• Ecommerce customers are most open to offers and promotions when they’re already in the middle of a purchase. The Transaction Moment can be broken down into several components including cart review, checkout, and confirmation.
• Rokt’s platform helps these emerging businesses, as well as enterprise companies, reach out to customers at these important moments with personalized products, offers, and ads.
• Rokt has created a marketplace of different ecommerce brands with similar, non-competing products. This marketplace enables merchants to introduce their customers to relevant offers while enabling those advertisers to efficiently acquire high-quality customers at scale.

The moment ecommerce customers are most likely to be enticed into engaging with an offer is when they’ve already loaded their cart with at least one item.

They’ve already started the transaction, which means they aren’t just digitally window shopping. They are engaged and paying attention. Now is the time to reach them.

It doesn’t have to be an upsell of another item. You can introduce an opportunity to sign up for a subscription, join the loyalty program, or buy insurance for their purchase. Or, you can offer a relevant message from a third-party vendor: both deepening the relationship with the shopper while generating a new revenue stream.

Rokt makes it easy to add these options at every transaction moment — the different steps between adding an item to the cart and the order confirmation page.

Using machine learning, the Rokt platform determines what option is most likely to appeal to each individual user, increasing engagement rates.

And through its network of advertisers and businesses, Rokt provides an alternative to Facebook and Google to allow businesses to acquire new customers.

Rokt co-founder Justin Viles described the process and the benefits in an interview on the eCommerce Fastlane podcast.

A platform designed to add value for every party in the ecosystem

One of the reasons Rokt has proved so popular is because the platform is designed to be simple for everyone involved in ecommerce transactions.

For Shopify merchants:

This is ideal for business owners looking to generate additional profit on each of their transactions, while also delighting customers with relevant offers.
Everything your customer sees is backed by data science and machine learning, that picks the best advertiser, offer, and experience based on the customer’s likelihood to engage. Engagement and profit are driven by a more relevant shopping experience.

Merchants sign up for the app, customize the placement widget to match their existing branding, and select which industries are eligible to appear to their customers. With these three easy steps, merchants ensure complete control over their brand with a placement that seamlessly matches their store theme and make sure that advertisers are coming from the right industries. Merchants who need extra help can contact Rokt’s customer support staff.

For advertisers:

Using machine learning, Rokt analyzes customer data to determine:

• Which of the company’s network of advertisers is a strong fit

• Which offer or service the customer is most likely to go for

• Which version of the ad artwork will most likely appeal to the customer

This custom approach ensures customers only see offers they’re statistically likely to be interested in. This in turn increases the odds of them making an additional purchase or commitment (to a subscription program, for example.) and ensures that advertisers are only in front of customers who are most likely to be interested.

For customers:

The customer is presented with a customized experience to further engage with the brand or with another Rokt partner during every possible transaction moment, including:

• Cart review
• Checkout
• Payment
• Confirmation page

The opportunities each customer sees are based on data science that learns about each customer in real-time, with data gathered and analyzed by Rokt’s machine learning capabilities. For example, one customer might be offered a discount, whereas another might be asked to join the loyalty program.

Not only does the business benefit from an additional sale, the customer is getting something they actually want!

An efficient solution for ecommerce customer acquisition

Customer acquisition makes up the single largest cost to many ecommerce companies. When it comes to finding new customers, ecommerce businesses are currently at the mercy of Facebook’s and Google’s ad rates.

Through Rokt, brands have access to a network of companies, and the audiences those businesses represent.

In short, Rokt is on the path to becoming an ecommerce super connector. Customers won’t just see offers and promotions related to the merchant they’re purchasing from: They’ll also have the option to connect to other, non-competing merchants within Rokt’s marketplace.

In the future, Rokt will use its machine learning to identify specific products the customer might be interested in purchasing next, from across its range of vendors. For example, if a customer buys a laptop from Vendor A, Rokt could connect them to desk chairs from Vendor B. The two companies work in the same vertical, but don’t directly compete.

In addition to reaching new customers, each merchant will have access to other merchants’ traffic. Introducing customers to other non-competitors they are interested in widens the market without raising customer acquisition costs.

New marketing opportunities for ecommerce companies

Many ecommerce retailers don’t have the time, money, or internal expertise to customize every user’s experience. Rokt gives these companies access to tools that can help increase average order value and customer lifetime value (LTV).

Access to enterprise-level tools

Rokt was initially designed to serve enterprise businesses. Now, the tools and experience previously only accessible to large companies are being made accessible to all companies on major ecommerce platforms. Through Rokt, these brands can optimize:

• Payment options
• Completion rates
• Insurance options
• Product selection

In the future, Rokt plans to make more of its enterprise tools available to all retailers, including Shopify reporting capabilities through the Rokt platform, and potentially a calendar service.

Improved LTV

In addition to helping merchants increase their average order values and reducing customer acquisition costs, Rokt’s platform can increase average customer lifetime value (LTV).

The platform makes it easy for merchants to bring attention to loyalty programs and subscription options, which encourage customers to make repeat purchases.

There are also tools to help ecommerce merchants add marketing messaging through SMS and apps, in addition to the more standard email-only approach.

This blog post is based on an episode of eCommerce Fastlane featuring Rokt co-founder and Director of Innovation Justin Viles.