I believe everyone has experienced the disappointment of a product not being available when they really wanted to buy it for themselves or a loved one. At the same time, constantly checking if the desired product is back in stock consumes valuable time and adds frustration. This, in turn, has a negative impact on the company’s reputation, customer loyalty, and ultimately, revenue. So, how can we ensure that customers receive up-to-date, verified, and personalized information about the products they are waiting for, thereby increasing their satisfaction and the e-commerce store’s revenue?

Vivamix, the Official Distributor and Service Provider of KitchenAid in Poland since 1991, faced exactly this challenge. In recent months, the demand for KitchenAid products has been at record levels, and certain mixer models have been unavailable. To enable every customer to conveniently purchase their dream kitchen robot, we collaborated with Vivamix to implement automated notifications about the current availability and unavailability of products in stock.

Within the first month, over 3,000 notifications were automatically sent to 1,600 customers. The statistics speak for themselves and demonstrate the importance of these notifications to customers: an Open Rate of 65% and an impressive Click Rate of 40%!

Implemented Solution: Personalized Automation

In the face of unprecedented customer interest in KitchenAid products and the challenges of keeping up with deliveries, the Vivamix team decided to focus on providing systematic assistance to customers in purchasing their preferred product variants, even when temporarily out of stock. Based on Vivamix team’s ideas, we created an automated tracking scenario for each customer’s favorite product variants. This scenario sends personalized notifications not only about their availability but also their unavailability. To implement this scenario, we leveraged the full potential of the Bloomreach technology (CDXP Exponea) owned by Vivamix.

Results

In the first month of implementing automated notifications, we achieved the following results:

• Open Rate = 65%
• Click Rate = 40%
• Share of notifications in revenue = 17%

The introduction of Vecton’s assistance in automated availability notifications was a bull’s-eye. Thanks to this solution, we significantly relieved the workload on our customer service office in terms of email and phone inquiries about product availability. At the same time, our customers received a transparent tool informing them about the availability of their sought-after, dream KitchenAid products, which they could utilize at any time, regardless of Vivamix’s office hours. The main objectives of the implementation were achieved: customer satisfaction with shopping at Vivamix store increased, the customer service office saved valuable time, and the efforts to inform customers were noticeably reduced, resulting in increased revenue. Thank you!

Bartosz Konwicki, Direct Sales Department Manager at Vivamix

Components of Success

• Knowledge of Vivamix e-commerce store customers and having up-to-date data on their preferences, communication history, and transactions in one place.
• The flexibility and versatility of the CDXP platform, allowing the preparation of a customized algorithm to track inventory levels and send availability and unavailability notifications.
• Clear role assignments and division of responsibilities between the Vivamix, Vecton, and GOshop teams.

Implementation Details

The automation algorithm was developed and implemented on the Exponea platform, which had previously been fully integrated with the data of the vivamix.pl store and its GOshop e-commerce engine.

• The entire process started with customers expressing their desire to receive notifications about temporarily unavailable product variants. Customers could submit these requests at any time and for any number of products. Based on each request, the algorithm embedded in Exponea dynamically updated an individual list of the customer’s product variants in real time.
  
• Based on the up-to-date individual lists of product variants, the automated scenario continuously checked the availability of these variants in the store’s inventory, without any human involvement. If any of the tracked products became available, the scenario sent personalized email notifications with links to the now available products. The data on email opens, clicks, and subsequent purchases demonstrate the significant customer interest generated by these notifications.
  
• After each availability notification is sent, another automated algorithm checks whether the customer has made a purchase or not and continuously verifies if the product is still available in the store.
  
• If the customer did not make a purchase and the product’s inventory is depleted, the scenario sends another notification, this time about the unavailability. The message includes links to the product pages that are once again unavailable, allowing customers who still wish to track the availability of that particular variant to express their interest again. And when the products reappear in stock, they can easily and quickly make a purchase.

Summary

Thanks to the collaboration between the Vivamix team and our specialists, we implemented an automation algorithm that successfully addressed the challenge at hand. Within the first 30 days, the scenario sent over 3,000 personalized notifications about product availability/unavailability to 1,600 customers of the e-commerce store, resulting in an Open Rate of 65% and a Click Rate of 40%!
Additionally, the implemented solution had a positive impact on sales, with notifications contributing to a significant 17% share of revenue.

In the implemented automation of notifications, there are many more algorithms and rules that help provide the best user experience. If you would like to learn more about this or other types of customer communication automation or if you want to create a customized solution according to your needs, please feel free to contact us!