AI in Action: 5 Real-Life Examples of Putting Your AI to Work

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest buzzwords in the ecommerce world right now, and for good reason. 

AI has been instrumental in changing the way businesses operate and customer experiences are delivered. But it can be tough to figure out what’s just hype and what’s actually useful. Businesses everywhere are asking themselves: How can we put AI to use in practical ways?

Long before the buzz around AI — and specifically generative AI — took off, Bloomreach has been helping ecommerce companies put their AI to work to drive revenue and offer connected commerce experiences to their customers. With over 30 AI-related patents, Bloomreach has been a leader and visionary in working with AI in ecommerce since 2009. 

With that in mind, let’s explore seven real-life examples of ways that your company can successfully put AI into practice. These use cases will demonstrate the various ways in which AI can be used to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer experiences.

Through these real-life examples, we hope to illustrate the potential of AI to transform a wide range of industries and business functions. Whether you're looking to improve customer experiences, reduce operational costs, or accelerate innovation, AI can provide a powerful toolset for achieving your goals.

Jenson USA Uses AI To Personalize Search Results

In today's digital age, customers expect personalized online experiences across the board. 

Jenson USA, a leading online cycling retailer, knew it needed to create more tailored shopping experiences to keep customers coming back.

The company was struggling to personalize customer experiences online — it relied heavily on manual search results and lacked the ability to offer personalized results based on customer behavior. After partnering with Bloomreach and using our AI-powered technology, Jenson USA was able to automatically segment customers based on their in-session behavior and purchases. 

From there, the company could offer personalized product recommendations and improve the relevance of search results — for example, a mountain biker would see a different set of products while searching than a road biker. This search personalization helped boost overall RPV by an impressive 8.5%.

The power of Bloomreach’s AI — and in particular, our real-time segments capability — helped Jenson USA stay ahead of the competition by delivering personalized experiences that catered to individual customer needs. 

bimago Finds Success With Contextual Personalization for Testing 

A/B testing is a standard way to find the best variant for the majority of your audience, but that’s also the main drawback of the method: It’s the best version for most people, not all.

That’s why contextual personalization, an AI-powered way to test and experiment, has the potential to revolutionize digital commerce stores. By using AI and machine learning to analyze customer data, contextual personalization can deliver the best variant to each individual customer instead of showing a single message to everyone. 

bimago, an online art retailer, faced the challenge of providing personalized experiences and relevant product recommendations. With a vast collection of over 10,000 products, bimago struggled to efficiently categorize and present its inventory in a way that resonated with its customers.

In order to address this challenge, bimago used Bloomreach Engagement’s contextual personalization to serve the best variant of a banner to customers depending on what would convert. The result was clear: Contextual personalization delivered much better results (a 44% increase in conversion rate on subscriptions) vs. A/B testing. 

MKM Wins With AI and Composable Commerce 

MKM Building Supplies, the largest independent builder's merchant in the UK, recognized the need to modernize its digital experience and take a B2C approach to commerce. However, the company faced several challenges, including an outdated tech stack, slow website load times, and an inferior digital experience compared to its in-person offering.

As the industry evolved and consumer expectations increased, particularly among younger shoppers, MKM needed to meet the rising demand for seamless digital experiences. The existing website accounted for only limited revenue, and the company aimed to improve its first touchpoint in the buyer's journey. However, the previous website lacked cohesive reporting, CRM, and personalization capabilities, leaving MKM unable to evaluate marketing tactics or ensure customer lifetime value.

The company also required hyper-personalization, considering its unique branches, customer needs, and localization. To address these issues, MKM tapped into the AI capabilities of the entire Bloomreach Commerce Experience Cloud. 

This yielded a new and improved website that provided connected and personalized digital experiences. The combination of Bloomreach, BraveBison, Vue Storefront, and BigCommerce created the perfect MACH (Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, Headless) architecture for personalized composable commerce.

boohooMAN Uses AI To Predict Optimal Send Time and Channel

With Bloomreach Engagement, you can use AI to ensure that your emails resonate with your customers and that you’re not coming across as intrusive. 

You can do this by using the optimal send time feature for email and SMS campaigns, or by using a predictions template. Optimal send time is a prediction model that takes into account your customers' past behavior to determine the best hour of the day to send your campaign. 

This ensures that your message reaches individual customers at a time when they are most likely to engage with it, resulting in higher click-through rates and open rates. By using this feature, you can automate your campaigns with the assurance that they’re targeted to each customer's preferences and behavior. Additionally, Bloomreach Engagement can also determine the most effective channel — for instance, if a customer is subscribed to both email and SMS but only makes purchases via SMS, Bloomreach can identify SMS as the best channel to push customers into action.

Online retailer boohooMAN used this to great effect in its SMS campaigns. Because segmentation and personalization operate by leveraging customer data, boohooMAN can create highly targeted and personalized SMS campaigns (instead of treating them as one-off messages). The brand uses Bloomreach Engagement’s predictions to identify when SMS is the best next action to encourage customers to take the next step, and when to send the messages. As a result, boohooMAN saw a 5x ROI on SMS campaigns and an even greater return on a birthday flow campaign it ran.

Boden Upgrades Digital Merchandising With AI

Boden, a UK-based clothing retailer, realized that personalizing the customer journey was critical to its future success. However, legacy tools were time-consuming and required a lot of manual work.

By implementing Bloomreach Discovery, Boden was able to build a personalized experience for each of its visitors. The solution is powered by AI and offers capabilities in A/B testing, slot-based merchandising, 1:1 personalization, segmentation, analytics, and more. These features have allowed Boden to implement personalized experiences in new and innovative ways, such as offering customers a collection of clothes that go together.

Boden was also able to serve climate-appropriate products to shoppers by creating location-based audiences and targeting relevant products. This has helped the brand drive better commercial performance in key areas.

Moreover, Boden's site now feels fresher than ever before, thanks to the ability to update product sort order every 15 minutes based on customer-driven performance data and top business priorities.

Boden has become more customer-centric and innovative than ever before. The company can make decisions based on customer behavior and leverage data-driven testing and personalization capabilities to increase engagement.

Use Bloomreach’s AI To Reach Your Ecommerce Goals

Powered by a customer data engine, Bloomreach is the only technology provider that allows you to combine the power of your customer and product data to achieve true personalization across any channel — all in real time. 

To learn more about how you can generate more revenue and increase customer retention with AI-powered use cases from Bloomreach, check out our use case library for inspiration.