Rituals and DEPT Win Customer Data Award with AI Solution to Boost Shopping Experience

Rituals is taking home the Customer Data Award with the 'Next Best Offer' AI solution, developed with digital agency partner DEPT®. Presented by the DDMA trade association, the award recognizes and celebrates companies that excel in transforming customer data into strategic assets. 

The 'Next Best Offer' solution leverages advanced AI Models to provide tailored product recommendations, enhancing the shopping experience for Rituals' loyal customers. The AI model delivers suggestions that align with individual preferences, going beyond popular products for truly tailored experiences. Showing what is truly interesting to each customer makes the interactions with the brand more relevant, improving the relationship and increasing engagement. 

The AI model predicts the potential of the next purchase and makes a tailored recommendation in real time based on their overall purchase history. The model is trained on behavioral data from multiple channels and touchpoints exclusive to Rituals. It continuously learns and predicts the most likely “Next Best Offer’ in terms of products and categories for each customer.

Developed on the Google Cloud Platform, this flexible solution integrates seamlessly across Rituals' marketing channels. The predictions can be implemented on email communications and what each user sees featured on the website, for example. The ‘Next Best Offer’ can also become a part of offline activations in stores, creating coherent messaging across all channels with each individual customer. The result is a more meaningful interaction with each customer, nurturing increased trust and brand loyalty. 

“In this case, everything came together: the collaboration with DEPT® to prepare the model so that we can use it directly as marketers, the accessibility of Google Cloud, and the seamless integration with all our marketing channels. This unique combination made it possible to develop a tailored model based on anonymized purchase behavior that not only improved the customer experience but also significantly improved our marketing performance,” said Meral Tervoert, digital data driven manager at Rituals.

“Our multi-year collaboration with Rituals exemplifies how we transform business challenges into tangible AI solutions. While the “Next Best Offer” solution demonstrates impressive marketing results, it's really about laying the foundation for broader AI transformation”, said Job Deibel, data and AI director at DEPT®.

"This project is a great example of how cloud technology can revolutionize modern marketing. Rituals' 'Next Best Offer' solution, developed by DEPT®, leverages Google Cloud’s technology to centralize customer data and build a 360-degree customer view. Powered by Google Cloud's AI tools, Rituals delivers personalized marketing campaigns at scale, demonstrating the transformative impact of cloud-based AI solutions." said Marleen Smit, director retail, Google Benelux.