Bluecore

✨🥁✨ We’re beaming to share news of a major milestone for Bluecore. We have acquired Alby, the AI Shopping Assistant. Using Bluecore, retailers will soon be able to make their own ecommerce sites, email campaigns, SMS and mobile apps conversational by anticipating and answering shoppers’ questions about their products. 🤩 The new integrated capabilities will be available for Bluecore customers in Q1 2025, giving retailers even more powerful capabilities to move more customers through the lifecycle. As part of the acquisition, alby’s CEO Max Bennett – who is also one of Bluecore’s original co-founders and author of “A Brief History of Intelligence” – will join the company to lead alby’s evolution. “Unlike the technology of the past, these conversational AI systems will look very different depending on whether you are buying a fashion, consumer goods or sporting goods product. Paired with Bluecore, we can make these experiences even more magical, and create a truly intelligent retail platform that becomes smarter on its own, over time, as it learns about shoppers.” – Max Bennett But this is only the beginning. ✨ Learn more about the future of Bluecore + alby 👉 https://lnkd.in/e5g7Gk42

“There’s all this talk about the vision of living in the agentic future where consumers have agents that do things for them, almost like Rosie from The Jetsons, but in a digital environment.” Agentic AI was a hot topic at eTail™ this week. Bluecore CMO Jason Grunberg caught up with Always Off Brand Podcast host Scott Ohsman to talk all about it. To hear more about the agentic future — and why it's emulating, not replicating the in-store experience — listen here: https://lnkd.in/e7-fG4Ny

AI shopping agents are new and exciting, which means retailers may not know how to evaluate them. An AI shopping agent should balance the customer experience with business results, like higher conversions and larger basket sizes. The first step is to define what success looks like for your brand — both in the near- and long-term. From there, you can start evaluating. Not sure what to ask? Here are four questions to start: 👉 Can you demonstrate specific results around CX, like engagement rate and CSAT scores? 👉 How does your platform handle A/B testing during a pilot period and at scale? 👉 In addition to metrics, what kind of shopper insights can be pulled? 👉 How is data from conversations written to customer profiles? For 30 more questions across seven other categories, check out our full guide here: https://lnkd.in/e3uYrMRf

Bringing in-store onsite, an AI shopping agent mimics the personalized, hands-on experience of working with a human sales associate. But how? 🤔 Powered by the latest large language models, Alby ingests data from retailers product catalogs, ratings, reviews, customer Q+A, sizing guides, ingredients lists, assembly manuals, and on and on and on. With that data, the AI shopping agent can answer shoppers’ questions or apply various skills. Skills include: 🤖 Review summaries: Sharing the most common sentiments across customer reviews 🤖 Bundling: Creating an entire outfit (or room, for home goods brands) based on a single item 🤖 Best selling: Introducing the hottest products and refining recommendations based on shopper feedback 🤖 Visual matching: Recommending similar and complementary items based on product attributes 🤖 Co-purchase: Showing shoppers what other customers tend to buy with the item they’re browsing 🤖 Compatibility: Letting shoppers know which items *can* be bought together 🤖 Comparison: Comparing products side-by-side to let shoppers know how they differ 🤖 Fit: Helping shoppers understand how different items may fit them Want to see how these skills translate to your specific retail vertical? Check out the full guide: https://lnkd.in/ezHVdVuQ

By mimicking the personalized, hands-on experience of an in-store salesperson, an AI shopping agent is an emerging technology that can revolutionize a retailer’s business… …but only if they know how to evaluate one. To make sure retailers get the optimal AI shopping agent, they need to know what questions to ask around: 🔹 Balancing the customer experience with business results 🔹 How shopper identification factors in 🔹 Cross-channel conversational capabilities 🔹 The ability to go beyond generic prompts 🔹 What data the AI shopping can ingest 🔹 Ease of implementation and management 🔹 Transparency for your team and shoppers 🔹 Flexibility for refining and building on top of existing capabilities Don’t know where to start? We’ve outlined *34* questions across those categories. Check them out: https://lnkd.in/e3uYrMRf

eTail™ is around the corner and the Bluecore + Alby team is energized and ready to return. We’ll have team members across the event, but here are the top 3 things we’re most excited about… 🥁 🤖 AI Summit, Monday: If you’re joining this pre-day summit, catch Alby x Bluecore during the technology demos to see our AI shopping agent in action. ⚡ 🎤 Main Stage, Tuesday: Bluecore’s Max Bennett, the founder of conversational shopping agent, alby, will share the stage with Marie Fleisher from QVC. They’ll be talking about how AI adoption (both internally and for your shoppers) can elevate the shopping experience while driving real business impact. Don’t miss it! 🪩 House of Retail, Tuesday night: It’s the second year of the House of Retail party on Tuesday night and we are beyond excited to see you all again. We’ll have live music, great food, and a chance to recognize your peers’ excellence with awards. Even better? You can personalize your own pair of Nikes or a customized Carhartt jacket. 🤩 This party is limited admission and spots are filling up fast – request your RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/e-UaAQB3

On a typical day, we may: 📱 Wake up with a smartphone alarm ⌚ Check smartwatches for reminders 💻 Work from laptops 📺 Decompress with a smart TV …all while checking our smartphones an average of 144(?!) times 📱 It’s safe to say that consumer electronics are everywhere. This is true both as a person existing in 2025 *and* as a shopper. The market has become extremely commoditized and competitive, which means retailers in this category can’t rely on brand loyalty. Tailored experiences are the key to standing out. And customer movement is the key to creating tailored experiences. Retailers that embrace customer movement pick up on shopping signals and use them to deliver personalized interactions for every shopper, whether they’re comparing specs for a big-ticket purchase or looking at compatible accessories for it. Learn to crack the code here: https://lnkd.in/e7F_2QWT

DXL Group has consolidated multiple martech capabilities — including identification, audience building and segmentation, and campaign management — onto Bluecore. This expanded partnership will give DXL a single, holistic view into customers’ individual preferences and buying habits, helping improve personalization, says CMO Jim Reath.

Lately, the news has been a whirlwind of tariffs, which have huge (and fast) implications for retailers. Still, we're optimistic. Few industries were hit harder by the pandemic five years ago. Retailers pivoted and global ecommerce sales surged 19%. The same technology that fueled growth then can soften the blow now. Bradford Johnson, who leads our Strategic Consulting team of retail experts, has outlined four actionable use cases to help retailers respond quickly and focus on what they can control: their marketing. One example? Putting real-time product data to work. Tariffs will create inventory constraints. By leaning on real-time product data, retailers can: 🔹 Prioritize items that are already in stock 🔹 Promote high-marin products 🔹 Add a tariff score to each SK These three tactics can protect a retailer’s revenue without sacrificing the personalization necessary for a great customer experience. Check out more tips for getting ahead of tariffs here: https://lnkd.in/ecuGaXmg

Say you’re a digital strategist pulling a list of high-value customers. You may not include someone who’s only made two online purchases in the last three years… …because you didn’t know they’re a big spender in brick-and-mortar. That’s one potential (and common) pitfall when a retailer’s digital channels and brick-and-mortar stores are siloed. Digital channels can (and should) drive store traffic and help create a compelling experience once they’re there. That store engagement can be used to strengthen customers’ spending potential and their possibilities online. This cycle only works when a retailer’s digital and in-store experiences are unified. Bluecore data found that multichannel customers spend 2-5x more than those who shop in a single channel. Because stores *are* a channel, unifying it with digital can create more multichannel customers and drive profitable growth. High-impact unification tactics include:  👔 Dressing up email receipts 📱 Making your app an extension of the store 🔁 Incentivizing in-store returns 🎉 Building community with in-store events 🌉 Bridging the inventory gap For more tactics to unify in-store and online, check out our full guide: https://lnkd.in/e-BjW_Cg