Leading Electronics Retailer Launches Personalised Product Recommendations Across its E-Commerce Sites
Reading, UK — 29 June 2011 — RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalisation for the world’s largest retailers, today announced it has integrated its personalisation and analytics technology online at Dixons.co.uk, Currys.co.uk and PCWorld.co.uk websites. Shoppers on these sites now enjoy an enhanced shopping experience with personalised product recommendations as they browse through Dixons sites. A variety of recommendation types based on shopping behaviour adjust in real time to ensure the most relevant products are just a click away. Dixons expects to increase online revenue by improving conversion rates and strengthening customer relationships through the integration of RichRelevance’s technology.
Personalisation offers retailers the ability to connect with consumers on a deeper level. Using RichRelevance’s technology, Dixons will be able to provide customers with a completely individualised experience based on the preferences and personal attributes each shopper has shared, the data the merchant holds on relationships between products or product categories and the behavioural patterns of similar shoppers. The result is a more engaging and useful shopping experience for the consumer and greater revenue opportunities for the merchant.
“Delivering a personalised shopping experience across multiple customer touch points will give us the opportunity to better understand and engage with our customers and provide them with more meaningful product suggestions,” said Andy Barratt, head of online marketing at Dixons. “RichRelevance offers an unmatched combination of technical innovation and retail industry expertise that we expect will help us significantly increase customer engagement and online sales.”
Dixons elected to introduce personalisation initially across the company’s websites, with plans for additional implementations across other customer touchpoints such as email. The company plans to offer shoppers a seamless personalised experience across multiple channels using RichRelevance’s enRICH Personalisation Engine which facilitates competition among 60 independent recommendation strategies to deliver the most relevant experience. All recommendations include an explicit message about why a product is being suggested, framed in a way that will resonate with the consumer.
“A personalisation strategy is no longer just a nice to have. More than 40% of UK consumers have made a purchase recommended to them by a retailer, and today’s multichannel shoppers expect a personalised experience as they head online or onto their mobiles to shop,” said David Selinger, co-founder and CEO of RichRelevance. “Dixons understands the value of providing relevant, personalised recommendations for shoppers and we’re excited that they are one of the first merchants to implement our technology in the UK.”
About Dixons
Dixons Retail plc is one of Europe’s leading specialist electrical retailing groups. It operates a multi-channel approach to electrical retailing and trades through more than 1,300 retail and online stores, spanning 27 countries and employing nearly 40,000 people. More than 100 million customers shop in-store and online with Dixons Retail every year.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance powers personalised shopping experiences for the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands, including Wal-Mart, Sears, Overstock.com and others. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalisation at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and effectively monetise site traffic by providing the most relevant products, content and offers to shoppers as they switch between web, store and mobile. RichRelevance has delivered more than £1 billion in attributable sales for its clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of personalised advertising called shopping media which allows brands to engage shoppers where it matters most – at the point of purchase on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.co.uk.
By Darren Vengroff
Among the barrage of marketing emails consumers receive today, you can be sure that those with generic content are most quickly diverted to the trash. As one of the key touchpoints in the customer lifecycle–website, bricks-and-mortar store, call centre, catalogue, being a few others–email marketing is an important element of any ecommerce personalisation strategy. Personalising your email campaigns will enable you to provide relevant, timely and meaningful content that fosters trust while promoting customer engagement and loyalty. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when embarking on a personalisation strategy for your email marketing programme:
Ann Summers is making visits to its website personal, thanks to the use of recommendations technology.
Shoppers on the sex toys and lingerie website will see personalised recommendations that are uniquely relevant to them, thanks to the use of RichRelevance’s enRich Personalisation Engine.
Ann Summers says it will use data gathered from its ecommerce shop to create more cross-category promotions in its stores, similar to Marks & Spencer’s Marketing Week Engage Award-winning Dine In For £10 offer.
Personalised Product Recommendations Provide a More Pleasurable Online Shopping Experience for Ann Summers Customers
Reading, UK — 15 June 2011 — RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalisation for the world’s largest retailers, today announced it has partnered with leading high street brand Ann Summers to personalise the online shopping experience. When they shop online, Ann Summers customers will now receive personalised product recommendations to help each shopper discover products that are uniquely relevant to them. As a result, customers have a more engaging and pleasurable shopping experience while Ann Summers is able to create new sales opportunities.
RichRelevance’s enRICH Personalisation Engine facilitates competition among 60 independent recommendation strategies to deliver the most relevant experience. Using RichRelevance’s technology, Ann Summers will be able to take the wealth of information known about each customer, including preferences and shopping history, demographic details and referral sites, and marry it to the data the merchant holds on relationships between products or product categories and the behavioural patterns of similar shoppers.
Led by prominent CEO Jacqueline Gold, Ann Summers reports an annual turnover of more than £117.3 million. AnnSummers.com, launched in 1995, is the company’s third largest channel behind its 150 high street shops and Ann Summers Party, which produces more than 4000 women-only events per week in the UK. By establishing a personalisation initiative, Ann Summers hopes not only to create a deeper connection with its largely female online customer-base, but to gather information about shopping behaviour and product associations that will increase sales across all channels.
“Through our personalisation initiative, we are gaining valuable insight into our customers and the way they shop for and discover our products. For example, we can access vastly more kinds of associated data about what people viewed after viewing a certain item,” said Andrew Harber, eCommerce Director at Ann Summers. “By partnering with RichRelevance to manage and analyse our customer data, we are more in-tune with our customers’ behaviour and can take a more holistic approach to merchandising and promotions.”
“Many multi-channel retailers struggle to extract actionable information from all of the data they have on their customers. It is not uncommon for data from the various channels to be siloed and for the customer experience to be fragmented as a result,” said David Selinger, CEO and founder, RichRelevance. “It is exciting to see Ann Summers take a customer-centric approach. By looking at all of their customer touch points as a whole and considering how data can be used to improve the customer experience across channels, Ann Summers will be able to offer a better and more consistent shopping experience.”
In selecting RichRelevance, Ann Summers cited the company’s Amazon.com heritage as a key factor in the decision, alongside ease of implementation and technical knowledge. “Everyone is familiar with Amazon’s recommendations and to be able to tap into the intellect behind the algorithms was very appealing,” said Harber.
About Ann Summers
Ann Summers is one of the UK’s leading lingerie and seductive lifestyle brands for women. Ann Summers offers fun, sexy ranges with luxurious design, injecting ‘everyday glamour’ into the high street. Ann Summers is passionate about offering something for every shape and size, as we believe that every woman can feel sexy. Ann Summers operates three successful sales channels; Party Plan, Retail and Ecommerce.
From its acquisition by David and Ralph Gold in 1972, Ann Summers has built an innovative brand empire that now holds presence in 150 primary high street locations in the UK and Ireland and their first international store in Valencia, Spain. In 1981, David Gold’s daughter Jacqueline Gold introduced the Party Plan concept, allowing women the unique opportunity to get together with friends, have a fun girly night in and buy Ann Summers products in their homes. Party Plan today boasts over 7000 Party Organisers throughout the UK who hold on average 4000 parties per week. Ann Summers’ Ecommerce site, www.annsummers.com, boasts over 1.5 million individual visits per month.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance powers personalised shopping experiences for the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands, including Wal-Mart, Sears, Overstock.com and others. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalisation at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and effectively monetise site traffic by providing the most relevant products, content and offers to shoppers as they switch between web, store and mobile. RichRelevance has delivered more than £1 billion in attributable sales for its clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of personalised advertising called shopping media which allows brands to engage shoppers where it matters most – at the point of purchase on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.co.uk.
Technology researchers are being offered a $1m prize to solve a complex condundrum faced by retailers – how to choose the best online product recommendations to show shoppers.