High-Quality Reviews: How Dreamland Baby Fosters Trust Across The Customer Journey

Dreamland Baby is a successful brand offering weighted baby swaddles, blankets, and sacks that help them feel calm, fall asleep faster & stay asleep longer. As part of Fuel Made’s DTC Inspiration Series, Okendo Partner Marketing Manager, Lindsay Kolisky sat down with Dreamland Baby’s Director of Ecommerce, Mike Woodland to discuss how they utilize Okendo reviews to prioritize trust and transparency throughout the customer journey.

When it comes to baby products, trust is everything. Customers need to know that the product is safe, effective, and easy to use. From the beginning, Dreamland Baby has been focused on the consumer, because the founder was one herself.

Dreamland Baby’s founder, Tara Williams, is the mother of an extremely restless baby. After trying every trick in the book, she stumbled upon an unexpected (but very effective) solution. She casually placed her sofa’s throw blanket over her fussy baby, and he calmed down immediately. She had her mother-in-law sew a weighted sleep sack prototype, and her baby had no issue sleeping through the night from then on.

Thousands of orders and one Shark Tank appearance later, what started as a hack to help her own baby sleep better, has become a hugely successful brand with a passionate customer community of parents and those who support them. Knowing that Tara’s own testimonial is what sparked their success, Dreamland Baby knew they needed a way to authentically collect and display customer reviews.

“When a consumer finds that perfectly functional and life-changing product, it becomes something they want to share with the world,” said Mike Woodland, Director of Ecommerce at Dreamland Baby. “As such, having an easy-to-use platform for our customers to do so via testimonials and UGC is essential to our brand.”

Collecting Reviews & UGC

It’s not often that a customer leaves a review unprompted. Dreamland Baby uses Okendo’s integration with Klaviyo to incentivize customer feedback via Review Request Emails. Leveraging this integration, Dreamland Baby can ensure that their review request emails are designed to fit their brand, include specific references to the product(s) the customer purchased, and are able to be tracked and measured alongside all other customer communications within Klaviyo.

Dreamland Baby also incentivizes customers to leave a testimonial with photos and videos by offering a discount of 10-15% off their next purchases. With this strategy, nearly 30% of their reviews contain an adorable photo or video.

Leveraging Attributes to Create A Better Customer Experience

In their review capture form, Dreamland Baby asks customers to provide personal attributes, like their baby’s ages and sleeping styles. This zero-party data provides better context to the review making it more helpful to other customers while also helping Dreamland Baby to better understand and segment their audience.

Mike elaborates: “That kind of customer information is invaluable. We first tried to collect it through pop-up ads, but that introduced friction to the shopping experience. Now, we collect it through reviews, which direct multiple business decisions, including product development. For example, we can try to develop different products for babies who sleep on their sides versus their backs. From a marketing standpoint, it informs us who to target when, where, and how.”

These collected attributes help Dreamland Baby communicate to customers more effectively based on the age of their baby and what stage of parenthood they are in. For example, the information could assist the brand with recommending relevant products to consumers who already have children, if they’re purchasing a gift, or if their baby is already experiencing trouble sleeping versus this being a preemptive measure.

From the customer’s perspective, they are receiving relevant and informed information to help them find the right product that meets their specific needs. This layer of personalization makes the customer feel understood and builds trust and appreciation, turning them into loyal customers and evangelists.

Integrating Social Proof In Marketing Campaigns

Dreamland Baby lets their product’s effectiveness speak for itself. They integrate collected reviews, UGC, and product star ratings into various customer touchpoints. Mike states that social proof incorporated into online ads is so effective at swaying shoppers in the middle and bottom portions of the sales funnel. By putting social proof front and center, they are establishing that they can be trusted and their products have proven results.

Prioritizing Trust & Transparency

Dreamland Baby’s personalized approach to marketing and two-way dialogue with its community via reviews has helped them build a successful brand.

Mike stressed that in order to collect high-quality reviews, you first need to match what you deliver with customer expectations. Far beyond the first Review Request Email is sent, brands should be putting in the work to deliver a product and experience that warrants a 5-star review.

He also stresses that it is essential to pay attention to factors that negatively influence the shopping experience but might not be product-related, such as delayed shipping times that frustrate customers even if they enjoy the product itself. Providing a great product is only half the job, and delivering an amazing customer experience from the very beginning is what makes brands successful.

The more opportunities you create for your customer to provide feedback, the more potential you have to deliver the 5-star experience that keeps them coming back.