AI for retailers. The posting, done for you.

The posting nobody has time for, the email to customers who have not been in for months, the product descriptions for a new season, and the review nobody asks for.

AI for retailers is the marketing half happening on its own, and every word of it still gets read before it goes out.

Two different things get called AI, and only one of them matters here. The first is automation, which means a job that starts on its own: a customer has not bought in three months, so a message goes out. The second writes a first draft in your shop's words, which is what stops a post reading like it came from head office.

What it takes off you first

• The posting nobody has time for.

  A month of posts drafted from photographs of your own stock, ready to read and change before any of them go out.

• The customers who stopped coming in.

  A message when somebody has not been in for a while, mentioning what is new rather than sending a discount code.

• The descriptions for a new season.

  A first draft for every new line from the real details, so nobody writes forty of them from a blank page.

• The review nobody asked for.

  The request goes out after a purchase, with a link that opens straight to your Google listing.

All of that is work a shop already knows should happen. It happens in the week the shop is busy, which is the same week it would have been worth the most.

It costs repeat customers. Somebody who bought from you once and then heard nothing for six months is somebody who now buys the same thing wherever they happen to be, and they were the cheapest sale you had.

An independent shop lives on people coming back. Getting somebody through the door the first time takes advertising or luck. Getting them back takes a reason and a reminder, and the reminder is the part that stops happening the moment the shop gets busy.

The same is true of the feed. A shop that posts for three weeks and then stops for two months is invisible in between, and the people who followed it were the ones most likely to come in.

What that costs you

• Second visits that never happened.

  Not because they were unhappy. Because nothing reminded them you were there.

• The stock nobody knew arrived.

  New season lands, and the people who would have wanted it first never heard.

• Reviews you earned and never got.

  Every happy customer who was never asked is a review a competitor has and you do not.

The Australian Retailers Association has been saying for years that the independents holding their ground are the ones staying in front of their own customers, and this is the cheapest way to do that consistently.

Nothing here asks you to change systems. It works from your point of sale, your online store and your social accounts as they are, and the value is in the jobs happening around them.

Your point of sale knows who bought what and when. Your store holds the products. Your social accounts hold the audience. What none of them does is write to those people, which is why that still happens after closing.

Where the gaps are

• Between the sale and the next visit.

  The purchase is recorded and nothing goes back to that customer unless somebody writes to them.

• Between the stock and the feed.

  New stock arrives, gets photographed, and sits on a phone until somebody has time to post it.

• Between the product and the description.

  The details exist and a person turns them into words, one line at a time.

• Between the purchase and the review.

  The sale goes through and nothing asks the customer what they thought.

Each of those takes a few minutes by hand. Across a season they are the reason the marketing is the first thing dropped. The audit maps them in whatever you already run and puts a number beside each one.

It will not post without you reading it first, it will not price anything, and it will not say something about a product that is not in your own data.

A shop's voice is most of what people are buying, so nothing goes out unread. The drafts arrive in a batch and you change what does not sound like you before any of them are scheduled.

Where it stops, deliberately

• Posting unread.

  Every post is a draft until somebody in the shop has read it. That is not a setting, it is how it is built.

• Anything with a price on it.

  It never discounts and it never prices. What your shop says is what it says.

• Anything not in your own product data.

  If your store does not say it, it does not say it either.

Where the job is genuinely repeatable and written down, it runs. Where it is not, it stops and waits, and everything it drafted can be read afterwards.

The jobs that only happen when somebody has a free hour go on a list, and the one costing the most repeat business comes off it first. The wording gets approved before anything is built, and it runs watched before it runs alone.

The first one is the message to lapsed customers, because those people already know you. The next starts once that one is running.

1. The jobs that keep getting dropped go on a list

About twenty minutes. It is usually the posting, the email to the list, the descriptions and the review request.

2. The one costing the most repeat business goes first

A rough number goes beside each. Going back to people who already bought usually wins, because it costs nothing to reach them.

3. The voice gets settled before anybody builds anything

A handful of your own posts and emails, read properly, so the drafts come back sounding like the shop rather than like a brand.

4. It runs watched before it runs alone

For a fortnight, with somebody reading every draft. That fortnight is what stops the first month sounding generic.

5. It connects to what you already run

Point of sale, store and social accounts stay exactly as they are. Nothing gets replaced and nothing gets migrated.

6. The next one starts once the first is boring

A job is finished when nobody in the shop is thinking about it any more. That is the signal to start the next one.

The voice takes longer to settle than the building. The first month of drafts arrives inside a fortnight, and it gets better through the first few rounds as the changes you make go back into it.

The order it happens in

• The voice comes first.

  Your own posts and emails read properly, so the drafts sound like the shop. This is the slow half.

• Then a month of drafts arrives.

  Read, changed and scheduled, with nothing going out unread.

• Then it settles into a rhythm.

  You hear about it monthly: what went out, what people replied to, and anything that failed and stopped.

The customer messages start working sooner than the posting does, because those people already know the shop. The feed is the slower half and it works by accumulation.

Ask whose accounts everything runs in, who owns the customer list, whether anything goes out unread, and what you keep if you stop paying.

These are worth asking of anybody, including this one, so the answers given here sit under each question.

• Whose accounts does it run in?

  Yours, in your own name. A social account in an agency's name is not your account.

• Who owns the customer list?

  You do. The list is the business, so it never sits inside somebody else's platform in somebody else's name.

• Does anything go out without being read?

  Not here. Anybody who says otherwise is offering to speak in your shop's voice unsupervised.

• What do I keep if I stop paying?

  A build keeps running afterwards. A subscription stops on the day the paying stops, and you start again from nothing.

• Am I locked into a contract?

  Not here, it runs month to month. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

All of this can also be done in house, and plenty of shops do it well. The six steps above are the same either way.