BloomReach Reinvents Personalized Site Discovery For Every Visitor On Any Device

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- BloomReach, creators of the leading big-data marketing applications, today launched BloomReach Search, Navigation and Personalization (SNAP), a smart application that personalizes site discovery for all consumers on any device or channel in real-time. In addition, BloomReach SNAP exposes its big-data insights to marketers and merchants so that they can drive more revenue and better site-wide consumer engagement.

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For consumers, BloomReach SNAP connects user experiences anonymously as they shop across devices, and then dynamically adapts sites' search, navigation and content uniquely to each visitor. Using the industry's most sophisticated web-search algorithms, it combines behavioral patterns, natural-language processing, machine-learning and other signals of intent to instinctively present the most relevant search results, left-navigation and contextual filters.

BloomReach SNAP functions autonomously and learns from all visits, but allows marketers and merchants to make data-driven decisions that enhance and teach the smart machine using a rich set of analytics and visual controls. This big-data-driven approach represents a paradigm shift for marketers, who typically have used extensive manual processes to adjust sites for specific business objectives. While BloomReach SNAP can optimize a site for each consumer's behavior, merchants can make sure that specific pages or products are always or more easily discovered regardless of consumer queries. Without logging on to multiple site-management applications, BloomReach SNAP presents them with real-time data such as revenue per visit (RPV), conversions or other metrics site-wide that give the marketers insights into how to drive more revenue.

Unlike other onsite and personalization applications that mirror early internet search technology with manual tags, rules and hierarchies, BloomReach SNAP uses the industry's most powerful natural-language processor to extract and connect product attributes to the countless ways that consumers describe and discover online – learning from all channels, visitors and devices. Merchants can tailor the experience without writing extensive rules, manually tagging content or testing proscribed combinations for quality search results or "personalization."

BloomReach SNAP continuously interprets site content and web-wide demand to present new or return visitors with personalized search and navigation, while automatically refining the experience as visitor context changes in real-time.

In addition to today's launch, BloomReach also announced an expanded ecosystem partnership with International Business Machines (IBM), to natively integrate BloomReach SNAP with WebSphere Commerce as the premium, upgraded site search, navigation and personalization technology.  The integration will be available in the coming months.

Why Personalization Matters:

1. Gartner predicts that by 2018, companies that have fully invested in all types of online personalization will outsell those that do not by more than 30 percent.
2. 60 percent of marketers note they struggle to personalize content in real-time, yet 77 percent believe real-time personalization is crucial.
3. 75 percent of marketers say "dynamic, personalized content" across channels is very important, but most are still in planning stages.  
4. 55 percent of consumers think website recommendations based on their past browsing and shopping behavior are "desirable to receive."

BloomReach SNAP is built on BloomReach's signature technology, the Web Relevance Engine, a smart machine that uses machine-learning and natural-language processing to synthesize understanding, intent and implications within a retailer's content, one billion consumer visits per week and one billion consumer interactions web-wide per day. Deb Shops and Sears Hometown and Outlet are the first customers of BloomReach SNAP.

"Engagement is central to driving our business online and off, and Sears Hometown and Outlet is committed to delivering the most relevant content to our customers, whether they search, browse or want recommendations on what to buy. We also recognize that consumers use different devices at every point in their path-to-purchase, and BloomReach SNAP gives us the ability to deliver real-time personalization while giving our merchants the data to inform their actions," said Donnie Franzen, director of e-commerce at Sears Hometown and Outlet. "Having the ability to respond to individual shoppers in real-time is essential to giving customers what they want quickly, while driving our bottom line."

How BloomReach SNAP Combines Smart Marketers with the Smart Machine:

1. Boost or Bury – Marketers and merchants can promote or demote products based on real-time performance metrics.
2. Page Creation informed by data and WSYWIG editing – Create, curate and manage category pages recommended by the machine or by merchants. Then, customize for specific performance metrics or campaigns.
3. Goal-optimized site-search results – Create new category pages or redirect queries to existing pages to optimize for specific goals like relevance, revenue per visit and engagement.

What BloomReach SNAP Personalizes for Each Consumer:

1. Individual-centered experience –From content recommendations, search results and the left-hand navigation and filters, the user experience automatically adapts to the intent and preferences of each visitor.
2. Cross-device – Without visitor authentication, personalization elements like previously viewed products, dynamic categories and more adapt and learn from each visitor as they move across devices through their individual path-to-purchase.
3. Consumer-driven discovery – Visitors visually browse similar products by clicking "More Like This." Visitors get the most advanced search-engine-like recommendations based on their observed tastes for certain styles, sizes, brands and even sale items through "Just For You."

"Consumers' onsite experience should be as personal and as responsive as physically shopping in a well-designed store with a helpful staff. We built BloomReach SNAP to analyze and respond to every consumer interaction – ultimately connecting user experiences as they shop across devices," said Raj De Datta, co-founder and CEO of BloomReach. "At the same time, no one knows a business's objectives like its marketers and merchants, so we also developed tools that empower these experts to take data-driven actions to reach their goals."

About BloomReach
BloomReach's big data marketing applications drive new revenue by consuming web-wide and website data to interpret consumer demand and deliver more relevant user experiences on any marketing channel. BloomReach's unique big data marketing applications that drive revenue – BloomReach Organic Search for organic-search customer acquisition and BloomReach SNAP for Desktop, Tablet and Mobile for cross-channel-optimized personalized discovery experiences – are built on BloomReach's signature technology, the Web Relevance Engine (WRE). The BloomReach WRE analyzes consumer interactions across billions of pages, leverages the web's collective intelligence, and incorporates machine-learning to predict demand and deliver relevant content such as enhanced landing pages, intuitive alternative navigation or social trends.

BloomReach is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and is backed by investment firms Bain Capital Ventures, NEA, and Lightspeed Ventures. For more information, please visit www.bloomreach.com.

SOURCE BloomReach