subject: Behavioral Merchandising - How To Launch Your Holiday Marketing Strategy In 10 Man Days [print this page] Behavioral Merchandising - The Holiday Launch Plan
How to Launch Your Holiday Marketing Strategy in 10 Man Days
The Avail Holiday Launch Plan provides a detailed step-by-step plan to quickly launch a Behavioral Merchandising program on any eCommerce site, in time for the typical Holiday season lockdown. Based on Avails experience from over 100 successful deployments at online and multi-channel retailers, it addresses what resources are required and how to structure the deployment project
"If your company doesnt have a personalization strategy in place for the holidays, now is the time to act," says Susan Aldrich, senior consultant with the Patricia Seybold Group. It is essential for retailers looking to engage Holiday shoppers visiting their site, and to stimulate spending with highly relevant, personalized offers. Online buyers expect retailers to personalize the customer experience with targeted merchandising, promoting the right products at the right time to each shopper. Moreover, the automated optimization of recommendations can be a life saver during the peak season, when everyone is strapped for time."
The Holiday season typically starts in early October and accelerating up until the week of Christmas is for many retailers the most important period of the year. At the same time, it is also a highly competitive period, as competitors launch their most attractive offers and ramp up advertising.
Avail Behavioral Merchandising enables retailers to personalize all their merchandising and promote the right products at the right time to each shopper. It is essential for retailers looking to engage Holiday shoppers visiting their site, and stimulate spending with highly relevant, personalized offers.
This document provides a detailed step-by-step plan for how you can launch Avail Behavioural Merchandising on your site, in time for the typical Holiday season lockdown. Based on Avails experience from over 100 successful deployments at online and multi-channel retailers, it addresses
What resources are needed and How to structure the deployment project.
All in all, it requires 10 man-days or less of effort for your team, in a standardized process fully managed and supported by experienced Avail representatives.
Resources Needed
Being designed for maximum automation and a minimum of reliance on the customers IT organization, deploying and using an Avail solution does not require a lot of client resources. However, we strongly recommend you designate the following roles at the start of the project:
Merchandising Manager
Day-to-day owner and user of the Avail solution and primary contact with Avails Account Manager.
Time to allocate - 1.5 days
1xhalf-day startup workshop
1xhalf-day training
Availability during QA prior to launch
1xhalf-day post-launch workshop
Software Developer
Responsible for integrating the Avail solution with the e-commerce site(s). Must be able to program Javascript, HTML and integration modules for the e-commerce platform used. Tasks can be split across multiple developers, but this is normally not necessary.
Time to allocate - 6 days
1xhalf-day training
Approx. 1 week development per site
Availability during QA prior to launch
1xhalf-day post-launch workshop
Project Sponsors
In addition, we recommend that the managers responsible for the sales revenue and profit at the online business (e.g. e-Commerce Director) and technical platform (e.g. IT Manager) act as project sponsors and take an active part in the strategic aspects, i.e., the initial solution definition workshop and the regular merchandising optimization workshops.
Time to allocate - 1 day
1xhalf-day startup workshop
1xhalf-day post-launch workshop
Avail Resources
Avail Account Manager
Avail Account Managers act as the primary point of contact for the customer, and the interface between the customer and all relevant parts of the Avail organization.
Allocates resources from the rest of Avail to serve the customer as needed
Manages the deployment project from start-up until the launch is completed successfully
Maintains the ongoing customer relationship with client stakeholders, reporting results on how the Avail solution is performing and proactively proposes improvements
Responsible for customer results and general satisfaction
Avail Client Services Representative
Avail Client Services representatives specialize in deployment, integration and day-to-day use of the Avail product:
Provides technical support, training and tools to help the customer or its partner (e.g. web agency) deploy the Avail solution
Trains customer staff in using the Avail Control Panel and other parts of the product at launch, and on-demand
Provides ongoing technical support and help through Avails helpdesk
Avail Client Success Representative
Avail Client Success representatives are online merchandising experts focused on ensuring that customers are able to maximize the return on their Avail solution.
Designs the merchandising strategy and implementation plan together with customer
Performs post-launch benchmarking and performance tuning of the solution
Conducts regular merchandising optimization workshops together with customer
Researches and spreads best practices on using the Avail solution
What: Client stakeholders to discuss and agree on the following
o What are the objectives for implementing Avail (increasing conversion rates by x%, increasing average order values by y%, minimizing time spent on maintaining up- and cross selling recommendations currently handled manually, etc)
o Which pages to apply merchandising to and what strategy to apply for each page (social recommendations vs. topsellers and whether any results need to be filtered)
o Where on the different pages should the recommendations be displayed, under what heading/copy ("people who bought this...", etc)
Deliverable: Document summarizing how and in what way the Avail solution is to be implemented for each site/channel - provided by Avail.
What: Client Software Developer to do necessary (scheduling of) data export and uploads of order history (transaction data) for cold-start of Avail solution optional data such as product data (price, color, margin, etc), category data (which products belong to what categories), and valid products (products allowed to be recommended)
Deliverable: Avail solution populated with data and verified by Avail Client Services representative.
o "space and layout" for showing the Avail recommendations, in accordance with deliverable from pre-study workshop with client stakeholders.
o Avail-code for requesting recommendations from Avail
o Avail-code for logging purchases and other behavioral data on the fly
Deliverable: Code for client's web-pages exist in versions with 'room and logic' for requesting and displaying Avail recommendations, in Q&A environment - preferably fed with live behavioral data from live site.
o Client Merchandising Manager to see the recommendations live on client staging site (or in simulation interface in Control Panel if no staging site exists)
o Client Merchandising Manager to have tested setting up rules & filters, and seeing and understanding the effects it has on recommendations.
o Avail Client Services to perform quality assurance review of solution
Deliverable:
o Avail Client Services to signoff on quality assurance review
o Client Merchandising Manager to sign-off for launch.
3. Launch (late September / early October)
Live deployment, Launch
Who: Client Software Developer
For how long: 1-2 hours
What:
o Move new web pages and related code to "live", now showing Avail recommendations
o Client Project Sponsors announce the launch to the client organization.
Deliverable: Client live with Avail recommendations in accordance with agreement from Solution Definition phase, and client organization aware of the fact and the expected results to be achieved.
