Intermix, a multichannel retailer of designer fashions and accessories for women, expects to increase annual revenue by 15% after deploying a new personalization strategy for e-mail campaigns this year, the company says.
Intermix previously used an in-house system for manual personalization in an attempt to raise conversion rates, which ranged from one-half to three-quarters of one percent, says Don McNichol, e-commerce director.
We made good progress, but quickly realized the cost limitations and one-size-fits-all approach of manual personalization were going to keep us from obtaining the bull’s-eye results we wanted, he says.
Intermix, which runs its e-commerce site, IntermixOnline.com, on the MarketLive Intelligence Commerce Platform, then switched to MyBuys Inc., a provider of targeted e-mail and personalized product recommendations. MarketLive and MyBuys in 2009 had formed a partnership which integrates the two companies’ technologies.
The combination of MyBuys and MarketLive gives us the ability to push information to a customer subtly, relevantly and thoughtfully, McNichol says. The integrated solution bridges the gap between old-world retailing and the new world of consumer preference.
Intermix implemented MyBuys in two phases. During the first six months, Intermix installed MyBuys on the MarketLive platform and worked with about 12% of the customers in its database to learn how personalization could best be deployed. During this phase, the retailer tested frequency, mix and types of offers to send to customers.
By the end of the six months, Intermix had raised the conversion rate among the customer sample to a range of 7% to 8%, a more than tenfold improvement from the former conversion rates of less than 1%, the retailer says.
Intermix, which earlier this year rolled out MyBuys to its full list of more than 100,000 customers, expects conversion rates to settle around 4%, McNichol says, resulting in an estimated 15% increase in revenue on an annualized basis.
By taking the time to learn how personalization could best be deployed to our customers on a small scale, we gained the confidence, skills and knowledge we needed to be successful at a much larger scale, he says.