Personalization and product recommendation technology vendor RichRelevance has appointed industry veteran Diane Kegley vice president of marketing.
With 20 years of experience in multichannel marketing, media and branding experience, Kegley was most recently president of SMA Global, a marketing strategy and production company. Prior to that, she was vice president and chief marketing officer for Stanford Research Institute’s AtomicTangerine, leading global branding, marketing, communications and partner relations.
By Darren Vengroff
Industry watchers predict that overall holiday sales this year will be down, but that a larger percentage of those sales will take place online. According to a recent survey by Burst Media, some 85 percent of consumers will shop online this holiday season. That means if you’re not doing everything you can to boost sales in the online channel, you’re leaving revenue on the table.
E-business pioneer and branding veteran to help RichRelevance drive thought leadership in customer experience and ecommerce strategy
San Francisco – October 30, 2009 – RichRelevance™, the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, today announced that Diane Kegley has been appointed Vice President of Marketing. Kegley spent the last 20 years leading multichannel marketing, media and branding initiatives for companies like American Express, AOL, CNET, American Airlines, HP, Lockheed Martin, and Sprint. A renowned marketing veteran, Kegley will drive global demand and visibility for RichRelevance’s industry-leading product suite and guide thought leadership initiatives around key market themes that directly impact the company’s clients and partners.
“RichRelevance has enjoyed tremendous growth this year based on our ability to deliver measurable results for the world’s largest retailers,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “We are very excited to gain Diane’s marketing acumen as we unveil significant innovations in the upcoming months and throughout 2010. Her combination of strategic insight and flawless execution will be essential as we redefine personalization around the multichannel customer experience.”
Prior to RichRelevance, Kegley served as President of SMA Global, a boutique market strategy and production company serving Fortune 500 clients and the public sector. Before that, she was Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Stanford Research Institute’s AtomicTangerine, where she led global branding, marketing, communications and partner relations. She was also Vice President of Marketing for CNET where she was instrumental in driving the company’s branding efforts and revenue strategies across multiple advertising sectors. While at CNET, Kegley created the “Guide to E-Business” series which served as a national educational strategy for advertising agencies and major brands on how to maximize marketing efficiencies online in the pioneering days of the Internet.
“eCommerce has reached a cross-roads and companies are looking to find the right technology and structure to integrate their offline and online activities in the most efficient and profitable way,” said Kegley. “I look forward to working alongside the extremely talented team at RichRelevance to help leading retailers balance the needs of their customers while navigating the ever-changing eCommerce landscape.”
RichRelevance, which publicly launched in April 2008, now serves more than 200 million recommendations each day on over 40 retail sites, including Sears and Wal-Mart. The company continues to rapidly expand its operations to keep pace with this tremendous growth, supporting client success while remaining laser focused on product innovation and excellence. RichRelevance has doubled employee count in the past 6 months and recently announced the opening of its new Seattle office. Kegley is the latest in a steady stream of talented executives who have joined RichRelevance from leading Internet and eCommerce companies such as Amazon.com, Overstock.com, Staples, eBay, PayPal and CVS.com. Key hires last year included Darren Vengroff, former Principal Engineer at Amazon.com, as Chief Scientist; Todd Pearson, former Vice President of Sales at PayPal, as Chief Customer Officer; Tyler Hoffman who most recently spent seven years building and running PayPal’s enterprise sales, as Vice President of Sales; and Jake Bailey, former Director of International Business and Director of Marketing at Overstock.com, as Head of Advertising.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, including Sears.com, BassPro.com and Walmart.com. The company’s suite of SaaS-based offerings, including RichRecs™, RichMail™, and MyRecs™, are easily integrated and drive a range of key performance indicators by enhancing the entire shopping lifecycle, from interception through engagement to re-interception. Built on the enRICH™ platform, RichRelevance products offer robust merchandiser control and employ over 40 different recommendation types with cross-placement optimization and a closed-feedback loop to display relevant, clearly-explained product recommendations. Founded and led by the former head of Amazon’s Personalization R&D team, RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco.
Did Wine.com have a recommendation function before RichRelevance?
We had a homegrown tool built by our IT team. It was better than no tool at all but it was limited in what it could do. It made recommendations based on a limited set of information and was not dynamically following the customer’s browse path or purchase history. It wasn’t a strong performer. We contracted RichRelevance, a personalization and recommendations provider company, to manage our recommendation engine.
Exhibitors, attendees, and speakers at last week’s Shop.org Annual Summit were encouraged and excited about the future of ecommerce, both in terms of growth and technology.
In fact, walking around the convention center at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas seemed to make everyone feel like the industry was on the cusp of rapid change, revenue growth, and even greater consumer acceptance.
Highly relevant wine and gift recommendations drive nearly 10% of all site sales and deliver a 15% increase in average order value for #1 online wine retailer
Las Vegas – September 22, 2009 – RichRelevance™, the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, today announced that Wine.com is using the enRICH™ personalization platform to create an online experience that both mimics and surpasses the experience of choosing a bottle at a local specialty wine store. Through enRICH, the nation’s #1 online wine retailer now delivers highly relevant personalized recommendations of varietals, vintages and related accessories throughout the Wine.com site. Recommendations are tailored to each shopper’s current browsing behavior and geographical location and incorporate the point of view of the Wine.com community – what they looked at, how they shop, what they buy – in order to expose shoppers to relevant products that they might not have considered otherwise.
“We offer a huge assortment of wines to an extremely diverse customer base of wine lovers who could be looking to restock their cellar, buy a statement gift, pick an inexpensive party wine, or just find something that they love to drink,” said Amy Kennedy, Vice-President of Marketing at Wine.com. “The idea of personalization has always been attractive to us but difficult to realize in our market. RichRelevance helps solve this problem and delivers an unmatched customer experience. With recommendations already driving a 15% increase in average order value on Wine.com – and as much as a 26% increase in recent weeks – we’re very pleased with the results of personalization.”
Wine.com implemented RichRecs™ from RichRelevance in under six weeks to deliver a more relevant customer experience by offering personalized product recommendations on product, category, home and search pages. RichRecs leverages multiple recommendation approaches including collaborative filtering, personalization, analysis of current and past individual and “crowd” shopping behaviors, cross-placement optimization and a closed feedback loop to deliver the most relevant recommendations for each shopper at every moment. Automatic “competition” among 40+ recommendation types ensures accuracy and immediacy in the product recommendations.
As a result, no two shoppers at Wine.com are recommended the same products – even when considering the same bottle of wine. Both recommendation types (such as “people who bought this also bought…”) and recommended products constantly evolve and adapt to provide a targeted and unique customer experience.
“RichRelevance provides an intelligent technology that can assess multiple inputs – including geographical availability and pricing – to deliver an engaging shopping experience,” Kennedy continued. “Even better, their team took the time to understand our business and our goals. We expect the partnership to deepen as we look to integrate more of their personalization products across our customer lifecycle.”
“Wine.com is on the forefront of using data and technology to provide shoppers with an online experience that parallels if not surpasses the offline experience,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “With personalized recommendations, customers can immediately find products that they love but would have never discovered on their own. In the case of Wine.com, these are varietals they would have never encountered at a local wine store with a restricted inventory and no means to optimize data on behaviors and preferences. As the online experience continues to evolve, it’s companies like Wine.com – who harness the power of personalization to drive sales and loyalty – that will emerge as real ecommerce leaders.”
About Wine.com
Wine.com is the nation’s #1 online wine retailer, according to Internet Retailer magazine’s annual ranking of websites by revenue, offering thousands of wines, wine gifts, gift baskets and monthly wine clubs. Wine.com’s mission is to be the ultimate resource for wine enthusiasts, whether shopping for themselves or sending a gift, by offering a great selection, low prices, convenient delivery and helpful information. Wine.com is the world’s most visited wine web site, according to research conducted by comScore Media Metrix. For more information, visit http://www.wine.com.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance is the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, including Sears.com, BassPro.com and Walmart.com. The company’s suite of SaaS-based offerings, including RichRecs™, RichMail™, and MyRecs™, are easily integrated and drive a range of key performance indicators by enhancing the entire shopping lifecycle, from interception through engagement to re-interception. Built on the enRICH™ platform, RichRelevance products offer robust merchandiser control and employ over 40 different recommendation types with cross-placement optimization and a closed-feedback loop to display relevant, clearly-explained product recommendations. Founded and led by the former head of Amazon’s Personalization R&D team, RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco.