Ron Gerace, SVP, Product & Marketing Equipped with multi digital tools, modern day consumers oscillate between dual worlds—the physical and the virtual—and the same complex pattern reflects in their buying behavior. In such a scenario, retail success is all about optimizing a mix of online and offline consumer engagement strategies to convert skeptical visitors into loyal customers. While the convergence of commerce, customer, and technology is dramatically reshaping the rules of customer engagement and loyalty programs, oftentimes retail companies with decades of legacies are weighed down by antiquated systems that fail to integrate with e-commerce databases for a unified capability of customer engagement. This is where Exchange Solutions makes their impact, with their state-of-the-art engagement and loyalty programs that can track and holistically engage customers across channels in a meaningful and measurable way. With over two decades of experience in customer value optimization and having processed billions of transactions so far, Exchange Solutions uses data driven, personalized incentives (monetary and non-monetary) to fill gaps in a customer’s buying behavior, through one-to-one offers. “Our advanced analytical and technical capabilities help retailers maximize customer lifetime value at a lower cost than business-as-usual marketing,” remarks Ron Gerace, Senior Vice President, Product and Marketing, Exchange Solutions. All of Exchange Solutions’ programs are customized according to the client’s brand and are deployed as a managed service, which enables quick implementation and minimal IT intervention and developmental lead-time.
Differentiate and Delight
Exchange Solutions’ cloud-based solution, ES Engage combines real time, omni channel technology, artificial intelligence, and customer experience capability to help clients drive better ROI and measurable incremental customer behavior. Built on a proprietary platform, ES Engage engages customers with real time incentives to drive the key elements of lifetime value. Also, ES Engage provides a detailed report on behavior gaps and profitability potential along with a comprehensive approach to increase conversion rate, average order value, purchase frequency, and demand shaping to name a few key behaviors.
According to a report by Google, customers abandon over $280 billion worth of products in digital shopping carts every year.
We understand that retailers are focused on measurable performance, and hence, our solutions are available via a performance-based fee structure to lower upfront investment and risk
With ES Engages’ AI capability that interprets and predicts consumer behavior in real time working to prevent abandonment, retailers can now effectively gain a customer’s attention and interest by strategically placing real time offers and encouragement messages in a compelling form. The solution is intuitively margin aware, meaning little or no offer is made for poor margin baskets or low margin customers. ES Engage is margin aware and lowers promotional expense, which is a true differentiator in the customer engagement space. Moreover, a team of experts constantly monitor customer activity, looking for ways to improve intelligent offers and reduce incentive payout. While other solutions in the market are self-served, ES Engage is a fully automated, end-to-end solution that offers dashboard level reporting, performance metrics, and regular notifications.
"Our advanced analytical and technical capabilities help retailers maximize customer lifetime value, at a lower cost than business-as-usual marketing"
Above all, clients can expect an average of 10 percent lift in conversion, order size, and revenue with this unique solution. “The combination of capabilities in one product not only creates a holistic customer lifetime value capability but also a direct and measurable improvement on financials, ES Engage is truly the only product in the market that does it all,” exclaims Gerace.
With offices in Boston and Toronto, Exchange Solutions has some of the industry’s biggest retail and e-commerce brands as its clientele. For a prominent omni-channel home improvement retailer that was seeking new methods for customer engagement, Exchange Solutions helped boost average order value while minimizing margin erosion. On connecting ES Engage with the client’s website, the solution collected and analyzed customer clickstream events and patterns indicative of conversion and abandonment. Based on the insights, personalized offers were presented, enticing the customer to complete the checkout process. To ensure profitability, each offer considered the margin of the items in the cart and allocated just enough reward to actuate the conversion. In addition, as offers were extended to customers that exhibited a high propensity to abandon, margin was not wasted on rewarding customers who were likely to purchase and focused on building the customer’s basket value. The program was immensely successful and the retailer observed a 12 percent increment in client conversion, 15 percent rise in order size, and a reduction in promotional expenses by 50 percent. Initiated as a pilot program, the spectacular results prompted the client to deploy the solution on a national scale within three months.
Driving the Adaptive Loyalty Revolution
Currently organizations that integrate loyalty and advanced customer engagement are witnessing improved financial performance in their customer base. For traditional retailers, Exchange Solutions offers ES Loyalty, a super intelligent program that increases the customer traction of premium shoppers through an improved rewards scheme. In addition, with ES Journey, a product that provides an automated and advanced capability for A/B testing, Exchange Solutions can optimize page navigation through data received from tags and banner space. For a truly integrated approach, a retailer can now avail the high value performance of ES Engage, ES Loyalty, and ES Journey all through a single installation. “We understand that retailers are focused on measurable performance, and hence, our solutions are available via a performance-based fee structure to lower upfront investment and risk,” states Gerace.
Apart from retail companies, Exchange Solutions also helps retail banks identify customers with high investment potentials and present each customer with customized incentives such as fee adjustment or reward points, in return for performing incremental behaviors such as enrolling in direct deposit or opting for a credit card. Since most banks operate in multiple countries or markets with very different product economics, Exchange Solutions’ loyalty programs are fully adaptable to varied market positions. In one instance, a financial institution went ahead and implemented Exchange Solutions in its branch network across 22 countries, leading to a significant improvement in the bottom line. The client witnessed 70 percent increase in new customer balances, and the profits crossed $140 million.
Incremental Innovation in Action
To propel targeted engagement and loyalty campaigns, Exchange Solutions has a strong partner network in place with some of the industry bigwigs. Together with IBM Watson Commerce, Exchange Solutions enables online merchandisers to gain actionable insights that impact businesses. Leveraging this partnership, online marketers can design, build, and operate more effective customer engagement and loyalty programs. Committed to offer the best-in-class systems, the company also has partnered with Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Oracle Cloud. Exchange Solutions can seamlessly integrate with a retailers technology stack directly through its light touch or through its deep partnerships.
In the days to come, the company will continue to evolve ES Engage, taking advantage of the advancements in artificial intelligence and new channels such as voice agent and IoT capabilities. “We recently demonstrated a voice agent feature along with IoT capabilities that will be ‘everyday’ customer engagement opportunities soon,” mentions Gerace. Exchange Solutions is also extending its capability into user journey, A/B testing, and product recommendation spaces. “The world of retail is ready to embrace a new wave in customer engagement and Exchange Solutions is all set to lead this revolution backed by our next-gen products and keen understanding of consumer behavior,” ends Gerace.
