On 30th June, eCommerce leaders joined us at Kings Place in London for the Fresh Relevance Summit. The day was packed full of inspiring presentations, lively discussions and food and drink by Regent’s Canal.
If you couldn’t make it to the event, here’s a recap of the insights.
How to use behavioral science to drive growth
The Fresh Relevance Summit started on an inspirational high with Tim Wade, Founder of CX Lab sharing his insights into using behavioral science to drive growth.
Tim talked about the need to understand both the conscious and unconscious behavior of your customers – you can’t build your strategy solely based on what your customers say they want. The peak-end theory (a cognitive bias that impacts how people remember past events) was a key discussion point, with Tim highlighting the need to create peaks of emotions and a strong ending when designing eCommerce experiences.
A brief history of personalization
The audience was then treated to a brief history of personalization from two of our Co-founders, Mike Austin and Eddy Swindell.
They discussed the evolution of social media as a channel for eCommerce businesses and how marketing, commerce and merchandising has merged with social channels.
Another key point of discussion was the privacy environment and the cookie apocalypse. With Chrome set to block third-party cookies in 2023 and a potential UK split from the EU’s GDPR, marketers need to be prepared.
Learn more: Why Fresh Relevance isn’t affected by third-party cookie blocking
Mike and Eddy also looked into their crystal balls to predict three key areas of focus for eCommerce marketers in the future:
1) Consistent customer experience across channels
Many eCommerce businesses have separate teams, infrastructure and content for email and web. It’s time to bring these channels together into a single customer experience across channels.
2) Agile customer experience
With shoppers less likely to be loyal to particular brands and customer expectations increasing, your customer experience must be optimized and ever-evolving to ensure it’s frictionless, relevant and unified across channels.
3) “Always on” optimization
Consumer tastes, digital trends and economic conditions are changing fast, which means you need “always on” optimization to make sure your campaigns continue to resonate with your shoppers. A/B testing falls short, since it’s too slow and time consuming. Businesses need an AI solution to help them plan and implement tests and optimize their marketing automatically.
Fresh Relevance in action and the latest platform updates
Jamie McCandlish, Partner Account Manager, helped the audience take their marketing to the next level with best-in-class client examples of personalization tactics.
Jamie discussed using dynamic content that offers up to the minute relevance, using data to produce more relevant content, persistent web experiences, and solutions for accessible content.
Our CTO, Dave Henderson also took to the stage to share this year’s exciting product developments, including our Testing & Optimization module and SMS Triggers.
Two of our Business Development Managers, Katherine Hunter and Toby Parkes then demonstrated how to use these new platform features.
Data today, data tomorrow: how Dotdigital bridges the gap
Michael Foley, Product Marketing Manager at Dotdigital shared his thoughts on the power of data driven marketing. He discussed the challenges in data management, such as poor data quality and disparate systems, as well as the opportunities, including the ability to deliver a better customer experience and differentiate your business. Michael then turned the audience’s attention to the future of data, zoning in on four key areas:
- Zero-party data
- AI & ML
- Cookieless future
- CD(X)P
Michael finished his talk by iterating the importance of delivering the right message at the right time to the right person on the right channel.
Customer panel discussion
We welcomed three Fresh Relevance customers to the stage – Riina Stocker, Marketing Manager at Ettinger, Nathan Amery, Head of Digital Marketing at Jewellerybox and Jonathan Broadhurst, Ecommerce Executive at Cooksongold – to discuss all things eCommerce with our Head of Account Management, Dom Delegate.
Here are a few key takeaways from the discussion.
1) Don’t make assumptions
Don’t make any assumptions about your audience – dig into your data (such as Google Analytics data and social media audiences) to uncover the demographics of your customers.
2) Cater for savvier shoppers
Shoppers have become savvier and are doing more research when buying products. Cooksongold have responded to this by including more information on their product pages.
3) Localization
Localization is important but it needs to be done carefully. Steer clear of Google translate and hire specific people to manage translations in a way that is culturally sensitive. Cooksongold discussed getting the right currency in front of people, showing the right cut off times on countdown timers and the right delivery time frame, and even showing different alloy metals to customers depending on the country they are located in. Jewellerybox also displays the correct currency to each visitor, along with the right ring sizes. Ettingher displays local payment methods and currencies and they also translate their data capture popovers into the relevant language for each visitor.
And the winners are…
The Personalization Pro Awards is all about showcasing the most innovative, original and effective campaigns using the Fresh Relevance platform. We love celebrating our clients’ successes, which is why this is one of our favorite parts of the Fresh Relevance Summit!
Here’s a rundown of the award winners.
Personalization campaign of the year – Dormeo
Best use of web personalization – Duffells
Best use of email personalization – Wowcher
Fresh Pro of the year – Chris Hibbard, Web & Content UX Manager, FFX Tools
Tech partner of the year – Dotdigital
Agency partner of the year – MTC
If you’re a customer and you’d like to up your game in the Fresh Relevance platform, check out our live Fresh Focus training sessions.
A huge thanks to our speakers, our sponsor – Dotdigital, and our fantastic audience for keeping the energy levels high and the conversation flowing.
Until next time!
