Personalization

The e-commerce customer experience will continue to evolve … but how? The coming wave is going to be dramatically different. While e-commerce is nearing 30 percent penetration among consumers globally and almost any product can be bought online, most of these experiences are still based on intent. IRL shopping experiences are still, in many ways,…

To reach consumers, brands need omnichannel strategies that deliver a consistent customer experience at every touchpoint. Yet today’s technical and business conversations about omnichannel are often too limited in scope to achieve what’s ultimately possible. Brands typically only focus on customer interactions across one or two channels or fail to break up the many information…

To survive and succeed in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers quickly adapted to meet customers' priorities and needs. Convenience became a touchstone of our "new normal," defining how, when, and where we shop. This trend will continue to be a hallmark of how consumers and retailers engage in the future. A recent report…

2020 presented challenge after challenge for the retail industry. While COVID-related online shopping resulted in an estimated revenue boost of $175 billion, the industry itself took a loss, with total sales dropping 10.5 percent — a number not seen since 2016. This unique combination created new challenges for retailers and brands of every shape and size,…

The results are in for this year’s Retail Personalization Index (RPI), and Sephora earned top marks for the fourth year in a row. The RPI uses a 5,000 strong consumer survey to determine the most important elements of personalized customer experience across the web, email, mobile, other digital channels and in stores. Sailthru’s research team…

COVID-19 forced retailers and restaurants to squeeze years’ worth of digital transformations in the span of a few weeks. As in-store shopping and in-person dining models became untenable in March 2020, retailers and restaurants pivoted to contactless delivery/pickup; buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS); and mobile and loyalty apps to keep their businesses open. In…

Customer experience (CX) has always been a priority for retailers as they seek to improve engagement and drive customer loyalty. However, the huge shift to largely online shopping, accelerated by five or more years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, has every retailer competing in the same online world without the benefit of eye-catching…

Customer experience has been all the rage in B-to-B marketing, but it’s given way to defined, personalized journeys for win-win scenarios for each consumer. I recently received an email that opened with, “Hi Justin,” and thought, “Maybe this company will do it right.” Unfortunately, the rest of the email was a big disappointment and I…

Coming out of an explosive year, retailers and brands alike are looking to be better prepared to capitalize on the rapidly changing nature of retail. With e-commerce experiencing unprecedented growth during the pandemic, online retailers are looking to automation to enhance their overburdened merchandising teams' capabilities, without massive investment. In 2020, we saw online sales…

Eighty years after the classic movie "Casablanca" made its debut, lyrics from the film’s signature song still ring true today — “the fundamental things in life apply, as time goes by.” I think of this every time there’s another story about the ways that retail shopping habits have been impacted by digital technologies and, over…