MarTech Interview with Jason Grunberg, CMO at Bluecore

Jason, please let us know about the concept of “identification” in the context of retail websites?

Shopper identification is a critical factor in growing retail revenue. Technically speaking, identification refers to the ability to recognize a shopper – known or unknown – and then capture actions and signals associated with that shopper. Identification is the foundation brands need to then deliver significantly more relevant experiences. While creating a good customer experience is a positive aspect of identification, the best approach marries a good customer experience with business goals. Identification paired with product and inventory insights delivers the highest increases in revenue.
It’s important to note that identification is not the same thing as identity resolution, which refers to the process of aggregating all sorts of different data into a customer database. Identity resolution is valuable for retailers and brands with multichannel models and where householding is important for both analytics and marketing, but even in these cases identity recognition is also needed.
Rather, identification is much more focused on identifying a shopper in the moment and then gathering and actioning on insights in real time or on-demand that are relevant and specific to a certain context or channel.
For example, from an identity resolution standpoint, I might have a large customer profile for someone who has purchased two things on my site over the past two years, and have information about their demographics, which emails they clicked on, and how much they’ve spent. However, if that shopper comes to my website and isn’t logged in (and most shoppers are not) then I have no way of knowing who they are and I don’t capture any of the information about their shopping experience, nor am I able to create a relevant experience that might move them towards another purchase.
With identification, I immediately recognize that shopper, identifying them as a past customer. From there, I can use their real-time shopping data combined with what I know about them to deliver an experience that is much more likely to move them towards a purchase in that moment with channel-specific context.

On average, what do you believe is the typical identification rate for visitors on a retail website who are not logged in?

The vast majority of retailers have a small group of logged-in customers and a huge group of shoppers who are not logged in. The typical identification rate on a website is often below 10% and nearly all of those identified shoppers are the ones who are logged in. That usually means that they have registered for some reason, for rewards or a loyalty program, or because of additional capabilities that they can access such as scheduling a delivery. Most people don’t log in. This means that 90% or more of the shoppers on a site are anonymous to a retailer. It’s super important to note that those shoppers are not all first-time visitors. A ton of them are past customers – even customers with a robust profile in a customer database! However, without identification in place, any customer who hasn’t logged in looks just like a first-time shopper.
When a retailer implements identification, their rates immediately improve. Our identity network and proprietary data-driven identification software can double identification rates very quickly. From there, a retailer creates a strategy to move their identification rates higher and higher. This can be done in a variety of ways, from capturing data such as an email on the site to encouraging more loyalty engagement.

What exactly is Bluecore’s approach to using data for increasing identification rates on retail websites?

Bluecore combines patented technology that captures real-time signals from a retailer website with data from our identity network. With our transparent ID network, Bluecore customers can increase shopper identification by re-identifying lost shoppers and connecting their online behavior with their identifier.
Bluecore combines shopper data with product data to provide retailers with everything they need to create relevance that is also good for business.

In your opinion, why do you think very few people log into a retail website unless they are loyalty members?

Most websites offer little incentive or value to a customer. If I look at the websites where I’m usually logged in, and there aren’t many, there are two categories. The first is a website like Amazon, where years ago, they provided me with a reason to create a profile (free shipping, a saved credit card, and discounts) and have made it totally seamless to remain logged in. When I’m not logged in, my shopping experience is annoying because I have to type all of my information back in and since I’m often replenishing items I’ve previously purchased, I log in because it’s faster. I’m also usually shopping Amazon via the app, in which case I’m always logged in. The other example of a website where I’ll log in is if I get incredible value for doing so, such as early access to new products or great discounts.
Most retailers do neither of these two things well. Rather than delivering real value and making a clear incentive for logging in, and staying logged in with every visit, logging in is simply an extra step in the process. A retailer might say that it helps them personalize the experience for the customer, but that doesn’t mean anything tangible to the customer, especially if the product catalog is limited or I’m browsing a new seasonal collection where personalization may be effective, but it’s not essential for me as a consumer. In fact, the best personalization is invisible, it is actually a very seamless experience that shouldn’t require logging in like what I described with Amazon. Even when I do log in to a retailer or brand site, it’s not often until I’m checking out and want to have my shipping information automatically populate so at that point the login didn’t do anything to augment my session.
Retailers also tend to have very manual login processes where someone is required to remember a password and type it in. Consumers are more used to automated logins from their mobile phones. They can use logins with fingerprints or facial recognition. Logging in is an easy thing on a phone, but on a retail site, it’s still cumbersome and manual.

Do you believe that a higher identification rate can contribute to the success of a retailer’s customer movement strategy? Why or why not?

Identification rate contributes directly to the success of a retailer’s customer movement strategy. The more shoppers a retailer can identify, the more they are able to deliver relevant, valuable experiences that turn new-to-site shoppers into first-time customers, single purchasers into repeat purchasers, and repeat purchasers into loyalists.
Like identification, customer movement is a way of looking at retail marketing that focuses on the most important metrics and signals – those elements that will move customers towards more purchases. Customer movement is a critical strategy for growth. Many retailers have tight marketing budgets and high goals, which leads them to focus on near-term volume like cheap lead acquisition or heavy discounts. Ultimately, these approaches don’t move many customers toward high lifetime value. Instead, they get a lot of one-time customers who purchased at a high discount with little chance of repeat purchase. Customer movement creates a more stable approach to growth than channel silos, lead-focused acquisition or discount-oriented “batch and blast” marketing.

How do you think an increased identification rate on a retail website can benefit both the retailer and the visitor?

The math is clear – the more shoppers that a retailer can identify, the more they can drive relevant, valuable experiences for shoppers and increase purchases. If a retailer knows nothing about a shopper, they are in the dark, and can only send out generic offers and messaging. Knowing who a shopper is, and then leveraging signals from that shopper drives customer movement.
For the shopper, this adds up to two things: relevance and value. At a very basic level, if a shopper goes to a website for running shoes and sees an image for winter jackets – it’s not relevant. With identification, if they visited the site the day before and searched for a few pairs of running shoes, a retailer could have served up relevant content about the running shoes they already researched along with customer reviews and perhaps a few other alternative choices that similar shoppers purchased in the past.
The second element, value, is just as powerful. Based on the previous day’s research, the retailer could have sent an email or push notification with those reviews, or perhaps a note that one of the pairs of shoes is on sale. Suddenly the shopper is being engaged with an added bit of value which might increase their chance of purchasing.

Can you provide examples of how personalization in marketing and the website experience can enhance the overall shopping experience for customers?

Many organizations think of personalization as creating a great experience for the customer, but retailers are also businesses. They can use personalization to close the gap between customer preferences and how retailers can sell products. For example, retailers can make in-cart recommendations based on what someone has high intent to buy with a “complete the look” message. Marketers can trigger messages to customers who return after not visiting the site for a while such as “see what’s new” messaging. Retailers can also ask questions such as preferred store location and then personalize items available for in-store pickup based on that information.
The best way to engage a customer is by saying something or offering something relevant to them. For example, understanding if they have preferred styles, sizes, or colors. It’s also about factors that matter to their responsiveness such as preferred channel, discount affinity, and time of day that they are active.
Delivering relevance and value to the shopper doesn’t mean focusing only on offers and personalization. A retailer can and should pair identification and personalization with shopper insights and their own product and pricing information to ensure that they’re creating sustainable growth. For example, some shoppers will buy a product whether it’s on sale or not. There is no reason to deliver the “value” of a 20% coupon to a full-price shopper. A retailer might want to move their spring housewares, which can still be the subject of a promotional email, but can be tailored based on colors, price points, or products that are most likely to engage the customer – and customers who are very unlikely to care about housewares can be suppressed altogether.

Have you ever experienced a situation where relevant offers or messaging influenced your decision to make a purchase on a retail website?

Absolutely. For me personally, I respond to discount floors. Meaning if I need to spend $100 to get 10% off or free shipping and what I’m already planning to buy is close to that amount, I’ll typically spend more time exploring the product catalog to find another item. Even if I don’t add something to cart to achieve the floor, I’ve now become more familiar with the site. Food52 usually gets me to spend more this way – do we need more linens? No. Do I want more linens? Yes.

How important do you think data-driven approaches are in today’s retail marketing landscape?

Data is extremely important in today’s retail marketing landscape. Recognizing that a shopper is in-market and being able to deliver an offer that will drive a purchase is critical to remaining competitive. Shoppers have so much choice right at their fingertips. Retailers are competing with each other to not only get to a shopper first but also with the most relevant experience or offer every single time.
What’s more, Google has already begun deprecating cookies on Chrome, which represents a significant loss of reach for retailers and B2C brands. If a retailer can’t identify an audience at each stage of the customer lifecycle, they will be operating with a loss. Retailers need a strategy for replacing their third-party cookie processes with something more stable and effective and that’s identification – which is driven by data.
Reach powers new customer acquisition, conversion, and retention, and identification is a big part of creating a more “future-proof” and honestly more accurate reach. If a retailer relies on third-party cookies, their identification rate will erode considerably as cookies go away and that means their reach will go away. Retailers must build out an identification strategy that can withstand cookie deprecation, and that means focusing on data captured directly from shoppers.

In your opinion, what challenges or concerns might retailers face when implementing strategies to increase identification rates and drive customer movement?

The main challenge is that identification to drive customer movement requires a focus on new metrics and alignment across channels where there often is none. The good news is that this can be done without any kind of major overhaul; it simply requires a willingness to shift what is measured and how teams work together.
Many companies are set up to focus on lead acquisition and customer retention, each with a separate budget and separate goals. With identification and customer movement, those two things get closer together – with high-value customer data informing what kind of customers to acquire and new customer acquisition being funded by revenue from retained customers.
Similarly, many companies have channel functions like website, email, and loyalty. With identification and customer movement, retailer marketing teams are unified around common goals, because customer data determines which channel to use.
The goal with all of this work is to create a positive growth cycle, where marketers are continuously testing, learning, and improving. So many companies are not focused on continuous testing so they’re missing out on opportunities to improve things that are working “enough” but could be so much better.
Retail marketing leaders don’t need to take a leap of faith – the results speak for themselves. Increasing identification doesn’t come at the expense of some other goal, rather it enhances and improves them with more insights and better reach. Customer movement is simply a more effective way of seeing lifetime customer value and determining what the next best step is for any shopper to move closer to a purchase at any given time.

For example, Bluecore worked with Lenovo to identify specific opportunities to increase performance across its retention and channel programs. We put together a “Customer Movement Assessment” which showed Lenovo was lagging in purchase frequency of active buyers, a big retention driver for them. The analysis also uncovered that Lenovo was seeing great year-over-year growth in overall value for tenured buyers, who were much more profitable than new customers. Together, we worked to increase the purchase frequency and the pool of retained tenured buyers to improve retention and bottom-line revenue. We helped Lenovo shift from ad-hoc emails to more automated signal-based messaging. With real-time product data and the ability to scale hundreds of signal-based messages, Lenovo is able to capitalize on specific moments of intent and optimize its messaging strategy with customer movement in mind.