General retail

winedirect.com.au uses advanced product recommendations to drive sales and enhance customer personalization

revenue growth in online sales
attributed to AI-powered best next recommendations
overall company revenue

Dotdigital | Winedirect.com.au Case Study - Featured Thumbnail

Challenge

With an ever-growing influx of data following on from their increasing customer base, winedirect.com.au wanted to ensure it is marketing effectively to its broader customer base. Additionally, the retailer wanted to connect with its customers and create hyper-personalized recommendations through automated campaigns. As a result, winedirect.com.au leveraged the ongoing partnership with Dotdigital to integrate AI-driven product recommendations and address these concerns.

Solution

The team kicked off their campaign by using ‘bestsellers’, ‘most viewed’, and ‘also bought’ product recommendations, which has been an enormous success. The out-of-the-box recommendations made it possible for the brand to recommend the most relevant and personalized wine cases to the targeted audience. The AI-powered product recommendations helped the company identify new and unique customer-product relationships. The team now uses a wonderful mix of non-personalized, personalized, and machine learning recommendations.

“Dotdigital product recommendations have allowed us to get through a few roadblocks that the team faced previously. We struggled to match complex product packages to customers, but that’s where AI has come into play,” says Adam Hollinshead, Chief Digital Officer at winedirect.com.au. “The fact that we have access to an emerging technology that is proving its potential, is quite thrilling. It enables us to build many capabilities with very low effort and much higher returns.”

The team is also using the single customer view in Dotdigital to get a holistic view of customers across the entire buyer’s journey and re-target customers through socials and website. “To be able to track and consolidate data from consumer behavior across channels has helped us retain cleaner data and hyper-segment it to gather better insights at a granular level. It also helps us re-engage the customers who haven’t shopped with us in a while,” added Adam.

Case Study

About winedirect.com.au

Launching its first website over two decades ago, winedirect.com.au is a family-owned wine retailer providing quality wines across Australia. Located in Adelaide, they’re a stone’s throw away from some of the best wine regions in Australia, including the McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, and the Adelaide Hills. The winedirect.com.au team consists of passionate wine nerds who pride themselves on providing insightful, personalized service and top-quality, excellent wine.

Dotdigital product recommendations have allowed us to get through a few roadblocks that the team faced previously. We struggled to match complex product packages to customers, but that's where AI has come into play.”

Adam Hollinshead, Chief Digital Officer at winedirect.com.au

Results

Since implementing product recommendation in November 2021, the brand has seen an 8% revenue growth in online sales compared to the previous year. Product recommendations contributed 7% to overall company revenue, of which 6 % can be attributed to Dotdigital’s AI-powered best next recommendations.

Looking ahead

Winedirect.com.au is currently working on creating a cross-channel journey with SMS. In addition to integrating SMS into its marketing programs, the team is also exploring how to use it best for one-on-one conversations.