When online retailer WildFang personalized their website with machine learning, they more than doubled YOY revenue. Find out how to get your own results to track that way within a month when you join WildFang CEO and Lytics Senior Director of Solutions Consulting at this VB Live event.
“Marketers are still struggling to integrate machine learning and AI,” says Craig Schinn, senior director of solutions consulting at Lytics. That means they’re missing out on some major wins that not only transform how customers relate with the brand, but actually move the needle with website conversions.
Schinn, who first worked with Lytics on client side as digital marketer for online retailer The Clymb, saw a ten percent revenue boost with cross-channel, personalized site merchandising.
“Machine learning does a great job of improving cart recommendations and cross-sell and upsell technologies,” Schinn explains. “Where I think machine learning becomes a little bit more threatening to the marketer — but also a potential improvement that justifies testing — are things like the tried and true user journeys that we’ve built into email welcome series or marketing automation.”
They’re the standard flow of automated emails at specified intervals that customers have come to expect when they first create an account, encouraging them to keep shopping and keep buying, or the win-back emails they get when they haven’t visited the site in some time or made a purchase.
“Machine learning and artificial intelligence start to replace, in a better way, that kind of marketing automation that has been built,” says Schinn. Data sets can be merged across website interactions, email interactions, and CRM data, opening up an unprecedented view of the customer.
“Now we’re able to say, here’s a score for each one for how likely they are to come back and transact or an engagement-based metric that machine learning develops,” Schinn says, “and then prioritize your remarketing or filter out certain users from receiving remarketing.”
And with precise segmenting, marketers can start to bring sharp personalization to bear which offers real-world, concrete results.
On the unsubscribe side, he notes that a client who’s focused on dynamic, engagement-based frequency has used that segmentation to shift email volumes so that heavily engaged customers get the bulk of the contact, while email to less engaged customers is dialed down.
“They’ve improved their unsubscribe rates by 30 percent and their revenue from email by 20 percent,” says Schinn, “which has been a great win on that side.”
The simplest, easiest place to start, where personalization embeds fairly seamlessly, Schinn says, is recommended articles or products you might be interested in. But from there, a host of more sophisticated techniques are at your fingertips.
At The Clymb, they were able to pinpoint VIP customers at purchase points and keep them engaged and spending with private offers and exclusive opportunities, or an opportunity to earn free shipping in exchange for a gift card. Some customers have leveraged disengagement techniques, moving from emails to retargeting ads, to successfully and proactively bring back lapsed customers before resorting to the “we miss you” email or the win-back coupon.
To get there, Schinn says, think through your objectives up front. “There are a lot of ways to skin the personalization cat,” he explains. “If you just want to get more products into the cart, cart recommendations are a great tool for that. If it’s something that’s a little bit more holistic and engagement-based, there are different answers to that question.”
And once you’re getting started with that program, don’t expect it to work immediately. There’s some discipline and some learnings that have to take place — but your results from personalization will compound over time.
“I’ve seen users who have started out with a single digit percentage lift that eventually grew to twenty, thirty percent point lift from their prior baseline, just by being disciplined and continuing to evolve what that program looks like,” says Schinn. “You’re looking at quick wins in as short as a month or two, but then for full benefit, within 6 to 12 months.”
Don’t miss out!
In the webinar you will learn how to:
- Increase web conversions and revenue with personalized website marketing
- Use behavior-based audience segments to better target visitors.
- Target customers who are most likely to buy or most likely to churn using data science and advanced machine learning algorithms.
- Use cross-channel customer data to power more relevant website marketing campaigns
Speakers:
Emma Mcilroy, CEO, WildFang
Craig Schinn, Senior Director, Solutions Consulting, Lytics
Moderator:
Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat