Rogers’ RichContext Launches New Product

E-commerce company RichContext in Rogers recently held a virtual launch for its new product: Hyphen, a digital platform that’s been in the works for a year.

Billy Courtney, co-founder and head of partnerships, said Hyphen allows all digital retail media — Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, etc. — to direct online shoppers to where they can purchase products tied to specific brand promotions.

Here’s the example he used to explain how Hyphen works, broken down into steps:

1. RichContext partners with several different brands to build out a digital s’mores promotion.
2. These are the same brands that have the s’mores display or end cap you may have seen before in a store. It’s the one that may tempt you into buying Hershey bars, graham crackers and marshmallows by putting those items together in the same place at your store.
3. Brands “haven’t figured out how to translate that into the digital environment,” so RichContext helps shoppers discover their products in the digital environment, Courtney said.
4. The company buys a s’mores ad on Facebook, Instagram, etc., that targets specific users.
5. Shoppers click on that ad and enter the Hyphen platform.
6. The platform loads quickly, and its look is consistent with the ad they clicked on; it also knows the shopper’s location and connects him to the nearest store.
7. Then shoppers can add the chocolate bars, marshmallows and graham crackers to their carts to be picked up at the store. The goal is enabling them to do that in just a few clicks.
8. RichContext’s technology ensures that the items that are shown are available and in stock at the shopper’s store before the shopper even clicks on them, preventing substitutions when he arrives to pick up his items.

The goal is for the online shopper’s experience to be seamless and for clients to engage more of the shoppers using pickup and delivery services.

Courtney agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic had made the timing of Hyphen’s launch more fortunate. In fact, RichContext has had its best months in company history during the pandemic.

“We focus a lot on the pickup and delivery shopper. So, clearly, that’s a business model that has accelerated in five weeks what should have taken five years. So the adoption levels are up significantly,” Courtney said. There’s been “an acceleration of the adoption of those services, which equates to an acceleration of the adoption of our technology.”

RichContext, which employs 30 people, will mark its four-year anniversary on July 16.

The company was founded by people who were involved in the rollout of Walmart’s grocery pickup and delivery services, worked for brands like Nestlé and Coca-Cola and worked for marketing agencies, Courtney said.

The company is also self-funded. It has raised no outside capital and has been profitable “since day one,” he said.

Courtney declined to disclose RichContext’s annual revenue, but said its revenue had doubled every year and its workforce has grown significantly.

“We just built products that people and our clients desire. And, so far, we’ve been fortunate that they’ve been successful right out of the gate,” Courtney said. “So this year, we planned on, we’re definitely forecasting to [reach] the double-digit millions threshold.”

The company makes money through annual retainers and by charging its clients on a project-by-project basis. It builds out media strategies, executes them and reports results. RichContext works with more than 600 companies, including 40 “top-tier” brands, he said.

“We’ve really seen a significant increase in adoption of this technology as an alternative to, in some cases, working directly with retailers themselves,” he said. “Because what powers this, these [shopper] experiences, is a bit more intelligent than any other offering that’s on the market.”

One feature that sets the company’s technology apart is the speed at which shoppers get to the page where they can buy a product after clicking an ad, Courtney said. When a page takes a long time to load, shoppers lose interest and don’t buy. That’s unwanted media waste.

Another feature that sets its technology apart is RichContext’s ensuring that the items are in stock and available at the shopper’s store.

“The goal is to minimize the amount of clicks per [shopper] and maximize the conversion for a brand,” Courtney said. Conversion refers to the shopper taking a desired action, such as buying a product. “And we think that we’ve been able to unlock that in a way that far exceeds any other platforms that exist.”