Fashion Forecasting

How to leverage AI to foster growth for your Fashion Ecommerce store

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The advent of technology and digitalization have collectively been a concrete reason for the evolution of Fashion Ecommerce.

Like other industry verticals, the Fashion eCommerce Marketing retail landscape has also endured a tangible change. Enabling consumers across the globe to shop their preferred commodities by leveraging flawless online transactions.

Owing to the reckless adoption and access to the internet, the number of digital shoppers is climbing every passing year that would certainly be a contributory factor for positive eCommerce growth.

Did You Know?

The worldwide retail eCommerce sale which amounted to 3.53 billion US dollars, has been expected by the Statista research department to rise to the mark of 5.69 billion US dollars by 2022 and 6.54 billion US dollars by 2023.

But, given the contemporary eCommerce trend; Who is the king?

Well, as per the GP Bullhound Consumer Internet index, Amazon, with a market capitalization of 1,597.2 billion US dollars, was ranked as the largest online consumer service company across the globe.

So what makes Amazon a clear winner?

Amazon has been an early adopter of AI and has had an edge in using AI to elevate its business efficiencies. Despite using AI for enhanced customer experience, Amazon has also perfectly deployed the AI model for internal functionalities.

The result? According to a report, the effective recommendation engine of Amazon accounts for a whopping 35% of its total sales.

Now let’s dig in to explore, more of what AI holds for eCommerce

It’s because of Artificial Intelligence, we finally have the time that we hadn’t had ever before.

Since machines are learning how to assist humans and how to effectively perform manual tasks, let’s shed some light on the promising AI in fashion retail aspects that help to boost eCommerce.

1. Chatbots and Virtual assistance

This is the newest eCommerce trend favored by almost every renowned store. Chatbots make the buying process easier for the shoppers in a way they wish to map their shopping journey.

While living in a world full of intelligent automation, it is evident to say that chatbots are a boon for contemporary eCommerce marketers.

These tiny programs automatically intensify interactions with online customers based on predefined triggers and settings.

Just because customers intend to have the information at the click of a button or in the blink of an eye. And the failure may brew frustrations and often result in losing the scale and bouncing the lead out of the sales funnel.

Let’s understand how chatbots could mitigate these frustrations:

  • By providing a quick answer to questions
  • Offering a solution to a complaint or problem
  • Presenting a more detailed answer for common and complicated queries
  • Looking for the best ways to communicate with your visitors.

But Chatbots benefits beyond Customer Experience:

Lead Generation Automation

Chatbots are believed to be more efficient than humans. The utilization of NLP (Natural Language Processing) and direct messages build more intuitive conversations with the customers.

For instance, chatbots could be used to let the lead potential customers automatically find the products they are looking for, such as related products and specific collections.

Decimation Headcounts (Cost Reduction)

Don’t you think AI-enabled chatbots could substitute frontline support staff?

Indeed they can.

For example, the customer asking for a common shipping question could be assisted by a chatbot by understanding the concept and offering the FAQs article explaining the company’s shipping policies.

Deployment of a simple conversational bot for such frontline queries could reduce the number of associated resources to serve customers.

2. AI personalization

The average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized experiences, urges to bring personalization at the core of eCommerce marketing via Artificial Intelligence.

Contingent on the specific data garnered from online users, AI, and machine learning derives vital user insights to help eCommerce marketers.

Various AI-enabled tools leverage various touchpoints including mobile apps, email campaigns, and websites, to gather data to track shopping behaviors and to analyze how the users are executing their online transactions.

eCommerce marketers then utilize these insights for product recommendations and to offer a logical user experience across all devices.

However, before the digital commerce explosion, professional clerks at brand stores were available for customer assistance, such kind of personal attention can’t work for the digital realm.

AI comes into play here.

Personalization isn’t just about the product recommendations or inserting a name in an email. Marketers are leveraging the latest AI and ML models to elevate the relevance of audience personalization that encompasses purchasing behavior, category preferences, demand, and lifetime value predictions.

Now combine your fashion copywriting product description content, product categories, and offers with these personalization models to render an amazing brand experience to the customers.

For example, a medicine shop app could use such AI models to predict when an individual is about to run out on a particular item, and send a notification to stock up their medicines when they return to the app. This experience would be relevant, timely, and personalized.

3. Inventory Management

Inventory Management is one of the most pivotal aspects of an eCommerce site.

One item out of the stock could cost hundreds of potential customers and at the same time, the perfect inventory management could retain customer loyalty, lifetime relationship, and brand value.

So, how to inculcate AI into the fast-paced world of inventory management?

Companies utilizing Artificial Intelligence for inventory management are yielding hefty and promising improvements. Such companies are effectively leveraging the huge volume of real-time Big Data via AI models.

Amazon is a perfect example here, that has implemented AI methodologies in almost every sphere of their operations. From user demand to supplier backorders including warehouse optimization and stock level check.

In general, here are two chief implementations of artificial intelligence for inventory:

Demand Prediction
The demand prediction is a simple yet effective approach if implemented correctly. The basic idea behind the approach is to plan and predict the demand for the coming days for all items of your inventory.

Reinforcement Learning Systems
Reinforcement learning is an aspect of artificial intelligence that enables the model to take action rather than just making predictions and classifications. By this system, AI could take action upon what its other models have previously predicted.

4. Retargeting customers and Capturing abandoning shoppers

“What if I say, every two-third of consumers abandon your website without concluding their orders”

Isn’t it shocking? Unfortunately, it’s true!

The average cart abandonment rate is 69%, and according to Forrester’s research which currently is causing a loss of $18 Billion in yearly sales revenue.

However, the foremost hurdle for the marketers is that they do not possess any abandonment reduction strategy or effective process to bring back the bounced out prospects.

AI could be an aid here… (Yes, you heard it right)

Effective AI utilization could dramatically assist in lowering the cart abandonments, maximizing the conversions, and increasing the profits. Let us have a look; how?

This a proactive approach called Exit-Intent Campaign; implemented by minimum.

Whenever a visitor is about to leave the website without order completion, the brand could turn such visitors into email leads or final customers as well.

Secondly: Retargeting

It’s nothing but a simple strategy to bring back those bounced out potential customers to complete their purchases.

This process leverages the consumer’s site behavior and other information to display relevant ads or send messages or emails to bring them back for the final purchase by:

  • Analyzing Customer Behaviour including products viewed, visit timing, last visited page.
  • Identifying the Intent including; does the cart have any items before abandonment? What sort of searches have they done? What other sites have they visited?

Using such AI-powered retargeting with relevant prompts or CTA, the marketers could reap the chance to convert and close the sale again.

5. Email Marketing

Given the higher conversion rates than social media, direct traffic, and search, email marketing funnels is amongst the most popular brand marketing tactics for eCommerce marketers.

Marketers send relevant messages in order to build and strengthen audience connections. And these emails are sent on a set schedule, pertinent to an action taken by a visitor, or based on other prompts.

So, what’s the role of AI here?

AI assists the marketers to carefully analyze various factors for successful email marketing campaigns:

  • Personalized: The CTA and the promotion encompassed, are intended solely for the individual which elevates the chances to generate desired outcomes
  • Relevance: Emails are sent contingent upon the relevant customer journey
  • Timing: Messages are sent after comprehensive analyses of the email opening and response time

AI assists in achieving these factors to analyze behavior and demographics to set tailored email marketing campaigns for your eCommerce brand.

Wrapping up

As we have discussed in this article, AI indeed is a prominent factor for driving innovative solutions and unprecedented customer experience for the brands. You may lose out if you have not inculcated artificial intelligence, machine learning to function your eCommerce business to its best.

Though getting started with AI involves defining the areas that could yield maximum profits to your brand. Also, AI doesn’t anticipate to oust the humans already engaged in such activities, instead, it commemorates the tasks to increase the effectiveness while allowing manual staff to focus on other integral areas of the business.

“Don’t be tardy. Let us help start examining the benefits that AI can bring to your business today”

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