I.Me.Mine Digital Platform Delivers Unprecedented Levels of Personalization to Grocery Retailers.
Tempe, Arizona – August 2019 I Me Mine Digital Personalization I.Me.Mine’s Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Alan Alexander, and Chief Executive Officer Girdhar Arora discuss the origins, data insights, unique delivery options and the unprecedented levels of personalization it’s able to deliver to grocery retailers through the I.Me.Mine personalization solution.
It was 2000 when I was working with General Mills, said Alan Alexander, and they talked about how the internet was going to have an effect on General Mills’ business and ultimately on the entire grocery industry. One of the things they talked about is that the print circular, eventually, would go away.
Alan Alexander, CSO
I thought that was very intriguing, especially since 80% of the marketing money goes to the print circular. I filed that away for about a 10-year period; and then looked again at the situation and no one was doing anything about it. No one was taking advantage of that amazing opportunity in the marketplace. Since no one else was taking advantage of it, I thought that that someone should be me and my colleague Girdhar Arora, and that's essentially how I.Me.Mine was born.
I Me Mine Digital’s platform utilizes a sophisticated machine-learning personalization engine to identify and deliver personalized offers to shoppers, primarily via its grocer branded Personal Circular® product. The Personal Circular® product identifies and showcases the most individually relevant offers each-and-every week; delivering the right offers to the right shoppers, at the right time and place, over the shopper’s preferred digital channels.
We were fortunate enough to get a contract with Bashas’ shortly thereafter and they were very interested in personalization primarily because of what was happening with Safeway in the marketplace with their ‘Just For U’ program. In concert with Bashas’ we developed a very specific personalization program for them, and it has been a terrific experience, and it's getting better all the time.
We’ve learned a lot from what we've done. At one point in time, we thought all we had to do was just throw the deals out there, just have over 5,000 items available to us or just show shoppers the most relevant ones, but there's much more to it.
What’s really happening in the marketplace and we believe to be a major point of difference for us is in the area of personal pricing. What we found is with personal pricing, shoppers go beyond engagement…to addiction, they are addicted to having these personal deals arrive in their inbox every week.
Another distinction of I.Me.Mine is how it distributes an omni-channel digital delivery of offers. It’s not only delivering our unique web based personal circular, it also includes an email program, a mobile app, offering push notifications, utilizing SMS text messaging and we are reaching people at the right time with the right offers and that's really driving the business.
We have gotten a lot more attention since we've been with Bashas’ and we have now partnered with several additional grocers. This area of personalization really is the future of grocery declared Alexander. It's a terrific way for grocers to identify a key point of difference and benefits they can deliver to their shoppers. In the end, it’s ultimately about retailers growing their business and to grow the amount of loyalty they get from their most important core shoppers.
Girdhar Arora, CEO
The I.Me.Mine platform has three parts says CEO Arora; we have the analytics engine, that’s the big-data machine learning, the part of the system which processes hundreds of millions of transactions each week. That creates the analytical profile and machine learning method that powers the rest of the system. That is the engine. Secondly, we have the product selection and delivery mechanism of the personal circular; and thirdly, it’s how we deliver those offers and how we communicate. The communication platform we have dating back to the five years in which we have partnered with Bashas’ has evolved from email only…with the understanding that every shopper is unique, everyone has different preferences as to how they want to consume information. Creating a circular was an important initial step…but we knew we wanted to deliver much more.
Some shoppers, as stated, like apps or push notifications, other people go grocery shopping on a Saturday vs. a Tuesday. We must be able to fully understand what the shopper preferences are rather than any preconceived ideas of how the system should work.
That’s the power of machine learning, you have the system work and mold itself to how the shopper shops.…and then the shopper can be truly engaged and for us to give them when they want; the right offer at the right time. I know then we can better connect with the shopper and have a positive influence on their entire customer shopping experience.
Our mission at I.Me.Mine, reiterated Alexander is to be the best in personalization
There are other competitors out there, but many of them are trying to do multiple things simultaneously and have not made the same kind of commitment to personalization that we have. What we are doing is continuing to learn through demand signals and patterns, and be forward thinking to lookout four years, five years or ten years. What's the next thing, what’s the next method of personalization? It is essential for us to be the very best at personalization and really own that space…to do it better than anyone else.
Personalization is of course the core, the bread and butter of what do it, and it really ties intimately with loyalty. You can't have personalization and not talk about loyalty says Arora. We built the technology so that each grocer can have a customized version of our solution, as this is not a one size fits all.
What we have learned is every grocer has a different mission or different missions; they have different objectives to accomplish over and beyond personalization. Exactly what they want to do in terms of price image; how they aspire to best connect with their consumers, whether they have wellness programs which many do; a focus on ethnic choices, overall healthier eating, locally sourced items, fresh meats and produce, and one of the industry’s primary focal points, what Private Label SKU’s represent as an aggregate of their total offerings. These areas are where I.Me.Mine continues to invest and differentiate.
I.Me.Mine Personalization enables retailers to attain an unfair advantage
And because of customization, we can amplify those key missions. These grocers must accelerate the delivery of those missions. They can do so through the personalization platform we have created. That is where we have become the retailer’s primary collaborator. Many companies offer productive loyalty and rewards programs, but no one can deliver personalization to retailers that shoppers are now mandating like I.Me.Mine.
The I.Me.Mine platform can become the loyalty de facto if a retailer doesn’t have a loyalty program, or I.Me.Mine can further augment and leverage a retailer’s loyalty program with its personalization platform.
We know there are productive loyalty and membership programs in place at retail. But no one is delivering the level of personalization that further drives the value of those loyalty/membership programs. And I.Me.Mine integrates to all POS systems as part of our core deployment efforts says Alexander. Whatever POS the retailer is using, we will seamlessly integrate to the retailer’s system of choice.
Specifically, in terms of I.Me.Mine’s architectural capabilities, says Arora, we have a tremendous amount of capabilities built in the I.Me.Mine system, but we are not, nor should we be, everything to every retailer.
The digital landscape is vast and evolving We will keep evolving and remain on the forefront of personalization, but it's also important for us to not be an island. We fit within that big landscape either using services we offer innately, or we provide hooks and connections and APIs along with other elements of the retailers’ fabric.
I.Me.Mine Expansion…
With recent cash infusions, says Arora, we have continued to add and invest in every aspect of our business, including significant investments in infrastructure. We have brought on seasoned marketing and sales executives to our team, as well as to our board and advisory roles. In addition to our Tempe, AZ. headquarters, we have opened regional offices during the last 18 months in Chicago, New Jersey and Florida, enabling us to collaborate even more closely with our valued clients. And the organization has added an influx of additional data scientists both domestically and internationally with the explicit intent of prioritizing its AI, machine learning and automation as drivers towards our next generation of personalization deliverables.
We often get questions like how are you different from coupon galleries? Sometimes our product looks a little bit like those galleries, and the big difference is… that's only coupons. We are taking the entire store; every SKU in the store is available to us. Anything that’s on sale is available to identify and showcase as the most relevant items for any shopper.
And when you're dealing with coupons you're dealing with a very small percentage of the store and especially today, if you look at the coupon galleries, it's 75% non-food products and that's far less interesting for the average shopper. Shoppers go primarily to grocery stores for food and they want to see the best deals on the items they buy most frequently. They want to be able to access those deals as easily as possible… and they want to have them every single week.
I.Me.Mine’s Personalization Mission with our Retail Partners.
That is our mission at I.Me.Mine… to provide the solution that helps grocers accelerate the success of their growth & shopper engagement missions through personalization.
For further information or to schedule a demo, contact Gary Lowen at (732) 207-2160 or gary@imemine.digital