Shopping is becoming even more high tech, and those who can personalize the experience through the click of a mouse will leave those who can’t in the dust.
The merging of technology and data can boost retailers’ profits, draw customers, increase brand awareness, and instill loyalty. That was the recurring message at the Shop.org Digital Summit hosted by the National Retail Federation here this week.
In a global B2B survey conducted by Avanade, 56% of purchasing decision-makers within companies report that they will (and do) pay more for products/services if the customer experience is better than with less expensive retailers. On average, they will pay 30% more for superior customer experience. As B2B companies transition from traditional channels to the fast-paced ecommerce environment, the principle remains: Ensure your customer is always at the center of everything you do and the rest will follow. While obvious and logical, for many, the challenge comes with where to start. These four simple steps will launch you on a personalization initiative that not only makes your customers happy, but keeps them happy, too.
#1 Re-think your customer persona
The line between B2B and B2C has blurred. B2B shoppers now consume in the same way they do outside of the work place, and are far from reliant on inside sales personnel. Today’s B2B shopper relies just as much on social, crowd-sourced and peer-reviewed resources to support and validate her work purchase decisions–as much as she does for personal shopping. Take guidance from market leaders like Office Depot and MonotaRO, who have integrated user-friendly features and functionality that enable shoppers to seamlessly navigate their site. A quick browse through their catalogs highlights features such as product reviews, inventory availability, and product recommendations which ensure that customers make educated buying decisions through a sophisticated personalized interface.
#2 Hone in on your customers’ real-time behaviors
Take your general understanding of how customers interact with your site to the next level with personalization that offers a real-time view into exactly how and why your customers shop the way they do. Collect and retain insights about brand, product, and category preferences with user-centric personalization features that engage customers as they shop. RichRelevance offers features like the Customer Preference Center and the the User Profile Service to synthesize online clickstream behavior and purchases with explicitly input preferences, so that regardless of channel and frequency of purchases your customer is always recognized. With knowledge like this, it’s easy to greet customers each and every time with products, promotions and categories that are relevant to their unique needs.
The User Profile Service synthesizes online clickstream behavior and purchases with explicitly input preferences—to recognize your customer regardless of channel.
#3 Communicate to the individual, not the masses…
A sophisticated retailer doesn’t cater to the masses, but rather understands the nuanced needs of individual customers. At its core, personalization must respect the shopper, and deliver the most relevant experience possible. A good personalization platform doesn’t merely offer comprehensive product recommendation technology, it also takes learned knowledge of your customers to offer relevant content and promotional messages across mobile and desktop sites, as well as within email communications. With an understanding of what messages resonate with different customer segments, HD Supply delivered curated messages to customer segments via email using RichRelevance’s Engage solution, and saw a subsequent 116% increase in conversion. Read more about their success story here.
Deliver curated messages that resonate with customer segments using RichRelevance Engage™
#4 But curate at the account level
In contrast to a traditional B2C retailer, successful B2B personalization must consider account level pricing and product assortments. It must offer region-based strategies and user tools that personalize a site based on unique business needs. RichRelevance enables customers to offer different pricing and product assortments at the account level so that B2B retailers can maintain the right assortments at the right price points. This ensures that customers not only see the appropriate products, but that the personalization is further tailored to them.
B2B retailers should consider these four fundamental opportunities across key pieces of real estate: your website, email communications, and/or contact center. Even in its simplest form, product recommendations aimed at ensuring your customers or contact center agents have a full view into your product assortment can guide buying decisions; targeted promotional and marketing communications to customer segments after a certain navigation path has been demonstrated can also be impactful.
Personalizing the path to purchase ensures that you meet and exceed customer expectations, before your competitor has the chance to do so.
Contact us today to get started!
Global leader in omnichannel personalization and software consulting pioneer realize first project together for Hepsiburada.com.
Istanbul, October 21, 2015 – Hepsiburada.com has chosen RichRelevance as its personalization partner to enable a more enhanced online customer experience. Already a pioneer in adopting the advanced design and software technologies, Hepsiburada.com has nor progressed its user-friendly experience through personalization. In partnership with OBASE, RichRelevance is facilitating and speeding the shopping journey on, Hepsiburada.com by providing real-time, dynamic personalized recommendations.
At the recent Webrazzi Summit ’15, Özgür Doğan, Hepsiburada.com Chief Marketing Officer, and David Ogidi, RichRelevance Europe Sales Director, shared best practice strategies retailers need to put in place in order to optimize the omnichannel shopping environment and improve customer experience.
Comments from Webrazzi Summit ’15
“Our latest move raised the bar in the ecommerce sector. Implementing RichRelevance enabled us to streamline and personalize our online shopping experience. The benefits of the new design were quickly apparent; the performance of Hepsiburada.com increased significantly. We redesigned our site based on customer feedback. State-of-the-art technologies were utilized in this project, which was implemented using Agile methodology. Within the omnichannel shopping environment, customers are able to purchase products they have previously added to the basket from mobile devices using their tablets or desktop computers. As a pioneer in ecommerce, we always aim to exceed current needs so we also implemented our new Marketplace platform, which will accelerate our ability to meet evolving customer needs as the retail sector continues to transform.” — Özgür Doğan, Hepsiburada.com Chief Marketing Officer
“Personalization is the most important strategic weapon for global companies. According to a customer experience report published by Gartner last year, by 2017, 89% of the marketing leaders will compete on the basis of customer experience. In this project, we considered the digital texture of Hepsiburada.com’s customers to provide recommendations suitable to the online shopping environment in order to enhance the customer experience. Our future projects will aim to provide Turkish retail and ecommerce companies with a customer experience that is in line with consumer-oriented demands.” – David Ogidi, RichRelevance Europe Sales Director
* Gartner, Inc., “Gartner Survey Finds Importance of Customer Experience on the Rise — Marketing Is on the Hook”, by Jake Sorofman, Laura McLellan. Sept. 29, 2014.
About OBASE
Founded in 1995, OBASE is a pioneer software and consulting company in Turkey, specialized in the areas of “Scientific Retail Solutions” and “Analytic Solutions”. With its specialized team of Turkish experts, OBASE converts its customers’ data into business value through scientific retail business solutions, data warehouses, business intelligence, data integration, data mining solutions and B2B/B2C electronic business platforms, thereby assisting them in improving their efficiency. Breakthroughs implemented by OBASE for the retail industry in the area of analytic solutions are sought after in industries like telecommunication, transportation, finance, manufacturing, insurance, logistics, medical, textile, etc. Complementing its business partnerships with globally leading companies in the best manner with its R&D capabilities, OBASE provides solution and consulting services in 11 countries, to a customer portfolio comprising of more than 200 institutions of various scales. Proudly demonstrating its realized projects both in Turkey and throughout the world, OBASE’s goal is to reinforce the information-based management approach in institutions.
For more information on OBASE and OBASE R&D Center, please visit www.obase.com.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ASKUL Selects RichRelevance to Personalize its Customer Experience
ASKUL adopts cutting edge big data technology to accelerate growth in expanding ecommerce business
San Francisco, CA – October 20, 2015— RichRelevance®, the global leader in omnichannel personalization, today announced that ASKUL Corporation has selected RichRelevance’s cloud-based personalization solution for its B2B business. Recognized as a pioneer in Japanese ecommerce for its investment in cutting edge technology, ASKUL will adopt RichRelevance’s personalization solutions and best practices in order to accelerate its product category expansion and overall business growth.
ASKUL will implement the Relevance Cloud™ and its flagship product Recommend in order to provide personalized product recommendations to its B2B customers, who span a wide spectrum of industries. By harnessing RichRelevance’s state-of-the-art personalization engine, which leverages ensemble learning to optimize machine learning algorithms, ASKUL will be able to instantaneously predict and provide what the customer desires, not only on the website but across all customer touch points such as mobile channels and emails.
RichRelevance not only provides a standard set of 150+ algorithms, but also forces real-time competition through its renowned King of the Hill approach, which selects the optimal algorithm at the precise moment in time in order to drive customer purchases. Leveraging its proprietary knowledge and expertise, ASKUL will also build its own personalization strategies to compete with RichRelevance’s pre-existing algorithms. Customers will not only discover products more readily, but will also be exposed to recommendations of “long tail” products, which have lower purchase frequencies but untapped potential for significantly impacting sales.
“Our company continues to significantly expand the number of product categories it offers,” says Yohei Akioka, Executive Officer at ASKUL. “As our business grows, the importance of personalization as a strategic pillar has never been more clear. Early on, we grew aware of RichRelevance’s potential to provide us with great benefits in this area, and have since engaged in research and business discussions with them. Our decision to implement their technology was ultimately driven by our imminent need for a platform that could serve our expanding business. Their proven track record at major retailers in the US and Europe, their concept of real-time personalization, as well as the positive results of their A/B tests greatly influenced our business decision. In addition, the fact that their personalization platform is flexible, scalable, and offers a wide variety of features that are extremely easy to use by our merchandisers, was a huge selling point. We greatly look forward to seeing how RichRelevance’s personalization solutions will help us achieve further growth in the business.”
ASKUL IT Managing Director Heita Oshige adds, “As we expand from our core business in office supplies to categories in medical/nursing and MRO, personalization provides us with a competitive advantage. RichRelevance is unique for its ability to offer real-time personalization, and to provide us with highly customizable building blocks for feature development. But perhaps what makes them stand out the most is their ability to allow merchandisers to experiment and test their own rules and strategies by themselves. We plan to invest our time and energy in various personalization initiatives using RichRelevance technologies, in order to achieve our goal of increased revenue.”
RichRelevance CEO Eduardo Sanchez states, “ASKUL is one of Japan’s largest online ecommerce retailers, known for its innovative efforts in various business initiatives such as fulfillment, and for its emphasis on investments in the latest IT technologies. We are very pleased they have selected us as their personalization partner, and now, through our product Recommend, we are proud to fully support ASKUL’s personalization journey and business roadmap.”
About ASKUL Corporation
Founded in 1993 with an innovative and unique business model based on the concept of same-day/ next-day delivery on all orders (ranging from a single pencil to a truckload of office supplies), ASKUL Corporation is the largest online B2B retailer in Japan. In 2012, ASKUL launched LOHACO, a comprehensive Internet mail-order service for the general public. It is currently working to transform itself into a full-fledged comprehensive e-commerce company by building the mail order business for B2B and B2C customers into a new growth driver.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, ASKUL was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange as of April 2004 and had consolidated revenue of 276.8 billion yen for the month of May 2015. For more information, visit: www.Askul.co.jp
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the global leader in omnichannel personalization and is used by more than 200 multinational companies to deliver the most relevant and innovative customer experiences across web, mobile and in store. RichRelevance drives more than one billion decisions every day, and has generated over $10 billion in sales for its clients, which include Office Depot, Costco, Marks & Spencer and Darty.
Headquartered in San Francisco, RichRelevance serves clients in 42 countries from 9 offices around the globe. For more information, please visit RichRelevance.
Sponsored product recommendations bring performance marketing for brands to more leading retail sites through the Relevance Cloud™ platform.
Brands can now increase visibility and sales via sponsored product recommendations on leading retail sites, thanks to a new partnership between HookLogic and RichRelavance. RichRelevance, a company specializing in omnichannel personalization, and HookLogic, a company taargeting performance marketing for brands, have partnered to expand retailer media programs using the Relevance Cloud™ personalization platform.
Sponsored product recommendations bring performance marketing for brands to more leading retail sites through the Relevance Cloud™ platform
San Francisco, CA and New York, NY — October 15, 2015 — Brands can now increase visibility and sales via sponsored product recommendations on leading retail sites, thanks to a new partnership between HookLogic and RichRelevance®. RichRelevance, the global leader in omnichannel personalization, and HookLogic, the pioneer of performance marketing for brands, have partnered to expand retailer media programs using the Relevance Cloud™ personalization platform.
With this new partnership, retailers working with HookLogic and RichRelevance can now incorporate sponsored products alongside product recommendations to grow paid media revenue from the brands they sell. The Relevance Cloud enhances the sponsored product listings with advanced personalization logic to deepen customer engagement and extend customer lifetime value for retailers and brands. In addition, both companies have agreed to jointly develop a set of advanced media functionality that will further extend the sophisticated personalization features already available in the Relevance Cloud.
Additional News Facts
- More than 220 leading retailers use the Relevance Cloud to power personalized content, offers and product recommendations to shoppers across web, mobile and store. Forrester Consulting recently found that the Relevance Cloud personalization platform delivers revenue increases of at least 10% and over $400K in annual maintenance savings.
- Thousands of the world’s leading consumer product brands use HookLogic’s platform to reach shoppers, drive traffic to product pages and attribute the resulting sales. HookLogic’s brand advertisers experience dramatic increases in product pageviews and sales of their products.
- The partnership extends use of the Relevance Cloud to enable brands working with HookLogic to increase visibility on more ecommerce sites than ever before, within RichRelevance’s personalized product recommendations, by sponsoring relevant products for consumers.
- Through the Relevance Cloud, algorithms ensure that customers continue to receive highly relevant product recommendations, and sponsorship of products is clearly communicated to ensure an authentic experience that keeps shoppers within the retailer’s site.
- Retailers can fine-tune the level of sponsored products that are displayed, and existing RichRelevance customers will be able to implement this functionality immediately without additional work.
- By blending conversion and media monetization, retailers can increase profitability and achieve even higher revenue per session, while brand manufacturers are able to sell more products.
Comments on the News
- “This agreement gives our brand partners an even larger network of ecommerce sites to advertise with, in turn providing them with the power to influence even more consumers at key decision points,” said HookLogic CEO Jonathan Opdyke. “We are excited to partner closely with RichRelevance to combine the benefits of omnichannel personalization and performance marketing for brands.”
- “HookLogic has built a true ecommerce advertising exchange, and our alliance leverages the Relevance Cloud to better serve our retail partners,” said RichRelevance CEO Eduardo Sanchez. “Using our platform, retailers can continue to safeguard an authentic customer experience while simultaneously increasing clicks and conversion through more relevant, personalized sponsored recommendations.”
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the global leader in omnichannel personalization and is used by more than 200 multinational companies to deliver the most relevant and innovative customer experiences across web, mobile and in store. RichRelevance drives more than one billion decisions every day, and has generated over $10 billion in sales for its clients, which include Office Depot, Costco, Marks & Spencer and Darty.
Headquartered in San Francisco, RichRelevance serves clients in 42 countries from 9 offices around the globe. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
About HookLogic
HookLogic, the pioneer of performance marketing for brands, partners with the world’s leading retailers and online travel agencies to accelerate sales for product brands and hotels. Advertisers use the platform to reach in-market shoppers, drive traffic to products, and attribute resulting sales. Network partners and advertisers include Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, Expedia, Priceline, Hasbro, Intel, LG, L’Oreal, Mondelez, Philips, Microsoft and Marriott. HookLogic is headquartered in New York, with offices in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Santa Monica, Calif.; and London. For more information, please visit www.hooklogic.com or call (646) 467-8200.
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