Customers expect brands to know who they are, anticipate what they need, and deliver relevant experiences at the right moment. But that’s only possible when marketers and data teams can unify, understand, and act on their data seamlessly.

That’s why Insider is proud to announce its newest integration with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, combining the power of Snowflake’s data scale and governance with Insider’s cross-channel personalization platform. 

With this powerful, bi-directional integration, brands can unify customer data, activate it instantly across 12+ channels, and feed engagement insights back for richer, more precise personalization. It’s a partnership built for marketers and data teams who want to extract the full value of their data securely, efficiently, and at scale.

From Data Chaos to Customer Clarity

For marketers and data teams, the challenge isn’t a lack of data; it’s turning that data into action. You have rich customer, behavioral, and transactional insights sitting in Snowflake, but getting them to flow seamlessly into campaigns is still a hurdle. Complex integrations, latency, and siloed tools keep insights locked away, slowing execution when speed and precision matter most.

Marketers want agility. Data teams want governance. 

Composability delivers both. By bringing your marketing stack closer to your source of truth in Snowflake, Insider bridges the gap, enabling real-time activation without sacrificing control, security, or scalability.

Through a secure, governed data connection via Snowflake Secure Data Sharing, Insider enables near real-time data flow between your Snowflake environment and Insider with flexible controls over what data is shared and how often it updates. 

The outcome: A unified marketing and data ecosystem where everyone works from the same live customer truth and personalization happens as fast as your data moves.

How the Insider + Snowflake Integration Works

The Insider + Snowflake integration is powered by Snowflake Secure Data Sharing. It enables a bi-directional, governed data connection between your Snowflake environment and Insider’s platform.

Because this connection is built on Secure Data Sharing, there’s no data movement or storage replication. Brands eliminate the need for manual exports, batch jobs, or complex sync work — maintaining full governance, accuracy, and control within Snowflake.

The result? Always-fresh insights, instant activation, and a unified data foundation that never leaves your secure environment.

Secure connection setup
The integration requires only a one-time setup using Snowflake’s secure authentication. Once established, Insider gains access to your designated Snowflake data through secure sharing without any additional infrastructure or engineering resources.

Bi-directional intelligence
Data flows both ways: customer profiles, purchase history, and behavioral data from Snowflake power personalization in Insider, while engagement data from Insider’s 12+ channels, including email, SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp, web, mobile app, and more, flows back into Snowflake for complete analysis and attribution.

Secure, governed data share
Insider connects to your Snowflake instance through a Secure Data Share, creating a governed replica of your shared data within Insider’s Unified Customer Database (UCD). This enables real-time personalization while ensuring your source data remains securely managed in Snowflake without manual exports, ETL jobs, or data silos.

Flexible sync frequency
The integration supports real-time, hourly, and daily data syncs, giving teams the flexibility to align data flows with their business and activation needs.  

For marketers and data teams, this means:

• Always-fresh data: Activate the most current customer information, not yesterday’s snapshot.
• Dramatically lower costs: No duplicated storage means you only pay for what you use.
• Bulletproof compliance: Sensitive data never leaves Snowflake’s secure, governed environment.
• Lightning-fast activation: From insight to action in hours, not days or weeks.
• Composable flexibility: Seamlessly connect Snowflake with Insider’s activation layer without complex ETL or maintenance overhead.

Together, marketers gain the agility to act in real time, and data teams retain the governance, control, and scalability they need to support it. 

From Insights to Impact in Real Time

When customer data in Snowflake meets Insider’s personalization engine, insight turns into impact. Complete customer profiles in Snowflake flow seamlessly into Insider’s personalization and cross-channel orchestration platform, where they automatically trigger journeys, refine audience segments, and adjust campaign logic based on the latest customer behavior.

What does the real world scenario look like? Purchase frequency data in Snowflake indicates a customer is due for a replenishment. Within minutes, Insider launches a perfectly timed WhatsApp message with their usual products and a contextual discount. They purchase that same day. The conversion data flows back to Snowflake, enriching the customer profile and informing your next campaign.

Every click, view, and conversion feeds a continuous feedback loop between Insider and Snowflake, giving marketers and data teams cleaner attribution, smarter optimization, and a truly 360° view of the customer as it happens, not after the fact.

Real Scenarios, Real Results

The true test of any integration is whether it helps you reach customers more effectively. Here’s how marketers are already winning with Snowflake + Insider:

Replenishment and cart abandonment campaigns
Use purchase frequency data from Snowflake to trigger replenishment messages across WhatsApp, email, or SMS. Target cart abandoners with personalized product recommendations based on browsing and purchase history to drive conversions.

Advanced customer segmentation and targeting
Create dynamic audience segments from behavioral data, purchase patterns, computed attributes, and predictive insights in Snowflake. Target customers with high likelihood to purchase, discount affinity, or projected lifetime value for more effective campaigns.

Churn prevention with predictive analytics
Feed churn scores and behavioral signals from Snowflake into Insider to automatically launch win-back campaigns before customers leave. Use AI-powered predictions to identify at-risk customers and engage them across multiple channels.

Cross-channel journey orchestration
Combine customer data from Snowflake with Insider’s Architect journey builder to create personalized experiences across email, SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp, web, mobile app, and more.

Real-time website and app personalization
Use enriched profiles from Snowflake to personalize website banners, product recommendations, and app experiences in real time, creating consistent experiences across digital touchpoints.

Online-to-offline engagement
Integrate in-store purchase data from Snowflake with online behavior to send location-based push notifications when customers are near physical stores, creating connected omnichannel experiences. Arm your sellers with past purchase information to power personalized recommendations while in store.

Together, these scenarios show how the integration turns customer data into meaningful, measurable journeys that respect preferences while driving business outcomes.

Why This Matters

The Snowflake + Insider integration is a secure, scalable bridge between customer understanding and delivering an experience that reflects it. When your data foundation is unified and your activation engine is instant, every team benefits without compromising governance.

Built on a secure, governed data connection, brands gain both the speed modern customers demand and the governance modern businesses require.

Ready to Turn Data into a Competitive Advantage?

Activating your data shouldn’t require a heavy engineering lift, and with Insider + Snowflake, it doesn’t. The integration is simple to set up, requires no ongoing developer resources, and gives both marketing and data teams the flexibility to move at the speed of their business.

By connecting Insider’s personalization engine with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, brands can unify customer intelligence, streamline operations, improve campaign performance, and build a modern marketing foundation for sustainable growth.

For most brands already collecting rich customer data, the Snowflake + Insider integration feels like the natural next step, one that finally connects the dots between knowing your customers and acting on that knowledge.

Discover how the Snowflake + Insider Secure Data Share can transform your customer experience strategy and book demo today.

By 2030, approximately 70% of consumers are projected to shop primarily through social platforms. 

In fact, seven in ten shoppers now expect digital experiences that anticipate intent through virtual try-ons, voice searches, and personalized product suggestions.

The change in shopping behavior is not limited to where customers shop; it is also rooted in the “how.” Unsurprisingly, what breaks conversions today are different forms of friction at every touchpoint.

A recent report suggests:

• 81% of shoppers abandon carts when their preferred delivery options aren’t available
• One in three exit due to sustainability concerns

Clearly, online shopping is taking on a new role: one defined by intelligence, precision, and AI-guided journeys that adapt in real time.

AI Shopping Agents are redefining the ecommerce experience. Acting like 24/7 digital sales associates, they guide users from discovery to checkout, seamlessly, personally, and at scale.

This blog explores how these autonomous agents deliver tangible business results, including higher conversion rates, increased average order value, and reduced drop-offs. Let’s get exploring!

What is an AI Shopping Agent and How Does It Work? 

An AI shopping agent is autonomous software that helps users browse, compare, and purchase products of their liking with relative ease.

These 24×7 assistants replicate the role of an intelligent in-store expert by:

• Adapting to each customer in real time
• Guiding them through product discovery, decision-making, and checkout
• Bringing contextual relevance and speed to queries by online shoppers

What Do AI Shopping Agents Look Like in Action?

• Product recommenders that adjust based on live behavior
• Guided shopping flows that mimic an in-store assistant
• Voice-led interfaces that showcase relevant options instantly
• Context-aware chat experiences that convert hesitation into action

Introducing Insider’s Shopping Agent with Actionable CDP

Shopping Agent, part of Insider’s Agent One platform, transforms your search engine into an intuitive, outcome-focused assistant that drives shoppers to buy:

It is AI automation that applies real-time intelligence to:

• Anticipate shopper intent
• Bring up the right products
• Guide decisions through emotionally intelligent conversations

From search to checkout, the agent takes action by alternating between suggesting and selling.

Leading retail brands like Samsung, AVON, and NA-KD are already using Agent One to deliver personalized discovery, reduce friction, and increase conversions across web, mobile, and messaging channels.

To work at this level of precision, AI agents need one thing: unified, intelligent data. That’s where Insider comes in.

Our Actionable CDP aggregates and activates customer data and makes it instantly usable across your website, app, and messaging channels.

Insider connects to every relevant data source across your ecosystem to give you accurate and comprehensive customer profiles.

These profiles combine implicit behavior such as clicks, scrolls, etc., with explicit data like surveys and responses, enriched by 120+ customer attributes (read: CRM IDs, emails, phone numbers, etc.:

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Trusted by brands like AVON, Samsung, and Toyota, Insider helps you:

• Break down data silos: Connect CRMs, CMSs, POS systems, analytics tools, and more into one place:

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• Predict and personalize: Use AI to forecast churn, purchase probability, discount affinity, and potential spend
• Activate data across every touchpoint: Deliver real-time personalization at scale, across web, app, email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, push, and more

AI agents use these insights to personalize journeys and drive smarter decisions, faster checkouts, and higher AOV, LTV, as well as revenue.

Ready to transform how your customers shop? Take the interactive product tour and explore what Agent One can do.

5 Reasons Why Every Ecommerce Brand Needs an Autonomous Shopping AI Agent 

Shoppers today don’t want to search; they want accurate and relevant answers at every touchpoint.

Most importantly, they demand a buying experience that feels made for them. Static search bars and one-size-fits-all customer journeys no longer cut it. To stay competitive, brands need a shopping experience that responds in real time to intent, context, and behavior.

That’s where autonomous shopping AI agents come in.

Benefit #1: Anticipates Intent and Accelerates Product Discovery with Hyper-Personalized Experiences

Product discovery often breaks down because most AI platforms aren’t built to detect context. Insider’s Shopping Agent recognizes natural language and detects context:

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It understands what the shopper wants and generates contextual, emotionally resonant responses that are customized to the customer’s journey:

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Every answer is accurate, drawing from Insider’s CDP, Eureka search technology, and AI recommendation models to guide customers in fewer clicks.

It also accelerates product discovery by anticipating intent and offering personalized product recommendations with rich clickable product cards (a significant upgrade over reactive bots):

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Key takeaways:

• When it comes to Ecommerce personalization, treat every query like a signal instead of a search term. Use real intent to lead shoppers directly to what they’re looking for
• Collapse multi-click journeys into one interaction. Guide with product cards that respond in real time
• Build search flows around outcomes and not filters. Serve results that reflect where the shopper is in the journey
• Make natural language your conversion driver. Stop depending on keywords to deliver relevance

Benefit #2: Improves Purchase Confidence with Contextual Conversations and a Connected Customer Journey

Even the best product pages can’t answer every question. Doubts around relevance, fit, and trust can cost you the sale.

Shopping Agent brings clarity to those moments and irons out the shopper’s pressing queries instantly:

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It uses real-time behavioral data and intelligent prompts to provide clear recommendations, display relevant reviews, offer comparisons, and highlight complementary products based on context. 

Here’s how it builds conviction in the buyer with specific prompts that boost engagement:

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The responses are always up to date and instant.

Key takeaways:

• Answer objections as and when they happen. Don’t wait for them to cost you the conversion
• Use real-time behaviour to steer the conversation in the right direction
• Guide decisions with context. Let the shopper feel like they’re getting personalized advice
• Turn product questions into buying signals. Highlight value, clarify doubts, and keep the flow moving

Curious how other brands are using Agentic AI?
Here’s a complete guide on how to use  Agentic AI for Customer Engagement.

Benefit #3: Increases Average Order Value with High-Intent Upselling and Cross-Selling Opportunities

Most upsell and cross-sell attempts feel random or, worse, intrusive because they generally are. This happens as they rely on generic logic and not real-time context. 

Shopping Agent changes that by turning checkout into a precision-timed opportunity to drive more value per order:

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Its cross-sell and upsell recommendations are based on AI-led recommendation algorithms, shopper intent, user behavior, and emotional signals:

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As customers approach the final step, the Shopping Agent analyzes their journey and dynamically offers smart bundles, personalized add-ons, and complementary products as helpful nudges aligned with their needs.

Whether it’s a perfectly timed product upgrade, a relevant add-on, or a top-rated alternative, every recommendation is backed by real intent and delivered without slowing down the path to purchase.

Key takeaways:

• Don’t push products mindlessly. Offer add-ons that make sense in the moment
• Let shopper behaviour shape bundles. Use real signals to time your recommendations
• Showcase upgrades when the shopper shows interest and not when they’re about to leave
• Stop treating upsell like a side tactic. Make it part of a fluid journey to checkout

Benefit #4: Elevates Customer Support with Emotionally Intelligent, Always-On AI Agents

Poorly handled support is more than just a missed opportunity; it creates doubt, frustration, and bounce. Most bots still fail where it counts: tone. They misread intent, respond too generically, and leave users feeling like they’re talking to a robot or a script.

Agent One’s Shopping Agent solves for this. It recognizes not only what’s being said; but how it’s being said. Built with advanced sentiment detection and contextual reasoning, it adapts to emotional signals in real time:

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If a shopper sounds confused and frustrated, the agent responds accordingly, acknowledging the concern, offering helpful responses, and taking relevant action. That level of understanding doesn’t just resolve questions; it earns trust.

Unlike traditional bots, Agent One doesn’t lean on pre-set scripts. It draws from live behavioral data, past interactions, and contextual cues to drive conversations that feel natural, empathetic, and on-brand.

Shoppers walk away feeling heard, and that feeling drives measurable outcomes. And because it’s connected to Insider’s CDP, Shopping Agent only gets smarter with time. Every conversation becomes a signal that fine-tunes future interactions. So your support doesn’t just stay responsive; it continuously improves.

Key takeaways:

• Don’t script empathy. Let real-time emotion detection shape the tone of your responses
• Resolve confusion at the moment. Use past behavior and live context to personalize support
• Build trust through the conversation and not just the product
• Make support feel like guidance as opposed to using it for damage control

Benefit #5: Reduces Cart Abandonment with Timely Nudges and Checkout Intelligence

Shopping cart abandonment occurs in every 7 out of 10 purchases. And more often than not, it’s triggered by friction—whether it’s pricing doubts, delivery concerns, or a lack of urgency at the final step. 

Most digital journeys fail to respond to these signals in a timely manner. Shopping Agent does. Unlike static automations, the Shopping Agent learns and responds in session. It adapts to what each shopper needs at the moment and helps them finish their purchase confidently:

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Built to interpret real-time behaviors, such as hesitation, inactivity, and exit intent, the Shopping Agent steps in with well-timed prompts that move the shopper forward. These are intent-driven nudges grounded in behavioral insights.

If a user pauses on the delivery screen, the agent can suggest better options. If price becomes a blocker, it can highlight customer loyalty perks and better-value bundles. The goal is to remove doubt (as opposed to distract customers).

Key takeaways:

• Step in when the shopper hesitates; don’t wait for them to leave
• Use inactivity as a signal. Respond with contextual automation
• Turn abandoned carts into completed checkouts using intelligent timing and behavioral prompts

Turn Browsers into Buyers with Insider’s Shopping Agent

Personalization gets attention. Insider’s AI Shopping Agent converts that attention into revenue.

This autonomous shopping AI platform guides your customers’ buying decisions, reduces cart abandonment, and improves user experience with every interaction. It self-learns and closes the feedback loop in the moment.

Consequently, you’ll see the impact where it matters most: higher conversions, greater order value, shorter paths to purchase, and, of course, happier customers. For enterprise and high-growth brands, AI agents are a performance layer that they should invest in. And the right time to do this was yesterday.

Want to see Shopping Agent in action? Request a demo and explore how Insider’s AI shopping agent can power your growth!

FAQs

What are autonomous AI agents, and how do they work?

Autonomous AI agents are systems designed to carry out complex tasks independently based on a defined goal. 

Whether it’s selecting a product or completing a transaction, these agents break the goal into steps, make data-informed decisions at each stage, and follow through to the finish line. They utilize machine learning to analyze the context, predict the best path forward, and act accordingly, with no human input required after the initial instruction.

How is AI transforming the shopping experience?

AI is reengineering retail at both operational and customer levels. Behind the scenes, it streamlines supply chains, forecasts demand more accurately and reduces waste. For the end user, it enables seamless interactions, such as dynamic offers, tailored suggestions, and real-time responses.

What’s driving the shift toward AI-powered, personalized shopping journeys online?

Digital retail is shifting away from overwhelming options toward simplified, hyper-personalized journeys. AI helps by narrowing choices to those that align with a shopper’s intent, past behavior, and preferences. This enables smarter sizing, curated product lists, and instant feedback from reviews.

Insider’s Shopping Agent goes beyond suggestions. It takes charge. Shoppers share what they want, and the agent instantly analyzes trends, compares options, and guides them to purchase with a proactive, end-to-end experience.

One wants more cheese, another wants vegan-friendly, and someone else is all about the meat. Suddenly, what seemed simple turns into a juggling act of trying to please everyone.

If you’re an email marketer, you’ve quite likely experienced this while personalizing content for every subscriber.

If you’re not personalizing your emails in 2025, you’re technically invisible to them. Because consumers expect relevance, and relevance demands data. 

That’s where segmentation becomes your secret weapon, as brands that segment score 14.31% more open rates and 101% more click-through rates compared to non-segmented ones.

 In this guide, we’ll walk you through advanced audience segmentation examples and best practices to integrate into your email marketing strategy. 

Before we dive into tactics, let’s talk about the key filters to help you identify engaged audiences to maximize the benefits of advanced segmentation.

The groundwork for effective email list segmentation

Refine your email list to help you gain a clearer understanding of your truly engaged audience. But how should you define “engaged?” 

A good rule of thumb is to create your segment based on the criteria “has clicked at least one text” within two to four weeks. But to nail this down, apply conditions to both qualify and disqualify a subscriber as an email engager. This process will help you tap into the potential of an active, engaged audience. 

Here are some ideas to get you started: 

1. Conditions that qualify a subscriber as an engaged audience: 

• Consistently opens and interacts with your emails
• Occasionally replies to emails or shows direct interest in your content
• Request more information, respond to offers, and click through your links

These behaviors show that the subscriber is not just passively receiving your emails but is invested in what you’re offering.

2. Conditions that don’t qualify a subscriber as an engaged audience: 

• Simply subscribing to your email list doesn’t guarantee interest in your emails
• Double-opt-in does not automatically mean they’re engaging with your emails
• A one-time purchase doesn’t translate to email engagement, even with deals
• Just visiting your site or social media doesn’t make someone an email engager, even if they’re subscribed

These signals indicate you’ve passive subscribers, not an engaged audience. So be intentional when segmenting this particular group of subscribers.

7 advanced email segmentation strategies

There are many different ways you can segment your email audience to reach and engage different groups of subscribers. Among them, 1) Demographic, 2) Geographic, and 3) Psychographic are the most common ones. 

For this guide, we’ve interviewed highly experienced email marketers across industries who’ve shared practical insights and advanced segmentation strategies you can adopt today. Let’s get into it.

1. Segmentation based on purchase history

Segmenting customers by purchase history allows you to deliver highly personalized campaigns tailored to their preferences and buying behavior. Think of it as having a personal shopper who knows exactly what products your customers are likely to love. Whether it’s recommending related items, offering upsells, OR sending timely reminders to repurchase.

Understanding what customers have bought in the past enables you to create campaigns that speak directly to their interests. This level of personalization not only builds trust but also encourages repeat purchases, driving long-term customer loyalty.

Briana Torres, Senior Email Marketing Strategist at Injectco, finds that behavior-based segmentation is one of her most effective strategies. She segments by course interest, page view recency, and whether subscribers engage with medical training content or treatment-related material. 

Subscribers who are heavy clickers receive more frequent emails, while those with lower engagement are placed in a slower nurture track. This approach ensures the sender’s reputation remains strong and helps maintain balanced open rates across lists. 

“Segmentation alone boosted our average open rate by 12% year-over-year,” Briana shares.

Example: 

Lululemon Athletica’s Father’s Day email is a great example of segmentation based on purchase history. It features grooming kits likely tailored to what the customer bought before, making the message feel timely and personal. Bold visuals, a clear “Shop Now” CTA, and shipping reminders help drive quick repeat purchases. This kind of personalization builds trust and boosts loyalty.

2. Customer life cycle stage 

Whether you’re engaging new leads, nurturing paying customers, or re-engaging lapsed users, lifecycle stage segmentation is key to delivering relevant content.

New leads require introductory, educational content to build trust, while repeat customers are more likely to engage with advanced features or exclusive offers. This ensures that users receive content tailored to their specific needs. This also prevents overwhelm and guides them smoothly through the sales funnel.

Adrian Nikolov from MobiSystems, Inc. says, “Tailored messaging makes a big difference, especially when aligned with user lifecycle stages. This segmentation approach boosts our open rates by at least 20% compared to batch-and-blast campaigns.”

Deepak Shukla adds, “We segment our audience based on lifecycle stages (new leads, engaged clients, and repeat customers), interactions (such as email opens or link clicks), and, most importantly, intent. 

For example, someone who downloaded an SEO guide receives a different email than someone who signed up for a webinar on conversion optimization. This intent-based strategy has increased our open rates by 20-25%, as the content resonates more with what the audience is interested in.”

Example:
Prada’s Timecapsule Drop email is a sharp example of lifecycle stage segmentation aimed at loyal or repeat customers. The exclusive, limited-edition drop feels tailored to subscribers already familiar with the brand’s value. 

3. Engagement history and pattern

To personalize your marketing campaigns, it’s crucial to understand how users interact with your content, dividing users based on engagement patterns, like frequent openers or clickers. This lets you send relevant content tailored to each user’s behavior. The goal? Keep your most engaged users coming back and re-engage inactive ones.

Ethan Dempsey, the founder of D2C agency Homestead Studio, highlighted how he uses this segmentation strategy for his clients – “We split multiple segments by how often someone has placed an order – zero, one, or multiple times. This helps us scale engagement differently depending on the user’s activity.”

4. Abandoned cart value

Cart abandonment is a chronic issue in ecommerce, but it’s not insurmountable.

By targeting abandoned carts with segmented campaigns, you can recover revenue and drive customer loyalty. Cart abandonment emails are effective because they tap into urgency and the psychological concept of loss aversion. And people dislike losing what they’ve already committed to purchasing.

For low-value carts, a gentle reminder with a strong call to action can work wonders. While high-value carts benefit from the added incentive of a discount or special offer, which makes the purchase feel even more rewarding.

 To maximize the effectiveness of abandoned cart recovery, segment your strategy based on key variables:

• Time since abandonment: Timing is everything. Send an immediate reminder for fresh abandonments, then follow up at intervals (e.g., 24 hours, 72 hours) to keep the purchase top-of-mind without overwhelming your customer.
  
• Cart value: Customize your offer. For lower-value carts, a reminder message with a clear call to action might suffice. But for higher-value carts, offering a discount or free shipping can help tip the scale in your favor.
  
• Product category: Tailor your messaging. Highlight specific benefits or solve problems associated with the abandoned products. For instance, if a customer abandoned a high-end pair of shoes, remind them of their durability or style.
  
• Abandonment frequency: Create separate flows for one-time abandoners and repeat offenders. Frequent abandoners may need more compelling incentives. In contrast, one-time abandoners might respond better to subtle reminders.
  
• Device used: Optimize your emails for the device where the abandonment occurred. If a shopper left items in their cart on mobile, ensure your email is mobile-friendly. Additionally, include a one-click return to the cart.

Example:
Whisky Loot’s cart abandonment email is a clever example of cart recovery done right. With a playful subject line, “Your cart is sobering up”, it gently nudges recent abandoners to return. The tone is casual, the imagery bold, and the CTA, “Take Me Back”, is clear and inviting. This kind of targeted follow-up taps into urgency and loss aversion, commonly through abandoned carts.

5. Gifting history

Analyzing customers’ gifting habits can unlock new opportunities for personalized marketing. “Gift explorers” and “bulk gift planners” each have distinct motivations. Understanding these differences enables your business to deliver messages that resonate on a deeper level.

Gift Explorers are casual buyers who enjoy finding unique or personalized gifts, often making purchases for special occasions or last-minute needs.

Bulk Gift Planners are strategic buyers who frequently purchase gifts in larger quantities, typically for corporate events, recurring celebrations, or holidays.

Segmenting these two groups allows you to tailor your messaging, offers, and timing to meet their specific needs. 

Gift explorers respond well to inspiration, urgency, and discovery. While bulk planners value efficiency, bulk discounts, and early access. This approach engages customers more effectively, eliminates irrelevant messaging, and drives higher conversion rates.

Example:
Misc. Goods Co’s re-engagement email, “Still need a gift? We got you?”, is a strong example of targeting “gift explorers”. The message acknowledges hesitation without pressure, offering last-minute gift solutions that still feel thoughtful. Clear CTAs and flexible delivery options meet the needs of spontaneous customers, whether “gift explorers” or “bulk gift planners”, turning potential drop-offs into conversions.

6. Separate the savvy savers from the luxury splurgers

Segmenting based on spending habits allows for more relevant messaging that resonates with each customer group. Budget-friendly shoppers and luxury buyers have different preferences, so crafting tailored messages for each segment can drive greater engagement and conversions.

By focusing on each group’s specific needs and budget, you can increase the relevance of your offers and promotions. 

This further makes sure that each segment receives content that aligns with their preferences. The targeted approach, ultimately, boosts customer satisfaction and maximizes the effectiveness of your campaigns.

7. Loyalty program status

Loyalty programs leverage transactional data to foster repeat purchases and increase customer lifetime value. Analyzing past behaviors, i.e., what, when, and how often customers buy. This reveals invaluable insights into their preferences.

These insights allow you to deliver highly personalized offers that resonate with individual buying patterns. Moving away from generic promotions, this segmentation enables businesses to create customized experiences. The experiences align with each customer’s personalized needs and motivations. Thus, customer engagement and retention are higher than before.

Example:

Fleet Feet’s loyalty program launch email, “Our New Loyalty Program Launches Soon”, uses past purchase behavior to tease personalized perks that feel truly earned. The message highlights upcoming tailored rewards, making frequent customers feel seen and valued. It’s a strong example of turning transactional data into a personalized retention strategy.

6 email segmentation best practices to implement

Here are some not-so-common segmentation best practices you can use to engage different groups of subscribers.

1. Suppression lists to improve deliverability

Effective suppression list management ensures your messages land in inboxes, not spam folders. Most email platforms will automate this process. But it’s crucial to have clear guidelines for manual updates.

So, prioritize clean and engaged lists to protect your sender reputation. Regularly update suppression lists to remove unsubscribes, spam complaints, and hard/soft bounces. This is essential for maintaining high deliverability. Your emails also reach only those who are engaged and want to hear from you. Follow these three easy steps for higher deliverability: 

• Exclude dead subscribers to safeguard reputation. Don’t waste resources or damage your reputation by sending emails to users who haven’t interacted in a defined period (e.g., 60-120 days). By filtering out inactive subscribers, you enhance deliverability and safeguard your sender reputation.
  
• Keep your segments clean. Not everyone who unsubscribes from one communication type wants to stop hearing from you altogether. Use topic-specific suppression lists to allow users to opt out of specific content without affecting their overall subscription. That is, you don’t unintentionally exclude valuable customers from future engagement.
  
• Suppress segments’ temporality for campaign efficiency. Advanced marketers often use temporary suppression segments to avoid over-mailing the same contacts across multiple campaigns. This keeps lists fresh, reducing fatigue, and boosting engagement.

2. Micro-segmentation with intent data

Once you’ve nailed down the broad customer groups (i.e., who buys, who browses, etc.), micro-segmentation enables you to dive deeper into customer behavior. This helps you tailor your messaging to specific customer actions, making emails feel personally relevant. 

A good tip is to combine multiple data points, such as multiple page visits and content downloads, to create unique segments with personalized content. For that, regularly enrich your customer database, monitor behavior patterns, and automate updates. So, you can test hypotheses and implement changes quickly. 

The more precise your data, the more effective your microsegments will be.

Using algorithms, AI, or manual data analysis helps you efficiently create microsegments based on user behaviors. Start with broad categories and refine them into niche lists for laser-focused campaigns.

Don’t have the data?

You can collect valuable customer insights through surveys, sign-up forms, or by integrating data from social media platforms. Plus, with Insider’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), you can unify and enrich customer information from multiple sources. That way, you get a comprehensive, real-time view.

3. Refresh and test segments regularly

Keep your segments up-to-date by incorporating the latest engagement and activity data. Regular testing is key to identifying what works. So, always measure the impact of new segmentation strategies on open and click rates.

Remove invalid or outdated email addresses as needed. 

While suppressed addresses should generally stay suppressed, temporary suppressions can be lifted in specific cases. Regularly review your suppression policies to ensure they align with your current business needs and compliance standards.

Streamline your process by automating list updates to reduce human error. Set up systems to automatically add unsubscribes, bounces, and complaints to the suppression list. Thus, eliminate the need for manual intervention.

4. Avoid over-segmentation

Nothing “over” is ever good. Be it cheese or segmentation. 

While it’s tempting to send emails only to highly specific segments to maintain deliverability, over-segmentation can backfire. But when it comes to segmentation, there’s a common dilemma. 

Too narrow and your segments are too small to yield meaningful results. Too wide, and they lose relevance.

You need to find the right balance for a successful campaign.

Keep in mind that your segments should be large enough to be actionable while still being relevant to your goals. Avoid the temptation to create ultra-narrow segments, as they often result in missed opportunities for engagement.

For example, excluding all past customers during a sale or excluding those who haven’t purchased in six months can leave huge portions of your list untapped.

5. Use engagement signals to guide frequency

Mishandling your sending frequency can harm your sender reputation. If you bombard users who aren’t engaging with your emails daily, they will quickly start archiving or deleting your messages. Over time, this can negatively affect your brand’s reputation.

 A damaged reputation is tough to repair.

So what’s the solution?

Base your sending schedule on how often subscribers engage. This shows inbox providers that you understand your audience and care about delivering valuable content.

Move inactive users (30-60 days without engagement) to a group better aligned with their open behaviors. This gives users who signed up but haven’t yet shown interest a chance to rediscover your brand when they’re ready.

High-engagement users can receive emails more often. While low-engagement users should be nurtured with a slower cadence. 

Here’s a sample engagement-based segmentation schedule to ensure your lists stay healthy and your open rates remain high: 

• 0-30 Days: Daily messages
  
• 31-60 Days: 3x a week
  
• 61-90 Days: 2x a week
  
• 91-180 Days: 1x a week
  

With this schedule, you can keep your audience engaged without over-saturating them.

But what about unengaged segments?

Send normal content less frequently to keep the brand in sight without overwhelming them. Deliver highly personalized messages based on their purchase history, showcasing products more likely to reignite their interest.

You should focus on major sales and holiday promotions to ensure you’re in touch at least monthly.

If you see no engagement after 9 months, put them into a sunset flow: remind them of the time that’s passed, ask if they want to remain subscribed, and offer an incentive to stay. 

We recommend sending three messages spaced over a few weeks.

6. Layer segmentation strategies for maximum impact

Targeting specific segments helps you concentrate your efforts where they matter most, rather than trying to do everything for everyone.

The best part? 

You don’t have to be locked into one strategy. Mixing segmentation methods can boost engagement and personalization. Layering these strategies will make your email campaigns more powerful and meaningful. Ultimately, you’re always speaking to the right people at the right time.

For example, Stitch Fix uses a mix of demographic and psychographic segmentation to provide personalized product recommendations. This is how they enhance the relevance of their offerings for each customer.

How Insider makes segmentation even more precise

Now you’ve realized just how important segmentation is, it’s time to invest in a segmentation tool so you can carry out the following steps as quickly and accurately as possible.

With Insider, you can take segmentation to the next level and craft personalized experiences that speak directly to your customers’ needs and behaviors. Let’s look at what you can achieve with Insider: 

1. With Insider’s powerful predictive engine, you can create segments based on real-time data, such as discount affinity, likelihood of purchase, and lifecycle stage. 
2. Insider’s AI engine allows you to make predictions based on real-time events like purchase intent or churn, enabling you to seize micro-moments. So you don’t miss out on opportunities to delight and engage users when they’re most likely to take action.
3. Whether it’s demographics, behaviors, or even custom attributes, you can segment users based on any criteria. Add rules to enhance your segments, boosting engagement and making your marketing efforts more targeted and effective.
4. Personalization starts with data, and Insider gives you the ability to refine segments with custom datasets—whether that’s cookie values, POS data, or any other unique data source. The flexibility to work with any kind of data ensures you can build highly targeted segments.
5. Get precise with your targeting. Insider’s platform lets you trigger actions based on user interactions, like clicks, purchases, or even engagement levels. This allows you to trigger behavior with military-like precision and convert leads into loyal customers.

Ready to get started with segmentation? Insider offers over 120+ attributes so you can build the most effective segments for your business goals. Get started today with a quick demo.

The figure underscores how important it’s become for retailers to embrace an omnichannel approach.

It also reveals that the rules of retail are being rewritten, especially within physical stores. Your stores now double as fulfillment centers, O2O gateways, and last-mile accelerators.

To keep up, you need the right software that connects every channel, every store, every step of the journey.

In this article, you’ll learn how to connect every touchpoint, automate journeys, and drive revenue at scale, with an omnichannel marketing platform like Insider as your unfair advantage.

What is an omnichannel retail software?

Omnichannel retail software integrates and streamlines various customer touchpoints — from physical stores and mobile apps to e-commerce websites and social media — to provide a cohesive, seamless shopping experience. 

This software syncs your sales, marketing, inventory management, and customer service systems. Thus, both online and offline touchpoints work together smoothly.

How is it different from omnichannel commerce?

While omnichannel commerce is the strategy of creating an integrated customer experience across multiple channels, omnichannel retail software is the tool that enables it. Think of omnichannel commerce as the game plan, and omnichannel retail software as the playbook that brings it to life.

Unlike traditional systems that may treat in-store and online experiences separately, omnichannel retail software bridges the gap. 

For example, a customer might browse products online, visit a physical store for evaluation, and then complete their purchase via a mobile app for home delivery. This unified approach eliminates friction in the customer journey, providing convenience and efficiency.

Benefits of having omnichannel retail software

The leading omnichannel retail platforms share several essential features. Here are the most important ones: 

1. Unified customer view

In an omnichannel world, shoppers seamlessly transition between online and offline touchpoints. A unified customer view aggregates data across these various channels. That is, each interaction is informed, efficient, and personalized. 

This is why unified profiles have never been more essential: customers expect personalized attention across every platform, and businesses need to streamline their operations to meet these demands.

This comprehensive snapshot of each customer enables personalized engagement, driving better marketing outcomes and enhancing the overall shopping experience.

Creating a unified customer profile is crucial for several reasons. 

With the increasing demand for personalized shopping experiences and the pressure for effective marketing campaigns, it’s essential to have a consolidated view of your customers. 

A unified profile doesn’t just help with personalization but also offers valuable insights into customer behavior. Like more accurate inventory management and more tailored interactions at every touchpoint.

On the other hand, a fragmented customer view leads to missed opportunities. 

Without a unified profile, brands risk delivering irrelevant ads and promotions, missing out on cross-channel interactions, and managing disjointed systems that hinder customer experience.

To create this unified view, businesses must integrate their customer data across multiple platforms. 

This can be a challenge without a centralized system to sync data from CRM systems, POS, and marketing platforms. But with a unified approach, you can seamlessly capture a comprehensive view of each customer. This way, other markers in your team can access up-to-date information on preferences, purchase history, and behaviors.

2. Hyper-personalization 

Rather than relying on broad data sets like demographics, hyper-personalization turns every interaction into a meaningful, tailored experience.

It integrates real-time insights and AI models to deliver content and offers that align precisely with a customer’s predicted intent. 

For instance, while a standard recommendation might suggest a product based on a customer’s past purchase, hyper-personalization could predict their willingness to try a subscription service. Ultimately, delivering a tailored offer that includes discounts tied to their loyalty points.Insider’s platform empowers businesses to leverage this approach by combining customer behavior, preferences, and predictive analytics to deliver truly personalized experiences at scale.

With Insider, you can use AI-driven recommendations, real-time customer behavior data, and dynamic pricing models to tailor every interaction, turning personalized marketing into a seamless, engaging experience.

3. Broad channel support

To ensure consistent, personalized messaging across every customer touchpoint — whether that’s email, SMS, web push, WhatsApp, or social media — you need a platform that supports omnichannel engagement. 

Without a unified platform, tracking customer behavior, optimizing content delivery, and measuring engagement across these diverse channels becomes a daunting task. That’s where omnichannel support becomes indispensable. It enables you to reach customers where they are, providing a seamless and personalized experience that drives better outcomes.

The real power of  engagement lies in data unification and segmentation. Insider’s platform consolidates customer data across all touchpoints, giving you a precise understanding of audience behavior. 

With Insider’s analytics, you gain clear insights into reachability and engagement. This helps you understand which segments (like VIPs or lapsed users) are most responsive to each channel, be it email, SMS, or push notifications.

For example, Insider’s reachability breakdown provides insights into what percentage of each customer segment (VIPs, lapsed users, etc.) is reachable via specific channels, such as email, SMS, or push notifications.

From there, you can refine your messaging strategy. 

Insider’s message frequency analytics help you determine how often to contact each segment across different channels and optimize engagement without overwhelming your audience.

But that’s not all.

Insider also gives you the tools to dive deeper into performance. 

You can track metrics like delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and revenue, all in real-time. This allows you to fine-tune your strategy, align it with customer preferences, and improve every interaction.

Insider’s analytics transform your omnichannel approach into a data-driven & seamless experience, eliminate guesswork, and enhance engagement. With clear insights into customer preferences and behaviors, you can ensure your messaging is always on point across every channel.

4. Automated workflow 

While many marketing and CRM platforms offer automation tools, Insider stands out because it integrates data insights into every workflow. This ensures that your campaigns are not just automated, but also intelligently personalized.

What makes Insider’s platform truly effective is its ability to leverage rich customer data to build campaigns that are not only automated but also deeply personalized. 

By using customer behavior data, purchase history, and preferences, you can create journeys that truly speak to the needs of your customers and create maximum impact.

With Insider’s powerful drag-and-drop editors, you can easily automate marketing workflows that span over 12+ channels, including websites, mobile apps, email, SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp, and more. These workflows not only save time but also ensure that your communications are relevant, timely, and improve customer experience.

You don’t need to rely on complicated integrations or multiple tools. Insider consolidates your marketing efforts into one seamless platform. Thus, you can effortlessly manage customer journeys, drive conversions, and recover lost opportunities.

5. Advanced analytics

Not all omnichannel retail software is created equal. When evaluating your options, it’s essential to focus on the core capabilities that drive business growth. Below is a guide to what makes the best retail analytics tools stand out, and how Insider helps you leverage these features for superior performance:

1. Real-time data collection. Traditional retail systems often struggle with real-time updates, relying on patchwork integrations between disparate tools. This creates delays, data mismatches, and manual work that hampers decision-making. Choose a retail analytics solution that pulls data in real-time and seamlessly integrates across platforms. A unified system, like Insider’s, offers an advantage by eliminating data reconciliation tasks and providing live insights directly from your commerce platform.
   With Insider, integrations are smooth, ensuring your data flows effortlessly across all channels, offering you accurate and up-to-the-minute insights every time.
2. Customer insights for personalization. Understanding your customer is the key to sustained success. With Insider’s advanced analytics, you can gain insights into customer behavior across all touchpoints, both online and offline. From browsing habits to purchasing patterns, our platform allows you to track interactions that influence a sale. Armed with this information, you can personalize your marketing efforts and drive both immediate conversions & long-term loyalty. 
3. Comprehensive inventory management. A good analytics tool should provide full visibility into inventory across all channels — whether it’s in-store stock, shipping warehouses, or third-party fulfillment centers. With Insider, you get a unified view that makes omnichannel management seamless. Whether you’re managing BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store) or optimizing your stock for next-day delivery, Insider ensures you have the insights needed to make informed decisions that impact your bottom line.
4. Fast, flexible reporting. Retail moves fast. As trends shift and customer preferences evolve, your data needs to keep up. That’s why Insider offers powerful reporting tools and prebuilt dashboards that allow you to track key metrics faster. With real-time insights, you can adjust campaigns on the fly and make sure you are always in tune with current trends.
5. Predictive analytics. The most advanced retail strategies anticipate customer needs before they even realize them. Insider’s predictive analytics tools allow you to forecast demand, adjust pricing dynamically, and personalize offers based on customer behavior. With AI-powered cross-channel demand forecasting, you can ensure that every customer receives the most relevant offers at the right moment, whether they’re browsing your site or engaging in-store.
6. Security. Retailers are responsible for safeguarding sensitive customer and transaction data. Insider ensures your data is protected with state-of-the-art security features, including encrypted data transmission, user access controls with two-factor authentication, and regular system updates to comply with industry regulations. With Insider, you can trust that your data will remain secure and compliant. Thus, giving you the peace of mind to focus on growth.

6. AI-Powered Recommendations

Incorporating Gen AI (Generative AI) into marketing strategies transforms how businesses engage with customers. At its core, Gen AI predicts customer preferences and delivers hyper-personalized experiences at scale, critical in today’s customer-centric era.

Here’s how it works: by analyzing customer data and behaviors, Gen AI enables businesses to offer tailored product recommendations, deploy virtual shopping assistants, and even create custom experiences in real-time.

For instance, one in five retailers in the US and EMEA are set to launch customer-facing Gen AI applications by 2025, highlighting the growing significance of this technology. 

With AI-powered recommendations like those available through Insider, marketers can use predictive algorithms to understand their customers’ needs and serve them relevant content. This leads to improved engagement and higher conversion rates.

Why top retailers are betting on Insider 

Insider is an ideal omnichannel customer engagement platform for brands and retailers looking to build personalized, automated, and highly effective campaigns across touchpoints, from websites and mobile apps to channels like email, push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, and more.

Our enterprise marketing platform can:

1. Unified customer profiles. Insider breaks down data silos by merging customer information from multiple touchpoints— website, app, email, CRM, POS, and contact centers—into a comprehensive and enriched customer profile. This 360-degree view ensures you’re working with the most up-to-date and accurate information to drive decisions across your entire customer journey.
   
2. AI-driven personalization. Powered by AI, Insider enables deep hyper-personalization and offers individualized product recommendations, tailored content, and dynamic cross-channel campaigns. This level of personalization adapts to each customer’s unique behavior, lifecycle stage, and predicted likelihood to purchase. Ultimately, results in relevant and increased conversion rates.
   
3. Agentic AI for autonomous outcomes. Insider’s AI agent, Agent One, brings together purpose-built AI experts to help you deliver superior customer engagement through emotionally resonant conversations and autonomous decision-making. Whether it’s helping a shopper find the perfect product, resolving a support issue before it escalates, or surfacing valuable insights, these autonomous agents deliver customer experiences that feel personal and genuinely impactful.
   
4. Seamless omnichannel communication. The platform’s omnichannel orchestration ensures that email, SMS, WhatsApp, social media, and web interactions are managed seamlessly from a single interface. This eliminates fragmented efforts, enables cohesive messaging, and improves customer experience across all channels.
   
5. Automated workflows & gamified engagement. Insider simplifies complex customer journeys with drag-and-drop tools and gamified templates, making automation effortless. This approach increases customer engagement, enhances retention, and drives better long-term results through customized touchpoints.
   
6. Advanced analytics for real-time optimization. Insider’s detailed analytics and reporting tools give businesses the insights they need to measure campaign effectiveness and refine strategies in real-time. This enables rapid adjustments to optimize customer interactions and drive better business outcomes.

Schedule a demo with our team to learn how Insider can benefit your business specifically.

Now? Consumers simply ask AI. 

A statistic found out that nearly 42% of shoppers are turning to tools like ChatGPT instead to bypass search engines altogether.

With a single prompt, they get the best alternative to any specific product, as the AI tool  instantly gets a list of options, pros and cons pulled from real reviews, and links to the most competitive offers. 

For them, this level of convenience reigns supreme. And this alone makes their shopping experience much smoother.

This shift indicates that the spray-and-pray tactics of traditional engagement or shallow personalization won’t cut it anymore. 

To keep up, you need a customer engagement strategy that’s fast, flexible, and deeply intelligent—built on behavioral signals, powered by predictive analytics, and ready to act in real time.

This is where you can use Agentic AI to take your service quality up a notch.

Agentic AI proactively anticipates customer needs, takes autonomous actions, and continuously optimizes for outcomes, without waiting for instructions. Instead of reacting to past actions, Agentic AI operates in the moment, adjusting strategies as the customer customer journey unfolds.

As a result, you can spot churn risk before it’s too late. Surface the right offer at the perfect moment. 

In this article, we’ll explore what happens when AI agents take the wheel of customer engagement, how Agent One helps you increase customer retention, and the real impact it can make on every touchpoint.

Unlock endless possibilities with Agent One Get a demo

How AI Agents help you keep customers coming back for good

Consumer behavior is more fragmented than ever, expectations are higher, and attention is harder to earn, let alone keep. A report from Emersya reveals 71% customers feel frustrated when the shopping experience is impersonal.

Credit: Emersya

These numbers might not surprise you, but they explain exactly why people stay with brands that show up with relevance, empathy, and lift off additional efforts from their shopping experience.

Additionally, Attentive found out that 81% of consumers ignore irrelevant messages in their recent customer trend report. Even worse, 1 out of 4 customers is less likely to buy from you when a brand’s messages don’t match with the customer’s context.

But the problem? 

Most brands are still relying on outdated systems that can’t deliver that kind of experience at scale. And the gap between what customers expect and what most companies deliver keeps getting wider.

That’s where AI Agents can be a game changer.

These agents act without waiting to be told what to do. They are autonomous in nature, can anticipate needs, and take action without human oversight.

Whether they’re browsing, buying, or looking for help, customers today expect brands to meet them with speed, empathy, and relevance.

AI Agents rise to that challenge by pulling signals from every click, chat, past purchase, even the moments between interactions, and instantly turning them into personalized, context-aware responses that feel human.

When new users feel supported through clear guidance, easy-to-find FAQs, or quick-start tips, they gain early momentum and are far more likely to stick around. 

The best part is that these Agents are always listening, learning from every conversation, and evolving with every interaction. As a result, you can develop genuine emotional resonance with your customers. Not the kind that happen once and vanish, but the kind that make people come back, again and again.

Meet Agent One: your autonomous AI Agents for human-like customer engagement

Agent One is Insider’s solution of purpose-built AI agents designed to power superior customer engagement at scale. They’re autonomous, outcome-driven agents that think, act, and adapt in real time, and make every interaction feel effortless and personal.

Whether it’s a shopper trying to find the right product, a customer looking for post-purchase help, or a marketer trying to optimize a campaign, Agent One takes prompt initiative. 

It senses intent, reads context, and responds with precision. 

With Agent One, you can skip extensive customizations. 

The best part is that these purpose-built Agents solve industry-specific problems right off the bat, like turning frustrating keyword searches into intuitive, conversational product discoveries or proactively guiding marketing teams to hidden insights.

Traditional tools leave data scattered, which leads to superficial customer experiences. Agent One taps into an integrated loop of CDP, CRM, and real-time metadata. 

They ensure every interaction deepens your understanding of customer emotions and intentions and turns standard touchpoints into hyper-personalized engagements that foster genuine loyalty.

Insider has spent over a decade pioneering predictive, generative, and now agentic AI.

How to use Agent One to retain customers in unstable times

This year, consumer sentiment and spending habits rebounded in a positive direction. But then the U.S. President’s new tariff policy and the looming fear of recession  shifted the direction of the wind. The impact varied by industry.

But one theme was noticeable: consumers became more selective with their spending. 

While market volatility creates pressures for brands, successful marketers are using this downturn as their competitive advantages that will serve them long after the tariff impacts stabilize. This includes:

• Deepening customer relationships with a personalized shopping experience
• Showcasing value in communications to encourage more purchases 
• Using behavioral segmentation to target high-intent customers

If you’re ready to turn this shaky time into your competitive edge, see how Agent One can help you make it happen:

1. Make product discovery effortless with Shopping Agent

If customers can’t find what they’re looking for, they won’t stick around. Unsurprisingly, the No. 1 priority for shoppers is finding products easily. 

This is especially true for products that require more research—like supplements or wellness tools—where buyers are actively searching for trustworthy answers about safety, usage, and benefits.

Most brands still expect customers to do all the work, dig through product filters, compare SKUs, and hunt down details buried in FAQs. 

But in a world where attention spans are short and expectations are high, that’s a fast track to abandonment. 

In situations like this, Agent One suggests relevant products and bundles based on customer data. They pick up on behavioral cues, search intent, and contextual signals in real-time, then guide each shopper through a personalized journey to the right product, faster. 

So instead of “other customers also bought,” your shopper sees exactly what they want, before they even know they want it. 

This proactive guidance increases your average order value (AOV) and lays the groundwork for long-term retention. 

2. Make support feel like a real conversation with Support Agent

The quality of customer support dictates whether the brand loyalty is won or lost.

Insider’s Support Agent taps into real-time Customer Data Platform (CDP) and CRM context to deliver emotionally intelligent responses that adapt to a customer’s tone, history, and needs in the moment.

From resolving tickets autonomously to managing post-purchase workflows and follow-ups, the agent transforms traditional support into a trust-building engine. 

The best part? While it works the frontlines, your human teams are freed up to focus on high-impact interactions that deepen relationships.

3. Know your customers better with Insights Agent 

Engaged visitors are more likely to return, and they leave behind rich behavioral data that can fuel smarter retargeting down the line. 

Track how long someone stayed, what they hovered over, or when they dropped off, so you can serve up follow-ups that actually feel relevant. 

Whether it’s tailored ads, curated reminders, or a well-timed offer, you’re not just guessing, you’re building on a real interaction. 

Our Insights Agents constantly scan performance across channels, flag underperforming journeys, and alert your marketing teams about the hidden risks and opportunities to optimize gaps before they snowball. 

It gets even better as Insights Agent helps:

• Identify top-performing strategies and replicate them automatically
• Learn from past results and suggest data-backed improvements
• Analyzes subscriber behavior, seasonal trends, and performance patterns in real time

Go the extra mile with Agent One, even when resources are tight

Customer retention isn’t magic, it’s the result of countless micro-moments where people feel seen, supported, and understood. 

It’s getting answers right when customers need them, timely nudges, seamless handoffs, and conversations that feel like someone actually gets you.

From first click to long-term loyalty, Agent One helps your team do more with less, guiding customers to what they need, resolving issues before they escalate, and giving marketers real-time insight into what’s working (and what’s not).

Whether you’re short on bandwidth or ready to scale what’s already working, Agent One is built to step in and elevate your strategy from day one. 

Brands like L’Oréal, Philips, and Virgin are already using it to spark human-like conversations, strengthen trust, and drive retention that compounds.

Ready to see what happens when every customer moment builds a loyal customer base? Book a demo with our growth team. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Many marketing teams found their automation tools promising efficiency and outcomes, but end up delivering complexity, guesswork, and underwhelming results.

In fact, 73% of marketers say implementing marketing automation is a challenge, with nearly 31% finding it very challenging. 

So if your campaigns are falling flat or you feel like you’re only scratching the surface of your platform’s potential, you’re in familiar (and crowded) company.

When done right, automation takes the heavy lifting off your plate. 

It clears out the manual, repetitive tasks so you can focus on the work that actually moves the needle, while still boosting conversions and delivering the personalized experiences your customers expect.

But let’s be clear: automation isn’t a magic button you push and walk away from.

To get the most out of marketing automation’s potential, like higher engagement, better efficiency, and stronger customer relationships, you need to follow proven best practices.

That’s exactly why we’ve compiled these eight best practices. They’re designed to help you use marketing automation platforms strategically and turn them into a powerful engines that drives measurable ROI and lets you scale smarter.

Let’s dive in.

8 marketing automation best practices you need to follow for successful campaigns

Here are the 8 marketing automation best practices that give actionable tips on how to make marketing automation work for your business.

1. Start with clear goals (no, really.)

“Set a goal” might be the most overused marketing advice of all time. 

Everyone knows it. But oddly enough, most marketers still get it wrong, especially when it comes to automation.

It’s not just about having a target like “generate leads” or “increase retention.” The real power of goals lies in how they shape the entire automation journey.

Think of them like secret keys that unlock the next step automatically. 

For example, let’s say your automation tool is built to send two follow-up emails encouraging people to book a product demo. But if someone schedules that demo after the first email? 

The second email becomes irrelevant. 

With the right automation tool, like Insider, your system can recognize that the goal has already been hit and move the lead to the next step.

This kind of goal-driven logic saves your audience time and keeps your messaging clean, relevant, and behavior-based, exactly what today’s customers expect.

Here’s where most marketers fall short: they automate for automation’s sake. 

Instead, start by mapping the outcome you want at each stage of the journey (lead gen, nurturing, upsell, retention) and then ask yourself, “What signals tell me someone’s ready to move on?”

Use those signals as behavior-based triggers. Align them with your customer journey map. And always be ready to rewrite old workflows that don’t match how people buy today.

Because in a world of AI-assisted scale, relevance is the only way to earn attention and action.

2. Clean your data and unify channels. 

Marketing automation lives and dies by your data. But the problem? 

Most marketers are swimming in it, but very few are actually using it well.

We’re talking about data that’s outdated, inconsistent, incomplete, or flat-out wrong. And the impact is brutal. Bad data doesn’t just ruin campaigns, it erodes customer trust.

Many marketers say data hygiene is their biggest challenge. And it shows: automation efforts often stall, not because of weak strategy, but because of weak signals.

So what’s the fix? Integration and hygiene.

Start by pulling your customer data across email, SMS, push, web, mobile, and even in-store, into one unified view.

Data unification platforms, like Insider’s Actionable CDP, bring it all together. Whether it’s your CRM, your website, or your support system, every channel should feed into the same central nervous system.

From there, build 360-degree profiles. 

These act beyond just contact records. You’ll know customers’ habits, preferences, reachable channels, and even predicted behaviors like “likely to purchase” or “likely to churn.”

That kind of visibility makes campaigns more seamless.

Insider makes that orchestration doable with over 100 plug-and-play integrations, a robust API, and human support when you need it. 

Which means you can stop duct-taping platforms together and start delivering the kind of unified experience today’s buyers expect.

3. Use predictive analytics and AI agents to personalize every step of the journey

Traditional marketing had a spray-and-pray problem.

Even well-meaning campaigns reached the wrong people at the wrong time, with little context for who they were or what they needed.

Worse, brands often fall into the trap of showing ads for products customers have already bought. It’s clearly a missed opportunity. 

Imagine if, instead, those brands recommended complementary products or helpful add-ons. That’s the difference between noise and value.

This is where predictive marketing changes the game. With  Agent One and predictive analytics, you can anticipate what customers want, even before they do, and guide them toward meaningful next steps.

Here’s how it works:

• Anticipate intent in real time. Insider’s AI-powered shopping agent reads signals like browsing behavior and click patterns to understand what a shopper is likely looking for.  Then guides them toward the right product with timely nudges.
  
• Build trust with confidence-boosting recommendations. The agent can suggest highly relevant products based on past purchases or interactions. This increases both satisfaction and CLTV.
  
• Turn casual sessions into purposeful journeys. From search to checkout, Insider’s intelligent product discovery tools help customers find what they want faster – and discover what they didn’t know they needed.

And when every conversation is grounded in real-time understanding, you stop sounding like a brand that’s guessing. And start acting like one who gets the customers.

4. Score leads and segment them better

When leads start piling up, it’s tempting to treat them all the same. 

But in reality, not every prospect is ready to buy. And treating them like individual prospects can overwhelm sales teams, stretch resources thin, and tank conversion rates.

So what’s the solution here?

With Insider’s AI-powered lead scoring and dynamic segmentation, you no longer have to rely on gut instinct or static lists. 

You can use real-time behavioral, demographic, and engagement data to automatically score leads based on their intent and readiness to buy.

Once scored, Insider helps you segment your audience dynamically, so you can trigger relevant messages, offers, or nurturing sequences that align with where each lead is in the funnel. 

Think: high-intent buyers get fast-tracked to sales, while lower-score leads are guided through personalized nurture tracks that build interest over time.

Our customer, Generali, uses this to shorten sales cycles, improve lead quality, and boost close rates – without burning out their teams. 

First, they used behavioral data to build a custom lead scoring model, tracking every meaningful interaction across the site from product views to exit intent. 

High-interest leads were automatically surfaced and prioritized, while low-scoring ones were routed into targeted nurture campaigns built with Insider’s Architect. 

Insider grouped leads in real time based on their score and behavior, triggering cross-channel journeys that matched each lead’s buying stage – whether that was a warm follow-up via email or a re-engagement prompt through SMS or push.

As a result, Generali sped up sales cycles, had higher-quality leads, and a more efficient sales funnel. 

Generali’s team could finally focus on the leads that mattered because Insider made it clear who was ready to buy and who needed more time.

5. Personalize at scale, without losing the human touch

With generative AI making content and campaigns easier to churn out than ever, one big question keeps coming up: How do you personalize at scale without sounding like a robot?

You could manually write every message. Or build dozens of landing pages. 

But let’s be real, most teams don’t have the bandwidth for that. Still, customers expect hyper-relevant, in-the-moment experiences. And if you can’t deliver them, someone else will.

That’s where Insider comes in.

With Insider, you can personalize web and app experiences, email campaigns, and even WhatsApp messages in real time. Without lifting a finger after setup. Here’s how it works:

• It tracks every micro-interaction – scrolls, searches, cart updates, and clicks — across web, email, app, SMS, and more.
  
• All of that data feeds into a single unified profile that updates in milliseconds.
  
• Then, Insider automatically triggers personalized product recommendations, offers, banners, or emails based on those behaviors.

And because it’s all powered by Insider’s Actionable CDP, there’s no complex data stitching or IT lift. You also get –

• Real-time data on both anonymous and known users
  
• Dynamic segmentation that evolves with customer behavior
  
• The ability to deliver personalized experiences across channels at scale

6. Automate nurture campaigns that actually nurture

Most marketers find managing lead gen, crafting follow-ups, and personalizing outreach overwhelming. And doing it all manually? Pretty much impossible to scale.

With Insider’s automation engine, you can build multi-step nurture journeys that adapt to your audience’s behavior in real time. No more sending the same stale sequence to every lead. Instead, you can –

• Trigger onboarding, re-engagement, upsell, or retention flows based on actual user activity
  
• Map the entire customer journey — from discovery to purchase to loyalty
  
• Automatically update sequences as new data comes in

Let’s say a lead signs up but doesn’t convert. Insider detects the drop-off and automatically nudges them with a tailored email.

 If they still don’t bite, maybe it’s time for a push notification – or a WhatsApp message with a time-sensitive offer.

Here’s an example of our customer: Remix built a 3-step nurture flow for new leads and saw a 104% increase in first purchases. 

And it’s not just about lead nurture. With Insider, you can also set up:

• Cart abandonment reminders with personalized incentives
  
• Transactional updates like order confirmations and delivery alerts
  
• Birthday and milestone celebrations that make customers feel seen
  
• Price drop alerts and back-in-stock messages to bring window shoppers back

Tools like Architect and Insider’s lead scoring engine take it even further. 

They evaluate each lead’s behavior, assigning a score, and routing them into the right sequence. Just like what Insider did for Generali, helping the global insurer reduce its sales cycle by 20%.

7 . Monitor, measure, and optimize regularly

Marketing automation isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of deal. 

Once your workflows are up and running, the real work begins with measuring performance, interpreting what’s working (and what’s not), and making smart adjustments that move the needle. 

But the challenge is you need to figure out:

1. What exactly should you track 
2. How to make sense of the data
3. And how to keep improving without getting stuck in endless tinkering

We suggest starting with clear, campaign-specific KPIs. 

Whether it’s open rates, conversion rates, customer lifetime value, or funnel progression, every automation should be tied to a tangible outcome. 

Keep in mind that metrics don’t live in isolation.

A high open rate might look good on paper. But if conversions are flatlining, it could be a sign that your content’s not resonating or your targeting is off. 

So always interpret numbers in context.

Next, take a magnifying glass to your analytics. Dashboards like Insider’s make it easier to track real-time performance. 

And identify bottlenecks, like drop-offs in onboarding flows or abandoned carts after a push notification. 

With Insider’s split testing tools, you can go beyond static dashboards and actually experiment with different combinations of messaging, timing, and channels. 

From swapping out CTAs in emails to tweaking checkout flows in your app, you can test it all.

But perhaps the most overlooked part of optimization is segmentation. 

Don’t just look at your overall campaign performance; zoom in on how different audience segments are responding. 

Find out if your loyal customers are engaging more with your WhatsApp nudges while new users are ghosting your emails.

These kinds of insights tell you if you’re delivering content that actually aligns with your audience’s intent.

Remember: Continuous experimentation is the gold standard.

Run A/B tests to see which subject lines drive more engagement or which journey leads to better conversion. 

Then roll out what works and iterate again. Insider’s AI-powered tool can help you create predictive audience groups and tailor journeys on the fly. 

8. Avoid common automation pitfalls

Automation is powerful, but it can also backfire if misused.

Thinking automation means autopilot. The truth is, high-performing automation requires just as much human oversight, empathy, and iteration as any other part of your marketing strategy.

Let’s start with the most common mistakes – 

• Setting it and forgetting it. Just because a campaign is live doesn’t mean it’s still effective. Customer behaviors shift. Products evolve. Messaging that worked last quarter might feel stale today. That’s why regular audits are a must. 

Review your workflows, identify drop-off points, and update copy or offers that no longer resonate. Kill what’s not working, double down on what is.

• Then there’s over-automation. This makes automation feel robotic, impersonal, or just plain spammy. You’ve probably seen it: back-to-back emails that ignore your interests or blast messages at odd hours. 

The fix? Segment your audience. Tailor messages based on behavior. Use natural, empathetic language. Automation should feel like a well-timed nudge, not a megaphone.

• Only planning for the perfect journey. What happens when a customer doesn’t click? Or bounces mid-funnel? Great automation accounts for detours, like re-engagement sequences, alternate offers, or even graceful exits. Don’t just build journeys for your ideal user, build safety nets for the rest.
• Team buy-in is another critical issue. Automation can’t thrive if your marketing, sales, and support teams aren’t aligned. That means training your teams on how the platform works, sharing goals and KPIs. And encouraging feedback on what’s helping or hurting the customer experience. The best workflows are built collaboratively, not in a silo.

Finally, none of this works without clean data. Poor data hygiene leads to duplicate messages, irrelevant content, and skewed analytics. 

Make sure your CRM, automation tools, and analytics platforms are tightly integrated. Additionally, run regular data health checks.

How to get the most out of marketing automation with Insider

We’ve talked a lot about how critical it is to build your marketing automation strategy on real customer insights and reliable data. 

Insider puts your data front and center. It helps you build automation strategies based on deep insights, like your customers’ preferred channels, optimal communication times, and favorite products.

With Insider, you can seamlessly build and launch automated campaigns across 12+ channels, including –

• Websites
• Mobile apps
• Email
• SMS
• Push notifications
• WhatsApp
• Social media ads
• AI agents, and more.

Advanced segmentation and hyper-personalization ensure every message hits the right audience at the right time, on exactly the channel they prefer.

Plus, our easy integrations, intuitive templates, and dedicated support team mean you spend less time figuring things out and more time delivering results.

Our platform is best for fast-growing, mid-sized and enterprise brands that need to automate personalized interactions across every customer touchpoint – be it websites, mobile apps, email, SMS, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger.

Want to see how Insider can specifically boost your automation strategy? Schedule a demo with our team.

FAQ

Q: What is the best marketing automation?

The best marketing automation platform is the one that goes beyond simple task automation to deliver personalized and cross-channel customer experiences at scale. Insider stands out because it unifies customer data across 12+ channels, including web, mobile, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and more. It uses AI-powered predictive analytics to tailor every interaction in real time. Insider’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface and robust integrations make it easy for teams to build, launch, and optimize campaigns that drive measurable ROI. 

Q: What are the pillars of marketing automation?

Successful marketing automation rests on three core pillars:

Pillar-1 Data unification
Bringing together customer data from all touchpoints into a single and actionable profile. Insider’s Actionable CDP excels at this, enabling a 360-degree view of each customer.

Pillar-2 Personalization at scale 

Using AI and predictive analytics to deliver relevant messages, offers, and experiences tailored to individual behaviors and preferences. Insider’s AI agents and dynamic segmentation make this effortless.

Pillar-3 Automation with agility

Building adaptable and behavior-driven workflows that evolve as customers and move through their journey. Insider’s intuitive workflow builder and real-time triggers ensure your campaigns stay relevant and effective.

Together, these pillars empower marketers to create meaningful, timely, and scalable customer engagement.

Q: What is the best practice of marketing automation?

The best practice is to start with clear goals and build automation strategies that align with your customer journey and business objectives. Avoid “set and forget” automation and regularly monitor, test, and optimize your campaigns using real-time insights. 

Insider’s platform supports this with advanced analytics, A/B testing, and AI-powered audience predictions. 

This helps you continuously refine your approach. Also, prioritize clean, unified data and cross-team alignment to ensure your automation delivers personalized experiences without feeling robotic or intrusive.

Q: What is the best marketing automation strategy?

The best strategy combines goal-driven automation, data-driven personalization, and multichannel orchestration – a) Map your customer journeys carefully, b)Use behavior-based triggers to move leads through the funnel, and c) Leverage AI to anticipate customer needs. Insider’s platform makes this strategy actionable by unifying data, scoring leads dynamically, and delivering personalized messages across all preferred channels, from email, SMS to push notifications, WhatsApp. 

Insider’s comprehensive suite empowers marketers to orchestrate individualized, AI-driven customer journeys that scale effortlessly. With Insider, you get –

• Unified customer data across channels
• Predictive AI agents for real-time personalization
• Intuitive workflow builders and automation tools
• Robust analytics and optimization capabilities
• Dedicated support and seamless integrations

Whether you’re a mid-sized brand or a large enterprise, Insider helps you automate smarter, engage deeper, and grow faster.

That’s a lot.

Doing all of this manually isn’t simply practical; it is virtually impossible to scale. 

That’s where they need the power of retail marketing automation.

Retail marketing automation empowers brands to streamline repetitive tasks and deliver personalized experiences effortlessly. With automation, retailers can:

• Enhance customer experiences
• Boost operational efficiency
• Increase conversions

 The result? Happier customers, smoother operations, and increased sales. 

In this guide, we’ll cover the essential retail marketing automation tools, showcase examples, best practices, and how you can get the most out of Insider. 

Whether you’re just starting to automate marketing or looking to scale your strategy, this article will help you build smarter, more efficient retail marketing workflows that keep your marketing engine running smoothly.

What is retail marketing automation and how does it work?

Retail marketing automation is all about using the power of automation to streamline and automate repetitive marketing tasks. That is, things like email campaigns, SMS messaging, social media outreach, and customer segmentation. 

Essentially, it helps retail brands send the right message to the right customer, exactly when they need it most.

With automation, retailers can create hyper-personalized customer experiences without the manual hassle. Here’s how it works –

• Personalized customer journeys. Automation platforms leverage AI to deliver tailored product recommendations and targeted content. This makes customers feel seen and valued.

• Campaign management. Retailers can automate critical marketing workflows – welcoming new customers, re-engaging inactive ones, or nudging loyal customers toward an upsell.

• Data-driven insights.  Automation software collects and analyzes data in real-time. This provides actionable insights that marketers can use to fine-tune campaigns and boost customer satisfaction.

The result is a unified brand voice and consistent messaging, no matter where your customers choose to engage.

For example, retail marketing automation can trigger timely reminders about items left in a cart or send personalized offers based on previous purchases. 

These are great ways to boost conversions and strengthen customer relationships, without extra manual effort.

Top 5 retail marketing automation tools you must try

To help you find the right solution for your business, we’ve compiled the top 5 marketing automation platforms. Let’s take a look at them:

1. Insider

Insider brings together the most extensive set of personalization and automation capabilities for websites and mobile apps, as well as for channels like email, SMS, push notifications, and WhatsApp.

Our platform has been ranked among the top solutions in various categories, including –

• Marketing automation platforms.
• Mobile marketing software.
• Personalization software.
• Customer data platforms.
• And more.

Thanks to the wide range of capabilities and native channels, over 1200 brands like Adidas, Vodafone, and Lexus use Insider for various use cases like:

• Automating flows and campaigns across all customer touchpoints from a single place using Architect, our cross-channel customer journey builder.  
• Maximizing their marketing efforts and budget by consolidating their stack. Instead of using a bunch of different automation and personalization tools for each channel.
• Increasing engagement, conversions, and revenue by automatically personalizing every customer touchpoint. Including their websites, mobile apps, email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, and more.
• Getting an accurate 360-degree view of all their customers’ interactions, behaviors, and preferences by consolidating their data into our Actionable Customer Data Platform (CDP).

2. Braze

Braze is a comprehensive customer engagement platform. It supports a range of channels, including email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications. It offers basic on-site and in-app personalization features. 

Braze is used by many retail brands, from Glossier to Vivid Seats and SoulCycle, for customer engagement and marketing automation. 

In terms of retail automation, Braze has a tool called Canvas Flow that comes with many features for building and automating cross-channel campaigns. 

3. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Many large retailers use Salesforce Marketing Cloud to unify customer data, personalize messaging, and increase conversion rates.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud combines various products for:

• Customer data aggregation (CDP).
• Cross-channel campaign orchestration.
• Data visualization and reporting.
• Marketing and sales automation.
• Content management.
• Loyalty management.
• Account engagement (powered by Pardot).
• And more.

These tools can be used to automate routine tasks and campaigns across channels like email, SMS, social media, and push notifications.

4. Adobe Experience Cloud

Adobe Experience Cloud brings together a set of tools for use cases like automation, personalization, content management, journey orchestration, and more. When it comes to automation, the most important products in this stack are:

• Marketo Engage helps B2C and B2B marketing and sales teams automate various tasks, nurture leads, build audience segments with the help of AI, and personalize their communications.
• Adobe Campaign helps marketers create and manage cross-channel campaigns.
• Adobe Target is an A/B testing, personalization, and automation solution.

Retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walgreens, and Coles use Adobe Experience Cloud to understand customer journeys and personalize engagement in real time. This further boosts loyalty and sales.

5. HubSpot Marketing Hub

Marketing Hub is HubSpot’s main offering for marketing teams. While it’s not built specifically for retail brands, its complete automation capabilities are worth exploring. As a marketing automation solution, Marketing Hub offers:

• A visual board for creating conditional workflows.
• Various email, live chat, and on-site automation features.
• Workflow automation capabilities via integrations with their internal sales tools (like their CRM) and third-party solutions.

5 examples of retail marketing automation

Before we dive in, note that you can build all of these workflows with Insider, #1 AI-native omnichannel experience and customer engagement platform. Our solution offers:

• A flexible marketing automation tool for 12+ channels. You can use it to build automated workflows with a simple drag-and-drop editor across your website, mobile app, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and more.

•  AI-powered features that save you time and optimize your workflows. These include send-time optimization, next-best channel selection, A/B test winner auto-selection, and more.

• A plethora of workflow templates for tons of use cases and industries. Each template can be easily customized to your needs without any coding.

Now, let’s explore the retail marketing automation examples:

1.  Recovering abandoned carts

Cart abandonment remains one of the biggest problems in the world of ecommerce. Any marketing team that’s looking to maximize its budget and revenue should constantly be looking for ways to get cart abandoners to complete their purchase.

Insider helps you do this by automatically creating segments of cart abandoners. And letting you easily add cart items to your emails, push notifications, and messaging channel communications. 

You also have ready-made cart recovery templates for different channels. These templates are easily customizable. So, you can adjust their colors, branding, and other elements without any coding – or even changing the HTML.

Here are a few of the channels that our clients use to recover lost carts:

1. Email and SMS are the most widely used combination of channels by retail brands worldwide. Slazenger used both channels to build cart recovery campaigns that produced a 49x ROI in eight weeks (we’ll discuss their use cases later in this guide).

 2. WhatsApp is an underutilized but extremely powerful channel for recovering potentially lost revenue. Picniq used it to achieve an 80% open rate and a 5x ROI on their cart abandonment campaigns.

3. Web push notifications can be incredibly powerful and cost-effective compared to traditional channels (like email and SMS). Marks & Spencer used push notifications to achieve a 15.1% cart recovery rate, compared to the 3% industry average for abandoned cart emails.

2. Confirming orders and purchases

Transactional flows are a must for any online business. That’s why most ecommerce platforms and content management systems (CMSs) have built-in automated email workflows that trigger immediately after a successful transaction.

However, you don’t need to limit yourself to email. For example, with Insider, you can also send confirmation messages on channels like SMS and WhatsApp. Again, we have plenty of templates to make the process easier. Like the WhatsApp message template shown below.

All you need to do is set our journey builder to trigger your emails or messaging channel communications immediately after a successful purchase event. 

Then, you can build strategic follow-ups for promoting other products after a set amount of time (as we’ll discuss in a bit).

3. Sending targeted price drops and inventory alerts

These workflows are powerful for targeting users on the verge of making their first purchase, as well as those with a high discount affinity. 

Since Insider automatically collects data about each user’s interests and preferences, you can use that information to trigger emails, push notifications, or SMS and WhatsApp messages whenever:

• Products that users have been browsing are back in stock.
• Products that users have shown interest in get a price reduction.

In both cases, your messages have a much higher chance of engaging new customers as they’re based on their needs, interests, and preferences. 

At the same time, you can get even more targeted with our AI-powered predictive segmentation. Specifically, you can use our platform to only target customers with a high discount affinity who are much more likely to respond to a price drop alert.

This tactic also guarantees that you’re not wasting discounts on people who might’ve bought a product at its regular price.

4. Upsells and cross-sells 

Upsells and cross-sells can help you drastically increase key metrics like average order value (AOV), customer lifetime value (CLTV), and customer retention. That’s why you should find strategic places during the customer lifecycle to implement upsell and cross-sell workflows.

For example, you can build marketing automation workflows that automatically:

• Suggest products that are frequently purchased with the one currently in the customer’s cart. This can be done with a good product recommendation engine that analyzes browsing and purchase history (as well as real-time behaviors) to deliver relevant recommendations across landing pages and channels (like email).
• Employ this same strategy, but on a channel like SMS or WhatsApp. Wait a few days or weeks after a customer has completed their first purchase.
• Generate upsell and cross-sell opportunities by offering discounts on customers’ registration anniversaries, birthdays, or other important events.

5. Pre- and post-purchase feedback

With the cookieless marketing era upon us, teams need to rely much more heavily on zero- and first-party data gathered directly from customers. That’s why it’s crucial to have workflows in place for collecting that information at various stages of the customer journey.

The classic way to do this is by sending a post-purchase email survey that asks customers to rate your product and the overall experience. This can also be done on messaging channels like SMS or WhatsApp, depending on your customers’ preferences.

One way to take this tactic to the next level is by using AMP emails. The AMP technology lets customers answer surveys directly in the email, without having to go to your site or app. 

Retail marketing automation best practices 

Now that you’ve checked all the tools you need and examples to get inspiration, here are some retail marketing automation best practices to keep in mind.

1. Ensure data accuracy for effective segmentation

Incomplete data can spell disaster for your marketing automation efforts. This eventually leads to poor targeting, wasted resources, and frustrated customers.

Accurate, high-quality data is essential because it directly influences your ability to segment audiences effectively, personalize customer experiences, and deliver relevant messages.

When data quality suffers, segmentation gets messy. Customers may receive irrelevant offers, duplicate communications, or even contradictory information. This may potentially erode trust and damage your brand’s reputation.

The solution? A systematic approach to data management. Retailers need a robust data platform that consolidates, cleans, and maintains data accuracy consistently. 

That’s exactly where Insider steps in. Insider offers a unified data platform that ensures your customer data stays accurate, up-to-date, and actionable.

With Insider, retailers can:

• Centralize data from diverse sources such as website analytics, social media interactions, and customer feedback.
• Automate data quality checks to prevent errors before they impact customer communications.
• Gain comprehensive visibility into customer behaviors and preferences, with accurate segmentation and personalized experiences at every touchpoint.

Prioritizing data accuracy means your marketing automation efforts become precise, powerful, and genuinely effective. Ultimately, you end up achieving happier customers and stronger business outcomes.

2. Tailor messaging to behaviors and preferences

Effective retail marketing automation hinges on understanding and responding to the specific needs and behaviors of your customers. That’s where customer segmentation comes in. 

By categorizing customers based on their behaviors, preferences, demographics, and psychographics, you can craft highly targeted and personalized messages that resonate.

The challenge, however, is keeping these segments dynamic, adapting to evolving customer behaviors. Shoppers today are constantly changing. 

Rigid segmentation risks quickly becoming outdated. A robust automation platform like Insider helps you:

• Dynamically update segments in real-time as customer behaviors shift.
• Identify and respond to new customer needs quickly, and improve relevance and engagement.
• Leverage detailed insights from multiple channels to continuously refine segmentation and keep messaging sharp and effective.

With dynamic segmentation, your messaging stays consistently relevant. Results? Improved customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, and stronger overall marketing performance.

3. Adhere to data protection regulations 

Retail marketing automation must adhere strictly to data protection regulations like GDPR, ensuring customer data is handled responsibly, transparently, and legally. 

Noncompliance can result in severe penalties, lost customer trust, and lasting damage to brand reputation.

Here’s how best-in-class automation solutions like Insider ensure compliance:

• Explicit consent management. Automatically collect and manage clear and documented consent from customers. Thus, only willing recipients receive your communications.
• Transparent data usage. Clearly communicate how customer data is collected, used, and stored, i.e., building customer trust through transparency.
• Data minimization and accuracy. Collect only essential data, keeping it precise, and allowing easy updates from customers to maintain compliance and campaign effectiveness.
• Automated rights management. Easily manage data access, rectification, and deletion requests. This enhances customer experience, ensures legal compliance.
• Security and accountability. Protect customer data through advanced security measures, regular audits, and real-time breach detection. Making it easier to demonstrate accountability during compliance audits.
• Cross-channel consistency. Ensure uniform compliance across all marketing channels (email, SMS, social media, and more), creating a seamless and secure customer experience.

By prioritizing compliance, you build lasting customer trust and position your brand as responsible, reliable, and respectful of customer privacy. Ultimately securing long-term loyalty and success.

4. Run multivariate tests to optimize every element of your retail campaigns

A/B testing helps you understand exactly what resonates with your audience, whether it’s a subject line tweak or a full-blown journey change.

Take a simple welcome email, for example. You might want to test whether adding an emoji boosts open rates:

• Path A: “Welcome to Pets R Us! Discover the Best for Your Pet”
• Path B: “ Welcome to Pets R Us! Discover the Best for Your Pet ”

Trigger the test, split your audience, and track open rates, click-throughs, and conversions. 

Over time, these small experiments compound into major wins, and fine-tune your campaigns based on what actually performs, not what you assume will.

But what if you no longer have to wait until after the test to learn what’s working?

It might sound like a dream, but with Insights Agent, it’s already happening.

These agents help you measure results and optimize them in real time. Additionally, they spot campaign risks and underperforming variants before they drag down performance. 

With proactive triggers and anomaly detection, you can adjust campaigns on the fly and ensure your customer experience stays on point.

And once you’ve found a winning variant? 

Insights Agent makes it easy to scale that success across journeys and channels. With the power of Agentic and Gen AI, Insights Agent helps you scale high-performing strategies and boost engagement—without lifting a finger.

Pair that with Insider’s A/B Testing Winner-Autoselection, and you can simply level up your optimization game. 

5. Use predictive analytics to understand customer behavior 

Success in the retail industry requires anticipating customer needs before they realize them. Predictive analytics moves beyond traditional reporting;  it’s proactive and helps you strategize for future trends and behaviors.

If you’re working with a platform that offers AI-powered predictions, you’ll also get valuable predictive characteristics. 

Such as likelihood to purchase, likelihood to engage on a specific channel, discount affinity, potential spending, and more.

With Insider’s predictive AI, you’ll get valuable insights like likelihood to purchase, channel engagement predictions, discount affinity, and projected customer spend. 

These insights help you focus resources effectively. Your marketing hits the mark every time.

Our AI-powered predictive analytics gives you exactly that capability by:

• Forecasting demand: Predicting customer buying patterns accurately.
• Dynamic pricing: Automatically optimizing prices based on market demand.
• Personalized experiences: Crafting individualized recommendations that resonate deeply.
• Improving Operations: Reducing inventory waste and optimizing stock levels.

6. Regularly review and update your automation workflow

A big trap in marketing automation is the “set it and forget it” mindset. 

Too often, teams build intricate workflows, then assume those automations will effortlessly run forever. 

The problem? Markets evolve, customer preferences shift, and what worked perfectly last quarter can quickly lose its spark today.

The fix is simple but often overlooked: regular workflow audits.

When you pull your team into one central platform, collaboration gets smoother instantly. Marketing, product, and design teams see the same real-time information. Result? Everyone’s aligned, approvals happen quicker, and updates are transparent. 

But simply unifying your team in one place isn’t enough; continuous optimization is key.

Regularly optimizing your automation strategy matters because market conditions never stay static. Audiences also move quickly. Competitors make moves, trends shift, and customer expectations evolve. 

Along with that, marketing technology is keeping up with this drastic change. New tools appear regularly, bringing better features and efficiencies. Regularly checking in ensures your workflows stay in sync with current market demands.

Here’s how to keep your automation workflow relevant and efficient and maximize your ROI

• Review your KPIs often. Do regular check-ins to analyze engagement rates, conversions, and other critical metrics. Early detection of issues lets you pivot quickly and stay effective.
• Spot areas for improvement. Dig into the data when metrics dip. Identify what’s off – whether outdated messaging, stale audience targeting, or ineffective workflow logic.
• Make small, smart adjustments. Use insights from your reviews to tweak messaging, refine targeting criteria, or restructure nurturing sequences. Minor changes driven by data often yield major results.
• Test everything. Lean into A/B testing to validate new ideas. Experimenting with your content, timing, or audience segments helps you discover what truly resonates.
• Stay feedback-driven. Actively seek feedback from your team, customers, and industry experts. Use this feedback to refine your workflows and stay ahead of trends.

What sets Insider apart as the #1 retail automation solution

Retail marketing automation is crowded, confusing, and full of big promises. 

But Insider stands apart by solving the three core challenges every retail marketer faces: fragmented data, clunky workflows, and personalization that’s hard to scale.

Our platform unifies customer insights from CRMs, CMSs, APIs, analytics tools, even offline sources to create rich, 360° customer profiles. 

That means no more data silos, and no more guessing.

Insider is built for fast-growing mid-sized and enterprise retailers looking to automate and personalize across every touchpoint—from websites and mobile apps to email, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, and more.

Powered by advanced AI segmentation, Insider predicts what your customers want, how much they’re likely to spend, the best channels to reach them, and who’s at risk of churning. 

The result? Sharply targeted messaging that actually performs.

With automation across 12+ channels, Insider delivers personalized recommendations, timely promotions, and relevant reminders at scale. 

And thanks to our library of pre-built templates, plug-and-play integrations, and hands-on support, launching campaigns is fast and painless with no IT bottlenecks or long ramp-up time.

Ready to see how Insider can simplify your marketing and drive real results?

Schedule a demo or explore our interactive demo hub to experience it for yourself.

As digital payment methods, mobile apps, and AI-driven platforms become the norm, the banks that win aren’t just those with the best rates or the most branches. They’re the ones that deliver a unified, intuitive experience at every touchpoint.

But here’s the catch: while customers expect their banking to be as smooth as ordering groceries online, many banks are still stuck with siloed systems and clunky handoffs. 

The result? Frustrated customers and a growing risk of losing them to fintech upstarts who get it right. 

Capgemini’s research found that 75% of banking customers are drawn to fintechs precisely because they offer the fast, convenient, and personalized experiences that traditional banks struggle to match.

From mobile notifications to in-branch service, from virtual assistants to human advisors, customers want every channel to work together, without friction or repetition.

So, what exactly is omnichannel banking, how does it work, and why does it matter now more than ever? 

Let’s unpack how this approach is redefining customer experience and what it means for the future of financial services.

Read more on Insider’s Customer engagement platform for financial services!

What is omnichannel banking?

Omnichannel banking creates a seamless, connected experience across all customer touchpoints like mobile apps, websites, branches, and beyond. 

Unlike multichannel banking, where each channel functions in isolation, omnichannel banking ensures that every interaction is unified and consistent. 

Powered by a Customer Data Platform (CDP), it enables real-time engagement, integrated insights, and a frictionless feedback loop that drives both convenience and loyalty.

What are the benefits of omnichannel banking

Before smartphones, instant transfers, and banking apps that knew you better than your own accountant, what did your bank really offer beyond a place to deposit checks? 

Nothing much. But in the last five years, retail banking has changed completely.

Retail banks are battling for relevance in a world where customers expect their financial experiences to be as personalized and frictionless.

The problem is, many retail banks are still running on legacy systems that create fractured experiences. 

A customer might start an application on your phone, only to be forced to finish it at a branch. 

They might contact customer service, only to repeat your story to three different representatives. 

The end result is frustrating!

But what happens when your bank knows the customer, understands their goals, and anticipates your needs across every interaction? 

What happens when you can start an onboarding process on WhatsApp, Facebook, and then seamlessly continue with an email account setup, and then finish on the app with personalized banking that feels just convenient to customers? 

That’s the promise of omnichannel banking, giving your customers a unified, customer-centric approach that integrates every touchpoint, from mobile apps to physical branches, into a single, seamless experience.

Let’s explore the benefits first: 

A. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention

Remember when personalized service meant your local branch manager knew your name? 

Omnichannel banking allows retail banks to recreate that intimacy at scale, using customer data to deliver tailored advice, personalized offers, and proactive support across all channels. 

Imagine the customer journey as a complex, interactive story where all touchpoints are synchronized, creating personalized experiences that build trust and loyalty.

B. Increased operational efficiency through streamlined processes

Retail banks often struggle with fragmented systems, creating bottlenecks and inefficiencies that impact both customers and staff. 

Omnichannel banking leverages cloud-based platforms and AI-powered automation to streamline processes, eliminate redundancies, and free up staff to focus on higher-value interactions.

 Zendesk’s CX Trends 2025 report highlights the need for improving data security, investing in new CX technology, optimizing self-service support, and using generative AI in customer experience, all of which align with the goals of streamlining retail banking operations.

C. Data-Driven insights for personalized experiences

An omnichannel marketing approach transforms the retail bank into a robust data turbine, capturing real-time customer data across every touchpoint. 

AI-powered analytics sift through this data to identify trends, nuances, and patterns, enabling banks to deliver hyper-personalized experiences, anticipate customer needs, and proactively offer relevant products and services.

3 common challenges retail banks often face in implementing omnichannel experiences

According to Talkdesk’s 2024 CX in Banking survey, it’s not just a lack of channel options that frustrates customers. A whopping 80% cited disjointed experiences when moving across channels as the biggest source of frustration. 

That’s like ordering a pizza online and having to re-enter your address every time you call to check on the delivery.

For most retail banks, delivering this kind of unified experience is easier said than done. Siloed systems, legacy technology, and fragmented data make it tough to see the customer as a whole person, not just a series of transactions. 

Meanwhile, fintech challengers are raising the bar, offering frictionless, hyper-personalized journeys that make switching banks as easy as downloading a new app.

So why is it so hard for retail banks to get it right? It boils down to three core challenges that turn seemingly simple customer journeys into operational nightmares:

1. The disjointed experience of legacy systems:

Imagine trying to build a modern smart home on a foundation of rotary phones and dial-up modems. That’s what many banks are dealing with. 

Decades of mergers, acquisitions, and patchwork technology upgrades have left them with a jumbled mess of core banking systems, CRM databases, and channel-specific platforms that simply don’t talk to each other. It’s a data silo apocalypse.

2. Orchestrating the digital and physical symphony:

Delivering a consistent customer experience across digital and physical channels isn’t just about having a mobile app and a branch network. 

It’s about making those two worlds work in harmony. Customers expect their mobile app to know they just visited a branch, their phone conversation to pick up where their chatbot session left off, and their ATM transactions to be reflected instantly online.

But the reality is often jarringly different. Siloed data, inconsistent interfaces, and a lack of real-time synchronization can turn a simple task, like updating an address, into a frustrating maze. 

This problem leads to users facing difficulties in accessing information or support as a significant frustration, hurting loyalty.

3. Regulatory and security concerns:

From GDPR and CCPA to KYC and AML, retail banks operate in a thicket of regulatory and security requirements that can make even simple changes feel like navigating a legal minefield. 

Balancing innovation with compliance requires constant vigilance, significant investment, and a level of expertise many banks simply lack.

As AI and self-service become more prevalent, the pressure to protect customer data, prevent fraud, and ensure regulatory compliance only intensifies. 

Banks must not only adopt new technologies but also adapt their security protocols and internal processes to safeguard against evolving threats.

4 actionable steps you can take now to build an omnichannel banking experience 

So far, you’ve understood the common challenges retail banks face in implementing omnichannel experiences. Now let’s learn about the actionable steps you need to take to overcome those challenges.

1. Integrate customer data across channels

Every great omnichannel experience starts with a single source of truth: unified customer data. 

For many banks, this means investing in a robust Customer Data Platform (CDP) that brings together insights from every touchpoint—branch visits, mobile app activity, call center logs, and more—into one 360-degree view.

However, the problem is that traditional CDPs often fall short. Banks struggle with slow, complex setups and the headache of stitching together multiple point solutions just to activate their data. The result? Marketers bounce between platforms, workflows get tangled, and costs spiral.

The solution is a CDP that goes beyond storing data. Insider brings together 12+ activation channels, advanced personalization capabilities, and a customer journey builder under the same umbrella as our enterprise CDP. 

Besides that, Insider is also a leader in various categories based on reviews from customers and industry experts.

Global financial services provider Allianz was looking to deliver outstanding experiences across its digital channels. Data and privacy regulations had previously prevented Allianz from gaining a holistic view of its customers to build stronger customer experiences. However, Insider’s platform enabled Allianz to collect and store data safely and without risk. 

Insider also unified the data into one dashboard, so marketers had access to a 360-degree view of customers across all touchpoints, making it easier to create data-driven decisions and improve key results.

By connecting data across channels, Insider enabled Allianz to build AI-powered segments and deliver customer experiences tailored to each user. Allianz used this data to power an App Push campaign, which achieved an 80% opt-in rate and a huge increase in CLTV.

Read the full case study here. 

2. Leverage AI to understand and anticipate customers

Knowing what your customers did yesterday isn’t going to cut it anymore. The banks leading the pack use AI and predictive analytics to understand what their customers will want tomorrow.

You need predictive AI analytics to analyze patterns across millions of interactions to forecast needs, like when a customer might be ready for a loan or at risk of leaving for a competitor. 

That’s why a good customer data platform (CDP) like Insider is so crucial for making accurate predictions. CDPs unify customer data from different sources into one convenient database. This means they can act as a central hub for storing and analyzing customer data.

Plus, our platform’s AI-powered intent engine can analyze this unified data to come up with accurate predictions around each customer’s likelihood to purchase, likelihood to engage on a specific channel, discount affinity, and more.

When Hangikredi used real-time analytics and AI to personalize mobile loan applications, they made it effortless for returning visitors to pick up where they left off, boosting conversions by nearly 7%.

Read the full case study here.

3. Ensure consistency across every channel

Nothing erodes trust faster than inconsistency. Whether a customer is chatting with a bot, calling support, or speaking to a teller, every interaction should reflect your brand’s promise and knowledge of their journey.

Modern journey builders and automation tools let banks design, test, and optimize customer journeys across all channels. 

With solutions like Insider Architect, banks can orchestrate seamless transitions—so a customer who starts a mortgage inquiry online can finish it in-branch without repeating themselves, and every channel feels like part of a single, coherent conversation.

Insider ensures you can make every channel work together, so your customer never feels like a stranger, no matter where they show up. Here’s how: 

• Create AI-Powered segments: Automatically group customers based on their likelihood to purchase, preferred channels, or discount affinity.

• Design dynamic journeys: Map out multi-channel experiences with a simple drag-and-drop interface, triggering personalized messages based on real-time behaviors.

• Test and optimize: A/B test different messages, offers, and journey flows to continuously improve engagement and ROI.

Architect provides detailed analytics at every step, allowing you to track key metrics, identify drop-off points, and refine your strategy in real time.

This level of precision gives your customers a cohesive experience across all the platforms. Take Vodafone, for example. 

Vodafone was looking for ways to enhance its cross-channel marketing strategy and test new channels to engage its audience. They wanted to increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), customer retention and loyalty, and conversions.
Insider’s cross-channel capabilities—including Web Push, On-Site, Email, and Facebook—helped Vodafone engage its audience with consistent, timely messaging across multiple channels.

With 120+ ready-made attributes to segment users (including traits, behaviors, preferences, and more), Insider empowered Vodafone’s marketing team to quickly build and launch new, expertly segmented campaigns to highly targeted audiences.

Read the full case study here. 

4. Prioritize security and compliance at every step

In retail banking, your customers’ data is their most valuable asset and their deepest vulnerability.

Think about it: every transaction, every app login, every branch visit generates a trail of personal information—from account balances to spending habits to home addresses. 

This data is the lifeblood of personalization, enabling banks to offer smarter services and more relevant offers. But with great data comes great responsibility and significant risk.

Data breaches have become a constant threat. Customers know this, and they’re holding banks accountable. They expect you to protect their data as fiercely as they protect their own wallets, and they’re increasingly willing to switch banks if they don’t feel safe.

That’s why security and compliance can’t be an afterthought; they need to be woven into the very fabric of your omnichannel strategy. Meeting regulations like GDPR and CCPA is just the start; it’s about building a culture of data stewardship that earns trust and fosters loyalty.

The good news? You can make security a competitive advantage with Insider. Here’s how:

• Invisible protection: Create an omnichannel experience that feels seamless, but operates on a foundation of robust security measures. This means granular access controls, real-time threat monitoring, and strict adherence to data privacy regulations.

• Empowered control: Give customers visibility into their data and control over how it’s used, to make them active participants in their security.

Reshape the future of omnichannel banking with Insider

Banks that cling to outdated systems risk becoming relics.

The good news? Meeting those expectations isn’t a pipe dream. It’s within reach. With Insider, you can transform disjointed interactions into seamless journeys.

Our AI-driven personalization, unified data platform, and channel orchestration tools help you build banking experiences that are as fluid and intuitive as your customers expect.

Ready to stop playing catch-up and start leading the pack? To learn more about Insider, book a demo with our team or try the platform yourself.

Despite their usefulness, these technologies didn’t fundamentally change online shopping. Sure, they offered new ways to drive revenue but the experiences (and challenges) of both customers and retailers remained largely unchanged.

However, we’re now in the early stages of reshaping the future of eCommerce and retail in general thanks to Agentic AI. The new retail AI agents — which we’ll explore in this guide — are a massive step forward as they anticipate customer needs and take action autonomously to achieve key business goals.  

In fact, some brands are already using AI agents to deliver tailored shopping experiences, manage supply chains, monitor inventory levels, and much more. For example:

• Carrefour uses AI to automate supply chain management, personalize their marketing campaigns, and create better loyalty programs.
• Sephora uses AI to create a personal shopping experience by analyzing customer data to provide personalized product recommendations. 
• Walmart’s AI-powered Intelligent Retail Lab (IRL) monitors the shelves, tracks the inventory levels, detects out-of-stock items, and alerts the staff to replenish them. 

In this guide, we’ll explore how retail AI agents work, their key applications, and their most important benefits. We’ll also use Agent One — our suite of purpose-built agents — to show different types of agents and the impact they can bring.

What are retail AI agents?

Retail AI agents (sometimes called shopping agents or just agents) simulate a personal assistant that understands preferences, answers questions, recommends items, and predicts what a shopper might want based on behavior and context.

They remove friction from the shopping experience and drive product discovery by helping users find, compare, and purchase products more efficiently.  

Additionally, AI agents in general have the potential to reinvent eCommerce and retail across the board. Beyond creating exceptional shopping experiences, these systems can help optimize marketing campaigns, streamline supply chain management, and much more.

Here are three examples of AI agents from Agent One that are purpose-built for different business goals:

1. The Shopping Agent helps customers find what they need with personalized, intent-based recommendations. It uses behavioral cues and contextual data to understand what customers need, guiding them through a smooth shopping experience without having to be prompted at every step.

2. The Support Agent uses real-time data to answer questions and solve customer problems on the spot. Its answers are emotionally intelligent, offering reassurance and solutions based on the context. It can also be reactive or proactive, depending on the best way to solve the problem.

3. Our Insights Agent gives marketers a real-time pulse on performance, with actionable insights and recommendations. It can automatically surface problems and offer solutions, saving time, energy, and resources for marketing teams.

How are AI agents different from chatbots?

If you’re just diving into the world of Agentic AI, you might be wondering what makes these agents different from chatbots. After all, both types of technologies can answer customer questions, show products, and solve various issues. 

In short, the main difference lies in the ability to understand intent, make smart decisions, and drive valuable business outcomes autonomously. 

In that sense, AI agents operate like highly skilled consultants who understand customers’ needs and the business backend (e.g., inventory, discounts, upcoming arrivals) and confidently act on that understanding. Chatbots, on the other hand, often aren’t useful beyond answering standard questions or solving simple problems.

Here’s why:

Most chatbots are built on decision trees or flowcharts. This enables them to guide users through a predefined path to solve straightforward issues like:

• Explaining your return policy.
• Checking the status of an order.
• Answering questions about product availability based on current inventory.

Because they rely on fixed scripts, chatbots can usually direct users down a limited decision tree in a reliable and predictable way.

However, if a customer asks something outside that narrow scope, the system struggles. This can lead to vague answers, longer wait times, or a handoff to a real person. 

AI agents, on the other hand, don’t just follow scripts.

Instead, they use machine learning, language understanding, and real-time data to interpret what a customer actually means — not just what they typed. And unlike chatbots, AI agents can then:

• Make smart decisions autonomously, without being prompted by the customer.
• Adjust their approach on the fly, such as when the customer gets frustrated or starts losing interest.
• Aim to achieve specific business outcomes like increasing AOV with relevant cross-sells and upsells. This can involve asking relevant follow-up questions and getting a better understanding of customers’ needs based on their answers and historical data.

Put simply, AI agents offer a much more fluid and intelligent experience — a big step forward from the limited chatbots most people are used to. 

Benefits of implementing retail AI agents

The new types of AI agents can be extremely versatile for retailers looking to solve all sorts of problems. Specifically, they bring three essential benefits for both customers and companies:

• Enhanced customer experiences. By understanding individual preferences and behaviors, AI agents can offer relevant product recommendations, answer queries promptly, and create a seamless shopping experience across all touchpoints.
• Automatic data-driven insights. AI agents analyze customer data to provide actionable insights, informing business decisions. This includes identifying trends, preferences, and potential issues, so retailers make smarter decisions.
• Operational efficiency. Automation of routine tasks allows employees to focus on more strategic activities. AI agents can handle many tasks such as answering FAQs and managing inventory, freeing up people to concentrate on areas that require human creativity and judgment.

These benefits directly affect businesses’ bottom lines by driving more revenue (thanks to better shopping experiences) and creating more streamlined, cost-effective operations.

Key applications of autonomous AI agents in retail

Retailers can leverage Agentic AI in tons of ways.

In fact, we’re still only scratching the surface of these technologies yet there are use cases that clearly benefit customers’ shopping experiences and brands’ bottom lines. 

Below, we’ll explore four of these applications of retail AI agents.

1. Autonomous decision-making at scale

AI agents are capable of taking initiative without necessarily being prompted or getting instructions.

For example, say you have a customer who’s traveling to London and needs a new jacket for the trip. A traditional chatbot could offer jackets based on the customer’s instructions when it comes to color, price, and other attributes (assuming it’s programmed to do so).

However, an AI-powered agent can go much further. Insider’s Shopping Agent can check weather forecasts as well as the customer’s previous purchases and interactions to determine the best possible option for them. 

Then, it can include other variables into the equation such as which products are discounted, best-sellers, or frequently bought with the customers’ previous purchases.

In other words, the agent can understand and anticipate intent, which is a massive improvement over reactive chatbots. When implemented correctly, this can drive massive engagement and revenue improvements as thousands of customers can get a tailored experience that was previously unattainable in the world of eCommerce.

2. Deep data integrations for real-time personalization

Another huge benefit of AI agents is how they use customer data. With deep integrations across personalization tools, eCommerce systems, CDPs, CRMs, and much more, retail agents can get a holistic view of each customer.

As a result, product suggestions align more closely with what shoppers actually want, search experiences feel intuitive and dynamic, and upsell opportunities surface organically rather than being pushed. 

This level of personalization, grounded in real-time insight is only made possible by overcoming data silos with deep integrations. For example, Agent One integrates with tons of different solutions as well as with our proprietary: 

• eCommerce CDP that creates 360-degree profiles for each customer filled with valuable data like channel interactions, purchases, preferences, and more.

Personalized site search and merchandising platform, which boosts product discovery with AI-powered product recommendations.

• Smart Recommendation models, which deliver tailored product recommendations and maximize cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

This makes our Shopping Agent (and the Insider platform as a whole) a complete solution for personalized product discovery. 

The agent can leverage the right data to deliver the right content, messaging, and product recommendations to each customer, at the right time — a massive upgrade from the traditional experience of searching for products using keywords and simple chatbots.

3. Emotionally resonant conversations

One of the main limitations of chatbots is that conversations with them often feel off — the tone can be wrong or the replies don’t address the issue expressed by the customer. These tone-deaf responses can make users feel ignored or misunderstood, leading to high bounce rates and lost revenue.

AI agents aim to change that by factoring in sentiment and emotional cues when responding. They don’t just parse language — they pick up on how someone’s feeling. If a user is clearly frustrated, a well-designed agent will respond with understanding and work to solve the issue directly.

This kind of emotional intelligence adds a layer of authenticity to digital interactions. It creates the sense that someone is truly listening, which can make all the difference in how customers perceive your brand.

4. Automatic learning and improvement

One of the most powerful aspects of AI agents is that they’re constantly evolving. Each customer interaction becomes a learning opportunity informing the agent about what worked, what didn’t, and how to do better next time. 

This allows the experience to become more refined and accurate without constant human oversight.

Insider’s Shopping Agent, for instance, becomes more effective the more it’s used. With access to a customer’s browsing history, purchase patterns, and preferences, it can continuously tailor recommendations with greater precision. This kind of learning isn’t just theoretical — it translates into real results.

Bonus: Additional AI use cases for retailers

As you can see, AI-powered technologies can be massively beneficial to customers. However, their utility goes far beyond that as marketing, sales, and merchandising teams can use them for:

• Inventory and supply chain management. AI agents can predict demand, optimize stock levels, and streamline supply chain operations, ensuring that retailers meet customer needs without overstocking or understocking.
• Fraud detection and prevention. AI agents can monitor transactions, identify suspicious activities, and implement preventive measures to protect both retailers and customers.
• Marketing campaign analysis and optimization AI agents can analyze customer behavior, segment audiences, and optimize marketing campaigns to drive sales and improve ROI.

For even more examples and applications, check out our complete guide to the 10 breakthrough trends of AI in retail.

Embrace the future of retail with Insider’s Agent One

Autonomous AI agents are not just a passing trend — they are the future of retail. By embracing these technologies, retailers can enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and drive growth.

That’s why we’ve built the industry’s most aggressive AI roadmap to help brands stay ahead. Specifically, Agent One provides a comprehensive suite of AI agents that empower retailers to:

• Turn their web search engine into an intelligent answer engine that delivers personalized conversations.
• Anticipate customers’ needs, understand the intent behind their queries, and provide relevant product recommendations.
• Integrate with relevant data sources, including 360-customer profiles from our enterprise CDP.
• Manage front-line support by answering customer questions accurately 24/7, powered by CDP, CRM, and other relevant data sources.
• Uncover campaign risks, make recommendations and optimizations autonomously, and anticipate trends to improve performance. 

Additionally, Insider offers a plethora of other AI-powered functionalities. Some of these include our Smart Recommender — which delivers tailored product recommendations — and Next-Best Channel and Send-Time Optimization — which optimize campaign performance automatically based on customers’ behavioral patterns.

To learn more about Insider’s AI capabilities and how they can benefit your business, schedule a free demo with our team.

1. SMS filtering gets stricter to keep spam and scams at bay

Apple’s latest iOS 26 update puts you in control as it only allows the messages that truly matter to make it to your inbox. Every notification you see is relevant, valuable, and tailored to you. On the surface, this update might seem challenging for marketers, but its true purpose is to enhance user experience, respect their time, and make their inbox clutter-free.

With the new Messages filtering system, when enabled by end user, any SMS from an unknown sender, meaning one your customer hasn’t saved, is quietly whisked away into a separate folder, unless it’s transactional.

For example, messages like “Your table is ready” or “Your flight is boarding” still earn a front-row seat. But everything else gets no ding and no eyeball. Here are a few strategies you can adopt right now to bypass this filter (ethically): 

• Make your messages matter. Here’s the thing: Apple isn’t completely against brand messages, but they want more clarity and relevance for customers. When you respect your customer’s choice, you build trust. Here’s what you can do:
  • Be crystal clear about what your customers will get from you. What kind of messages? How often? 
  • Keep your sender ID consistent. Don’t confuse users with random numbers or different names. Make it obvious that it’s you.
  • Lastly, make sure each SMS gets straight to the point. Your messages should feel personal, like they were written just for the person.

• Get in the contact list. Think of it like a VIP list. If your brand isn’t saved as a contact, you’re likely stuck outside. During onboarding—whether via SMS, email, or in-app—give users a quick nudge: “Save us to your contacts so you never miss a message.” It’s a small ask that makes a big difference in whether you land in the inbox or the no-man’s-land folder.

• Have a Plan B and C. Where SMS may not get through. But you’re not out of options. Reinforce your messages through push, in-app, or email—whichever channels your users are most likely to see. Map journeys across platforms so your communications aren’t siloed. The same alert or offer should echo across your stack, creating continuity even if one message gets filtered.

• Watch your delivery rates like a hawk. If open rates or link clicks suddenly dip post-iOS 26, it’s not a coincidence. Track performance by OS version. If Apple’s filtering is clipping your reach, that’s your cue to adjust. Don’t wait for a full campaign to flop—act on the micro-signals.

• Look ahead to RCS. RCS won’t bypass Apple’s filters. But it’s where messaging is headed. Rich visuals, branded senders, suggested replies, and read receipts aren’t just nice-to-haves anymore—they’re becoming table stakes. Ask your users if they’re open to receiving RCS. Their interest helps prioritize adoption and ensures your brand stays ahead of the curve.

2. Live activities have officially outgrown the iPhone.

With iOS 26, Live Activities are expanding to CarPlay and macOS, bringing real-time updates, like your pizza ETA or game-day score, to the places people are already paying attention: on the road and at their desk.

In short, what used to live on your phone now lives everywhere else. Apple’s baked real-time engagement into the fabric of its ecosystem. So what does that mean for you?

On CarPlay: CarPlay’s new Live Activities are built for glanceability, not interaction. That means no buttons. No prompts. No fiddly UX. Just bold, crystal-clear updates that land without stealing focus.

Think:

– Order arriving in 2 mins

– Gate changed: B14

– 3rd Quarter: 76–71

Big fonts. Bright visuals. Quick context delivered while someone’s hands are on the wheel and brain’s in transit.

Image: Apple

With CarPlay lighting up over 600 million times a day, you’ve got a real chance to meet users exactly where they are, without ever asking them to look twice.

On macOS: Live Activities on desktop are less about urgency, more about presence. They sit tucked inside the Notification Center—never pushy, always there. Perfect for moments that unfold slowly, like:

– A challenge streak that needs one more step

– A limited-time promo with hours left

– A poll is waiting for your team’s final vote

The best part is that they don’t disappear after 30 seconds. So you can nudge, remind, and encourage without interrupting flow. Just make sure the rhythm fits the macOS beat: subtle, timely, and quietly helpful.

Read more about the feature 

3. A new, refreshed design across the OS

Apple’s major update is its boldest visual redesign: Liquid Glass. It’s being introduced across iOS, macOS, and beyond. 

According to Apple, the translucent buttons, layered textures, fluid motion, and interfaces that feel almost like real life glass, hence the name. VisionOS inspired this design; this update pulls the glassy, reactive look of spatial computing into everyday screens—phones, laptops, tablets. 

On macOS Tahoe 26, you’ll see it in the Dock, Finder, widgets, and Spotlight. On iOS 26, your Lock Screen now whispers through layered transparencies, time and notifications float above your wallpaper, shape-shifting as you move.

It seems like changes from Liquid Glass will touch just about every part of the operating system, including apps, buttons, sliders, the Control Center, and your homescreen. 

Image: Apple 

Tab bars will also change because of Liquid Glass, shrinking and expanding as you scroll up and down.

Liquid Glass changes the way users experience every tap, swipe, and scroll. It’s beautiful. Sometimes, a little extra. But undeniably expressive. 

Apps that haven’t adapted might look jarringly out of place. Here’s what you need to do:

• Audit your visuals. Check your onboarding screens, in-app messages, and permission prompts. If they lean too heavy or opaque, they’ll clash hard with the new system’s light, airy vibe.
• Lean into motion. Interactive elements now shimmer with fluid animations. Your app doesn’t need to dance, but subtle movement can guide attention and make it feel native to the new OS.
• Test obsessively in light and dark mode. Transparency introduces a whole new layer of contrast considerations. That sleek overlay you love in light mode? It might completely disappear in the dark.

Apple’s even offering updated APIs so developers can tap into Liquid Glass directly, creating interfaces that refract light and shift subtly with their environment.

4. Custom background and other exciting features in group chats

Group chats have always been a bit like a potluck dinner: someone brings the vibes, someone else brings chaos, and you’re left wondering why you agreed to this in the first place. 

But Apple’s latest messaging upgrade will make you forget those boring blue bubbles. 

You get built-in designs, custom photo uploads, and even AI-generated images that match the energy of your group. So your conversations feel more “this is so us.”

That’s not all. Some other updates include creating polls in group conversations.

Not every message deserves a parade. With iOS 26, Apple’s spam filters now quietly sweep unknown senders into a side folder. This gives people more control. Let them surface what matters, mute what doesn’t, and decide when (or if) they want to engage. 

Image: Verge

Wrapping Up

From smarter SMS filtering to real-time engagement everywhere, and a design glow-up that’s begging your app to keep up, there’s plenty to chew on for every marketer and customer engagement expert.

But here’s the thing: the world of customer engagement and marketing doesn’t slow down after WWDC. If you want to keep your finger on the pulse, without wading through a sea of tech jargon, make sure you’re following Insider on LinkedIn for the freshest takes, and hit subscribe on our monthly newsletter.

We’ll keep you looped in with the trends, tactics, and tools you actually need.