertVoice. But we can do more. We’re actively working with partner organizations, with retailers, and with you — our brand partners — to consistently add more of those valuable voices to the community.

Adding more evidence of their expertise

To date we’ve focused on place of employment or organization affiliation (for example, DICKS Sporting Goods, Le Cordon Bleu graduation, or membership in the National Academy of Sports Medicine). We’ll continue to do  that, but we’re also going to provide opportunities for experts to add credentials like degrees obtained, races completed, and former work experience. These additional credentials allow experts to express just how well-rounded they are, not only in level of expertise, but in the number of categories they have expertise.

Doing more to help them be better at delivering the recommendations consumers rely on to make buying decisions

We will work to get experts to engage with your brand more often, through email campaigns and simplifying their site experience. We will also continue optimizing the content we create with you, giving them more meaningful ways to learn about your company and the products you sell. Educated experts are proven to have more conversations about your brand after engaging with either education or product experiences, and we’re going to facilitate even more of those opportunities.

More ways to get valuable responses back from them

We’re currently developing ways for more experts to share  their reviews and recommendations about brands and products — their feedback can be invaluable for a brand, for other experts, and for consumers. We’re also scaling how we survey our experts to provide you with insights you can use as you develop and market new products.

Improving ways to build your relationship with them

Our experts want to engage with your brand regularly. They want to give their feedback. They want to learn more about what happens behind-the-scenes. They want to use their knowledge and experience to give more meaningful product recommendations to consumers. We are going to continue to bring you and the expert closer together, building that trusted relationship that will create better buying experiences for you, experts, and consumers.

Here’s to a world full of expert recommendations driving sales and creating better buying experiences!