Written by Natasha
The e-commerce market is ever-growing, with more and more businesses left with no choice but to establish an online presence to be sustainable. And an increasingly important aspect of e-commerce success is e-commerce personalization. Here is what we can learn about personalization from the veterans of the e-commerce industry.
E-commerce Personalization
Personalization; It’s got everybody’s attention and is the fast-emerging norm of the e-commerce world.
Businesses across the spectrum small and big are looking to optimize their platforms by implementing e-commerce personalization, but very few have fully embraced personalization in its true essence and achieved a level of personalization that is both effective and seamless.
If you’re looking for inspiration on how to personalize or some convincing on why to personalize, then look no further.
Let’s take a look at e-commerce personalization examples from the top brands who are absolutely nailing personalization.
Amazon.com – Personalization every step of the way
If you’ve been looking into e-commerce personalization, then seeing Amazon on this list is really no surprise.
Established in the USA in the year 1994, Amazon is one of the very first e-businesses, which still functions and thrives to this day.
Amazon’s constant need to innovate and elevate brought about them pioneering e-commerce personalization by first introducing it into e-commerce over 20 years ago. And it has only gotten better over time making it a crucial e-commerce personalization example.
Amazon offers a highly-personalized shopping experience to all its users. Their focus is on making shopping easier for customers. Amazon’s high-functioning recommendation system along with many other personalized features makes this possible.
Amazon tracks absolutely everything their customers do through Big Data Analytics; this is the foundation of their successful personalization strategy. You can’t sell to your customers what they want if you don’t know what they want.
The personalized recommendation acts as every customer’s own virtual AI shopping assistant by promoting products based on customers interests along with cross-category recommendations and thereby increasing Amazon’s sales through up-selling and cross-selling.
Raking in annual revenue of 232.9 billion USD in 2018, Amazon attributed that 35% of their sales come from their personalized recommendations.
Amazon’s personalization strategy is very aggressive with multiple data point-based personalization at every touchpoint of a customer’s buying process.
Being solely an e-commerce-based business with no brick & mortar entity, following an aggressive personalization system helps Amazon stay ahead of the game and keep customers engaged and satisfied.
Best Buy – Integrating online & offline personalization
Best Buy has established itself as your go-to electronics retailer in the United States and has expanded to both Mexico and Canada.
Unlike Amazon, Best Buy operates on both the online and offline world. And they have used this to their advantage when it comes to personalization.
On top of personalizing their e-commerce website and app with machine learning and Big Data Analytics-driven personalized recommendations and personalized emailing, BestBuy has also found clever and effective ways to integrate online and offline personalization.
A unique personalization feature Best Buy boasts is their ‘Local Store Mode’ feature on their App. As soon as a customer walks into a Best Buy store, the feature automatically activates to send the customer personalized push notifications tailored to match the store location inventory.
Best Buy noted that 72% of customers who use its app come into the store with an item in their online cart. The ‘local store mode’ feature notifies the customer if a product in their cart is available in the store along with any other relevant offers.
Another e-commerce personalization example is their ‘On My Way’ feature which notifies relevant store employees when a customer is coming in to collect an online order. This way, the customer experiences a smooth and seamless service.
Best Buy is a great e-commerce personalization example for how businesses operating both online and offline platforms can use personalization to upgrade service quality on both platforms simultaneously.
This approach of adapting innovative features has allowed BestBuy to remain competitive against players like Amazon and Target.
Netflix – Personalization is fuel
The top streaming service in the world and grossing 20.16 billion USD in 2019, Netflix has become a phenomenon and a household name. And e-commerce personalization has a concrete role in that success.
According to Netflix, 80% of what people watch on Netflix comes from their personalized recommendation algorithms. Netflix’s next level personalization will have you binging on series non-stop all day long.
Sifting through the thousands of ever-multiplying number of shows and movies on Netflix can get tedious for users, and that’s exactly what the personalized recommendations engine is there to solve. Netflix’s machine learning algorithms process multiple data points and recommends shows/movies to users that match their individual tastes.
Not only does Netflix personalize recommendations but they also personalize their promotions, messaging, page generation and even personalize the image/poster display of a show to cater to different audience segments.
At Netflix, it is all about utilizing that heavy math machine learning to personalize every possible aspect of their service. Netflix believes in offering each and every user a personalized unique experience from top to bottom and that this personalization is key to higher user engagement, customer satisfaction and customer retention.
Spotify – Creative personalization for creative industries
One of the top music streaming platforms in the world neck and neck with Apple Music and Pandora, Spotify is another great e-commerce personalization example of utilizing machine learning and AI Algorithms to step into the realm of personalization.
Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ is a personalized playlist delivered to every one of its users. The playlist combines personal listening data with data from users that have similar listening taste profiles to generate the personalized playlist with a collection of songs nearly perfectly curated to each individual listener’s music taste.
Spotify noted that deployed tests showcased that users listened longer to personalized playlists.
And that’s not it, Spotify is also working on expanding personalization into their podcast realm. Using the same machine learning algorithms to curate podcast content to streaming preferences and habits, Spotify believes this is the key to fueling more engagement, building podcast credibility and loyal podcast fans.
Spotify’s personalization strategy is a win-win for both artists and music lovers. More artists get more exposure and users get a higher quality service.
Spotify has also integrated personalization into its marketing campaigns. Spotify’s Wrapped ad campaign features personalized ads based on user behaviour. One such personalized ad cheekily featured the most streamed songs in each advertised location.
These big data-driven ads of their app saw a higher return compared to non-personalized generic ads.
Spotify believes that creativity drives data drives creativity and is on the lookout for how it can further integrate machine learning to offer more personalized experiences to its user base.
easyJet – Get emotional with personalization
Airline e-commerce personalization is steadily on the rise as the industry is beginning to realize the benefits of personalization. easyJet has been one of the first airlines to embrace personalization and is a prime example of e-commerce personalization in the airline industry.
For their 20th anniversary, easyJet released a personalized ad campaign via email and the campaign garnered massive success. The ad campaign “How 20 Years Has Flown” was built around data on each customer’s journey with easyJet throughout the years. The personalised emails contained images and links that showcased each customer’s story from their first-ever easyJet flight to their flights to come.
The personalized and emotional ad campaign brought open rates over 100% higher than the average easyJet newsletter – with 25% higher click-through rates. Across all markets, 7.5% of easyJet customers who received the personalized email went on to make a booking in the next 30 days. In specific, the Switzerland market saw an increase of 30% in conversion rates. :’)
This is all just the tip of the iceberg on how airlines can use e-commerce personalization to increase sales and revenue, there are a number of other ways airlines can optimize their e-commerce with personalization on a daily and real-time basis to reap these benefits.
Conclusion
Personalization is a vast and interesting topic. As you can see from the above-listed e-commerce personalization examples, there are many ways to personalize your e-commerce business. And adopting even one such methodology can bring great benefit.
But first, you’ve got to establish your foundation; start with the basics and then you can get creative. Wondering what the first steps to personalization are? We’ve discussed that too on; How to personalize your e-commerce platform.
It is evident that personalization is essential in e-commerce and is a key component in successful businesses to improve and maintain healthy customer relationships, retain customers, and acquire customers.
No matter what industry you’re in, personalization seems to be the way to your customer’s heart. Do you agree? Tell us what you think.
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