Strands Blog

Strands Recommender™ presents its first webinar in an ongoing series of customer stories, industry trends and implementation intelligence. This webinar addresses how to get the most out of Saas recommendations for online merchants looking to personalize the shopper experience. The recorded webinar is now available for those of you who missed the the live session. Watch the recording now.

The 45-min webinar discusses the best practices for optimizing implementation with the Strands Recommender and shares the experience of customer Nimli, an online marketplace for eco-brands as told by CEO/Founder, Rajat Arora. The key points summarize Strands best practices for:

1. Uploading your product catalog
2. Tracking user behavior
3. Installing recommendations for multiple use cases

These guidelines were followed by a walkthrough of Nimli’s current implementation on the product detail and shopping cart pages and ongoing improvements to them. In the next phase, Nimli will use personalized Strands recommendations in the purchase confirmation and abandoned shopping cart emails. Seventeen percent of the revenue is attributable to Strands recommendations, along with a CTR of 40-50% on the recommendations. Rajat also shares his key takeaways and best practices such as treating recommendations as a continuous process for improvement and leveraging the customization features. Learn more today by creating an account at recommender.strands.com.

Today we are excited to announce our partnership with the Spanish National Track & Field Federation for the celebration of the 2009 Track & Field Championships, which will be held during the 1st and 2nd of August in the Olympic Stadium of Barcelona.

Through the partnership Strands will be present during the event with banners, booths for both athletes and attendees, and spots on both the JumboTron and the National DTT Sports TV Network: Teledeporte. 

Additionally, Strands will be hosting the Official Post-Championship Party, which will include awards for the Best Athlete of the Championships and the Most Popular Athlete on Strands.com; as well as the announcement and introduction of Team Strands Spain – a team of post-collegiate, professional middle and distance runners.

To follow all the events throughout the Track & Field Championships, log into your Strands account and check out the event profile at Strands.com/Barcelona09 to see pictures, videos, and meet the athletes.

Bix 7, American National 7 Mile Championship – Davenport, IA
Meghan Armstrong and Cele Rodriguez led the Team Strands contingent at the Bix 7, with 9th and 11th place finishes in their respective races.  The Bix was the host of the Inaugural US 7-Mile Road Championships.

Armstrong ran 39:06 in her return to the roads, laying claim to her second U.S. Road Championships top-ten finish in her first year as a professional.  Armstrong was fifth in the Road Mile Championships in the Twin Cities last May.  Teammate Zoila Gomez, in the midst of World Championships Marathon preparation, was 31 seconds back in 12th place, and Elva Dryer ran 40:18 for 15th place in the women’s Championship race.

On the men’s side, Cele Rodriguez placed 11th overall, running a 34:07.

For complete results, visit the Bix-7 Results page.

Boston Scientific Heart of Summer 10k – Minneapolis, MN
Also active this weekend was Team Strands athlete Nicole Aish, who overcame a bout of food poisoning and still managed a second-place finish at the Boston Scientific Heart of Summer 10k.  Aish ran 34:56 on the loop course around Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis.

For complete race results, click here.

As you know BBVA and Strands teamed to launch Tú Cuentas in July of last year to provide a valuable personalized finance management tool for BBVA’s 4.1 million online users. Within one week there were 100,000 users of  Tú Cuentas; 300,000 by the end of June 2009; and the number continues to grow today. In recent past it has received high praise from Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff, and today BBVA Tú Cuentas is celebrating!

This week Tú Cuentas was awarded by Actualidad Económica, the Spanish business magazine, as one of the “100 best ideas of the year.”

But our joy does not end here. Our personal finance project has been recognized twice recently:

First, we are tremendously honored by the Actualidad Económica Award of the 100 best ideas of 2008. This is just another endorsement of the enormous value that we believe the tool has and the awesome potential it has to complete the ideas that we plan to develop with BBVA.

The second milestone is the publication by Forrester Research, of a case study monograph. In it, under the title “BBVA’s Tú Cuentas Shows What Next-Generation Online Banking Will Look Like,” Forrester places BBVA and it’s Department for Innovation as a benchmark for innovation in the global financial world, providing detailed information and explaining how Tú Cuentas is better than similar tools in the market. Undoubtedly, something that makes us extremely proud.

With this, we see how the path we started next to a year ago is generating encouraging results and will continue to encourage us to come up with new ideas as we team with BBVA. According to Manuel Castro, director of Innovation and Development of BBVA, “the goal of innovation in the Group is to generate products and services that are useful to people. In that sense, Tú Cuentas is really an example of how to develop innovation in BBVA.”

In the end, the key to success are the users of Tú Cuentas, for using it, for giving us feedback, conveying their ideas, and, above all for positioning the tool as a project made by all and that is enjoyed by everyone.

Therefore: Thanks to all and thanks to you!

(To read the Spanish version of this blog post please visit the BBVA Tú Cuentas blog)