IBM Cloud Boosts Sales for S&S Worldwide

IBM Cloud Boosts Sales for S&S Worldwide

IBM cloud has driven personalized product recommendation sales for S&S Worldwide via its Web sites.  S&S, a national distributor of sporting goods products for recreation, health care, and education professionals grew recommendation sales 75 percent in just three months with IBM Smarter Commerce software in the cloud.

Before implementing IBM cloud, the distributor was using a native application to serve up generic product recommendations on its Web site. This portal was not contributing to the company’s bottom line and accounted for only 5 percent of all online sales.   IBM notes that today’s informed consumers prefer personalized product recommendations that ultimately generate a significant revenue lift for organizations.

Having realized this need, S&S Worldwide decided to deploy IBM’s Smarter Commerce software that delivers cloud-based analytics and marketing personalization.

This implementation was very successful as S&S product recommendations sales for its art supplies and sporting goods offerings surged to 9.8 percent of all Web sales in just three months.  This is not all, the distributor’s product views shot up 24 percent and viewing sessions increased 30 percent.

Encouraged by this success, S&S Worldwide decided to tie IBM to its personalized email marketing initiatives. IBM software has enabled S&S Worldwide to identify and target people who browsed items on the site but did not put any items in the shopping cart.

Visitors to this site were sent an email message that described in details products browsed by the customers. Emails also included suggestions for other items within the same product category.

“The results have been quite impressive with the IBM Smarter Commerce cloud service. The recommendations have led directly to a much more tailored and compelling customer experience,” said Will Bender, web merchandising manager at S&S Worldwide. “We’re now able to make decisions and track results very thoroughly based on data – not what we think should be on the site, but what the data tells us.”

By Anuradha Shukla

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