Luxury fashion brand Ralph Lauren was founded in 1967 and is a global leader in the design, marketing, and distribution of premium lifestyle products, including apparel, accessories, home furnishings, and other licensed product categories. For over five decades, their long-standing reputation and distinctive image have been consistently developed across an expanding number of products, brands, sales channels, and international markets.

For Holiday season 2021 and beyond, Ralph Lauren challenged BYTE/DEPT® to find a way to elevate their existing gifting experience within the digital space.

The challenge: developing a strong bond

The aim was to provide users with a more immersive and personalised method of picking the perfect gift, matching their interests with compatible products available on the Ralph Lauren website. They wanted to develop a strong bond between the brand identity of Ralph Lauren, the digital assistant, and the customer, breaking any barriers of communication and supercharging the journey to finding the perfect gift.

This was coupled with a desire to be pioneers in cutting-edge communications with customers, tapping into emerging, innovative mechanics to bring the gift experience to life.

The solution: a gifting chatbot

Combining data-driven insights from previous gifting chatbots with innovative Instagram platform features, we built one of the first branded Instagram chatbots available in the industry and worldwide.

We optimised the conversation structure based on data collected from the Messenger and WhatsApp gifting bots we’ve previously run, to ensure the best experience for users throughout the Holiday season and beyond. We know how the customers behave and what they like when shopping for gifts, and have taken that to the next level on Instagram.

A personalised journey

The conversation takes you through a personalised journey towards discovering the perfect gift - just like you would in Ralph Lauren’s flagship store on London’s Bond Street.

• Tell us who you’re shopping for and their style
• Match their style with the perfect gift using bespoke Taste Profiles
• Refine your search with dynamic filters (such as price or outerwear) that remember your search history and tailor recommendations accordingly 
• NLP functionality that would take you to specific product pages when certain trigger words were typed e.g. ‘jeans’
• Get bespoke product recommendations from a dynamic product feed

We made use of powerful discovery features including automated replies to story @mentions, and DMs to drive new conversations cost effectively. We also built a series of creative assets that were channelled into Ralph Lauren’s paid campaigns to drive traffic to the bot.

Excellent results

Our gifting chatbot saw excellent results in its first few months.

Average of 12k monthly users over Dec 21 - Mar 22

We’ve seen very healthy traffic into the bot, with 3.5x more users on Instagram compared to Messenger and WhatsApp combined.

82% organic traffic

Over 80% of users are introduced to the bot organically, making it very efficient compared to paid media campaigns. Essentially high quality traffic at zero media spend.

6 minutes average time spent on the bot

This is 3x higher than the average time spent on our other gifting bots, showing that users are engaging well with the bot experience.

2.7% click through rate to website

Almost 3% of users that land on the chatbot visit the website and show purchase intent.

0.4% users handed over to Customer Services

Only 0.4% of users required a handover to a live Customer Service agent. This is one of the lowest rates we’ve seen in the industry.

With the chatbot now successfully rolled out in 4 markets (UK, IT, DE and FR) across 4 languages, we’re looking into further expansion across more global Ralph Lauren markets for 2022 and beyond.