Natori Uses AI to Transform Social Media into Sales ; Sees Jump in Revenue and Return on Ad Spend with Albert

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Natori Company, the women’s fashion designer and manufacturer responsible for the ready-to-wear, lingerie, home, fragrance and accessories labels Josie Natori, Natori, Josie, and N Natori, today announced the results of its first three quarters working with autonomous digital marketer Albert (LSE: ALB.L). Since May 2017, the artificial intelligence-driven platform has been executing its label Natori’s paid social media efforts on Instagram and Facebook, resulting in an 18% increase in ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), an 84% increase in 2017 holiday-related conversions, and a 76% increase in social media revenue in its first six months alone.

Natori’s adoption of Albert came in response to a noticeable shift in its customers’ online behaviors and the realization that even its most loyal customers were at risk of drifting away if the brand didn’t keep up with the increased digital marketing activity of other brands vying for their attention.
Prior to Albert, Natori’s social media efforts were limited to organic posts which were handled by its in-house public relations team and primarily focused on generating brand awareness.

In May 2017, Albert became the first AI technology in Natori’s marketing stack. Albert was charged with identifying new audiences on Instagram and Facebook, driving consumers back to its ecommerce store, and increasing overall conversions originating on social media.

“We haven’t traditionally been early adopters when it comes to technology, so making the leap directly to artificial intelligence was a little out of character. But working with Albert has been a great experience so far,” said Ken Natori, The Natori Company’s President. “We’ve gone through a learning curve together—us, in terms of new ways of thinking about creative and adding parameters that work for us; Albert, in terms of learning about our audience and getting smarter over time.”

Working with creative provided by Natori’s creative agency and KPIs provided by the brand, Albert began testing different creative combinations (visual and text) and their performance among specific audience micro-segments. Albert quickly discovered that Natori’s focus on beautiful creative, designed specifically to capture audiences’ attention, had to be complemented by data-driven insights about the different creative and ad types that specific audiences were responding to.

For instance, Albert determined custom carousel ads to be a high-performing ad type that significantly exceeded prescribed benchmarks, and therefore recommended that Natori add custom carousel items for priority concepts. For the creative team, this meant learning new approaches to formatting existing content to keep up with creative demand.

“Our creative teams have traditionally approached creative from a standpoint of ‘artful;’ now they’re learning how to achieve artful and performance simultaneously,” said Heidi Maund, eCommerce Director at The Natori Company, who is driving digital transformation in the brand’s marketing practice. “Rather than sacrifice the Natori aesthetic, our work with Albert is more so an exercise in working with content differently to meet the demand of performance campaigns. Overall, we’re adopting a performance mentality and learning to think beyond initial awareness of our campaigns.”

After learning which creative combinations were driving the most conversions among which audiences, Albert was able to increase Natori’s online conversions by 24% in only a single month. In November and December of 2017, Albert ran holiday-specific campaigns that increased conversions, compared to subsequent months, at an average of 84% per month. Overall, the campaign has increased their Return on Ad Spend by 18% with the lifetime ROAS increasing significantly during the holiday selling season.

Natori has responded to Albert’s demand for increased content needs by hiring additional creative agencies to format its top-level creative content for use in a performance-driven marketing environment. In collaboration with Natori’s teams, Albert has built a strong revenue flow from a channel that had previously delivered only numbered conversions.

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About Albert™
Albert, created by Albert Technologies, LTD. (AIM: ALB.L), is the world’s first and only fully autonomous digital marketer. The enterprise-level artificial intelligence platform drives digital marketing campaigns from start to finish for some of the world’s leading brands. Albert liberates businesses from the data and technology complexities of digital marketing—not just by replicating their existing efforts, but by executing them at a pace and scale not possible by human teams. “He” accomplishes this by wading through mass amounts of data, converting this data into insights, and autonomously acting on these insights, across channels, devices and formats, in real time. Brands such as Harley Davidson, Cosabella and Dole Asia credit Albert with significantly increased sales, an accelerated path to revenue, the ability to make more informed investment decisions, and reduced operational costs. For more information, visit albert.ai.

ABOUT THE HOUSE OF NATORI
The House of Natori was founded in 1977 and today is one of the fashion industry's most recognizable designer brands. Each of the Natori brand collections -- Josie Natori, Natori, N Natori and Josie by Natori -- is a reflection of the namesake designer's distinctive, East/West aesthetic, with products ranging from ready-to-wear, lingerie, sleepwear and hosiery, to home textiles and accessories, bath, and fragrance. Natori products are available in the world's leading retailers and specialty stores, including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, and Dillard's, among many others.