Omni channel personalization Archives - Omnichannel Personalization SaaS Solution

24 Oct
2017

[ Case Studies ] How To Apply Omnichannel Personalization in the Restaurant Industry

How to boost ROI, increase conversion, and build loyalty with personalization automation

Just like with any other brand, consumers want to interact with their favorite restaurants both online and offline – from placing an order of their favorite dishes to getting personalized offers and discounts.

Delivering a seamless and personalized experience will help you stand out from your competition and make your restaurant the go-to dining choice.

Need some ideas and inspiration? Here are three restaurants that are winning the omnichannel personalization game:

TGI Friday’s

The casual restaurant chain increased conversion rate by 35% using an omnichannel personalization strategy that involves a website, a mobile app, social media, and in-store experience.

They collect all customer data on a centralized platform and create targeted offers based on each individual’s preferences, habits, and past orders.

TGI Friday’s robust mobile app uses push notifications to remind customers about their favorite foods at days/times when they’re most likely to make a purchase.

The app offers easy access to a list of past purchases so customers can order their favorite dishes quickly and easily.

They also incentivize individuals who have downloaded the app but are yet to place an order with a special first-time order discount code, delivered through push notifications.

Carrabba’s

The Italian restaurant chain successfully boosted mobile and in-store traffic conversion by encouraging customers to sign up for a coupon on their website when they relaunched their menu.

They then leveraged the customer data to integrate website, mobile, and in-store customer experience. Customers were rewarded for engaging with the brand via different channels.

By collecting data from these interactions, Carrabba’s was able to gain insights on its fans and customers by using all information from ZIP code to favorite dishes.

Combining such data with the emails collected during the menu relaunch campaign, Carrabba’s implemented automated personalization technologies to send emails featuring customized content and offers to keep building relationships with diners.

Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe

This Greek restaurant chain is on track to double its locations by the end of 2017.

They owe a good portion of their rapid growth to a mobile and online ordering system that offers a fast and personalized off-premise dining experiences, such as take-out, catering, delivery, and third-party delivery.

To support online and mobile ordering and provide a seamless customer experience, Taziki’s installed a unified platform that funnels all types of orders through a single gateway.

Guests can order via the website, iOS and Android mobile apps, or on Facebook, with the ability to choose from different menus and fulfillment options such as in-store pickup, curbside pickup, and catering.

All orders are tracked by a fully-integrated loyalty program designed to increase the customer lifetime value.

Online and mobile ordering generates a lot of customer data, which is the starting point for any personalization strategy. Taziki’s is then able to collect and analyze such data to enhance their customer interactions.

Omnichannel personalization unlocks the future of casual dining

An omnichannel experience not only makes it faster and easier to place an order but also builds long-term relationships, which increases customer lifetime value, by offering the ability to order from a list of past purchases and the opportunity to participate in a loyalty program.

At the core of any personalization strategy is the ability to collect and analyze customer data by using a centralized platform.

Find out how NectarOm can help you take your restaurant’s omnichannel marketing to the next level with our personalization automation solution.

02 Aug
2016

Personalization In Every Industry: Big Box Retail

Big box stores, supercenters, megastores. It doesn’t matter what you call them, the massive size of these retail giants is enough to send people into awe.

Their space isn’t limited to storefronts and warehouses either, which is good since foot traffic is constantly getting lower. To their benefit, the ever expanding digital marketplace has allowed these businesses to grow on another level, leading to new opportunities for marketing and personalization.

McKinsey found that 17% of consumers value the customer experience compared to 24% who care most about the prices. With competition increasing steadily as companies find new ways to increase brand loyalty and strengthen the customer experience, personalization has become more important than ever.

Personalization Incorporated

The techniques for personalization in retail chains don’t differ significantly from other markets. Companies will find ways to increase subscriptions, social media activity, and web page interaction in order to raise brand awareness, collect information, and personalize the experience.

There are two trains of thought when it comes to personalization for these retailers. Both are acceptable focuses, but when prices are as low as they can get, the company that offers the better customer experience is the one that can integrate the two.

The first is the use of variables. Businesses will study marketing trends to see which ways they can capitalize. These can include purchase history, shopper behavior, and interests. Businesses can guess at what customers will buy next and tailor advertisements and deals towards that.

The second are the constants. Rather than focusing on the marketing trends, this style focuses on the guaranteed information collected from customers. This is personalization based off name, age, location, and other unchanging facts. They’re simple, but give a different insight into a customer’s potential purchases. This information lets companies highlight deals and events at specific locations that would meet their needs. A sixteen year old girl could get an email about a back to school sale at her local store.

Companies that correctly use the omni-channel personalization strategies are able to pull all of this information from different places and organize them into one cohesive plan.

Omni-channel Issues

Big box retailers have a lot of struggles when it comes to personalization. It’s difficult to track the purchases and preferences of individuals who enter the store. There’s no data that can be held. Compared to a mom and pop shop where the staff knows your name, it’s more harder to direct Jerry to the products he always buys.

Because in-store personalization is all but impossible, retailers focus on the digital side of marketing. Unfortunately, attempts at predicting recommended products falls short due to troublesome programming. The Harvard Business Review reports that predictions for products are becoming so absurd that companies are creating more generalized algorithms in order to reach customers.

When a customer purchases a sleeping bag through Amazon, they’re more likely to be recommended another sleeping bag rather than camping accessories. The algorithms can’t take into account that a person generally only purchases one at time.

Also, the data held isn’t used to it’s fullest. If a customer buys large t-shirts every month, he’s still getting recommendations for tank tops and sweatshirts, rather than capitalizing on the purchase he’s going to make. The customer doesn’t get a better experience through the purchase, he gets the same as everyone else.

Lastly, the Harvard Business Review also found that shoppers would appreciate the ability to customize rather than have the business personalize the experience for them. This is largely due to the failed attempts at personalization by big box retailers.

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Their poll showed that 42% of online shoppers claimed to have seen no benefits from site personalization. Nearly all claimed they would prefer to customize the experience themselves than let the business do it for them.

Against these facts, personalization is still a vital piece to creating a better user experience. The issue is that it needs to be done correctly, especially by businesses that are focused outside of the digital realm. For most of these companies, it means going mobile.

All of these companies have had their own issues but continue to provide better experiences due to personalization. By using omni-channel strategies, they can pull information seamlessly to engage customers. They all use social media and they all have websites that offer accounts. The piece that separates them is how else they get information and how well they can put it into play.

Walmart

In 2013, Walmart identified the need for a more personalized shopping experience. It took two years of development, but in 2015, they launched a new app, specifically designed for tablets and phones to surf through Walmart.com.

Bao, Nguyen, a spokesman for Walmart claimed, “During Black Friday we sold about 1,000 tablets a minute.”

Trusting that customers purchasing through them would do so again, Walmart focused on those users to create a personalized shopping experience.

On the application, customers are given recommendations based off their purchase history. They’re given discounts and notifications for deals, as well as advertisements that meet their interests.

Walmart also took the opportunity to integrate their actual stores by sharing local rollback deals and discounts. This benefited Walmart as a whole, but also helped the individuals stores maintain customers.

Walmart is also changing their focus to smaller stores. With Walmart Express, and Neighborhood Market Units, the shopping experience will be tailored more towards the customer’s requirements, personalizing the experience on a more general level.

Target

Target was also fast to jump on the mobile track in order to better their customers’ experience. In 2014, they acquired Powered Analytics, a start-up, in order to provide a more personalized manner of shopping.

With the app, customers can search for an items and get instant information on where to find it inside the store. It creates a faster way to shop and reduces the amount of time employees need to assist shoppers.

The app also offers personalized discounts and deals based off the items they’re searching for. This not only gives the customer more options before buying, but it lets Target push stock that isn’t moving as fast.

Target also has the option of customers using a loyalty card. The RedCard offers a 5% discount on all Target purchases and is directly tied to a debit card of the customer’s choosing.

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Customers who use the card are required to sign up on their website, providing their information for access and management of the card. Having them on the site, with the information, allows Target to personalize online shopping. Because purchases are made with the RedCard, they’re tracked through the transactions, giving insights to types of products and rate of activity.

Different from others, however, is the 5% discount that attracts more users of the card. Loyalty programs are offered by nearly every major business today, but very few offer such strong discounts.

Target is using the same tactic as Walmart, aiming at smaller niched stores.

Nordstrom

In 2011, Nordstrom purchased HauteLook, a website that centers on flash sales. With it, they were able to develop new techniques of getting people into the store. Customers could buy what they wanted off HauteLook and, should the product not be to their liking, they could return it to Nordstrom stores.

At the stores, the employees, who are all selected based off their ability to nurture relationships, take note of the item. They help the customer with the return and then recommend what items they think might interest them. If the customer shows interest, the employee will walk them directly to the item, giving them a personalized experience they’ll remember.

On the application side of the house, Nordstrom uses Beacon’s location based technology, to promote their products. Customers’ location is tracked, and when they near a store, the application sends recommendations and deals to the user.

Furthermore, the app lets customers shop on their phone and see exactly which products are in local stores, down to the size and color. This grants customers the ability to go into the store, try on the clothes, and potentially buy other items they weren’t planning on. It’s all possible because collection of their location.

The app also sends custom advertisements that are personalized to their interests. More impressive, though, is what they intend to do.

If the stars align, Nordstrom hopes that, through RFID, employees can be transmitted the interests and digital shopping cart of their customers. This would allow them to assist the customer on a truly personal level.

Nordstrom dives further into the application marketing trend with TextStyle. Customers can get recommendations from live representatives or personal shoppers that are sent to their phone. If they like the item, they return the word ‘buy’ and enter a code specific to them. The transaction is processed through their online account with Nordstrom and the product is delivered. This one-on-one personalization is another reason why Nordstrom is one of the market leaders in big box retail.

J.C. Penney

While J.C. Penney may not be able to live up to Nordstrom’s application personalization, they do add their own fixes.

The apps allow for wedding and baby registrations to link with their online account. Users will receive emails with other recommendations based off the products in the registry and, since they’re not paying for them, are more likely to add them to the list.

Through their location based services, J.C. Penney offers discounts for in-store check ins. Along with their store finder for over 1,100 locations, they’re offering a way to tailor discounts and recommendation to the customer.

These companies have found some different ways to capitalize on personalization and continue their growth. The usual marketing trends aren’t enough for these corporate giants and they’re forced to continue to develop new methods to gain and keep customers.

These are the companies leading the marketing world and their personalization of your shopping experience is going to continue to become better as they branch deeper into the field.

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12 Jul
2016

4 Ultimate Personalization Tools and How To Use Them

Personalization can be a powerful tool in all facets of your business. From growing your e-mail list to increasing sales, giving your audience targeted content can thrust your business to a new level. In fact, by not personalizing you could be sacrificing prospective customers.

Look at it like this. You’ve gone to a site in order to learn how to increase traffic on your blog. You’ve read a couple of articles, but a pop up on the site keeps urging you to sign up for a free guide on e-mail marketing. You don’t even have an e-mail list yet. It seems pointless right?

If the pop up would have targeted you with a guide to using social media for increased traffic, you would have jumped on it, supplying your e-mail and potentially reading more from the site. But instead they lost a potential customer.

The ability to collect behavioral information about your clients is becoming pivotal in creating a successful enterprise. Marketing trends are proving this. Previously, the ability to capture all this data was limited to the Fortune 50 and those who could spend the money. Now, there are attainable options to collect the information yourself, so creating an omni-channel personalization strategy has never been easier.

To further drive the point that personalization is important, look at this article from BCG. It’s expected that by 2020, “roughly 8 percent of the combined GDP of the EU-27” will be from using personalization. That’s a huge percentage when looking at all the other contributors to the GDP.

Personalization and Privacy

Prior to any strategic execution, offer full disclosure to what information you’re collecting and how you’re using it. Also, allow them to control what or how much data you’re able to extract via a preference center. Giving them these choices, along with the ability to opt-out at any time, will keep your business’s integrity and establish greater trust between you and the customer. You’ll be surprised at how many people see the disclosure and quickly accept it. This is a sign of the times we’re in. There is an audience segment that wants nothing to do with their activities being tracked, but the overwhelming majority know giving this information translates to better, more relevant content and services.

When using social media, the platforms do most of this work for you. Sites like Facebook allow the user to determine who sees their profile and who can interact with it. By leaving their personal page open to the public, they’re allowing businesses to collect information from their posts, likes, and interactions. This information can be translated into data for your personalization strategy.

Now that you have that figured out, let’s get to the list of channels you should be considering…

1. Web Content

The old adage that, “It’s only advertising if you don’t want it,” still stands true. Consumers know their data has a value and they’re willing to share it if you provide them value in return. This is where content upgrades, lead magnets like offers, and custom calls to action come into play. They are the currency you’ll use in exchange for better information about your target consumer and customers.

Like in the example above, you need to identify the obvious ‘why’. Learning why a customer is on a particular page of your site is the most basic form of personalization. Without needing to pick up any actual information on the user, you can arrange a pop-up to offer a related product or content upgrade as soon as they read a percentage of the page. The percentage verifies they’re interested in the material, since they’re actually reading it, and it also let’s them get hooked before the pop-up arrives, making it more than a pesky distraction.

On top of this, you can arrange for different versions of your site based off the information collected. For instance, the experience of a user from Denver through a Google search will be offered content for the area and pop ups directed towards the keywords they searched. If the customer is searching for a product, tailor the pop-ups for that item. When a user from Montreal arrives through a Facebook post, they’ll have a different set of content elements, and the specific article they were looking at with content upgrades related to the topic.

A lot of sites do a basic version of this by storing cookies. You’ve seen these, right? Every 7 days, you’ll be asked to join the e-mail list until you do. Some will take it further and use a different style of pop-up for each visitation. Is this right for your brand? That depends on your “brand promise” or the “pillars” your brand has been built upon and the specific use case, but there has to be that exchange.

The important thing to remember is you should always be testing and learning. The way to do that, as you develop your personalization strategy, is by using dynamic content and presenting it as close to real-time as possible using algorithms to identify the effectiveness.

A static page with related content may generally work in the beginning, but that will start to fade. If a viewer reads an article about horses and is offered an ebook on horses, great. If he immediately returns and reads an article about cows and gets an offer for a guide on raising cattle, less great. You could be missing out on an opportunity to sell the Ultimate Guide to Raising Farm Animals. Perhaps the customer arrived through a Google search for the top 10 animals to raise on a farm. Missing that key piece of personalization could cost a sale.

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There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in this scenario, but the point is that you need to be constantly using the data that’s available to you in order to maximize the effect.

Creating a website that tracks the behaviors of customers is very manageable now with various approaches. It may take some initial work, but you will know the value of the content you’re serving and you’ll know it by the individual vs. trying to make all content resonate with all visitors. And it’s worth the effort. Optimizing your site to target specific actions and interests of specific individuals can increase your profits as much as 15-25%.

2. Social Media

The benefits of social media outweigh the issues every day of the week. Along with the free platform to engage with your audience, you can also pick up a lot of great information to better your sales. Don’t confuse personalization with socialization, however. Where personalization uses data from an individual to custom tailor an experience, socialization uses a group to apply pressure.

Being recommended to ‘like’ horses, because you like ponies, is personalization. Being recommended to ‘like’ horses, because 11 of your friends do, is socialization.

Facebook is quite likely the strongest social media platform when it comes to personalization. Everything on site collects data. Even if a business can’t collect information from the users, Facebook can.

Ads purchased through Facebook can appear in sidebars along your newsfeed and profile. Featured posts can become embedded into your newsfeed, appearing as though a friend has had a great experience with Tide. Facebook all but monopolizes the market by personalizing the content. Digital marketers know they can efficiently target customers through this system.

When creating ads, you have the ability to target key demographics. Things like location, likes, and interests can be selected to fine tune who sees your ads. Facebook’s ad campaigns also allow you to see your ROI on personalization. They show the amount spent, the number of impressions, and the dollar value of engagements.

Twitter is a different beast. Like Facebook, Twitter collects data from all of their users. The issue is that a tweet is seen for a significantly smaller amount of time than a post. Because of this, understanding your community is essential.

Since the average tweet stays ‘alive’ for only 18 minutes, marketers need to identify when their users are most likely to be online. Study the amount of impressions based off the times of given tweets to know when is best. Take into consideration what time zone a majority of your followers are in. Posting multiple times may be the best course of action.

Ads works generally the same way as Facebook, but stand out more, because of the amount of traffic a feed on Twitter receives. Look over your business’s feed and see what people are sharing the most. You can use the most searched hashtags to forecast marketing trends and coordinate your ads to show up more often.

Social media is your ticket to some easy personalization. Harness its strength to start converting at a faster rate.

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3. E-Mail

This is one of the most used and undervalued channels for creating consumer engagement.. By collect data on what products the customer has previously purchased, you can custom target e-mails to meet their needs. eConsultancy reports that 77% of business owners claim that “personalization based on purchase history has a high impact.” A percentage that large illustrates that it’s vital you don’t ignore it.

When a customer makes an entry into the sales funnel, they make the statement, “I am willing to spend money.” That’s the point where you need to identify what other items they’ll be willing to buy. Targeting them with products that don’t pertain to their interest will waste time. After they purchase that horse, send an e-mail offering brushes or feed. You know where their interests sit. Now it’s time to pour gas on the fire.

With modern e-mail automation, it’s easier than ever to have pre-written messages for when a customer buys specific products (i.e., triggers). Strong copywriting can let you capitalize on a customer already willing to spend money.

Creating targeted e-mail lists can benefit your audience, as well. Maintain a massive distribution group for general company information or other stuff you may want to send out, but keep smaller segmented lists for targeted content. One group for horses, one for chickens, but a large for your barnyard news. Your audience will be more likely to open and read emails focused on their interests, giving you more opportunities to make impressions and conversions.

4. Single View of Customer (SVOC)

If 60% of consumers are saying they want personally relevant content and offers, you would think every company would start doing that, right? Well, only a third of corporations report their technology and platforms are providing them an adequate single view of their customer so that 60% is going to be waiting a while.

SVOC is the centerpiece of great omnichannel personalization and it’s a mindset shift for a lot of companies. For years corporate marketing has been built on the concept of mass campaigns and channel programs. The two rarely shared a database and even more rarely combined sales data with them. Today, organizations can truly get to that SVOC with solutions like NectarClickstream and the next step is on the mindshift of marketing to an individual based on their behaviors, as opposed to working against massive segments.

Whatever solution you use, make sure it’s not completely dependent on third party pixels. The ideal tracking platform will incorporate 1st party pixels, redirect links, social data and operational data. This will take some coordination, but when you start seeing that data flow around each individual platform you’ll immediately understand the value and the questions (and corresponding use cases) will start flowing.

Bringing It All Together with Omni-channel Personalization

What good are any of these channels if they’re not slotted into the larger puzzle?

Omni-channel personalization is your strategy that intertwines the various platforms into a single stream of effort. Getting the systems to play nicely together is more of a challenge than setting up any one individually, but it can drastically increase your ROI.

Remember earlier, when we lost the sale for the Ultimate Guide to Raising Farm Animals? If you can get the systems to talk to each other, you wouldn’t miss that sale. The customer would still provide you with his e-mail for the ebook on horses, but you could follow up with a message for the guide. This method converts interested readers into buyers.

Whatever strategy you use to personalize your channels and improve your customer relationship management, make sure you have a backup plan. Constant A/B testing will allow you to stay proactive with what’s working and you can essentially remove any lull in your sales.

Personalization is your ticket to quicker conversions, higher profits and a more satisfied audience. As long as you operate with your customer’s privacy as top of mind, focus on making their interaction with your business a pleasant experience and you stay curious you’ll be successful in your personalization efforts.

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28 Jun
2016

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common?

These 4 Billion-Dollar Companies Are Leaving the Competition In the Dust…

The customer is always right, right? Well, it all depends on what kind of experience customers have with your brand. Their experience will not only dictate how often they’ll complain, but how successful your company will be. Think of some of the biggest new brands – ones like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon. All started within 15-20 years, but all have seen incredible success. Want to know why? Because they spent a lot of time and money making the customer experience the best it can be.

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Recently, taking the customer experience to the next level is possible through personalizing the content. It’s been an important cornerstone of successful marketing for some time now.

Think back to how this got done before the web. Companies were talking to customers, giving them surveys to try and find out as much as they could about them.

These days companies have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, and are embracing data to make it work for them. This article will explore how four companies (Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Best Buy) adapted over the past five years to see amazing growth, largely because of personalization.

Google

This company needs no introduction, and I bet you can already start to connect the dots on how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to great success. First, we need to take a step back and understand how Google makes its money. 89% of it comes from ad revenues, so for all intents and purposes, we’re only going to focus on that. So the question is, how do they leverage personalization to see the 66-billion-dollar revenue they pulled in last year.

Personalized Search

Google works best as a profile-based service, which means that to get the most out of it, you’ll need to sign into an account. From Gmail to YouTube, Google accounts work with a lot of services that people use regularly. Sure, you can still use it without signing in, but that is where the real personalization begins. This first point is pretty obvious. Depending on what you search for, and what your browsing history is, Google will serve you different sites.

Despite this fact, most people still don’t mind using it. By knowing what you’re searching for, they can offer products they think you’ll want to see. Yes, they are skewing the data. If you want a completely unbiased web search, consider using something like duckduckgo.com. Google is banking on a complex algorithm that takes sites you’ve visited and continues to show similar ones. If they know the type of sites you enjoy, why not show you more of the same?

Personalized Ads

This takes the first point to the next level and is made obviously clear after searching for a specific topic that you wouldn’t usually search. As an interesting experiment to illustrate this, I changed up my searches for a week. I love cars and do a lot of car-related searches. Understandably, most of my ads (when ad blocker was turned off) were for car-related products. I tried searching for something completely unrelated to cars: bird watching. Google noticed and then started showing me tranquil ads for bird watching equipment. Anyone can run this experiment, and it’s interesting to see how your search affects everything around you.

Though this may come off as creepy to some, it makes sense. If I am genuinely interested in all this bird watching stuff, maybe a company is offering a sale on those killer binoculars that I was looking for; so, I’ll click an ad, Google will get paid, and I’ll have some nice binoculars. Thanks, Google!

Personalized Videos

This last example is the natural progression from search and ad personalization. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s already happening. Depending on what you usually watch, it will curate your content to show you related videos.

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Though most, or all, of us, hate video ads, they know it’s a numbers game. Sure, you may close an ad every time, but 1 in 100 people might click it, and 1 in 1,000 might go on to buy the product. With these ads being served to millions of people every day, there is a lot of money to be made.

Google has mastered personalization to try and give you what you’re looking for before you even look, and the numbers speak for themselves. If this approach weren’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it.

Next, let’s look at everyone’s favorite streaming site: Netflix.

Netflix

“Netflix and chill,” may be a popular saying, but they are not chill about their dedication to providing you with shows you want to watch. Unlike Google, Netflix doesn’t make their money through ads, but through subscriptions, so their main focus is retention and keeping existing customers happy. They do this by filtering through their sea of available content to give you only what you want to watch.

Let’s look at how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to create a unique experience for all of their 81.5 million subscribers.

Recommendations

The “Recommended Shows” sections of Netflix aren’t new. In fact, they were working on improving their recommendation algorithm when they were still mailing out DVDs. Way back in 2006, they announced a $1 million prize to any team who could help improve their recommendation algorithm by just 10%. It’s clear they’re serious about constantly improving recommendations, and things have only gotten better for them since they made the jump to streaming in 2007.

Compared to a DVD watch list, instantly streaming content gave them a lot more data about people’s viewing habits. While they only had a list to work with in the past, now they can see what shows you watch, how much of each show you watch, what time you watch, and a lot more. This knowledge about your viewing habits helps them keep you engaged by ensuring you always have something new to watch.

Multiple Devices

Once Netflix made the jump to streaming, it opened up a whole new platform to reach new potential users. The thing is, not everyone’s the same, and different people prefer to watch movies or TV on different media. Netflix quickly understood this dilemma and saw the potential to have their service on different platforms. Rather than just being available through their site on a PC, they opened it up to Roku, Xbox, Apple TV and many others.

Netflix has one thing down: they are available to personalize content wherever and however their customers want it. From laptops, to phones, and even gaming consoles, Netflix is available wherever you want to use it.

Breaking The 4th Wall

The last piece of personalization that helps Netflix deliver a seamless customer experience is by now bringing recommendations right to your inbox. They knew people spent a lot of time just browsing for something to new watch, so now they help out by emailing suggestions directly to you. By using all of the data from your account, if a new show or movie that they think you’ll like comes out, they’ll let you know. You can even add it to your list from your phone!

Delivering useful content and recommendations is the type of omni channel personalization that has separated Netflix from the competition. They’re able to deliver a seamless experience from start to finish.

Amazon

You may have heard of this company. They used to sell books online, but are now the largest marketplace in the world, and are a perfect e-commerce example for how personalization helped them dominate the marketplace. As an e-commerce site, they make their money by selling products, and make even more money by recommending other items.

The motivation for recommendation is getting you to purchase more items. As the web grew, and more data points became available about their users, they were able to track more and more information, and make appropriate recommendations.

Frequently Bought Together

If you’ve ever used Amazon, you’ve seen this section, and it’s an ingenious piece of personalization. These recommendations are not serendipitous or a fluke. They are cold and calculated. Fortune describes it pretty well:

The company reported a 29% sales increase to $12.83 billion during its second fiscal quarter, up from $9.9 billion during the same time last year. A lot of that growth arguably has to do with the way Amazon has integrated recommendations into nearly every part of the purchasing process from product discovery to checkout.

Not only does this work, but they have multiple areas, each offering different suggestions: frequently bought together, customers who bought this item also bought, sponsored products relating to this item, and what other items do customers buy after viewing this item.

Those are four other suggestions to upsell and get you to buy more products. It’s no wonder why Amazon is the leader in the marketplace. This alone shows their understanding and value of customer data.

Follow Up Emails

If you’re running an e-commerce business, then you know that it’s a fact that a certain percentage of people will abandon their carts before purchasing. It doesn’t mean that they hate your brand or don’t want the product; life is complicated, and lots of things are vying for our attention.

With nearly 44% of cart abandonment emails being opened, a good percentage of those result in sales. This kind of personalization and customer experience isn’t hard to achieve, and any e-commerce business should be doing it. All it takes is a simple email with the items they left in the cart to try and rekindle the relationship and emotion felt in the first place.

Amazon Dash

This last product of Amazon’s takes personalization from the digital into the real world. If you’ve been following along, then you understand that people like to interact with brands on their terms, and that repeat business is key for a successful brand.

Amazon took their one-click checkout feature and made it into a real button. They realized that certain people would buy the same staples like Tide, Gatorade, or razors, so they made it even easier for you to buy them with one touch. Going from multiple steps to one press of a button is the next step in personalization and takes the customer experience to the next level. I’m excited to see what else they have up their sleeves.

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Not mentioned in the title, but equally as interesting is Best Buy, and they’re the last example of how a brick-and-mortar company can also adapt to the online data revolution and go toe-to-toe with the best of them. Worldwide, they have a 22% hold in the electronics market and are trying to close the gap with Amazon. To do so, they’re implementing similar tactics as Amazon and capitalizing on the shift to personalization.

Catching Up With The Rest

If you’ve bought something at Best Buy recently, you’ll notice that they too are sending recommendation emails. If you bought an Xbox and they have your email address, you might get emails suggesting new game titles you might like.

Of course, Best Buy stores benefit from the ability to offer instant gratification, but they also separate themselves from other online retailers by offering store-exclusive content. That means if you preorder a game at Best Buy, you’ll get exclusive access to limited-edition content, not available to anyone else. With prices being pretty consistent for video games, offering the bonus of additional content is an interesting approach to helping close the gap with online retailers.

Price Match

Around 70% of Best Buy’s inventory is available cheaper elsewhere online (Amazon, eBay), so how do they still manage to compete? To combat this, they’ve implemented a pretty liberal price-match policy for brick-and-mortar as well as online retailers. This policy is a pretty bold statement and makes a strong case for those who prefer to buy all of their electronics at once to do it all at Best Buy. If online retailers can’t compete with price, then they’ll have to get creative to compete with Best Buy moving forward.

Personal Contact

Though brick-and-mortar can seem like an excessive overhead in our digital society, Best Buy uses it to leverage their “blue shirt” experts and staff, who give a real personal touch. This is something an online store just can’t do on the same level. Sure, they could have a pop-up live chat window, but it just can’t replace actual face-to-face, human contact. Their staff is well versed in what they’re selling (sometimes that’s because they are actually employees of the brands they are recommending, instead of being Best Buy employees), and can usually understand your concerns and make real-time recommendations.

Though large businesses are generally not known for their speed in implementing change, all of these companies have done a great job of using data to their advantage to keep things personal for their customers and deliver an amazing overall experience. And as far as it looks, the customers have returned the favor by staying loyal to them and purchasing time after time.