Do you remember the first time you bought something online? How exciting it was to get the package at your doorstep, and how it suddenly seemed like everything was going to change in the near future?
Now that ecommerce is a trillion-dollar market, it can be hard to recreate the feeling of the early days. For the retailers who are still building this market, AI is bringing excitement back. Retailers may not yet know exactly what they will build with AI, but they know it’s going to change their businesses.
Recently, Session AI announced the world’s first solution for autonomous on-site marketing. This new solution, AI Incentive Optimization, uses AI to do what was not previously possible in ecommerce.
With AI Incentive Optimization, retailers will be able to set commercial goals and define their onsite tactics such as offers, then let the machine do the rest. This solution is real-time, it’s highly efficient, and it overcomes the challenges of current on-site marketing strategies.
What are these current challenges? Retailers I talk to often mention these concerns:
- Too many pop-ups and promos. Retailers that use sitewide promos are often drowning in offers, even if they don’t want to admit it. If the current mix of promos isn’t enough to hit the number, the answer is often to add yet another promo.
- No on-site conversion levers. For retailers that don’t use onsite promos, they often can’t influence visitor behavior in real time. If they need to increase their numbers quickly, they can only do so in outside channels, not on-site.
- High levels of anonymous traffic. Up to 98% of site traffic is anonymous. Most conversion tools today are based on personalization, and they will be less effective in years to come. Retailers are starting to recognize this issue.
- Margin pressure. Ecommerce is facing new competition, while growth is flat following the pandemic boom. The resulting competitive environment is forcing a difficult tradeoff between conversion and margin, and often margin suffers.
AI can answer these challenges. With AI Incentive Optimization, retailers can use far fewer promos to achieve the same results. Retailers can provide conversion strategies in real time on site, and add the ability to use non-promotional strategies that convert visitors. Everything retailers can do with this AI will work for 100% of site traffic, both anonymous and known visitors. And the results will boost margin–even better, the AI can be tasked to pursue different goals whenever needed, such as increasing revenue, reducing inventories, increasing promotional yield, increasing order value, and more.
I foresee this new technology as a step change for ecommerce. This AI will allow retailers to move beyond the limitations of traditional promo calendars. They’ll be able to hit their goals with goal setting instead of catch-up tactics. They will serve up the information each visitor is most likely to respond to–without the need to collect any personal data.
A whole new generation of possibilities is open for retailers who begin to embrace AI. And I can’t wait to see what will happen next.
For more information read the press release announcing AI Incentive Optimization and download the data sheet.
