Saks Fifth Avenue relies connects with customers through AI-powered personalization
Kristin Maa is Senior Vice President of Growth at Saks Fifth Avenue, and is responsible for growth and retention marketing as well as online category growth. We sat down with her to discuss how the luxury retail brand uses AI-powered personalization to stay connected with its customers. Listen to the full interview.
Expanding into more digital channels
Customers who share their data digitally also expect that information to be used to improve their in-store experiences. To meet customer expectations for omnichannel personalization, Saks is structuring in-store conversations around that digital data.
Today, the expectation for brands is that they’ll engage in open dialogue with customers. There are many ways that can happen. Saks has been moving more into creator-driven content. They see increased interest in communities built around livestream content, where customers can ask questions and have conversations.
Whether those conversations include designers or buyers, being able to engage directly with a brand is a powerful way to build customer engagement. Customers want to be heard regardless of the platform, so Saks is dabbling to varying degrees in different digital spaces, trying to figure out the best way for customers to communicate with them, and understand how they want to interact.
Creating personalized digital experiences
At Saks, personalization is more than an accessory. When it comes to strengthening customer relationships, it’s the pièce de résistance. Considering the enormous number of categories and items on their website, it's mission critical for them to use personalization to guide customers to products that reflect their personal preferences.
With over 150,000 styles available, finding the right combination for customers is a lot easier with AI working behind the scenes. It pulls customer information and displays products that match the information known about that shopper, and it does it quickly.
Saks has been designing personalized initiatives into their marketing campaigns to ensure the messages sent to customers are data-driven. Currently, over 90% of the messages have a personalization element compared to 10% from a few years ago. They’ve also ramped up their email marketing content, figuring out how to incorporate dynamic content so it’s not the same product script being used again and again.
Customer DNA
Saks uses personalization to make customers feel that the content they receive is curated just for them. They’ve collected a lot of data over the years through physical stores, an e-commerce site, and a loyal customer base. All that data is considered by their analytics team as their “customer DNA.” Essentially, a customer’s DNA is their collection of brand and category preferences. It also lets Saks know how the customer likes to engage with the brand i.e., are they an app shopper or a desktop shopper?
Saks supplements all their first-party data with AI predictions. This allows them to “model a customer” who behaves like a specific type of shopper. For instance, when a customer visits the website and is introduced to a particular brand or category that triggers a strong match based on their profile, there’s a high likelihood they’ll be interested in those products, so Saks builds a unique experience based on this information.
Kristin finds that to be an added value. As she describes in one hypothetical, “We noticed that you really love these three brands. There's this other brand you probably haven't heard of and you would love them as well, so why don't you give that a try?" Saks then adds that data to the DNA of what they think the customer would like, assuming that if they try it, they’ll like it. Layering on top of that, the AI tool then identifies the customer’s current actions. The process has been so successful that sometimes the store runs out of inventory on products because so many customers have been exposed to the item.
Finding actionable insights with customer data
The marketing team is pushing themselves to find more ways to infer what customers are looking for without customers needing to tell them. They’re continuing to test and roll out new strategies that expand on that idea. But they want to be smart with their data. As Kristin shared, “Everybody can collect data and anybody can collect a lot of data, there's no shortage of that. It's being able to take it and activate it and make it meaningful.”
One example of how they’re using data innovatively is by arming in-store associates with information about what customers are shopping for online. A lot of customers have stylists they work with in-store who sometimes order things on their behalf. Having customer data that is clean, reliable, and structured in a way that's ingestible is key for stylists to delight their customers with items they know they’ll absolutely love.
Discovering new use cases with AI
Saks plans to use AI more and more as new use cases become available. And while they see opportunities such as writing product descriptions as valuable, they really hope to leverage it to further personalize the customer experience and cultivate customer relationships. They see a world where sales reps will know more about each customer and be able to find out what the customer cares about and what they need to make the shopping experience more exceptional.
Conclusion
A powerful AI future will be here before you know it: with capabilities like predictions, generative, and workflow automations that will make AI consumable for business users across teams. These are just some of the intuitive capabilities that will soon be available with Twilio’s CustomerAI.
With all that information based on intelligent insights from YOUR customer data, the sky’s the limit in terms of delivering the best outcomes for your customers and deepening your relationships along the way using AI and a customer data platform.
To fuel efficient growth, you need to have a complete understanding of who your customers are and how they want to interact with your business. This is especially important because in this new world of AI, it’s about getting all of your data ready for AI use cases. This will be your competitive advantage moving forward.
But it takes time to get there. Afterall, AI is only as good as the customer data it was trained on. Don’t fall victim to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) with your AI strategy. The path to intelligent customer engagement starts with high-quality, first-party data.
You can get access to more customer stories in our ebook, Personalization in the Age of AI: How 4 Brands are Shaping the Future.