In a market where consumer expectations are rapidly increasing, retailers are on alert that they need to deliver unrivaled experiences to maintain shopper loyalty. One solution that’s standing out is personalization. Why buy a generic product when the retail journey could be curated to a consumer’s specific preference?
Enter Dynamic Yield, a full-stack, artificial intelligence technology platform. Liad Agmon, CEO of the company, affirmed that Dynamic Yield’s personalization operating system permits marketers to increase revenue by adding a personal touch to each customer interaction across various e-commerce channels.
The CEO said that the platform empowers customers to form real-time data segments and take immediate action on everything from personalization and product recommendations to automated optimization and behavioral messaging.
Here, Agmon talks about boosting brand loyalty and how to generate more sales conversions.
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FN: Why is personalization so important in today’s market?
LA: “In today’s hypercommoditized world, where the Amazon/Zappos leviathan dominates the competition on price, logistics and convenience, the best way to differentiate by retailer is on the basis of delivering a superior customer experience. Personalization is the key to delighting customers at scale online. Ultimately, repeatedly delighting customers and delivering on a brand promise is how retailers remain relevant.”
FN: What would be an example of that in the footwear category?
LA: “Imagine that you are an enterprise retailer with a significant footwear business, or a large footwear retailer that sells several types of shoes. A professional looking for work flats has quite different interests than an athlete looking for cleats. Serving the same online experience to both greatly decreases the likelihood of conversion.
“Here are some examples of what is possible: Personalize the hero banner for a returning visitor who has bought running shoes, so they see creative related to running, identify price-sensitive shoppers and serve them 10 percent off coupons and encourage users to add additional product to their cart to reach a free-shipping threshold. If $100 earns free shipping and a user adds a $70 item to her cart, launch a bottom bar notification that says, ‘You’re $30 away from free shipping.’
“Other solutions could include sorting category pages based on a user’s behavior on the site. For example, if a user is often looking at reviews, sort by ‘highest rated’ products. Another one: Personalize recommendations based on user affinities and past purchases. For example, people should buy new everyday shoes every four to six months. So for folks who have recently purchased, showcase complementary items based on their interests. When a few months have elapsed, showcase shoes they have bought in the past with a ‘Buy It Again’ headline.”
FN: What footwear brands and retailers have you worked with?
LA: “We personalize experiences for several large shoe businesses and many global enterprise retailers and marketplaces with footwear businesses. Among others, some of our customers include Under Armour (running shoes), Shoe Passion and Bombas.”
FN: Can you illustrate some scenarios in which Dynamic Yield boosted brand loyalty and sales conversions?
LA: “Russian retailer Lamoda’s use of Dynamic Yield resulted in a $15 million uplift in gross profit, a staggering 35-times return on their investment in the platform. The company built over 160 unique audience segments, and delivered unique experiences to each in the form of segment-specific coupons and personalized category pages.
“One particularly creative deployment featured a rush-time urgency coupon. For a user who started the checkout process but did not complete it, a notification with a 10 percent discount appeared. If a user clicked to redeem, a timer started on the site counting down the time to claim. This increased the conversion rate by 8 percent and led to 5 percent more revenue from every visitor receiving it.
“Here in the U.S., outdoor retailer Fjällräven tested a variety of free shipping offers depending on days left to Christmas and the value of items in a user’s cart. Ultimately, offering a message granting free overnight shipping to visitors who spent over $500 increased revenue per visitor by 30 percent among the recipients.”
FN: What are some of the latest innovations in practice at Dynamic Yield?
LA: “One aspect of Dynamic Yield I am particularly proud of is how we drink our own brew to continually test the utility of our product on our own website. For example, we have been able to identify visitors to our website particularly interested in our e-commerce thought leadership content, based on page views or traffic referrals and tailor experiences accordingly.”
FN: What distinguishes Dynamic Yield from other technology platforms?
LA: “Traditionally, building online experiences has been accomplished through a disjointed series of point solutions. Retailers would turn to one vendor to provide product recommendations, another to serve pop-up messages and a third to send promotional emails. In addition to the logistical disadvantages of this approach, this results in data silos; the actions that consumers take pertaining to one vendor have no bearing on the rest of the experience.
“Dynamic Yield replaces point solutions with a unified technology stack and a single source of truth for user data. As a result of our data capabilities, our machine learning algorithms are powered by the richest datasets in the market. Essentially, we give our AI the best textbooks.
“Dynamic Yield is also known for being fast and easy to deploy. We often have the platform installed on a retailer’s website in days and several use cases live just a couple of weeks after signing. Finally, our system is not a black box algorithm. With Dynamic Yield, you can combine the power of automated optimization with human intellect and nuance by incorporating merchandising rules to ensure all experiences remain on-brand.”
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