- RETAIL SEGMENT: Wellness and Beauty
- PRODUCT: Personalized Recommendations
- CHALLENGE: A Brazilian perfume and cosmetics manufacturer wanted its new eCommerce site to maximize engagement and sales with an optimized experience tailored to shoppers’ geographic location and past brand interactions.
- RESULTS: 40% MoM increase for online sales
A leading Brazilian brand of perfume and cosmetics with products backed by Brazilian and international celebrities. The combination of star power and value pricing translates into high quality products to a new customer segment – their hallmark. In 2017, their sales topped R$415 million and the company set out to double that figure by 2020 through a revitalized sales strategy and the launch of its first eCommerce site.
Celebrity endorsement in every category, such as fragrances, makeup , hair, body, bath, man and kids, goes farther than simply connecting names with products. Stars appear in print, television and billboard advertising and make appearances at promotional events, including meetings with the brand’s more than 250,000 direct sales representatives.
Challenge
As they prepared to launch their first eCommerce initiative in 2017, it sought to approach its customers to the entertainment universe backed-up Silvio Santos Group business, translating the glamour of celebrity backing into a rich online experience tailored to shoppers’ individual beauty needs. Complicating this effort was the need to adapt the new website to reflect and match different regional campaigns that runs at the same time, in different cycles, depending on the region, because it should follow the same Direct Sales door-to-door campaigns and catalog according to a site visitor’s location.
In addition to this geographic segmentation, they sought to enrich the online experience by tailoring product assortments and content according to individual preferences and past purchasing history. By maximizing relevance with dynamically personalized content, they sought to win customers and earn loyalty in Brazil’s crowded beauty and fragrance marketplace.
Solution Overview
This perfume and cosmetics manufacturer built its eCommerce business around RichRelevance’s AI-based personalization platform. The brand turned to RichRelevance Engage to dynamically detect and serve location-dependent content, products, and offers. RichRelevance Recommend then applied dynamic intelligence to present the most relevant items for each individual from within the region’s assigned catalog.
How it Works
Prior to implementing RichRelevance, they embarked on an extensive search for the right technology to launch its eCommerce presence. All-in-one solutions that promised personalization alongside an eCommerce platform didn’t offer the breadth and depth of functionality to meet their requirements.
Instead, they opted to select and integrate two best-of-breed solutions – RichRelevance and VTex, the largest eCommerce provider in South America. VTex offered the simplicity of a cloud eCommerce implementation along with the extensive commerce functionality they sought. RichRelevance’s industry-leading dynamic personalization provided the flexibility and interaction-specific machine learning to deliver the layers of contextual relevance they required. Thanks to RichRelevance’s open and flexible architecture, integration was swift and straightforward, with a four-month timeline from selection to launch.
When a shopper first visits the their site, RichRelevance’s Engage, Recommend and Personalization AI dynamically personalizes the site experience inn real time. Content from the home page hero banner onwards (from celebrity content to product assortments and site navigation) is tailored to the shopper’s geographic location, as well as individual history, context and behavior. A shopper in Bahia might be served content and products connected with one star, while Rio de Janeiro consumers might view content showcasing a new product launch for an entirely different line headed by another spokesperson.
With each site interaction, RichRelevance’s AI dynamically applies the most relevant decisioning algorithm to deliver the products best suited for the individual shopper’s beauty needs, continually learning and optimizing the experience in real time. Replenishment recommendations, complementary items, and new product launches are presented according to the shopper’s context within the customer lifecycle, while at the same time adhering to the business rules established for the regional product catalog.
Since launching in late 2017, they have worked hand in hand with RichRelevance to build a strong startup presence.Thanks to the content-rich, individualized shopping experience this perfume and cosmetics manufacturer offers, engagement is consistently high across geographic regions
Online sales have soared, with month-over-month growth since December average order sizes is increasing. The new eCommerce channel now accounts for a good portion of overall sales. And despite the short time frame since launch, their site is attracting return traffic and sales, thanks to personalized recommendations for replenishment items and complementary products.
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- RETAIL SEGMENT: Apparel
- PRODUCT: Personalized Recommendations and Personalized Browse and Nav
- CHALLENGE: Improve mobile conversion rate
- RESULTS: 53% increase in mobile conversion rate. 16.8% higher average order value from those interacting with recommendations.
[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1604047989158{padding-top: 100px !important;padding-bottom: 100px !important;background-image: url(https://richrelevance.com//wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CAse-Study-Banner.png?id=34881) !important;background-position: 0 0 !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;}”][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Case Study: CDW” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:center|color:%23ffffff” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
B2B ONLINE
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- SEGMENT: B2B IT Products and Solutions
- PRODUCT: Personalized Recommendations, Personalized Browse and Navigation
- CHALLENGE: With 100,000+ products, 1,000+ partners and 5,000+customer-facing trusted advisors, CDW needed to effectively connect a diverse set of customers with the right items, ancillaries and services to meet their unique business goals.
- RESULTS: RichRelevance’s personalization solution allows CDW to deliver an engaging, immersive and relevant customer experience tailored for industry, company and individual role, as well as unique goals and preferences
Founded in 1984, CDW is a leading multi-brand technology solutions provider to business, government, education and healthcare organizations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The company is ranked #199 on the Fortune 500 with nearly $15 billion in annual sales. Challenge CDW has a strong reputation for bringing together both technology and unrivaled expertise to solve organizational challenges and build IT solutions that companies need to succeed. With more than 100,000 products (from over 1,000 leading and emerging technology partners) ranging from discrete hardware and software to integrated IT solutions, CDW’s customers rely on the brand for ongoing strategic advice and proactive problem solving.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_raw_html]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[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- RETAIL SEGMENT: Sporting Goods
- PRODUCT: Personalized Recommendations
- CHALLENGE: Wide range of products. 60% Webshop in 14
languages and nine currencies - RESULTS: 3x revenue from orders containing product recommendations. 20% increase in
average shopping basket. Average of one more product per purchase. Improved revenues on mobile devices
Blue Tomato was founded in 1988 as a snowboard school by the former European Snowboard Champion Gerfried Schuller. Since then it has transformed into a successful international boardsport and fashion shop. Blue Tomato now owns more than 30 shops in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and their webshop offers more than 450,000 products from more than 500 brands and delivers to more than 40 countries. Having launched its webshop in 1997, Blue Tomato was an eCommerce pioneer. It now aims to become the leading omnichannel retailer for boardsports and freeski in Europe.
- SECTOR: Pureplay department store
- SOLUTION: Recommend™ & Consultancy Services across web, mobile and contact center
- CHALLENGE: N Brown Group was looking to free up time and resources from manual recommendations and implement a more dynamic and scientific solution that would enable quicker reactions to customer behavior. As the business underwent a transformational programme from traditional catalog retailer to digital first, online retailer, N Brown Group needed more insight into its customer base to deliver a more personalized experience.
- RESULTS: 30% increase in sales
N Brown Group is one of the UK’s leading online retailers with a specialism in fashion that fits and flatters, offering customers an extensive range of products in clothing, footwear and homewares. The Group’s three power brands include JD Williams, Simply Be and Jacamo.
Back in 2013, N Brown Group was struggling with manual product recommendations on its ecommerce sites, which was proving both time-consuming and costly. Frustrated by their inability to react quickly to customer behavior and transactions, the business decided it needed a more dynamic and scientific solution, which was based on customer insight rather than someone’s personal opinion.
N Brown Group turned to the RichRelevance personalization platform as a data driven engine that made decisions quickly and dynamically with the ability to react to a mix of transactional and browsing data when making recommendations for individual customers. The fact it was mobile friendly was an additional advantage.
“The ease of integration with our existing systems and an attractive commercial model, made the decision to move to RichRelevance easy.” Explained David Jennings, Head of Development and Customer Experience for N Brown Group.
Since these early days back in 2013, N Brown Group has undertaken a number of projects to improve its understanding of the ever-changing customer and increase the sophistication of personalization initiatives across all sales channels.
Ann Steer, Chief Customer Officer at N. Brown Group, commented, “Personalization and the ability to deliver, individual relevant experiences are the single most important thing that will help us deliver business success.”
To support more traditional product recommendation capabilities, N Brown Group introduced RichRelevance’s Advanced Merchandising solution in 2016. Advanced Merchandising has enabled N Brown Group to put more relevant products in front of online shoppers that appeal directly to individuals’ tastes and preferences. For example ’complete the look’ products or recommending products that take into account customers purchasing history or current basket items.
Data-driven Advanced Merchandising has freed up merchandisers’ time so rather than manually creating outfits for display on the sites, they can focus on building merchandising rules that support wider site trading objectives and the needs of their customers. These merchandising rules work in partnership with RichRelevance’s algorithms, combining the expertise of merchandisers with the power of machine learning. Reporting on the performance of Advanced Merchandising is provided by RichRelevance and allows merchandisers to see which rules are attracting the most customer engagement and driving the most attributable revenues.
Another personalization initiative has seen N Brown Group bring recommendations into the contact center, which is often overlooked as a retail sales channel especially when it comes to creating a personalized, relevant experience for customers. However, N Brown Group realised its potential and implemented RichRelevance recommendations in the contact center, training 950 UK-based contact center agents in the RichRelevance product recommendations engine and rolling out the personalization solution within the contact center system’s computers.
“Before we introduced data-driven recommendations into the contact center, staff would only offer the five products we had on sale, so it wasn’t personalized for the customer at all. Now, our customer service agents can advise customers on an increased product range using the power of the online recommendations engine. This real-time solution helps agents answer product queries, upsell and cross-sell products, or recommend alternative items that will resonate with the customer. We’ve effectively created another sales channel and improved the customer experience at the same time.” Said Jennings
Having Recommend™ live in the contact centers has had the added benefit of drastically reducing the time spent doing manual merchandising for the contact center.
By 2016, N Brown Group’s customer touch-points had diversified as it transformed itself from a catalog to online retailer. As a result N Brown Group sought to better understand its new breed of customer and maximize the opportunity online shopping presents to deliver a more personalized customer experience.
To gain this customer insight, N Brown Group commissioned RichRelevance to undertake an insights campaign to map the online shopping experience and explore what levels of personalization were right for N Brown Group’s customers to create a superior customer experience.
The project involved extensive user experience and personalization tests which the N Brown Group will use over the next year to guide the personalization implementation across all channels to enhance the customer experience.
“We see investment into understanding the customer as the most valuable data in terms of driving business and personalization forward in next few years.” concluded David Jennings.
Measures of success
As a result of their work together, the RichRelevance personalization engine has grown sales by 30% in 2016. This means recommendation-driven sales now account for 7% of all N Brown Group sales.
Furthermore, the result of the extraordinarily dedicated customer analysis is that N Brown Group is poised to exceed the £5m+ sales lift that its personalization initiatives already delivered in 2016.
Overall the data-driven product recommendations are now supporting the ecommerce site and, unusually, contact center staff, benefitting customer service and supporting an overall 12% year on year increase in sales for the group.
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- SECTOR: Marketplace
- SOLUTION: Personalized Product Recommendations
- CHALLENGE: With a wide array of partners and product offerings notonthehighstreet.com needed a personalization tool to help improve the customer experience by connecting shoppers with the most relevant products.
- RESULTS: 25% order value (from those interacting with Recommend™)
Notonthehighstreet.com is an online marketplace with 5,000 partners and a wide array of product offerings. Since they were founded over 10 years ago, demand for their unique, personalized products has continued to rise, with their customer base seeking bespoke and unique products compared to the mass produced offerings on the high street.
For notonthehighstreet.com personalization is a particularly important part of improving the customer experience. As a marketplace with such a broad product range and partner base, notonthehighstreet. com customers have very different shopping missions that range from top ticket items like large furniture pieces to Alpaca walking experiences in Derbyshire. With a mission to make every customer interaction as unique and enjoyable as possible, notonthehighstreet. com was looking for a personalization tool to help them connect the most relevant and appropriate product to each shopper.
After looking at whether they could develop a tool internally, notonthehighstreet.com turned to RichRelevance’s personalization platform to automate connecting customers with the right products.
“We chose the RichRelevance solution due to the flexibility and depth of personalization it gave us, dovetailing into our own product curation needs. We also liked the unobtrusive nature of the RichRelevance offering and the way it integrated seamlessly, complimenting the customer journey”, explained Michael Roberts, Senior Merchandiser at notonthehighstreet.com.
“The RichRelevance system is an AI based self learning tool, so the personalization takes care of itself automatically. A dashboard is provided which is easy to use and has powerful reporting and merchandising features built in. This means I can set high level guidelines to refine the recommendations when I need to – for instance when I want special promotions for Mother’s Day or Valentines Day.”
Since implementing Recommend™, notonthehighstreet.com found the personalization tool has provided them with insight into their customers’ behavior leading to the ability to highlight interesting new products within their offerings that the shopper might not have found otherwise. This capability is particularly important on mobile.
“With the advance of mobile shoppers whose browse times are much shorter on notonthehighstreet.com, the value of tools such as RichRelevance has increased dramatically, as they allow us to promote relevant product visuals to customers quickly and easily”, said Michael Roberts.
RichRelevance personalized product recommendations have high exposure across the notonthehighstreet.com website, with placements on the homepage, department pages, the bottom of listing pages and across checkout and add to basket pages. They help the shopper at every stage of their shopping journey.
Since notonthehighstreet.com deployed RichRelevance Recommend in 2015 they have seen steady improvements and many benefits both on conversion rates and incremental gain in sales. The AOV of orders interacting with personalized recommendations are 25% higher than those who don’t, showing the value and relevance of the suggestions being made. A total of 11% of orders on notonthehighstreet. com now interact with RichRelevance recommendations.
Notonthehighstreet.com has also been able to utilize RichRelevance personalization software to overcome specific challenges, for example a high bounce rate from search engine traffic, as Michael explained:
“We were struggling to immediately engage with traffic arriving from search engines, where we had a high bounce rate compared to the overall site. We utilized the RichRelevance technology to show very relevant product alternatives at the right time specifically for this source of traffic and as a result reduced our bounce rate by an impressive 13%.”
In terms of the future, notonthehighstreet.com sees personalization of the shopping journey as continuing to play an integral role in the way they deliver the right products to the right customers, alongside promoting new products and supporting their valued partners.
“RichRelevance has the features right now that we need to deliver our vision to focus on the needs of our individual customers and deliver them a great shopping experience.” Michael concluded.
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- RETAIL SEGMENT: Household appliances, multimedia, bedding, custom kitchens
- PRODUCT: Recommend™ & Engage™
- CHALLENGE: A multinational electrical retailing company was looking for the ability to create impacting personalized experiences at every customer interaction across multiple sales channels. However with a large and complex product portfolio, the company needed an automated solution to exceed their customers’ experience.
- RESULTS: 5% revenue lift from Recommend
In a retail world with more digital touchpoints than you can count, how do you connect the dots?
Your customers are busier, more distracted and more overwhelmed then they’ve ever been before so understanding their shopping journey is crucial. Your shoppers will be more inclined to spend the time logging in if you can demonstrate that it translates to a more individualized experience from which you can both benefit.