Books are a broad category with a passionate following. It takes data and a solid ecommerce strategy to break through to book fans on digital channels. Over the years, online bookseller ThriftBooks developed a data-driven approach to experience that makes books relevant each to casual book browsers and to trend-setting readers in TikTok’s “BookTok” community.
This year-round strategy translated into strong holiday sales during a successful ecommerce holiday season. Over the 2023 holidays, ThriftBooks sales were up greater than 20% year-over-year.
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Value for ecommerce customers
As a successful ecommerce brand, ThriftBooks sells latest and used books on Amazon, eBay and other book sites. It began in 2003 as an Amazon seller, and has since built out data-driven operations that deliver personalized experiences and customer support. The company has sold upwards of 250 million books over the past twenty years.
ThriftBooks bases its ecommerce strategy on five pillars: price, book selection, product quality, customer support and loyalty programs. The company uses proprietary in-house automation technology, in addition to Keep Book, a technology utilized by its processing centers to process roughly 200,000 books per day.
“The holidays were a very strong season for us,” said Barbara Hagen, VP of sales and marketing for ThriftBooks. “When I take into consideration what really contributed to that, I see it as a part of our core value proposition.”
Hagen added: “We didn’t have any discounts over the vacation, and we were up over 20%. So, the mixture of those five elements is absolutely resonating with our customers. They’re able to shop with confidence and not have to think, ‘Oh is there a sale coming? Do I want to wait?’”
Personalized customer experience and service
When customers go to the ThriftBooks site they will pick from a list of over 19 million books. If they’re returning customers, they’ll see personalized recommendations, ensuring that experiences are optimized for every user.
“They see the worth that we provide, in addition to the client response and the flexibility to interact with customer support if there’s a matter about an order,” said Hagen.
New customers come to the location either from social media buzz and community outreach, or from the investment Thriftbooks has made in SEO.
“If you’re searching for a selected title, you go to Google and hopefully we’re one in all the primary that show up with a very great price,” Hagen said. “That’s an amazing way to get people to the location, and then once they’re there, they’ve a very great experience.”
Web content on the location and pushed out on social media delivers recommendations and lets book fans know what’s on the horizon.
Thriftbooks also uses personalization to send fine-tuned emails to customers based on previous purchases. Additionally, the corporate keeps up on broader topics in culture, including latest movies and popular streaming series — a lot of that are based on books that readers will likely be keen on purchasing.
Site search, recommendations and integrated data
A key a part of the location experience for patrons is the search bar, which helps users find what they got here for and proceed shopping once they’ve added their initial purchase to their shopping cart.
“When people come to the location, numerous times they’re searching for a particular book,” said Trevor Higbee, VP of technology at ThriftBooks. “But then they see a search bar and wonder what else we’ve got. So we spend numerous time on the tech side trying to optimize search performance each from a speed perspective and for relevance.”
ThriftBooks uses the search signal data on their site to help construct recommendations for users. It’s all about integrating these priceless data insights through all areas of customer experience.
“It really is an ecosystem that we’ve built to try to get all of the several data points that individuals are interacting with,” Higbee said. “We have numerous customer outreach via email, and that gets back into our system and helps make our recommendations higher. We’re taking a look at what individuals are looking for and browsing. Information from our customer support system comes back into our central system and we use that to make higher recommendations. We’re trying to take all this data and really make that one-for-one experience for patrons.”
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Experimenting with large language models
Search and purchase data are a giant a part of how Thriftbooks can deliver relevant, effective recommendations to customers. Readers also share their book interests in writing, whether on social media, emails or interactions with customer support. To ingest and integrate these insights, ThriftBooks is experimenting with large language models.
“With the rise of enormous language models, we’re looking to integrate more insights into the data we now have already,” said Hagen. “With the dimensions of our business, we now have numerous great insights already. But we’re looking to augment that with some deeper insights from LLM.”
Loyalty program for book shoppers
The more customers shop with ThriftBooks, the higher the corporate can tailor emails and recommendations. The company’s loyalty program, ReadingRewards, incentivizes customers to proceed shopping and stay connected with the brand.
The program is tiered in order that when customers spend more, they receive more priceless free books and other perks like early access to out-of-stock books.
First, latest customers can enroll free of charge to the bottom level, “Reader.” When they spend $75 in a 12 months, they qualify for the following tier, “Bookworm.” Customers qualify for the very best level, “Literati,” when their annual spend reaches $150.
They get more points for every dollar they spend, the upper their level. And once they reach 500 points, they get a free book. “Readers” get a free $5 book of their selection once they reach 500 points, while “Bookworms” and “Literati” get $6 and $7 free books, respectively.
“Customers love ReadingRewards and that’s because we give out free books,” said Hagen. “When you concentrate on book lovers and what they value by way of advantages, it’s getting those free books they will redeem.”
Community constructing and social media outreach
“All the weather come together in an on a regular basis way, and then word-of-mouth really supports that,” said Hagen. “We have some really strong customer advocates on the market, almost cult-like.”
“Social channels are big for us by way of organic referrals or endorsements, if you happen to will,” Hagen explained. “People are organically making TikTok videos of their book hauls. TikTok has just been a force for the book industry basically, not only by way of its scale and reaching book customers, but in addition just the ‘BookTok’ community that’s on the market.”
ThriftBooks has nearly 170,000 followers on TikTok. The social buzz is helped by branding and packaging. Thriftbooks’ eye-catching teal packages construct excitement and brand awareness amongst the web book community.
“There’s a way of pride — I got these six books under $20,” said Hagen. “They love to share that, so social is a very big channel for us in that sense.”
She added, “One of the good things about ThriftBooks is that we now have a very large inventory between latest and used books. So, it’s an amazing place for patrons to find a few of these books that perhaps are out of print but individuals are buzzing about within the TikTok space.”
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