Case Study • Apparel
Website Personalization Ups Apparel Sales 48% For Local Business Woman
Problem
Website personalization is table stakes for fashion retailersSolution
1-to1 personalized recommendations onsite and offResults
SOLE
The big 48% sales increase during summer 2020 was no small feat in the increasingly competitive Asian apparel market.Multi-brand fashion websites have been growing quickly in Asia. And post-pandemic, shoppers have continued to appreciate the convenience of shopping online and the curation of multiple brands on a single site.Ashley and Alex have successfully built a large community of shoppers on social media with regular live streaming sessions and impressive consistency on traditional channels like Facebook and Instagram.
Problem
Website personalization is table stakes for fashion retailers
Ashley and Alex realized that online marketing has changed and that selecting outstanding styles is no longer the only factor that determines whether a multi-brand website is hot or not. Their competitors had already begun using personalization so they knew they had to give it a try.
Research from Salesforce over the past year backed up their intuition. Actually, 52% of shoppers now expect all shopping experiences to be personalized with product recommendations that truly understand individual style, right down to the favorite colors and preferred attributes.
Solution
1-to-1 personalized recommendations both onsite and off
Top websites nowadays go to great lengths to make one-to-one connections with shoppers. The ideal is to make the online experience more like the in-store service that Ashley herself would provide to a regular customer that she knows really well.
Rosetta.ai filters visitor data from their website’s customer browsing behavior, demographics, and previous transactions. Individual preference profiles are automatically created for first time visitors and then updated whenever they return.
Meanwhile, machine learning annotates the product catalog images with fashion-optimized tags including favorite colors and over 30 other attribute preferences (material, neckline, sleeve, etc.).
Then personalized product recommender boxes can be installed on whichever page Alex chooses. He currently uses them on his homepage and product details page to increase conversions and make more cross-sells.
1-to-1 remarketing
After shoppers have left the SOLE website, Alex can set up email outreach for promotions that have attributes matching items previously purchased or viewed.
For example, if a black sweater with long sleeves was viewed on the website, an automated email offer can be sent featuring items that were previously viewed. Individualized preference profiles can also be used to send personalized reminders via SMS or instant message.
Results
As mentioned above, over the summer of 2020 the recommendation engine on the SOLE website increased sales by 48%.
After this initial increase the effect of personalized marketing has continued to play a reliable role in generating sales for SOLE. Now, a year later, incremental sales are at 10% per month.
The beauty is, sales are up and personalized marketing runs on its own while Ashley still has plenty of time to continue with the great marketing that built her brand up in the first place.