How PEARL iZUMi converted 30% of chatting shoppers and 7x’d their ROI
PEARL iZUMi implemented a hyper-personalized online shopping experience, addressing rising consumer expectations in the sports apparel market. An 8-week A/B test generated positive results in revenue and customer satisfaction– ultimately achieving a 7x return on their investment.
Results
PEARL iZUMi's 8-week A/B test proved that shoppers who chat with experts buy more.
8% ↑
24% ↑
97%
Company
Alchemy Bikes builds premium, American manufactured performance bicycles with a focus on craftsmanship whether it be on the mountain, gravel or road. They were founded in 2008 by Ryan Cannizzaro and are based on Golden, Colorado.
"Remark brought the high quality in-store experience to every shopper who landed on our site. Conversion rate, ROAS, customer satisfaction, are all inextricably linked to the level of personalization Remark delivers."
Opportunity
PEARL iZUMi faced an evolving landscape in sports apparel, marked by rising consumer expectations. These expectations show in the data too. Today, 71% of consumers demand personalized interactions and 76% express frustration when these expectations aren’t met.
The company understood hyper-personalization while shopping online was critical. This wasn’t just for customer satisfaction however but top line growth too– especially with technical, high performance goods like cycling gear.
To differentiate themselves in this increasingly competitive, saturated market, PEARL iZUMi needed to replicate the personalized shopping experience of a physical store but instead on their website.
Solution
To answer the company’s need for hyper-personalized chat experience, PEARL iZUMi partnered with Remark to launch an exploratory A/B test.
Its primary objective was to clearly attribute new revenue by bringing the in-store experience online with Remark’s tooling.
Over an 8-week period, the company’s online traffic was divided evenly into two groups: test and control. The test group received Remark's expert chat experience. The control group experienced no change from PEARL iZUMi’s standard service operations.
During this time, all shoppers could opt into the chat at any point in their shopping journey, connecting them to live brand experts 24-7.
This unbiased, data-driven approach allowed PEARL iZUMi to clearly evaluate the impact of Remark for customer experience and sales performance.
Results
In less than 2 months, PEARL iZUMi saw incredible gains from shoppers who had access to Remark’s chat experience both qualitatively and quantitatively.
When it came to attributing sales, Remark’s test group increased new revenue by 8% and converted 30% more shoppers. Additionally, those shoppers also had a 24% higher Average Order Value than the control, standard service group.
What did these results ultimately translate into? PEARL iZUMi 7x’d their return from their initial investment with Remark. In other words, every $1 spent with Remark resulted in $7 of net new revenue.
PEARL iZUMi also saw remarkable results with its shoppers. Remark’s human-authored and human-generated content proved that buying gear online could give customers the same—if not a better—experience as in a retail store.
PEARL iZUMi received countless positive reviews, like the ones below, earning them a 97% average CSAT score.
“Amazing that I got a real person at this time of the night. Ellie was helpful and did some research to help me make a decision on shoes!”
By adapting to its evolving landscape, PEARL iZUMi successfully transformed their online shopping experience to replicate what shoppers expected at physical store locations.
Not only were the results extremely positive but in doing so, they’ve now set a new online shopping standard in the sports apparel market.
