Building Unbreakable Customer Loyalty: How Bloomreach Engagement Empowers Businesses With AI

Forget simply selling products — these days, building lasting connections and understanding your customers' needs is the most direct route to rock-solid brand loyalty. 

AI is your key to customer connection. I recently joined Manuel Tönz, Director of Client Strategy at Bloomreach, to explore this topic in our webinar, “Building Unbreakable Customer Loyalty Using Data and AI.”

The webinar speakers emphasized that by working with AI-driven data and tools like Bloomreach Engagement, brands can unlock valuable insights and personalize the customer journey. What follows is an unmatched brand experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

If you missed the webinar, here's what you should know.

AI Fuels Unbreakable Customer Loyalty

No longer just hype, AI lays the groundwork for lasting loyalty and sales by personalizing journeys, building connections, and predicting needs. There’s just one problem: The fear of being left behind often overshadows the practical aspects of implementation. Headlines paint a chilling picture of AI's impact, leaving business leaders with unshakeable FOMO. 

While it may seem like everyone's already on board with AI, most companies still aren’t fully prepared to embrace the technology, leaving room for you to gain a competitive edge. There’s still a lack of foundational readiness, meaning that these brands haven't laid the groundwork necessary to leverage AI effectively.

Imagine opening a restaurant and buying the most expensive cookware, assuming that doing so will automatically earn Michelin stars. That's the equivalent of lacking foundational readiness for AI. Purchasing fancy equipment doesn't guarantee success for a new restaurant or your ecommerce business. The five key pillars — vision, team, data, tools, and operations — must be in place before you can reap the rewards of elevated customer loyalty.

The Five Pillars of AI Readiness

Building a successful AI strategy requires more than an elaborate tech stack. It demands a solid foundation built on five key pillars. These pillars are the essential elements that separate those who thrive with AI from those who falter.

• Vision: Just like a restaurant needs a clear vision to attract customers, your business needs a guiding mission for your customer loyalty strategy. This vision should also outline how AI can help you succeed.
• Team: Putting together a team with the know-how to handle your data, customer systems, and marketing tools is key to making AI work for you.
• Data: High-quality, actionable data is important for successful AI implementation across every pillar. Data should be clean, organized, and properly collected.
• Tools: To bring your data to life and transform your business, you’ll need to select the right tools with features specifically designed for AI-driven campaigns.
• Operations: A smooth-running business is like a well-oiled machine when it comes to using AI.

It’s important to note that, while all of these pillars can use artificial intelligence, none of them can be fully replaced by AI. You’ll need to lean on your team to test, modify, and maintain these pillars over time. 

Bridging the Personalization Gap With AI

Understanding the five pillars is a fantastic place to start when implementing AI. To be even more successful, you must also work with personalization in mind. 

The gap between perceived personalization success (71% of retailers believe they excel) and actual customer experience (only 34% of customers agree) is significant. This is particularly evident in the online shopping experience, which can be fraught with challenges, especially when shopping for niche or customized products. 

AI can fill this gap by providing the right product recommendations via the right channels at exactly the right time. This not only streamlines the shopping journey but also fosters customer loyalty by demonstrating your brand's commitment to understanding their individual needs.

Bloomreach Engagement, powered by its ecommerce AI Loomi, exemplifies this approach. Using generative AI, Engagement actively creates new content and recommendations based on extensive learning and automation. Essentially, AI works like "eagle eyes," spotting the data that most affect your profits. This lets marketing teams create more precise, targeted campaigns.

The Future of Online Shopping Is Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce is the future of personalization, and Bloomreach is leading the way. With conversational commerce, every shopper receives the help of an expert to guide them through the online shopping journey, offering recommendations and answering questions in real time. 

Conversational commerce is the driving force behind Bloomreach Clarity, a first-of-its-kind system that leverages AI throughout the customer lifecycle and across various channels. Unlike traditional chatbots, Bloomreach Clarity offers personalized assistance and wows customers with a truly human-like experience.

Even small businesses, which often lack the resources needed for personalization and AI, can use Bloomreach for a competitive edge. Leveraging the world's second-largest ecommerce data pool (after Amazon), Bloomreach equips all customers with pre-trained AI algorithms that recommend the best approach for conversational commerce. This levels the playing field by allowing small businesses to offer personalized experiences just like larger companies.

Companies That Nail Customer Loyalty: FitFlop and Marks & Spencer Czech Republic

As more companies embrace artificial intelligence, some are already serving as AI pioneers. Footwear innovator FitFlop and the Czech Republic branch of British retailer Marks & Spencer work with Bloomreach and Colours of Data to personalize customer experiences, driving higher satisfaction and loyalty.

FitFlop Lowers Unsubscribe Rates by Predicting Customer Preferences

FitFlop, struggling with a shrinking email subscriber base, recognized the need for a more sophisticated approach to email marketing. The business partnered with Bloomreach Engagement and Colours of Data to optimize its email outreach and reduce unsubscribe rates.

The first step was calculating the best email frequency rates for each subscriber using the data the brand already had about each shopper. Doing this would discourage any unsubscribe behavior in the first place. 

Then, FitFlop broadened its customer communication options, allowing customers to adjust their email frequency preferences before opting out completely. Choices ranged from unsubscribing altogether to receiving emails once a month, once a week, or only for sales and new arrivals. Customers who chose to unsubscribe were prompted to provide feedback on their decision, which Bloomreach used to enhance their personalized data set and anticipate future interactions more effectively.

Marks & Spencer Reignites Customer Loyalty With Personalized Product Offers

Marks & Spencer Czech Republic wanted to win back loyal customers who were shopping less often. The brand used Bloomreach Engagement to send them special offers, including a free gift, to get them interested again.

Bloomreach technology played a key role in identifying valuable yet at-risk customers who indicated declining interest in the brand. This involved analyzing customer data, such as purchase history and behavior, to pinpoint individuals who hadn't made recent purchases despite being historically valuable customers. 

After identifying specific customers, Bloomreach provided product recommendations based on past purchases and preferred retail outlets. The point-of-sale system was updated to apply a 100% discount to these products during purchase. Then, the offer was sent via the most effective communication channels for each customer (push notifications, email, or SMS).

The Five Pillars Set the Stage for Success

Though each brand had different goals, FitFlop and Marks & Spencer share a similar approach to ecommerce AI. As these case studies illustrate, both companies paid close attention to the five pillars, carefully setting them up for maximum AI success. 

Both teams started with a thoughtful, well-defined vision and grew their cross-functional teams with diverse expertise. From there, they implemented a unified customer data view, and both used Bloomreach Engagement as a key tool. They also acknowledge the importance of streamlined operations and the authority to make necessary changes as they go to keep up with changing customer demands. 

Fuel Your Growth With Bloomreach

Ultimately, the most important takeaway is that AI isn't a magic trick for building lasting customer loyalty, but a powerful tool when you have the right foundation. Build it with the five pillars of AI readiness and tools like Bloomreach Engagement if you want to drive success.

Imagine crafting personal journeys for each customer, boosting their loyalty, and achieving consistent growth. AI can make this a reality! Get expert insights with the on-demand webinar or request a demo to see Bloomreach in action.