READING, UK, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Yell Group plc (LSE: YELL), a leading solution provider with one of the largest directories of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, US, Spain and Latin America, today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Bazaarvoice, a global leader in transforming customer conversations into long-term business value. Bazaarvoice powers social initiatives for leading brands around the world, enabling them to drive revenue growth and use the social web to gain unparalleled insights into customers.

This new strategic partnership is expected to bring Bazaarvoice services directly to Yell's customer community of over 1.3 million SMEs – helping them truly put their customers at the center of their business. The partnership also provides Bazaarvoice with access to SMEs across the United States, United Kingdom, Spain and Latin America.

"Word-of-mouth has always been a cornerstone of SME marketing, and bringing authentic customer conversations online will play an important role in the future of small business," said Mike Pocock, CEO of the Yell Group. "Bazaarvoice is a global leader in this space and our partnership is expected to make these services more readily available to small businesses around the world."

Bazaarvoice solutions that are expected to be brought to SMEs via Yell include:

• Dynamic and relevant user-generated content for e-commerce sites to help customers make more confident purchase decisions
• Online conversations that allow business owners to efficiently converse and respond to customer feedback
• Analytics designed to help business owners derive powerful insights about consumer sentiment and behavior in real time

"This is a tremendous opportunity for us to extend our reach globally to new clients of all sizes," said Brant Barton, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Bazaarvoice. "We are excited to partner with Yell to bring the voice of the customer to businesses in local communities where merging online and offline customer experiences is important to SME growth."

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice's Software as a Service (SaaS) social commerce solutions have powered more than 200 billion customer conversations on brand web sites like Best Buy, Blue Shield of California, Costco, Dell, Macy's, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, and USAA. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Through syndication, analytics, partnerships, and consulting, Bazaarvoice brings the voice of the customer to the center of their clients' business strategy, proving "social" can drive measured revenue growth and cost savings for manufacturing, retail, travel, and financial services companies. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in Amsterdam, London, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, and Sydney. For more information and access to client success stories, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarvoice.com/blog, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.

About Yell

Yell Group is a leading provider of digital services within the emerging local eMarketplace for consumers and SMEs across its operations in the UK, US, Spain and some countries in Latin America.

Building on its strong presence in the local market through its current digital and print portfolio, Yell is developing a broad range of digital services tailored to the converging needs of SMEs and consumers.

These address both the SME need to grow, transact and be efficient in the digital world, and the consumers' need to connect locally to the goods and services they want, in a way which saves them time and money, and moves their lives forward.

In the year ended 31 March 2011, Yell Group had 1.3 million SME advertisers.

www.yellgroup.com

SOURCE Yell Group plc

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http://www.yellgroup.com
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