RichRelevance Introduces the Relevance Cloud™ to Deliver a Continuum of Personalized Customer Experiences For Mobile, Web and Store

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RichRelevance opens its personalization platform with the debut of Build^TM innovation services

San Francisco, CA – January 12, 2015 – RichRelevance®, the global leader in omnichannel personalization, today unveiled the Relevance Cloud, the most comprehensive personalization solution for retail. Delivered as a scalable, secure service, the Relevance Cloud combines all the core personalization capabilities marketers need to deliver a winning customer experience in today’s complex, mobile-first retail environment.

“Personalization is core to the customer experience, bringing together customer, product and context into a unified marketing engagement,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “The Relevance Cloud puts nearly a decade of data sciences and personalization innovation into the hands of marketers so they can bring existing programs into lockstep and create entirely new customer experiences. The Relevance Cloud manages the heavy lifting so that retailers can focus on what they do best: designing differentiated experiences that speak to shoppers based on who they are.”

The Customer Experience Imperative

According to Gartner¹, “the changing preferences and expectations of the connected consumer and increasingly competitive markets mean that customer experience is often marketers’ top strategic weapon for driving brand preference, loyalty and advocacy.” A full 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016.

“Customers have come to expect a personalized experience. Digital content has become an enabler of personalization across all channels and all types of buyers,” said Penny Gillespie, Research Director at Gartner. “Buyers’ expectations increase with every great experience they encounter – they will expect the same high standards from their next experience. The key takeaway is that personalization offers a real competitive advantage and is a tool for promoting customer engagement but should be exercised with caution, maintaining customer privacy and keeping information in context.”²

To support this top initiative, marketing leaders are investing heavily in technologies that prioritize customer experience. The average enterprise runs over 30 systems and the amount of data generated will grow 20x in the next 5 years. More data and systems bring greater integration challenges and costs – and ultimately less ability to coordinate data around the customer.

The result is that consumers are jarred daily by disjointed experiences that stem from point and channel-locked solutions and siloed data sources – and marketers see diminishing returns.

The Relevance Cloud
Created by the team who has instrumented personalization experiences on more than 200 leading retailer customer sites, the Relevance Cloud advances service-oriented architectures to synthesize customer, product, content and contextual shopping information in real time and make intelligent services available to any application. Core products include:

• Discover^TM – Search & Browse Personalization
• Engage^TM – Content Personalization
• Recommend^TM – Product Personalization
• Build^TM – API-based services for personalization innovation

As mobility continues to drive shopper expectations, these services engage shoppers across all customer touchpoints, whether they are online, on the go, or in store.

“Providing an unparalleled customer experience both in store and across our digital properties is an integral part of Barneys New York,” said Matthew Woolsey, Executive Vice President, Digital at Barneys New York. “RichRelevance has enabled us to utilize our customer data to craft new and unique digital experiences which engage shoppers on our website, on their mobile and tablet devices and in the physical stores. We are excited to unveil some of our newest innovations alongside RichRelevance at the NRF Big Show.”

The Introduction of Build^TM

Launched today, Build^TM is a new set of API services that unlocks access to the personalization graph (customer, product, content and contextual shopping information). Build^TM allows retailers to leverage the real-time building blocks of the Relevance Cloud to create innovative omnichannel retail experiences throughout the customer life cycle.

Core features include:

Data Hub: Send data from any cloud, app or device – from websites, mobile apps, catalogs, kiosks, iBeacons, point-of-sale registers and more. RichRelevance manages all the data in one place and routes it wherever it is needed.

Profiles API: All the data necessary to learn about the user such as browsing and purchases history, preferences, and more.

Segments API: Groups all users that match a target audience based on behavior, attributes, interests, etc.

Product Affinities API: Interrelationships of all products or categories with one another.

Event Stream: Visualize data events in real time. The event stream shows how people are engaging with the various retail channels and which products are being considered and sold in real time. It also provides a quick health check on data flow to all existing tools.

Additional Comments on the News

• “We are committed to building best-in-class consumer experiences and personalization is key to delivering on this mission. An open platform and architecture allows us to bring together all of our distributed resources so we can provide a consistent experience across our brand touch points, and offer relevant product and content recommendations on our direct to consumer sites.” – Rajvir Madan, VP Digital Technology at L’Oreal
• “Cognizant has a long history of partnering with retail leaders to redefine the shopper experience. Our alliance with RichRelevance reinforces our commitment to collaborating with brands to build highly personalized and cohesive omnichannel customer experiences that connect touch points in meaningful ways.” – Joseph Rajadurai, Vice President, Retail at Cognizant Technology Solutions
• “We have entered a new era where mobility leads customer expectations. Retailers must rise to the challenge of delivering consistent, coordinated experiences or risk losing customers who have nearly unlimited options. With the Relevance Cloud, RichRelevance has innovated a powerful solution to align every brand moment around the customer on any device at any location.” – David Dorman, Partner, Centerview Capital

Pricing & Availability

The Relevance Cloud and the Build^TM innovation platform and API services are currently in beta and will be available in mid-Q1 2015. For more information, contact personalize@richrelevance.com.

^{1 Gartner, Inc., “Gartner Survey Finds Importance of Customer Experience on the Rise — Marketing Is on the Hook”, Sept. 29, 2014
2Gartner, Inc., “The CRM Perspective on Leveraging Digital Technologies to Create a Customer-Centric Enterprise”, Sept. 15, 2014}