Lessons from bol: How Retailers Can Unlock the Power of Cross-Channel Personalization

As a retailer, you recognize the importance of bringing customers to your app, website or store time and time again for conversion. Despite pouring time and resources into capturing shoppers’ attention (and dollars) across the digital landscape, many find it more challenging than ever to drive repeat purchases and lasting loyalty. Why? Consumers increasingly expect unique and consistent value everywhere they engage with a brand.

Today, most retailers go beyond addressing customers by  first name — the least valued personalization — to deliver more targeted promotions. But many still struggle to do so consistently across channels and at the scale customers now expect. That’s why we’ve gleaned several valuable lessons from the success of online marketplace bol, which offer a blueprint for deepening app engagement and conversions with cross-channel personalization. 

Build a Customer Journey Around Your Goal, Not the Channel

App stagnation is a common challenge in the ultra-competitive e-commerce landscape, with consumers inundated by competing offers everywhere they turn. To position its app as a central shopping hub, bol knew blunt app and opt-in promotions wouldn’t cut it. Instead, the team orchestrated a cross-channel customer journey grounded in a mutual value exchange: shoppers were encouraged via email, in-app messaging and push notifications to share product wish lists, in exchange for personalized alerts when the items were discounted. 

With alerts only accessible via app messaging and push notifications, shoppers were incentivized to download the app and grant opt-in permissions. The shift from channel- to goal-based enables teams to make every single touchpoint in the customer journey work toward a common outcome, while offering a more unified, cohesive experience.  

Leverage Zero-Party Data Collection to Scale Cross-Channel Personalization

As reliance on third-party data dwindles and personalization expectations soar, retailers need access to reliable data. bol’s “Price Alert” campaign was built around collecting zero-party data — information willingly shared by customers — to build a better understanding of what they want and, in turn, deliver hyper-personalized offers. The opportunity is ripe today with consumers more willing than ever to share information about themselves in exchange for personalized experiences.

By empowering customers to share their product preferences on their own terms and in exchange for cost savings, bol deepened customer understanding and paved the way for targeted offers. With this framework, shoppers could clearly understand the value of engaging with the app and opting into notifications, while the team at bol was able to scale personalization to increase the likelihood of engagement and conversion. 

Experiment and Optimize Cross-Channel Personalization Efforts 

With consumer preferences and behaviors evolving daily, retailers must be able to quickly adapt and refine experiences to maximize conversions. This starts with automating routine tasks to allocate your team’s time and resources where they will have the most impact. bol automated notifications so the team could instead focus on testing search behavior and abandoned cart segments, along with discount percentages and contact frequency. 

A culture of experimentation empowered the team with data-driven insights to understand what’s working or not, and prioritize the strategies that effectively move customers toward conversion. Additionally, no-code creation unlocked the organizational agility necessary to optimize the campaign without developer support. The outcome? Better results with more speed and less effort.

Scale Your App Engagement & Opt-Ins with bol’s Proven Strategies

Read the full case study with bol to discover how these strategies drove nearly 3X higher opt-in rates than average, an above average open rate of 27% and a conversion rate of 9%. If you would like to learn how you can implement any of the strategies highlighted above, book a meeting with our team for a personalized consultation.