Bucketfeet is a socially conscious shoe company founded by Aaron Firestein and Raaja Nemani. Thanks to their previous integration with X.Commerce and EmailDirect, Bucketfeet was able to integrate with us in just a few minutes. After integration, came the combining of Bucketfeet and Rapleaf’s data. Rapleaf was particularly useful for this case, due to their ability to provide data on customers neither Bucketfeet nor the SimpleRelevance engine had. This combo provided a 360° view of each customer. The result? When combining the 20 SKU’s of Bucketfeet with the 360° profile, our engine was able to recommend products their customer’s wanted. When putting this system into action we received an average score of 83.49. This score is derived from a point system, where if what we recommended, the customer bought, we receive points. For reference, the baseline average was 15.28.

That alone tests nicely the power of the SimpleRelevance engine, but we knew the engine could do even better. So, we sent an intern in to manually augment the SKU’s by developing categories for the different types of shoes Bucketfeet sells. The result? Predictability was improved. Our score after simply adding categories rose 13% to 94.2. For Bucketfeet, a 13% score increase means their customers will receive correctly recommended SKU’s 13% more of the time. As you can see, manual augmentation of a data set can improve predictability.

Possibly the most important thing to note, is the scalability of this demo. Just imagine your company using our software, taking advantage of manual augmentation, and your hundreds or thousands of products. That 13% will only increase as the diversity and amount of products increase.

Raaja Nemani, CEO of Bucketfeet, responded to the results with, “SimpleRelevance has been great through this quick process and we are excited about the results. Giving our customers what they want has just been simplified.” Erik Severinghaus, CEO of SimpleRelevance added, “Bucketfeet was a great example of our engine. It goes to show the power of adding small amounts of data can have on generating tremendous additional value!”  

Does your online store sell internationally? Well maybe it should.

According to lots of recent research, foreign ecommerce markets are growing rapidly. In fact, they’re growing faster than the US market. We’ve taken the time to highlight three new potential markets, but the trend is global:

Australia: “70% of Australians will be shopping online by 2012.” BizReport notes that US retailers have already started selling to the Land Down Under, but there is still plenty of room for newcomers. Some big benefits to the Australian market are the strong dollar value and an easy cultural transition (from the US).

India: Because of “increasing use of smartphones, laptops/PCs and availability of Internet,” Indian online shoppers are growing in numbers. Because income in India has historically been so disproportionately distributed, growing access to the Internet is creating a truly new market. So retailers—hop on that! Brand loyalties are up for grabs.

 China: “China’s ecommerce market is expected to more than triple over the next three years, with sales reaching $420 billion by 2015. That’s 20% more than what the U.S.’s ecommerce market is forecast to bring in that year.” I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise, as everyday we hear how China is surpassing us in something—why should ecommerce be any different? Contributing factors to the trend include a growing middle class, and, like India, more widespread access to and use of the Internet. Chinese shoppers are concentrating most of their online buying on low-priced items, but that could change soon. Trust (or lack thereof) is the number one issue for Chinese online customers right now, so being honest, open and personable are keys to success in this booming market.

We realize one of the hardest parts of breaking into an international market comes in the form of shipping, so we’re also providing you with this article from the Ecommerce Times that highlights some of the key ways you can alleviate cost stress. Good luck! Or maybe we should say, 好運. (That’s “Good luck” in Traditional Chinese according to Google Translate—so blame Google for any inaccuracy).

This one goes out to you, ecommerce business owners.

The Aberdeen Group released a fantastic study this year, which is available to anyone who takes 15 seconds to make a profile at this link: Aberdeen Group 2012 report.

Entitled “Divide & Conquer,” the report highlights the key differences between the ways “Leaders” in the online marketing world use predictive analytics and the way “Followers” use it. The results are extremely intriguing to anyone who’s interested in predictive analytics or increasing conversion rates, which, we assume, covers just about everyone reading this. If you didn’t feel like downloading the information-packed 16-page PDF, allow us to quote/paraphrase some key findings:

• -       The largest gap between Leaders and Followers in terms of the “Fuel for your predictive model” is access to social media, with 41% of Leaders aggregating social data and only 24% of Followers.

• -       “While most survey respondents (57%)—both Leaders and Followers—are able to customize offers for a specific market segment, Leaders differentiate themselves in their superior ability to customize marketing offers to individuals….Leaders are 70% higher than Followers.”

• -       “The insights generated from a predictive model are rarely used in isolation. Commonly, the findings are incorporated into an existing business process or application. 46% of Leaders can perform this integration easily, only 26% of Followers can.”

• -       “Data collected by the Aberdeen group in August 2011 found that companies using predictive analytics enjoyed a 75% higher click through rate and a 73% higher sales lift than companies that did not use this technology.”

Reading this, you’re thinking one of three things:

            “I’m a Leader! Stellar!”

            “Rats! I’m a Follower. How can I get better at this?”

            “What the heck is predictive analytics? Can I use this?”

If you’re in the first group, then congrats. But to our hypothetical friends in the other two camps, you’re in good hands.

Let’s address each point briefly:

• Simple Relevance is one of the only recommendation engines for small companies that uses social data from partners such as Facebook.
• Simple Relevance provides personalized recommendations for each individual customer—past or future.
• Finally, at Simple Relevance we pride ourselves on our quick and easy integration. Unlike other engines, you don’t need a technical background or even more than 20 minutes to get everything up and running.

So join us, and be a leader in your industry.

In upscale establishments, a concierge is expected to “achieve the impossible” -dealing with any request a guest may have (no matter how strange) and relying on an extensive list of data and providers to get the request completed to satisfaction.  Is your email marketing strategy any different?  
 
Consider your customer’s email inbox an upscale establishment and your email marketing campaign as the concierge. Cater to their needs and deliver the most satisfying product or service that your inventory provides.  Not everyone is the same, so you’ll have to rely on YOUR extensive list of data and providers to ensure you are delivering the email marketing experience each customer demands.

It’s always nice to have your work validated.

According to an article Gigaom.com, marketing technology is the way of the future. The article begins with a shocking quote from the Gartner Group:

“By 2017, a CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO.”

This truly is an astonishing idea. Technology, and more specifically data mining, has completely revolutionized the way marketing—both on and offline—is accomplished throughout the past decade.

The article explains, “at the heart of each of these companies are CTOs and engineers who have experience with big data and modern techniques for data mining, analytics and machine learning.”

And data mining only scratches the surface of the technologies now available to marketers. With access to virtually endless consumer information, companies, like Simple Relevance, can provide creative new tools to help marketers everywhere better understand and analyze their customers (or potential customers).

But although the tools that marketers are using and will use in the future are changing rapidly and allowing for more specific, personal data collection and analysis, it’s important to realize that the principles of the industry are still the same. Sure, players like RapLeaf may reduce the need for focus groups or consumer surveys, but the fact of the matter is that marketers are still looking for the same information—consumer insights. Understanding the behaviors and preferences of your potential customers is invaluable to any business, and that’s why companies like Simple Relevance have dedicated their time to helping others understand as much as they can. The great thing is that each new technology helps to reveal those insights and allows the industry to advance as a whole.

So marketers, rejoice! And cross your fingers that your company become one of the “several multi-billion dollar companies” the article claims marketing will “give rise to.”

  The 2012 Kellogg Technology Conference:  “The Era of Social Local Mobile” at Northwestern University was a fantastic experience for the team at SimpleRelevance this past Saturday.  The conference was focused on how new technologies are transforming the ways companies do business and interact with their customers.  Kellogg brought in some of the best minds from the likes of Pandora, Starbucks, Facebook and Google to discuss their thoughts on the impact of social, local and mobile technologies which made for an exciting and inspirational day for us here at SimpleRelevance.

  But it didn’t stop there!  The conference also showcased the very best technology companies from the Kellogg School of Management community.  Eleven technology companies competed in the Shark Tank with the opportunity to win a spot on the main stage of the entire conference at the “Kellogg Shark Tank”.  After hours of delighting attendees with our game-changing personalization technology, SimpleRelevance was indeed selected to participate as a finalist in the final competition.  The reward: prize money and consulting from leaders in Chicago’s technology community.

  Demonstrating our value to the judges, the conference attendees, and our customers is incredibly simple.  Once a merchant knows something about a consumer, it is easier to send that individual emails that are relevant to him/her, and avoid email marketing that is annoying or lack value.  At SimpleRelevance, we make it very simple for merchants to do this and begin increasing their revenue from their web communications.  The merchant and the consumer both win.  And in the end, SimpleRelevance’s value proposition also won the support of the judges and the conference, gaining our team 'first prize' at the inaugural Kellogg Shark Tank!  Thank you to everyone at the Kellogg Technology Conference, conference attendees and judges for such a rewarding experience!

More than anything else, great content drives traffic to your website. This means content loaded with description, keywords and ultimately intriguing copy. But with everything else you’ve probably got going on, finding the time to sit down and develop interesting content is not always easy, and you often finish staring at a page filled with boring, redundant material (we’ve all been there).

Introducing: FuzzyRelevance

Imagine a thesaurus that can read your mind, and you kind of have the idea behind FuzzyRelevance. Or imagine a machine that generates the words you’re not allowed to say on the Taboo playing cards, and you have an even better idea.

FuzzyRelevance is our gift to anyone who’s ever experienced writer’s block and never wants to again. Simply type in a word or phrase, and our product will churn out related words that can be used to help describe your query, as well as words that bear a fuzzy resemblance to it.

For example, typing in “sweatshirt” generates:

“sweatshirts, pullover, jersey, cotton, hooded, girls, women, sleeved, collarless”

We suspect that this will be most handy when you’re trying to creatively describe a product on your website, but feel free to use it for whatever you want (filling out crossword puzzles, writing your thesis, etc.)

Please test out this fuzzy piece of technology, and also check up every once in a while on our Products page—we plan on rolling out a bunch more useful tools in the future and you’re not going to want to miss out. Next up: CuddlyIrrelevance—a machine that spits out cute pictures of furry animals regardless of your query. (For some reason, we think that’d be an even bigger success).

Think about the last time you bought shoes. You went to one of your favorite shoe stores. Then you browsed for a while with a vague idea of what you wanted in mind. Then you tried on a pair, but you didn’t like how they looked on your feet. Then you tried on another but the size was off, and you asked a salesman to bring you a smaller size, and then when that didn’t work, you tried an even smaller size. Then you tried on two different types of shoes at the same time to see how they compared in fit and style. Then you asked the salesman to measure your foot again and which shoe he preferred. Then you finally made your purchase.

Or, if you’re part of a rapidly growing ecommerce trend, you bought your shoes online.

According to one report, “revenue generated from the online shoe sales industry is projected to reach $7.8 billion this year, which would be an increase of 16.3% over 2011.”

To some nostalgic shoe-shoppers, it may seem odd that a shopping experience that has historically been very physical and hands-on is being replaced (pretty quickly) by mouse-clicking. The truth is that consumer behavior is changing, and the new generation of shoppers is going to look to build the same rapport with online stores as it does with its local strip malls.

In other words, unlike shoppers of the past, these new shoppers are going to be more trusting of products they find online and will be willing to sacrifice the physical shopping experience for the convenience of never leaving the house.

Still, online retailers need to earn that trust. So how can they do that?

Well according an IBM survey of CMOs, it was discovered that “CMOs in the most successful enterprises are focusing on relationships, not just transactions.”

This makes a lot of sense. Consumers love to be greeted by and receive personal attention from store salesmen and women. It naturally follows that they’d want to build the same friendly relationship with stores online. And any relationship requires both time and care.

What this means for online retailers is that they need to be as personal as possible with each individual customer.  Invite customers to your store with weekly emails featuring products they might find interesting or special deals. Remind them of previous purchases and recommend additions. And provide a warm, simple shopping experience with easy navigation and clear instructions on how to make purchases.

Today’s shoe shoppers may not need you to check if there’s a thumbs-length of room between their big toe and the tip of their new Nikes. Still, they’ll never stop appreciating the fact that you care.

The Boston Hackathon that Sqoot is putting together has earned lots of fury from different places. They made a "joke" about women being hired to bring drinks to the coders, which has been taken by a number of people as insensitive at best, and mysognystic and sexist at worst. They have since apologized, but are still getting a lot of bad press.

To be clear, we are supporters of women in technology. At SimpleRelevance, we have non-negotiatable standards around respect in the workplace, and Sqoot's comments do not reflect those values.

The reason we have not pulled our sponsorship is that I don't think they reflect Sqoot's values either. If I didn't know Mo and Avand, I would have already tendered my cancellation. In addition to the obvious and very real sexism implications, the hackathon is simply not worth getting bad publicity, or being tarred as a sexist. But, I have gotten to know them both, and find them to be very decent human beings who often times have a very quirky sense of humor. That sense of humor is usually a welcome reprieve to otherwise droll corporate communication.

In this case, what they said wasn't funny. If they stood by the comments, or refused to apologize, we wouldn't be able to be associated with the event in good conscience. But, if I thought they were sexists or bigots, we wouldn't have agreed to be part of the event in the first place.

If all you know of Mo & Avand is this one dumb comment, then I don't blame you for being upset and boycotting the event. But, having context, I view the comments as an abberation and instance of bad judgement in a history of otherwise very positive interactions.

If anyone, male or female, wants to stop by the Hackthon - I'll be happy to get you a drink and say hello.

Erik Severinghaus

Founder & CEO - SimpleRelevance

Here at Simple Relevance, we believe that creating personalized recommendations is the coolest thing anyone can do with a large collection of online information (obviously). In other words, the coolest form of predictive analysis (to us) is using the purchase history of current customers to predict what like-minded and similarly situated new customers will buy. That being said, we couldn't help but point out these awesome new ways different organizations are using data to predict peoples' choices.

1) Geospatial predictive analysis: It turns out the same technology police use to determine where meth labs are going to be ahead of time can be of use to the average business. Who would've thought? Buy using socioeconmic and environmental factors, businesses can figure out which locations will present adverse business conditions (i.e. political instability, transportation disruptions, etc.) before actually moving in. We just have to hope that meth dealers don't get access to this technology, or we're going to have a bunch of criminals who are very good at finding the least suspect places to do business.

2) Insurance fraud predictive analysis: Insurance fraud, if done successfully, requires the law-breaker to be subtle, impercebtible and ultimately impossible to track. But predictive analysis is once again to the rescue! Because our insurance vocabulary is limited, we'll quote: "Analytics are a powerful weapon in fighting FWA -- before or after payment, detecting billing errors, and identifying systemic weaknesses and vulnerabilities such as oversights in provider contracts and loopholes in benefit policies." Sounds impressive. But how can predictive analysis help the common man? Or maybe the common young man...

3) Academic success predictive analysis: Yep. College students no longer have to wait until the drop date to determine if they're going to be able to finish the semester without completely destroying their GPAs. Degree Compass, a new analysis technology being used at Austin Peay State, takes into consideration "an individual student’s academic record, along with the past grades of hundreds of Austin Peay State students in various courses" to predict academic success before the course even starts. At first glance this seems like a great idea for preventing student depression, but we feel like having a computer tell you with 90 percent accuracy that you won't be able to get a C or higher in a particular course could be a pretty big hit on your pride.