How Data and POV Combine To Drive Commerce Sales
You might think the phrase above is the headline for a story about how commerce leaders are blending art and science skills to run their businesses. They should be, and that probably will be a future story. But this one is about the use of data that lets brands scale their point of view, or that of their customers, and glean insights that will allow them to make the right investments. While every commerce leader has his or her favorite tools, today I want to highlight technology companies driving sales - and profitability - at the intersection of behind-the-scenes information and a customer-facing perspective.
FindMine deploys data, specifically predictive intelligence, to make purchase suggestions to a brand’s customers via a content engine that automates complete looks. “Our brand is founded on strong design, but it was a challenge to translate [our store window displays] to e-commerce,” explained Sarah Sheldon, Senior Director of E-commerce at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. She lamented that other solutions deliver individual product recommendations, but lack the necessary context to create cohesive interior design recommendations for the whole home.
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, along with other clients of FindMine and similar “complete the look” solutions, know their customers are looking for guidance on how to create entire rooms, sets, and head-to-toe-styling — not just for what single product to buy in a given moment. “FindMine was our solution for scalable expert interior design guidance through our ‘Complete the Room’ e-commerce feature... Brands have to step it up and have a POV,” said Sheldon.
A point of view need not come from brands alone; it may be provided by customers. Stellar is a company that helps brands get their first product reviews by creating review seeding programs to put products into the hands of the right reviewers — consumers with a strong opinion. Amelia Showalter, Co-founder & CEO of Pantheon Analytics and Former Director of Digital Analytics for President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, partnered with Stellar to discover that:
Consumers are 40% more likely to buy products with 25+ reviews than products with <10 reviews
Consumer photos with reviews increase purchase intent by 24%
Products with 100 long reviews are 22% more likely to convert than products with 1,000 short reviews
Fairing is another company leveraging customer perspective, in this case by delivering more than one million surveys per month, giving brands an always-on stream of direct consumer feedback that’s tied to transactional data and integrated with other parts of the tech stack to facilitate faster, better-informed decision-making. Dr. Brandt Skincare used this insight to shift marketing spend from Facebook to GoogleGOOG because the latter is where traffic that was converting was learning about the product. And for Parade, the underwear brand, "Fairing's [zero-party] data enriches our customer-level marketing initiatives and operational insights in a way that nothing else can," concurred Jack DeFuria, Co-founder.
Regardless of where the traffic originates, and what triggers the desire to convert, retailers increasingly need help managing complex businesses. Alloy.ai, a demand and inventory control tower provides daily SKU-level insights by store in order to anticipate stock challenges, reports that its clients achieve a 35% reduction in out-of-stocks and millions of dollars in incremental orders.
“Toys are a very seasonal business and e-commerce, in particular, can be extremely up and down by the day, so Alloy.ai's constant data aggregation allows us to holistically analyze all of our e-commerce performance on a continuous basis,” shared Roxanne Stahl O'Hara, VP of Insights and Analytics at Melissa & Doug. This means the toy manufacturer can proactively take action on ordering and shipment plans to drive the most profitable sales for its own brand, for the retailers, and for consumers looking for good value for the price. Another client, Kristin Markworth, GM of Device Businesses at Tile (Life360), agreed Alloy.ai allows the bluetooth tracking company to spot possible inventory shortages at retail partners and avoid missed sales.
At the end of the day, conversion isn’t possible if the merchandise isn’t ready to ship when the customer needs it. This is why it’s critical to think not only about marketing in the right channels and providing the point of view that will create customer demand, but to ensure such demand can be fulfilled.
This article was originally published by Forbes on 4/20/23.