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