Ecommerce Personalization: The Complete Guide for Founders, Merchants, and Marketers
Your ecommerce personalization journey starts here👇
Join Michael Palazzo as he streamlines AstroFlav's app stack, boosts subscriptions, & brings the retail shopping experience online.
For Michael Palazzo, it started with a handwritten note.
How much could the company save by consolidating its app stack? AstroFlav’s marketing director jotted down the potential cost savings.
Excited about the possibilities, he shared the note with his boss. Both envisioned a brighter future with lower expenses and more loyal customers. But they knew turning their vision into reality wouldn’t be easy. They needed something powerful. Something that could do the work of several Shopify apps.
They needed an all-in-one ecommerce personalization platform.
AstroFlav is a natural supplement company helping to instill pride and self confidence in athletes and non-athletes alike. While the company was growing steadily, Palazzo and team knew more, bigger gains were possible.
In the case study below, you’ll follow Michael Palazzo and his team on their journey to bring the retail store experience online and provide every AstroFlav customer with a more personalized shopping experience.
“I repositioned the product display with the correct wording and in the correct spot, and it almost tripled the sales of one SKU. That alone paid for the service.”
Challenges
The time comes for every company using Shopify to audit its app stack. When it was Palazzo's turn, he’d already tested several merchandising solutions.
And he didn't love them.
“I’ve tested in-cart upsell solutions, cross-sell solutions, bundling solutions. You name it, I’ve tried it,” says Palazzo. This led to an overgrown app stack that became a challenge to manage, and it was affecting efficiency.
Product bundles play a big role in AstroFlav’s merchandising strategy. Yet, the company’s previous bundling system introduced a major roadblock to customers. Palazzo says the old system didn’t allow customers who were buying a bundle to add other products to their order. “If a customer hits a roadblock, they’re not going to call you. They’re just going to click away. And then they’re gone."
Another challenge? Helping online customers discover more products.
In action: Rebuy Smart Cart™ with a multi-tier progress bar and in-cart cross-sells and subscription upsells, and the checkout page with cross-sells and a customer testimonial.
It was easier to do in their retail stores where customers can browse the aisles and salespeople can build rapport, ask questions, and make personalized recommendations. Now, Palazzo wanted to offer that kind of experience to AstroFlav's online customer base.
To make life easier for him and his AstroFlav customers, Palazzo identified three areas of opportunity.
- Streamline AstroFlav’s app stack. The team struggled to address app clutter and streamline its tech stack. Before Rebuy, they used two separate upsell apps (for subscriptions and non-subscriptions) and a bundle system with limited functionality, resulting in increased complexity and extra monthly costs.
- Help customers discover new products. Palazzo sought to recreate the retail store experience for online shoppers (using personalized product recommendations) and gamify the cart experience with rewards and incentives.
- Make it easy to subscribe. The team wanted to make it easy for customers to upgrade to a subscription and downgrade to a one-time buy when needed.
Strategy
Palazzo started by installing Rebuy Smart Cart™ equipped with in-cart cross-sells and powerful subscription upsells. He added the multi-tier progress bar to gamify the experience with incentives like gifts and free shipping.
From there, personalized cross-sells were placed throughout the site, including the product pages and the checkout page. Best sellers were added to the homepage, and post-purchase offers were enabled to help shoppers discover new products and encourage impulse buys.
To improve bundling functionality, Palazzo worked with the Rebuy Launch Team to add streamlined bundling widgets. Using Rebuy Dynamic Bundles, Palazzo now empowers customers to buy bundles and any number of other items all in the same order, drastically improving the shopping experience (and backend accounting).
“We use the gamification on the top of the cart for our free gifts. That was a big one for us that drove a lot of value.”
Bringing the Retail Shopping Experience Online
AstroFlav uses a Facebook ad funnel to promote its hero products. This strategy is effective for increasing sales of those products but doesn’t allow customers to discover new and complementary items.
Palazzo used Rebuy's powerful merchandising capabilities to allow customers to browse more products, similar to the in-store experience. Rebuy's ability to boost sales for underperforming products became a crucial element in AstroFlav's merchandising strategy. “We’re using the in-cart cross-sells for lagging SKUs that need to be activated.”
"I do have fun using it, which is a weird thing to say about a SaaS program, right?"
For example, AstroFlav recently released a multi-vitamin. To get eyes on it, Palazzo added a clean, on-brand cross-sell in the Smart Cart. When people clicked on the ad for the hero product, they would eventually land in the shopping cart. That's where they saw the multi-vitamin cross-sell offer. “The multi-vitamin sales jumped because of that,” Palazzo says.
Gamifying the Holiday Shopping Season
To get a jump on holiday sales, AstroFlav ran a Black Friday promotion two weeks early, offering a 15% discount on all products.
Palazzo added a tiered progress bar to the cart, offering gifts at specific spending thresholds. “We use the gamification on the top of the cart for our free gifts. That was a big one for us that drove a lot of value,” he says.
It sure did. Sales spiked during their early BFCM sale and again over Cyber Weekend, even after removing the discounts. On the Sunday of Cyber Weekend, Rebuy product recommendations accounted for 30% of total sales.
Results
Those subscription upsells? They paid off handsomely. Subscription volume increased 300% over six months.
Palazzo says he understood the power of Rebuy when he tripled the monthly sales of a single SKU. He explains, "After I repositioned it with the correct wording, and in the correct spot, it almost tripled the sales of one skew. That alone paid for the service."
AstroFlav's lead marketer expressed confidence in Rebuy's customer service, stating, "When I have a meeting with Rebuy on the calendar, I’m always confident that the meeting will be productive and helpful." An extra benefit included fewer customer service inquiries and returns due to deploying the option to switch from a subscription to a one-time purchase.
In the end, Palazzo helped AstroFlav achieve its goals and had fun doing it. “It's fun to launch new, different campaign variations with Rebuy,” he says. “I do have fun using it, which is a weird thing to say about a SaaS program, right?”
Not at all, Michael Palazzo. Not at all. 😎
AstroFlav increased AOV by 18.95% and 26.4% of orders included a Rebuy add-on. In addition, subscription volume increased 300% in six months.
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