Three hot personalization initiatives from a cold winter
The winter of 2025-26 was a tough one for much of the country, but it didn’t stop retailers from making customers feel seen.
As the calendar officially shifts from winter to spring and the snow and ice begin to melt, it’s time to look back at some of the notable happenings in retail technology during the just concluded darkest and coldest time of the year.
Personalization is a heartwarming topic, so let’s heat up some cocoa and look back at three efforts retailers made to get to know their customers better as outdoor temperatures dropped and indoor thermostats climbed.
[READ MORE: How pricing, personalization & performance help beat retail uncertainty]
Lane Bryant
Plus-size women’s apparel and intimates retailer Lane Bryant began tailoring online customer experiences in real time. Lane Bryant deployed Metrical online personalization technology in an effort to deliver personalized content and targeted incentives only when they create incremental value, avoiding unnecessary discounting.
Utilizing the Metrical solution, the retailer can adjust messaging, guidance and offers based on each shopper's behavior and intent. This includes personalized content designed to help customers rediscover products, make fit and styling decisions, and navigate digital shopping, with targeted and personalized promotions offered when an incentive is determined to be likely to change an outcome.
According to Lane Bryant, its objective is not to show more promotions, but fewer, better ones in an initiative to eliminate unnecessary discounting while improving relevance and protecting margin. In addition, the retailer can continuously measure incremental impact and better understand which personalized experiences truly influenced outcomes.
L.L.Bean
Iconic outdoor lifestyle retailer L.L.Bean started replacing legacy CRM systems with the Amperity Customer Data Cloud in an effort to enable a new level of personalization in its interactions with customers across all channels.
The retailer is leveraging the platform to unify inputs of omnichannel shopper data into a single, accurate view which is accessible to the appropriate personnel and obtain predictive insights to deliver more timely, relevant content to customers and orchestrate personalized journeys across multiple channels. Multi-channel activations include email, direct mail, web personalization, loyalty marketing, and catalogs.
As a result, the retailer hopes to grow brand affinity and enable personnel to better understand customers, respond faster, and deliver targeted experiences.
True Beauty Lashes
Direct-to-consumer beauty brand True Beauty Lashes is in a new partnership to let consumers find the lashes that best match their individual characteristics and then get a virtual preview.
True Beauty Lashes has collaborated with Perfect Corp., a provider of artificial intelligence and augmented reality beauty and fashion technology, to develop a proprietary solution called LashLovr. The solution leverages Perfect Corp. virtual try-on and face analyzer APIs to allow shoppers to visually preview their recommended lashes in real time, directly on their face, before purchasing.
LashLovr features include multi-attribute eye shape personalization, daytime and nighttime lash recommendations, access to a 50-plus-SKU catalog designed for real fit variation, virtual try-on, and a limited-time complimentary virtual application support call after purchase
After users gain insight into the type of eye shape they have to receive personalized recommendations, they can then preview their recommended lashes directly on the results page and try on their lashes via Perfect Corp.’s virtual try-on technology.
