Furniture Chain Partners with Retail Technology Company to Predict What Shoppers Will Buy Next and Personalize Their Experience at Every Touchpoint
CITY Furniture, the retailer that’s changing the way people live through beautiful home furnishings, announced the results of an initiative to bring its customer-centric store experience to shoppers across owned and paid digital channels. Since July 2020, the retailer has been working with retail marketing technology company, Bluecore, to identify its in-store and online shoppers, and predict what they want to see–and purchase–next, no matter where they are. This work has resulted in a 330% lift in known shoppers, a 118% increase in repeat buyers, and a 58% increase in email opt-ins.
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“By extending its customer-first legacy to its digital channels with curated shopper experiences, CITY has been able to drive customer loyalty in a vertical where customers are more inclined to only buy once or repurchase at a slower rate.”
As commerce continues to shift to digital shopping channels, retailers are now in direct competition with more than just other retailers–but with every other digital experience. To create the compelling experiences that will convert shoppers on any channel, retailers need to meet shoppers where they are, be able to identify them individually, and have a deep understanding of the products and attributes they engage with throughout the entire lifecycle. For omnichannel retailers like CITY, their physical stores serve as in-person touchpoints to establish relationships with shoppers, so they can further nurture them and deepen customer loyalty throughout their journey between in-store and digital channels.
Before CITY began working with Bluecore, it had a wealth of first-party data from its 21+ showrooms and owned digital properties–ranging from what shoppers were engaging with and purchasing, down to the product types, trends, and categories each individual was interested in. CITY not only wanted to leverage its existing shopper, behavior, and product catalog data to grow a loyal customer base, but to identify as many additional shoppers as possible and activate that data to drive shoppers to convert, no matter what channel they’re on and at the speed in which they were engaging.
By increasing visibility into who its shoppers are and the products each engages with, Bluecore was able to automatically predict which price points, styles and product categories to feature in CITY’s personalized product recommendations. CITY used these insights to better target shoppers with campaigns across paid and owned channels, with each communication specific to an individual’s preference, identifying which product would be the perfect fit for every shopper’s home. Working with Bluecore, CITY went from personalizing only 16% of its communications to personalizing 66% of all communications across email, digital ad channels and its ecommerce site.
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“As our ecommerce site becomes the new ‘front door’ to our 21+ showrooms, it’s been crucial that we extend the customer-centric experience that we’ve provided shoppers in-store for the past 50 years to our digital channels,” said Justin Roisman, Managing Director of Digital Marketing at CITY. “With Bluecore we’ve been able to take control of our online and in-store data, and use it to better understand what shoppers want and where they’re likely to convert–driving long-term relationships and ecommerce growth as a result.”
Through its email campaigns with Bluecore, CITY attributed 42% of its email revenue to in-store purchase. In 2021, it had more ecommerce visitors than ever before. The retailer further extended the power of its first-party data on channels like Facebook and Google. By creating and targeting audiences based on existing shopper data, rather than third-party cookies, CITY saw a 63% increase in Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).
“Retailers need to be everywhere shoppers are–whether that’s online one day and in-store the next–and successfully connect those touchpoints to drive holistic shopping experiences,” said Sarah Cascone, VP of Marketing, Bluecore. “By extending its customer-first legacy to its digital channels with curated shopper experiences, CITY has been able to drive customer loyalty in a vertical where customers are more inclined to only buy once or repurchase at a slower rate.”