Major customer wins, additional financing and industry accolades underscore the company’s leadership in the commerce industry
Reading, UK – 17 December 2012 – RichRelevance, the leading provider of dynamic personalisation for the world’s largest retailers, finished 2012 with a strong roster of leading UK retailers and 100 per cent growth of its UK office. This year’s highlights for RichRelevance included new partnerships with Marks and Spencer, John Lewis and Matalan, recognition for the most innovative technology of the year and the kick-off of its global roadshow on ‘The Future of Shopping’ in London.
Leading retailers partner with RichRelevance to personalise the customer experience
Several of the UK’s leading retailers awarded contracts to RichRelevance this year. In January, RichRelevance integrated its personalisation and analytics technology online at Marks and Spencer to create a more customer-centric user experience. In February, it launched its partnership with John Lewis on both the website and via its email strategy. About the partnership, Sean O’Connor, Head of Online Delivery & Customer Experience at John Lewis said: “We chose RichRelevance as our personalisation partner because their technology provides our customers with increasingly relevant product recommendations, so that they’re able to find related products they want to buy more easily. We’ve seen a substantial lift in sales and order volume.” Later in the summer, Matalan deployed RichRelevance with the specific goal of increasing merchandising control and extending its personalisation across multiple channels. Mark Russell, Head of eCommerce at new customer Sit-Up Channels was already familiar with the power of RichRelevance: “Having partnered with RichRelevance at my previous company, I knew that I could count on a speedy implementation in time for our peak shopping period; indeed, RichRelevance was live on our site within three weeks,” said Russell.
New financing enables RichRelevance to expand global footprint
Globally, RichRelevance expanded every single one of their offices in 2012. The UK and EU team alone has more than doubled in size and moved twice to brand new offices to accommodate growing operations. To further this momentum, RichRelevance finalised a $28 million round of venture capital financing in August committed to infrastructure investment, technology to support new product innovations and global expansion. In 2013, RichRelevance will be focussed on building new partnerships across EMEA, having expanded its customer footprint to Coolstuff in the Nordics and kalahari.com in South Africa. Matthew Roux, CTO at kalahari.com – South Africa’s largest online retailer – said: “Our partnership with RichRelevance was greatly enhanced by our close alignment on IT operations. Both organisations leveraged scrum and an agile operations environment, which enabled us rapidly implement RichRelevance technology and immediately see the results.”
RichRelevance increases presence in British retail community
Commencing in London in May 2012, RichRelevance hosted a three-city global roadshow on ‘The Future of Shopping.’ More than 100 of the UK’s largest retailers attended the event to share best practices in the rapidly changing omni-channel commerce sector. RichRelevance was also honoured with industry awards this year: in March 2012, the company was voted the most Innovative Technology of 2012 by the 140,000 members of UTalkMarketing at the Marketing Innovation Awards in London. Further to this, RichRelevance was also shortlisted as the Retail Systems Awards’ Online Technology Vendor of the Year.
“2012 has been a great success for RichRelevance and we are thrilled with the growth that we’ve seen this year,” said Darren Hitchcock, VP of the UK and European Region, RichRelevance. “We place great importance on all of our partnerships, and each of the retailers that we work with are at very different but crucial stages of their journey. We are looking forward to 2013 and seeing omni-channel innovation evolve through our existing and new customers in the UK and Europe”.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance delivers over 850 million product recommendations daily, powering the personalized shopping experiences for consumers shopping the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands like Walmart, Sears, Target, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and customer engagement by recommending the most relevant products to consumers regardless of the channel they are shopping. RichRelevance has delivered more than $5.5 billion in attributable sales for its retail clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of digital advertising called Shopping Media which allows brands to engage consumers where it matters most—in the digital aisles on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Seattle, Boston and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
It all started with a cheesy holiday party invitation featuring cartoon-style ice skaters carving the words, “Cool As Ice” on a pristine San Francisco winter day (meteorologically impossible to freeze anything outdoor in SF, let alone an entire body of water). Just your standard holiday get-together with co-workers, right? Wrong. The only rumor floating was that there would be a “special guest…”
If you were one of the few who knew the 1991 movie reference, you could probably decipher the code. But with the ambiguity behind the reference, “Cool As Ice” quickly became an internal scavenger hunt for who the “special guest” would be. Despite the blatant clues, no one even thought to consider the 90’s rap superstar…
New 2012 Holiday Shopping Insights Study identifies top trends in mobile, social and regional shopping
San Francisco, CA – Dec. 13, 2012 – RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic personalization for the world’s largest retailers, today released its 2012 Holiday Shopping Insights™ Study, available for download as an infographic here. The new research drills into more than 490 million shopping sessions on leading retail sites to pinpoint changes in how consumers are shopping and buying this holiday versus the last, uncovering the new trends driving commerce forward this holiday season.
“The story for holiday shopping 2012 isn’t simply about sales volume,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “New ways of shopping have emerged that will continue to change the landscape for retailers through 2013 and beyond. For the second year running, we are digging into a huge treasure trove of data to provide insights into how Americans are shopping right now at the national and regional level.”
Key Findings:
- Mobile Shopping Continues to Boom: Shopping on tablets and mobile phones doubled this year to represent 15% of all traffic. Mobile activity peaked on Thanksgiving with traffic from mobile reaching 19%.
- Search Engine Traffic Up 43%: Consumers are turning to search engines in record numbers this holiday: one of every five shopping sessions (20%), on average, began with a search engine, compared with 14% in 2011.
- Pinterest Gains Share from Facebook: Traffic from social sources is up 30% this holiday, but still accounts for less than .5% of all traffic to retail sites. Traffic from Pinterest has doubled from this year to last, and now accounts for nearly 10% of all traffic from social sources. Facebook still dominates but has seen its share decrease to 90% (versus 95% for Holiday 2011). Twitter is not a factor for retailers with less than 1% of share of traffic.
- Cyber Monday Extends Into Cyber Week: Data shows that more people continue to shop post-Cyber Monday in 2012 vs. 2011. Shopping activity was twice as heavy on the Thursday and Friday following Cyber Monday this holiday as compared to last. Among all shoppers who visited retailers at least once during the holiday shopping period (from Thanksgiving through the following Friday), about one in ten were active on the Thursday (11%) or Friday (10%) following Cyber Monday. That’s twice as many as 2011, where about one in twenty were active on Thursday (5%) or Friday (5%).
Key Findings: Regional
The study also breaks down consumer shopping activity by region to uncover significant variation in local shopping preferences and behavior. Insights include:
- The Southwest (including Dallas, Oklahoma City) saw the highest mobile traffic of all regions.
- The West Coast (including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland) buys the most expensive items.
- The Plains (including Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha) saw the lowest average order value among all regions, as well as the lowest mobile usage.
- The Great Lakes (including Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc.) had the most online shoppers per capita than any other region. These shoppers also spent the most time on retail sites.
- Additional regional findings are available in the infographic.
Methodology:
RichRelevance’s retail network accounts for one of every four dollars spent online on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The 2012 Holiday Shopping Insights Study is based on an analysis of 490 million shopping sessions which took place in 2012 and 2011 during a ten day period beginning on Thanksgiving. Comparable days and equivalent sites are used for both 2012 and 2011. The online retail sites are all US-based and include mass merchants as well as small and specialty retailers.
Additional Resources:
- The infographic is available for download here.
- Connect with RichRelevance on Facebook and Twitter for updates and news.
AboutRichRelevance
RichRelevance delivers over 850 million product recommendations daily, powering the personalized shopping experiences for consumers shopping the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands like Walmart, Sears, Target, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and customer engagement by recommending the most relevant products to consumers regardless of the channel they are shopping. RichRelevance has delivered more than $5.5 billion in attributable sales for its retail clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of digital advertising called Shopping Media which allows brands to engage consumers where it matters most—in the digital aisles on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Seattle, Boston and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
RichRelevance’s Chief Scientist Darren Vengroff speaks on the science of email marketing at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit.
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Brand Fast-Trackers interviewed RichRelevance’s CMO, Diane Kegley last week about on and offline personalization. The podcast is available on iTunes, as well as on Stitcher.
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This is a weekly podcast that features top brands, agencies and marketers as they discuss the business of brand building, and features execs from R/GA, Edelman, Beats by Dr. Dre, Ford, Nascar, etc.