“Personalization” is increasingly being recognized as a “must have” for retailers of all types; but especially for grocers. Here are a handful of insights regarding personalization:

“In 2020, retailers are focused on identifying and serving the individual customer with tailored services by investing in Shopper Tracking, Location-Based Marketing and CRM/Personalization.”- Progressive Grocer, 2019

“Personalization will be the prime driver of marketing success within five years. Only by acting today, however, can companies hope to be in a position to deliver value to both their customers and their brands.”- McKinsey, 2019

“As the digital age offers up new ways to fight for customer mindshare and dollars, consumer-facing organizations are responding with new efforts to personalize the customer experience…and reaping big rewards in the process.”- Harvard Business Review, 2018

Not all personalization solutions are alike!

Grocers’ personalization needs are distinctly different from other retailers. Fortunately, I Me Mine has engineered a personalization solution focused on the requirements of grocers.

Here are the key elements of I Me Mine’s solution that separates it from other solutions:

A Comprehensive Customer Data Platform:

Collect & aggregate all your shopper data in one place
- Account/PII data
- Loyalty Data
- In-store and e-Commerce Purchase History
- Digital interactions
- Web Analytics data
- Location based data
- Supplemental heterogeneous data from other sources
Unified shopper profiles
Real-time data collection
Secure private cloud storage
Supports SSO & Identity provider role
Rich Audience/Segment builder
Configurable data retention policies
Integration with merchandising systems & other 3rd party data sources

Product & Offer Management:

Establish system to automatically receive offers and price changes on a weekly (daily or intra-day) basis. Includes short- and long-term TPR’s, local store coupons, and threshold/complex promotions [BOGO’s, mix & match etc.)
Full life-cycle integration with all major digital coupon providers & clearinghouse
Built-in full-featured Offer Management system to create & manage internal offers, set budget and distribute based on relevancy or rich segmentation-based targeting
Offers can be created via direct feed, excel based templates or Admin Portal UI
Source additional CPG offers through portfolio-wide events and other CPG initiatives
Create & manage Private Label campaigns
Integration with all major product data providers to have a ready access to product, image and nutritional data
API based access to recipe databases

The Inclusion of “Personal Deals®“, and Personal Deal® Management:

Create and Manage Personal Deals via feed, excel templates, or the Admin Portal UI
Alternatively, the system can create personalized price deals across the entire store using its machine learning powered engine in accordance with retailer cost & margin guidelines (recommended)
Full retailer control over creation, review and approval of the offers prior to distribution to shoppers
Additional controls over number of deals per shopper, expiration, maximum activations and other engagement & redemption parameters.

AI Powered Analytics & Personalization Engine, specifically created for grocers:

AI-powered sophisticated analytics & continuous learning engine designed to learn from shopper behavior & pattern changes
Analytical methodology incorporates a mix of supervised & non-supervised based machine-learning models, time-series techniques and behavioral model-based analytics tools to gain near real-time shopper and offer insights.
Predictive analytics is used as an integral part of our personalization algorithms. These heuristic & non-heuristic models predict shopper behavior on a weekly basis as we personalize both content and offers/promotions along the entire path to purchase.
Relevancy engine uses 100s of attributes and dynamic scoring techniques to determine item & offer relevancy at any given point in time
Identifies the optimum Personal Deals® each week, per grocer guidelines and input
Offer Personalization: All offers delivered to shoppers are 1:1 personalized based on relevancy.
Content personalization: This includes messaging, recipes, website content, offers/promotions, graphics, images, video
All digital channels are personalized, including Email, SMS, Mobile app, tablet, push notifications, and social media.
Continuous monitoring of shopper redemptions, purchase behavior and pattern changes (basket, content and frequency)
Analyze shopper spend and trends
Examine customer shopping history, frequency and monetary value, as a means of identifying the most profitable customers
Detect “at-risk” or declining customers
Review retention, acquisition and basket size KPIs and customer dashboard indicators

Advanced Loyalty Features to further engage with your shoppers:

Full-featured loyalty system with advanced automated capabilities
Designed to integrate with a grocer’s current loyalty system to augment its capabilities
Enables management of shopper loyalty status and rewards
Manage shopper account membership
Points-based reward program
Seamless API integration with any POS or 3rd Party Loyalty System
Custom one-time deals (Birthdays, VIP)
Categorize rewards by Customer Groups
Offer category-based membership clubs (pet, wine, baby, etc.)
Frequent buyer incentives, flexible rewards, coupons, and other benefits for regular shoppers.
Product-specific discounts based on purchase combinations, categories and location
Enable shoppers to self-register, view or update personal details
View relevant promotions and past purchases
Manage communication preferences
Advanced Loyalty Rules Management & Execution System

Communication and Engagement:

Personal Circular®: Generated weekly for each shopper by the Personalization engine, it showcases the 100+ most individually relevant offers each week. No two shoppers receive the exact same offers. Complimenting the one-size-fits-all print weekly ad, this serves as a “personalized weekly ad” for each shopper.
Digital Properties: Desktop & Mobile optimized Websites, iOS & Android Mobile Apps for Personal Circular, Shopping List, Loyalty Shopper Portal, and Recipe Center
Omni-channel digital delivery of the personalized offers & personalized content: Email, SMS, Push Notifications
Social media deep linking system for offers
Automated and on-demand Email Campaigns
Trigger-based and on-demand Push-notifications
Trigger-based and on-demand SMS messaging

Grocer Guidelines & Parameters:

I Me Mine will work with grocer to establish grocer directed machine learning and algorithmic guidelines to customize the Personal Circular® and other forms of offer delivery (e.g. integrating with segmentation studies, “total store” programs, “pushing” categories where shoppers are likely purchasing items elsewhere, margin management, etc.)

Dashboards & Reporting Insights:

Measures sales, visits, margins and other performance criteria on a continuous basis. The metrics include analyzing performance on a shopper basis, a segment basis, a brand basis, a category basis, etc.
Measures digital interactions, including “activations”, redemptions, app interaction, push notification interactions, email interaction, etc.
Analyzes time & location-based data on a shopper basis

Integration with Existing Digital Properties

High configurable, customization and fully retailer branded
Integrates with existing grocer digital properties (e.g. website, app, email, push notification, text social media) per the direction of the grocer.

Continuous Improvement

I Me Mine will continually be introducing product improvements, enhancements and extensions in order to achieve its goal of superior personalization execution via digital channels.

The bottom-line: I Me Mine’s comprehensive personalization solution drives greater “share-of-shopper” for grocers.

The results are in. Average monthly spend among enrolled shoppers increased by more than +25% in year one; representing a greater “share-of-shopper”. The ROI is exceptional as well, with an 18:1+ return-on-investment on a gross revenue basis.

Contact I Me Mine today for more information. This personalization solution can have a profound impact on your business in 2020!

Digital personalization the I Me Mine way will be the most important initiative a grocer can make to drive your business in the coming year.

by Girdhar Arora, Chief Executive Officer, I Me Mine Digital and Alan Alexander, Founder/Chief Strategy Officer, I Me Mine Digital

About I. Me.Mine.

Transform your organization & retail marketing to surprise & delight your shoppers across all digital touchpoints! Develop enduring & engaging digital relationships! Our AI-powered solution turbocharges your loyalty program to deliver the most individually relevant offers & content to shoppers each week via the Personal Circular®; at home, on the go, and in-store. The solution includes a Customer Data Platform, Analytics & Dashboards, Advanced Loyalty, and Omni-Channel Digital Offer Delivery. With our ability to integrate with a grocer’s POS system, Personal Pricing® is also enabled, which has proven to drive shopper engagement and sales.