Retailers from M&S to Missguided and JD Williams say personalisation is helping to lift sales in their businesses.
Marks & Spencer, a Leading company in IRUK Top500 research, saw sales lift by almost 6% when it personalised its homepage for returning customers, one test found.
The results came as the company, working in an agile testing partnership with Webtrends , aimed to find if returning visitors to the website were more likely to spend more if they were reminded about items they’d added to their shopping basket on a previous visit. When they did so they detected the uplift.
Clare Shields, product owner at M&S , says the development partnership has helped the business to act more quickly to boost sales.
“Our planning cycle has become much shorter and we are more flexible than before so we can be more responsive and reactive in prioritising the projects that will deliver the best possible returns for the business,” said Shields.
“The testing pipeline is continuously evolving and becoming more sophisticated, which has been boosted by our partnership with Webtrends. They’ve been a trusted advisor playing an important role in developing more complex, personalisation-based tests to ensure we maximise website performance.
“Everyone on the team recognises that our biggest challenges are the biggest business opportunities and now we can deliver new ideas and initiatives within a matter of weeks, not months,” she continued. “As we are more agile, we can make incremental improvements on a continuous basis and this has delivered impressive and tangible.”
Meanwhile, Missguided has reported how using a personalisation strategy to target customers with specific, tailored, experiences helped to boost conversion rates by more than a third. Monetate helped the fast fashion retailer, a Top150 company in IRUK Top500 research, to introduce targeted messaging for specific segments of its customer base. Thus it can now show winter coats and boots to UK websites visitors, while showing shorts and sandals to those visiting from its Australian site. ‘Celeb style’ badges worked well in the US, but not so much in France. Since implementing the personalisation platform, less than a year ago, revenues have risen by 33% and conversion by 34%.
Leanne Fyffe, optimisation specialist at Missguided , said: “We have a real passion for personalisation and are continuously seeing the value it adds to our business. As well as being able to offer our large, expanding customer base the best possible experience, we’ve also been able to use Monetate to set better business goals.
“We started out with just one team member using the platform but with a true personalisation strategy in place, we’re starting to see benefits across the whole company. 2016 will be a great year for us we still have a lot to do with the ultimate goal being one-to-one customer targeting.”
Another Monetate customer, JD Williams recently reported an 18% lift in new visitor conversion two weeks after introducing a mobile personalisation programme. Tests found that, following the introduction of the personalisation platform, overall conversions rose by 8%, revenue per session by 12% and average order values were up by 5%.
Monetate has also been used more widely in the business over the last year. Finn Christo, conversion rate optimisation manager at JD Williams’ parent company the N Brown Group , said: “The level of excitement in the business is inspiring. We have full support from the executive team who understand that by moving the needle by just a tiny fraction the ROI is huge. Montetate lets us move that needle.”
Ann Steer, director of marketing at N Brown Group, added: “Personalisation and the ability to deliver individual, relevant experiences are the single most important thing that will help us deliver business success.”
