How Blair boosts online cross-selling revenue by 70%

Blair, a multi-channel retailer of apparel and accessories, is using a new analytics-based cross-sell recommendation engine that has increased cross-sell revenue on Blair.com by 70%, it says.

The Intelligent Offer application from Coremetrics produced a complete return on investment within the first month of operation as it helped Blair present online merchandising offers most likely to win over shoppers, Blair says.

"With Coremetrics, we have a complete, closed-loop solution that collects and analyzes data, creates relevant recommendations, and reports on performance so we can accurately gauge how cross sell contributes to revenue," says Darren Schott, senior director of e-commerce at Blair, No. 118 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

The Intelligent Offer application replaced an in-house system that had relied on limited shopper clickstream data and had been capable of developing cross-sell recommendations for a limited number of products, Blair says. The Coremetrics application, implemented within less than two weeks, uses algorithms designed to generate recommendations based on data on online shopping and purchasing information collected on Blair.com. It then loads that data automatically into the IBM WebSphere Commerce platform that powers Blair’s web site, providing more relevant cross-sell offers while saving time for Blair’s merchandisers, Blair says.

The Intelligent Offer application is designed to continue optimizing cross-sell recommendations based on changing customer shopping behavior and new products. “Blair has a clear view of customers’ shopping habits, both individually and in aggregate, so they can optimize their offers for similar buyers,” says John Squire, senior vice president of product strategy at Coremetrics.