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The development of large language models (LLMs) has significantly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) across various fields. Among these advancements, mobile GUI agents—designed to perform tasks autonomously on smartphones—show considerable potential. However, evaluating these agents poses notable challenges. Current datasets and benchmarks often rely on static frame evaluations, which provide snapshots of app interfaces for agents to predict the next action. This method falls short of simulating the dynamic and interactive nature of real-world mobile tasks, creating a gap between tested capabilities and actual performance. Additionally, existing platforms tend to restrict app diversity, task complexity, and real-time interaction, underscoring the need for a more comprehensive evaluation framework.

In response to these challenges, researchers from CUHK, vivo AI Lab, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have introduced the Android Agent Arena (A3), a platform designed to improve the evaluation of mobile GUI agents. A3 provides a dynamic evaluation environment with tasks that mirror real-world scenarios. The platform integrates 21 commonly used third-party apps and includes 201 tasks ranging from retrieving online information to completing multi-step operations. Additionally, A3 incorporates an automated evaluation system leveraging business-level LLMs, which reduces the need for manual intervention and coding expertise. This approach aims to close the gap between research-driven development and practical applications for mobile agents.

Key Features and Advantages of A3

A3 is built on the Appium framework, facilitating seamless interaction between GUI agents and Android devices. It supports a broad action space, ensuring compatibility with agents trained on diverse datasets. Tasks are categorized into three types—operation tasks, single-frame queries, and multi-frame queries—and are divided into three levels of difficulty. This variety enables a thorough assessment of an agent’s capabilities, from basic navigation to complex decision-making.

The platform’s evaluation mechanism includes task-specific functions and a business-level LLM evaluation process. Task-specific functions use predefined criteria to measure performance, while the LLM evaluation process employs models like GPT-4o and Gemini for autonomous assessment. This combination ensures accurate evaluations and scalability for a growing number of tasks.

Insights from Initial Testing

The researchers tested various agents on A3, including fine-tuned models and business-level LLMs, yielding the following insights:

Challenges in Dynamic Evaluations: While agents performed well in static evaluations, they faced difficulties in A3’s dynamic environment. For instance, tasks requiring multi-frame queries often resulted in low success rates, highlighting the challenges of real-world scenarios.

Role of LLMs in Evaluation: The LLM-based evaluation achieved 80–84% accuracy, with cross-validation reducing errors significantly. However, complex tasks occasionally required human oversight to ensure accuracy.

Common Errors: Observed errors included incorrect click coordinates, redundant actions, and difficulties in self-correction. These issues underscore the need for agents capable of learning adaptively and understanding context.

Conclusion

Android Agent Arena (A3) offers a valuable framework for evaluating mobile GUI agents. By providing a diverse set of tasks, an extensive action space, and automated evaluation systems, A3 addresses many limitations of existing benchmarks. The platform represents a step forward in aligning research advancements with practical applications, enabling the development of more capable and reliable AI agents. As AI continues to evolve, A3 sets a strong foundation for future innovations in mobile agent evaluation.

Check out the Paper and Project Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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Evaluating the real-world applicability of large language models (LLMs) is essential to guide their integration into practical use cases. One key challenge in assessing LLMs is their tendency to exploit fixed datasets during testing, leading to inflated performance metrics. Static evaluation frameworks often fail to determine a model’s ability to adapt to feedback or provide clarifications, resulting in evaluations that do not reflect real-world scenarios. This gap in assessment methods necessitates a dynamic and iterative framework to test models under evolving conditions.

Traditionally, evaluation methods like “LLM-as-a-Judge” rely on fixed datasets and static benchmarks to measure performance. While these approaches often correlate better with human judgments than lexical matching techniques, they suffer from biases, including verbosity preference and inconsistent scoring across iterations. They also fail to evaluate models in multi-turn interactions, where adaptability and iterative improvement are critical. As a result, these traditional methods struggle to capture a holistic understanding of an LLM’s capabilities.

Researchers from KAIST, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Contextual AI have introduced LLM-AS-AN-INTERVIEWER, a novel framework for evaluating LLMs. This approach mimics human interview processes by dynamically modifying datasets to generate tailored questions and providing feedback on model responses. The interviewer LLM adapts its questions based on the evaluated model’s performance, fostering a detailed and nuanced assessment of its capabilities. Unlike static methods, this framework captures behaviors such as response refinement and the ability to address additional inquiries effectively.

The framework operates in three stages: problem setup, feedback and revision, and follow-up questioning. Initially, the interviewer creates diverse and challenging questions by modifying benchmark datasets. During the interaction, it provides detailed feedback on the model’s responses and poses follow-up questions that test additional aspects of its reasoning or knowledge. This iterative process culminates in generating an “Interview Report,” which compiles performance metrics, error analysis, and a comprehensive summary of the model’s strengths and limitations. The report offers actionable insights into the model’s real-world applicability and adaptability.

Experiments using the MATH and DepthQA datasets demonstrate the framework’s efficacy. For MATH, which focuses on arithmetic reasoning, models like GPT-4o achieved % initial problem-solving accuracy of 72%. This accuracy increased to 84% through iterative feedback and interaction, highlighting the framework’s ability to enhance model performance. Similarly, DepthQA evaluations, which emphasize open-ended queries, revealed the effectiveness of follow-up questions in uncovering models’ knowledge gaps and improving their responses. For instance, the adaptability metric for GPT-3.5 showcased a marked improvement of 25% after iterative interactions, reflecting the model’s ability to refine answers based on feedback.

The framework also addresses critical biases prevalent in LLM evaluations. Verbosity bias, a tendency to favor longer responses, diminishes as interactions progress, with a significant drop in correlation between response length and scores. Further, self-enhancement bias, where models favor their responses during evaluation, is minimized through dynamic interactions and comparative scoring. These adjustments ensure consistent and reliable evaluation outcomes across multiple runs, with standard deviations decreasing as feedback iterations increase.

LLM-AS-AN-INTERVIEWER offers a robust solution to data contamination, a major LLM training and evaluation concern. The framework mitigates contamination risks by dynamically modifying benchmark questions and introducing novel follow-ups. For example, models trained on contaminated datasets showed significantly higher performance in static settings but aligned more closely with uncontaminated models when evaluated dynamically. This result underscores the framework’s ability to distinguish between genuine model capabilities and artifacts of training data overlap.

In conclusion, LLM-AS-AN-INTERVIEWER represents a paradigm shift in evaluating large language models. Simulating human-like interactions and dynamically adapting to model responses provide a more accurate and nuanced understanding of their capabilities. The framework’s iterative nature highlights areas for improvement and enables models to demonstrate their adaptability and real-world applicability. With its robust design and comprehensive analysis, this framework has the potential to set a new standard for LLM evaluation, ensuring that future models are assessed with greater precision and relevance.

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Proteins, the essential molecular machinery of life, play a central role in numerous biological processes. Decoding their intricate sequence, structure, and function (SSF) is a fundamental pursuit in biochemistry, molecular biology, and drug development. Understanding the interplay between these three aspects is crucial for uncovering the principles of life at a molecular level. Computational tools have been developed to tackle this challenge, with alignment-based methods such as BLAST, MUSCLE, TM-align, MMseqs2, and Foldseek making significant strides. However, these tools often prioritize efficiency by focusing on local alignments, which can limit their ability to capture global insights. Additionally, they typically operate within a single modality—sequence or structure—without integrating multiple modalities. This limitation is compounded by the fact that nearly 30% of proteins in UniProt remain unannotated due to their sequences being too divergent from known functional counterparts.

Recent advancements in neural network-based tools have enabled more accurate functional annotation of proteins, identifying corresponding labels for given sequences. However, these methods rely on predefined annotations and cannot interpret or generate detailed natural language descriptions of protein functions. The emergence of LLMs such as ChatGPT and LLaMA has showcased exceptional capabilities in natural language processing. Similarly, the rise of protein language models (PLMs) has opened new avenues in computational biology. Building on these developments, researchers propose creating a foundational protein model that leverages advanced language modeling to represent protein SSF holistically, addressing limitations in current approaches.

ProTrek, developed by researchers at Westlake University, is a cutting-edge tri-modal PLM that integrates SSF. Using contrastive learning it aligns these modalities to enable rapid and accurate searches across nine SSF combinations. ProTrek surpasses existing tools like Foldseek and MMseqs2 in speed (100x) and accuracy while outperforming ESM-2 in downstream prediction tasks. Trained on 40 million protein-text pairs, it offers global representation learning to identify proteins with similar functions despite structural or sequence differences. With its zero-shot retrieval and fine-tuning capabilities, ProTrek sets new protein research and analysis benchmarks.

Descriptive data from UniProt subsections were categorized into sequence-level (e.g., function descriptions) and residue-level (e.g., binding sites) to construct protein-function pairs. GPT-4 was used to organize residue-level data and paraphrase sequence-level descriptions, yielding 14M training pairs from Swiss-Prot. An initial ProTrek model was pre-trained on this dataset and then used to filter UniRef50, producing a final dataset of 39M pairs. The training involved InfoNCE and MLM losses, leveraging ESM-2 and PubMedBERT encoders with optimization strategies like AdamW and DeepSpeed. ProTrek outperformed baselines on benchmarks using 4,000 Swiss-Prot proteins and 104,000 UniProt negatives, evaluated by metrics like MAP and precision.

ProTrek represents a groundbreaking advancement in protein exploration by integrating sequence, structure, and natural language function (SSF) into a sophisticated tri-modal language model. Leveraging contrastive learning bridges the divide between protein data and human interpretation, enabling highly efficient searches across nine SSF pairwise modality combinations. ProTrek delivers transformative improvements, particularly in protein sequence-function retrieval, achieving 30-60 times the performance of previous methods. It also surpasses traditional alignment tools such as Foldseek and MMseqs2, demonstrating over 100-fold speed enhancements and greater accuracy in identifying functionally similar proteins with diverse structures. Additionally, ProTrek consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art ESM-2 model, excelling in 9 out of 11 downstream tasks and setting new standards in protein intelligence.

These capabilities establish ProTrek as a pivotal protein research and database analysis tool. Its remarkable performance stems from its extensive training dataset, which is significantly larger than comparable models. ProTrek’s natural language understanding capabilities go beyond conventional keyword-matching approaches, enabling context-aware searches and advancing applications such as text-guided protein design and protein-specific ChatGPT systems. ProTrek empowers researchers to analyze vast protein databases efficiently and address complex protein-text interactions by providing superior speed, accuracy, and versatility, paving the way for significant advancements in protein science and engineering.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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You’ve got traffic. You’ve got products. But do you really know what your customers are thinking as they move from “maybe” to “add to cart”? 

For any marketer, understanding their journey is the key to doing the thing we all want to do – turning browsers into buyers and buyers into loyal fans. 

And it’s a must! Why? Because people aren’t just hopping on your site and making a purchase. 81% of shoppers research online before making a purchase. If you’re not tuned into what they’re doing during that research phase, you’re leaving money on the table.

Path to purchase research gives you the insights you need to meet customers where they are, at every stage of their journey. 

To get you started on your own research, we’re diving into exactly how to uncover those insights, use them to level up your marketing, and keep your customers coming back for more. 

Let’s get into it.

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What Is Path to Purchase Research?

Path to purchase research is all about understanding what makes your customers tick – every step, click, and decision they take on their way to making a purchase. 

It’s more than just tracking data points or following a trail of website visits. It’s about digging into why they do what they do and uncovering the motivations, obstacles, and triggers behind their actions.

Unlike general customer journey mapping, which focuses on high-level stages, path to purchase research gets into the nitty-gritty details. It identifies the moments that make or break a purchase decision (think a glowing review, a tempting discount, or a clunky checkout process).

For ecommerce brands, this kind of research gives you true insights into how to improve your messaging, refine your marketing, and create a smoother, more personalized shopping experience that converts.

Path to Purchase: What the Research Says

To truly understand the path to purchase, it helps to look at the numbers. 

Recent studies and reports highlight just how complex and dynamic the buying journey has become, especially in ecommerce.

Digital-First Behavior: According to Think with Google, 53% of shoppers research online before making any purchase decision. Whether it’s comparing products, reading reviews, or searching for deals, the majority of the buying journey starts long before customers hit “buy now.”

Omnichannel Influence: Shopping isn’t confined to one channel. A study found that 73% of consumers use multiple touchpoints during their path to purchase—browsing online, visiting a store, scrolling social media, or even clicking an email. This blending of online and offline experiences means brands need to create seamless connections across platforms.

Trust and Reviews: Social proof is everything. A whopping 93% of buyers read reviews before making a purchase. Positive reviews build trust and confidence, while a lack of them can be a dealbreaker.

For ecommerce brands, these findings underscore the importance of path to purchase research. 

Understanding how your customers interact with digital and physical touchpoints, what influences their decisions, and how trust factors in can help you tailor your strategies for maximum impact.

Let’s break down the key stages in the path to purchase so you can start applying these insights.

Key Stages in the Path to Purchase

We all know the path to purchase isn’t just a straight line. It’s a series of critical moments where customers decide whether or not to move closer to hitting “buy.” 

Image: Salespanel

For ecommerce brands, understanding these stages is the key to meeting your customers where they are and nudging them forward. Let’s break it down.

1. Awareness: How Customers Discover Your Brand

The journey starts with discovery. Customers are figuring out what they need or realizing they want something they didn’t know they needed.

Where It Happens: Social media ads, organic search results, influencer recommendations, or even a well-timed email.

Ecommerce Example: A DTC skincare brand runs Instagram ads showing before-and-after results of their best-selling moisturizer. Customers who click are taken to a landing page showcasing similar success stories.

Pro Tip: Use tools like Customers.ai to identify anonymous visitors from these discovery channels and follow up with tailored content that keeps your brand top of mind.

2. Consideration: The Research Phase

Here, customers start narrowing down their options. They’re comparing products, reading reviews, and hunting for the best deal.

Where It Happens: Product pages, review sites, YouTube unboxing videos, and price comparison tools.

Ecommerce Example: A fashion retailer notices customers spending extra time on product pages featuring video reviews and detailed size guides. They optimize all product pages with similar content to keep shoppers engaged.

Pro Tip: Make sure your product pages are loaded with trust signals (reviews, ratings, and answers to common questions). This is where social proof can help close that sale.

3. Decision: Closing the Sale

This is the make-or-break moment. Customers are ready to buy or they’re ready to walk away. Your job is to make saying “yes” as easy as possible.

Where It Happens: The checkout page, cart reminders, or even a last-minute exit-intent popup.

Ecommerce Example: A fitness gear brand adds a “Buy now, pay later” option at checkout, reducing cart abandonment by 20%.

Pro Tip: Streamline your checkout process. Keep it short, remove unnecessary steps, and offer multiple payment methods. Don’t let a clunky UX cost you the sale.

4. Post-Purchase: Turning Buyers into Repeat Customers

Every good marketer knows the path doesn’t end at the sale. Heck, it’s just the beginning of building loyalty. Customers who feel valued are more likely to come back and buy again. It’s time to build that beautiful relationship!

Where It Happens: Thank-you emails, post-purchase surveys, loyalty programs, and even SMS updates.

Ecommerce Example: An online coffee subscription brand sends a follow-up email with tips on how to brew the perfect cup, along with a 10% discount for their next purchase.

Pro Tip: Use post-purchase emails to upsell or cross-sell related products. For example, “Loved your new sneakers? Check out these running socks!”

When you understand the key stages in the path to purchase, you can create strategies that resonate with your customers at every step. 

Next up, let’s talk about how to dig deeper into your customers’ journey with effective research techniques.

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How to Conduct Effective Path to Purchase Research

Understanding the path to purchase means getting into the weeds of customer behavior. 

This means you can’t just skim surface-level data, you need to dive deep into the moments that shape decisions. Here’s how to do it right.

1. Collect Data Across Multiple Touchpoints

Your customers interact with your brand across dozens of channels and each one holds a clue about their journey. The trick is to connect the dots.

Tools to Use: Start with platforms like Google Analytics to track site behavior, heatmaps from tools like Crazy Egg to see where visitors engage most, and Customers.ai to identify and follow up with anonymous visitors.

Why It Matters: If you’re only looking at one channel, say, your website, you’re missing the bigger picture. Integrate data from social media, email campaigns, and paid ads to create a comprehensive view of your customers’ path to purchase.

Pro Tip: Use UTMs on every campaign link to track which sources drive the most conversions and where customers drop off.

2. Use Customer Surveys and Feedback

Your customers are your best source of insight…if you ask the right questions. Surveys can reveal motivations, pain points, and the factors that pushed them to make (or abandon) a purchase.

How to Craft Effective Surveys: Keep them short and focused. Example questions include:

“What made you choose our product over others?”

“What almost stopped you from completing your purchase?”

“How did you hear about us?”

Use Cases: Run post-purchase surveys to identify what worked well, or send exit-intent popups to collect feedback from shoppers who didn’t buy.

Pro Tip: Incentivize survey participation with a small discount or entry into a giveaway to boost response rates.

3. Analyze Patterns in Buyer Behavior

Once you have the data, it’s time to make sense of it. Look for trends that reveal how different segments of your audience move through the path to purchase.

Methods to Use:

Cohort Analysis: Group customers by behavior, such as purchase date or frequency, to see how they evolve over time.

Segmentation: Break down your audience by spend, product category, or time to purchase to uncover actionable insights.

Spotting Drop-Off Points: Identify where customers tend to bounce, whether it’s on product pages, the checkout process, or during a specific stage of your email flow.

Pro Tip: Use Customers.ai to track and analyze visitor behavior in real-time, helping you identify bottlenecks and optimize in the moment.

When you combine data from touchpoints, direct feedback, and behavioral analysis, you’ll have everything you need to create a customer journey that drives conversions. 

Next, let’s look at the tools and strategies that make decoding the path to purchase even easier.

Tools and Strategies for Decoding the Path to Purchase

Decoding your customers’ path to purchase requires the right tools and strategies to turn raw data into actionable insights. Here’s how to make it happen.

1. Behavioral Analytics Tools

Understanding how customers interact with your site is the first step to optimizing their journey. Behavioral analytics tools give you a front-row seat to see what’s working—and what’s not.

Tools to Try:

Hotjar: Use heatmaps to see where visitors are clicking, scrolling, or hesitating.

Crazy Egg: Dive into session recordings to watch how customers navigate your site.

Customers.ai: Track visitor behavior in real time, even identifying previously anonymous users for follow-up targeting.

Why It Matters: Heatmaps and session replays reveal friction points in your customer journey. If visitors are clicking everything except “Add to Cart,” it’s time to rethink your layout or messaging.

Example: An online furniture store used heatmaps to discover that customers were struggling to find their shipping policy. After moving it to a prominent spot on the product page, cart abandonments dropped by 15%.

2. Retargeting Strategies

Not every customer will convert on their first visit and that’s okay. Retargeting lets you re-engage those who’ve shown interest and guide them back into the purchase funnel.

Tactics to Use:

Dynamic Product Ads: Showcase the exact items customers viewed, complete with pricing and discounts.

Email Retargeting: Send personalized emails to browsers and cart abandoners with incentives like free shipping or limited-time discounts.

Why It Works: Retargeting aligns perfectly with the path to purchase by picking up where customers left off, whether that’s browsing a product or hesitating at checkout.

Example: A fashion retailer used dynamic product ads on Instagram to retarget customers who browsed their spring collection. The result? A 28% lift in conversions from ad clicks.

3. Predictive Analytics

Want to know what your customers are likely to do next? Predictive analytics uses past behavior to forecast future actions, helping you stay one step ahead.

How It Works: Tools like Klaviyo analyze browsing and purchase patterns to predict what customers are likely to buy or when they’re ready to purchase.

Why It Matters: Instead of reacting to customer actions, you can proactively send tailored messages or offers that match their next likely move.

Example: “Customers who browse the fitness gear category are 2x more likely to buy within 3 days.” Knowing this, an ecommerce store can trigger a follow-up email with a personalized discount, driving faster conversions.

These tools and strategies take the guesswork out of understanding your customers’ journey. By combining behavioral analytics, retargeting, and predictive models, you’ll have everything you need to optimize every step of the path to purchase.

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Turning Path to Purchase Research into Action

Understanding your customers’ path to purchase is one thing. Acting on it is another. 

Here’s how to take those insights and transform them into strategies that actually actually drive sales.

Step 1: Break Down What You’ve Learned

Take a step back and look at the data you’ve gathered. Ask yourself:

What’s driving customers to your site?

Where are they dropping off?

What’s stopping them from converting?

Example: If you’ve learned that most customers bounce on your product pages, it’s a sign those pages might not be answering their questions or building enough trust.

Step 2: Prioritize Quick Wins

Not every change has to be a full overhaul. Focus first on the areas where small tweaks can deliver big results.

Awareness Stage: If Instagram ads are your top driver of traffic, double down by creating more video content tailored to your audience’s interests.

Decision Stage: If your checkout process feels clunky, streamline it by eliminating unnecessary steps or offering guest checkout.

Step 3: Build Experiments Around Your Insights

Path to purchase research gives you the “what.” Now it’s time to test the “how.”

A/B test new product page layouts. Does a larger “Add to Cart” button improve conversions?

Experiment with retargeting ads. Does highlighting reviews increase click-through rates?

Try personalized email flows. Does including a discount in post-purchase emails boost repeat purchases?

Example: A DTC apparel brand noticed a high bounce rate on their cart page. After testing a free shipping banner above the checkout button, their conversion rate jumped by 12%.

Step 4: Scale What Works

Once you’ve identified what moves the needle, it’s time to double down. Expand winning strategies across other stages of the path to purchase.

Example: If personalized product recommendations work well in emails, bring them to your product pages and retargeting ads for a consistent, seamless experience.

Step 5: Keep Evolving

The path to purchase isn’t static. Customer behavior shifts, platforms evolve, and competitors adapt. Make ongoing research and optimization part of your process to stay ahead of the game.

Pro Tip: Tools like Customers.ai can help you track and analyze shifts in real-time, so you’re always ready to pivot when needed.

By breaking down your findings, prioritizing quick wins, and iterating based on data, you’ll be ready to act at every stage of the path to purchase.

Master the Path, Win the Purchase

Understanding your customers’ path to purchase isn’t just about data. It’s about knowing what makes them tick. 

When you nail their journey, you’re creating an experience that makes them want to come back again (and again).

And here’s the deal – you don’t have to fix everything overnight. Start with one stage. Maybe it’s dialing in your retargeting ads or fixing that clunky checkout process. Focus on one thing, nail it, and watch the results roll in.

Need a hand? 

Customers.ai has everything you need to crack the code on your customers’ buying journey. 

Start your free trial today and let’s make it happen.

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Path to Purchase Research FAQs

What is path to purchase research?

Path to purchase research involves analyzing the steps a customer takes from discovering a product to completing a purchase. It focuses on understanding behaviors, motivations, and decision-making processes throughout the customer journey. This research identifies critical touchpoints, such as when customers browse, compare, and make a purchase decision. It’s especially important for ecommerce brands looking to optimize conversions and customer loyalty. By identifying what drives or deters purchases, businesses can refine their strategies to meet customer needs more effectively.

Why is path to purchase research important for ecommerce?

Path to purchase research helps ecommerce brands understand customer behavior at every stage of the buying journey. This insight allows businesses to optimize marketing, streamline user experiences, and eliminate friction points that may deter customers. For example, knowing where customers drop off can lead to better product pages or simpler checkout processes. It also helps brands personalize their communication, resulting in higher engagement and conversions. In a competitive market, understanding the customer journey is essential to staying ahead.

What are the main stages of the path to purchase?

The path to purchase typically includes four stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Post-Purchase. Awareness is when customers first learn about your brand or product. Consideration involves research and comparison, as they evaluate their options. The decision stage is when they make the purchase, influenced by factors like pricing, trust, and convenience. Post-purchase focuses on building loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases. Each stage offers opportunities to engage and guide customers effectively.

How does path to purchase research differ from customer journey mapping?

While both focus on understanding customer behavior, path to purchase research is more detailed and action-oriented. It zeroes in on the specific steps and motivations that lead to a purchase, often with a focus on ecommerce. Customer journey mapping provides a broader overview of the entire customer experience, including non-purchase-related interactions. Path to purchase research aims to uncover actionable insights to optimize sales funnels and marketing strategies. It’s particularly useful for driving conversions and revenue growth.

What tools are best for conducting path to purchase research?

Tools like Google Analytics, heatmaps from Hotjar or Crazy Egg, and customer survey platforms like Typeform are excellent for gathering data. Behavioral analytics tools such as Customers.ai help track visitor behavior and identify patterns in real time. Retargeting platforms like Facebook Ads Manager and email marketing tools like Klaviyo are also valuable for engaging customers during their journey. For a holistic view, integrate data across platforms to connect the dots between touchpoints. Choosing the right tools depends on your specific business goals and customer journey complexity.

What types of data are most important in path to purchase research?

Key data includes website analytics, customer demographics, and behavioral patterns like time spent on pages or cart abandonment rates. Social media engagement and ad performance metrics are also critical for understanding the awareness and consideration stages. Feedback from customer surveys and reviews provides qualitative insights into motivations and barriers. Heatmaps and session recordings reveal friction points in navigation or checkout flows. Combining these data types offers a comprehensive view of the customer journey.

How do ecommerce brands use path to purchase research?

Ecommerce brands use path to purchase research to optimize marketing campaigns, refine product pages, and enhance the overall shopping experience. For example, if research shows customers abandoning carts due to high shipping costs, brands can offer free shipping thresholds or discounts. Insights can also inform ad targeting, ensuring customers receive relevant messages at the right time. Post-purchase research helps create loyalty programs or personalized email campaigns to drive repeat business. Ultimately, it helps brands increase conversions and lifetime value.

What role do reviews play in the path to purchase?

Reviews are crucial, especially in the consideration stage, as they build trust and credibility. Studies show that 93% of customers read reviews before making a purchase. Positive reviews can be the deciding factor in converting a hesitant customer, while negative reviews may deter them. Including reviews on product pages or showcasing testimonials in ads can significantly impact conversions. Encouraging happy customers to leave reviews also boosts your social proof and strengthens your brand’s reputation.

How can social media influence the path to purchase?

Social media plays a vital role in the awareness and consideration stages of the buying journey. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok allow brands to showcase products, share reviews, and engage directly with potential customers. Influencer collaborations can introduce your brand to new audiences, while targeted ads can retarget users based on browsing behavior. Social proof, like user-generated content, helps build trust. When done right, social media can seamlessly guide customers from discovery to decision.

What is the impact of mobile shopping on the path to purchase?

Mobile shopping has made the path to purchase more immediate and accessible. Customers can research, compare, and buy products directly from their smartphones. However, mobile-first optimization is critical—slow-loading pages or clunky navigation can lead to drop-offs. Features like mobile-friendly checkout, one-click payment options, and clear CTAs improve the mobile shopping experience. Path to purchase research helps identify pain points in mobile shopping journeys, enabling brands to optimize for conversions.

How can heatmaps improve the customer journey?

Heatmaps visualize where customers click, scroll, or linger on your website, offering insights into their behavior. They can reveal friction points, such as unclear navigation or ineffective CTAs, that lead to drop-offs. For example, if customers aren’t scrolling far enough to see key product details, repositioning that content can boost engagement. Heatmaps also help identify high-performing areas to replicate across other pages. These insights are invaluable for refining the decision stage of the path to purchase.

How does omnichannel behavior affect the path to purchase?

Omnichannel behavior means customers interact with multiple touchpoints—like browsing online, visiting a store, and clicking on email promotions—before purchasing. This complexity makes it essential for brands to provide a consistent and connected experience across channels. Path to purchase research helps identify which channels drive the most engagement and where customers drop off. Integrating data from online and offline interactions is crucial to creating a seamless journey that guides customers to conversion.

How can predictive analytics help with path to purchase research?

Predictive analytics uses historical data to forecast customer behavior and anticipate their next actions. For example, it can predict which customers are likely to abandon their carts or which products will be most appealing based on browsing history. This allows brands to proactively send targeted emails or ads that align with the customer’s stage in the journey. By acting on these predictions, brands can reduce drop-offs and increase conversions.

What are common pain points in the path to purchase?

Common pain points include unclear product information, slow-loading pages, complicated checkout processes, and unexpected shipping costs. Customers also drop off when trust factors, like reviews or return policies, are missing. Researching these barriers helps brands make strategic fixes, such as adding FAQs to product pages or streamlining checkout steps. Addressing these pain points ensures a smoother and more satisfying customer experience.

How do abandoned cart emails fit into the path to purchase?

Abandoned cart emails target customers who leave items in their cart without completing the purchase. These emails often include reminders, product images, and incentives like discounts or free shipping to encourage completion. They are an effective way to re-engage customers in the decision stage. Path to purchase research can identify the best timing and messaging for these emails, maximizing their impact on conversions.

How can path to purchase research improve post-purchase engagement?

Post-purchase engagement includes actions like sending thank-you emails, requesting reviews, or suggesting complementary products. Research helps identify what customers value after their purchase, allowing brands to tailor their communication. For example, insights might show that follow-up emails with usage tips or exclusive discounts drive repeat purchases. This stage is critical for building loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value.

What metrics should you track for path to purchase research?

Key metrics include bounce rates, time on page, cart abandonment rates, and conversion rates for each stage of the journey. Retargeting click-through rates and email open rates can provide insights into engagement during the consideration and decision stages. Post-purchase metrics, like repeat purchase rates and customer lifetime value, reveal the effectiveness of loyalty efforts. Tracking these metrics helps brands optimize every touchpoint.

How does personalization impact the path to purchase?

Personalization enhances the customer experience by delivering relevant content, products, and offers at the right time. For example, personalized product recommendations based on browsing history can move customers from consideration to decision. Path to purchase research helps identify where personalization will have the most impact. Customers who feel understood are more likely to engage, convert, and stay loyal.

How do loyalty programs fit into the path to purchase?

Loyalty programs focus on the post-purchase stage, encouraging repeat business and long-term customer relationships. Path to purchase research can identify incentives that resonate most with your audience, such as exclusive discounts or points-based rewards. Effective loyalty programs not only increase customer retention but also boost lifetime value, completing the purchase cycle.

What role do trust signals play in the path to purchase?

Trust signals like secure payment icons, customer reviews, and return policies reassure customers during the decision stage. Path to purchase research can reveal which trust signals are most important to your audience. For example, if customers hesitate at checkout, adding security badges or testimonials can improve confidence and reduce drop-offs.

How can businesses measure the success of path to purchase strategies?

Success can be measured through increased conversion rates, reduced cart abandonment, and improved customer retention. Metrics like ROAS (return on ad spend) and customer lifetime value are also indicators of effective strategies. Comparing pre- and post-optimization data offers a clear view of what’s working. Path to purchase research ensures strategies are backed by actionable insights, increasing their effectiveness.

What industries benefit most from path to purchase research?

While every industry can benefit, ecommerce, retail, travel, and financial services see particularly high ROI from path to purchase research. These industries often involve complex buying decisions, making it critical to understand customer motivations and barriers. For ecommerce, optimizing the path to purchase directly impacts sales, engagement, and loyalty.

How often should you revisit path to purchase research?

Path to purchase research should be an ongoing process. Customer behavior, technology, and market trends evolve constantly, requiring regular updates to your strategies. Conducting quarterly or semi-annual reviews ensures you stay aligned with customer needs and competitive in the market.

How does social proof impact the consideration stage?

Social proof, such as reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content, heavily influences decision-making during the consideration stage. Customers trust the experiences of others more than marketing messages. Including social proof on product pages, in ads, or within emails can help build trust and move customers closer to purchase.

What’s the ultimate goal of path to purchase research?

The ultimate goal is to create a seamless, optimized customer journey that drives conversions and loyalty. By understanding every step your customers take, you can eliminate friction, personalize experiences, and deliver value at every stage. Effective path to purchase research not only boosts sales but also strengthens customer relationships, turning one-time buyers into lifelong fans.
The post Path to Purchase Research: Decoding Your Customers’ Buying Journey appeared first on Customers.ai.

Large language models (LLMs) have found applications in diverse industries, automating tasks and enhancing decision-making. However, when applied to specialized domains like chip design, they face unique challenges. Domain-adapted models, such as NVIDIA’s ChipNeMo, often struggle with instruction alignment—the ability to follow precise human commands. This limitation reduces their effectiveness in tasks like generating accurate electronic design automation (EDA) scripts or assisting hardware engineers. To be genuinely useful, these models need to combine strong domain expertise with reliable instruction-following capabilities, a gap that remains largely unaddressed.

NVIDIA Research Introduces ChipAlign

NVIDIA’s ChipAlign addresses these challenges by merging the strengths of a general instruction-aligned LLM and a chip-specific LLM. This approach avoids the need for extensive retraining and instead employs a training-free model merging strategy. At its core is geodesic interpolation, a method that treats model weights as points on a geometric space, enabling smooth integration of their capabilities.

Unlike traditional multi-task learning, which requires large datasets and computational resources, ChipAlign directly combines pre-trained models. This method ensures that the resulting model retains the strengths of both inputs, offering a practical solution for integrating specialized knowledge with instruction alignment.

Technical Details and Benefits

ChipAlign achieves its results through a series of carefully designed steps. The weights of the chip-specific and instruction-aligned LLMs are projected onto a unit n-sphere, allowing geodesic interpolation along the shortest path between the two sets. The fused weights are then rescaled to maintain their original properties.

Key advantages of ChipAlign include:

No Retraining Required: The method eliminates the dependency on proprietary datasets and the cost of retraining.

Improved Instruction Alignment: Achieves significant enhancements, including a 26.6% improvement in instruction-following benchmarks.

Preservation of Domain Expertise: Retains critical knowledge in EDA tasks, circuit design, and related areas.

Efficiency: With a linear time complexity, ChipAlign can handle large-scale models without excessive computational demands.

Results and Insights

Benchmark results demonstrate the effectiveness of ChipAlign:

On the IFEval benchmark, ChipAlign shows a 26.6% improvement in instruction alignment.

In domain-specific tasks, such as the OpenROAD QA benchmark, it achieves up to 6.4% higher ROUGE-L scores compared to other model-merging techniques.

In industrial chip QA, ChipAlign outperforms baseline models by up to 8.25%, excelling in both single-turn and multi-turn scenarios.

Sensitivity analysis indicates that setting the hyperparameter λ to 0.6 optimally balances instruction alignment with domain-specific knowledge.

Conclusion

ChipAlign demonstrates how innovative techniques can bridge gaps in large language model capabilities. By merging domain expertise with robust instruction-following abilities, it offers a practical solution to challenges in chip design. This approach could also inspire advancements in other specialized domains, emphasizing the growing importance of adaptable and efficient AI solutions. NVIDIA’s work highlights how thoughtful design can make AI tools more effective and widely applicable.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now an integral ingredient in automating tasks in various industries, gaining immense efficiency and better decision-making benefits. Autonomy in agents has developed the capability to work independently to achieve specific functionalities, such as controlling smart home appliances or managing data in complex systems. The idea behind these autonomy features is to save time while enhancing user productivity through minimal human intervention. However, the development and implementation of these systems constantly attract innovation due to their limitations.

The primary challenge with autonomous agent systems is their inability to generalize across diverse tasks and adapt to changing user needs. Many agents struggle with tasks outside their predefined scope, often lacking flexibility and scalability. Some other problems are privacy, trust, and ethical considerations, which are critical for deployment in sensitive real-world contexts. A multidisciplinary approach is needed to address these issues, balancing technical capabilities with user-centric design principles.

Agents developed historically rely upon methodologies like symbolic AI, reactive systems, and multi-agent frameworks. Symbolic AI with predetermined rules did well for some applications but failed with real-world complications. Reactive systems were great in immediate response activities but failed in long-term planning and adaptability. Multi-agent frameworks offered distributed problem-solving capabilities but still had challenges concerning coordination and communication, especially at large implementation scales. These limitations call for a paradigm shift in agent development.

Researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research have introduced a new ecological system consisting of three connected entities: agents, Sims, and Assistants. An ecological system in this context signifies a new approach to the traditional role of agents, consisting of two aspects: Sims represent user preferences and behavior, whereas Assistants act as intermediaries between the agent and the user. This integration can enable personalization, adaptability, and trust through improved agent-based systems.

Advanced architectures that combine large and small language models are utilized in the proposed methodology. Such a hybrid architecture enhances the scalability of agents, reducing computational requirements by breaking down tasks into more manageable sub-tasks. Coordination mechanisms are advanced, involving decentralized control and negotiation protocols to allow agents to interact without hindrance. Reinforcement learning and transfer learning enhance adaptability, allowing agents to learn from prior experiences and apply knowledge to new tasks. Ethical design principles, such as transparency and fairness, ensure these systems’ safe and responsible operation. By integrating these elements, the researchers aim to overcome the traditional limitations of agent-based AI.

The performance of this ecosystem demonstrated significant improvements in managing complex tasks. For example, agents effectively handled multi-step operations with minimal user intervention, a key challenge in earlier frameworks. A salient outcome was the decrease in the user input required to perform a task by introducing Sims that communicated on behalf of the user. The system was also observed to have greater accuracy in completing tasks and making decisions, as there were observed efficiencies in the time it took to complete tasks compared to a standard approach. Specific numbers are not reported; however, the researchers point out the applicability of their system to real-world domains.

The work of the researchers clearly shows that a holistic ecosystem can be used to solve long-standing problems in agent-based AI. Combining agents with Sims and Assistants ensures the system addresses scalability, adaptability, and trustworthiness issues while guaranteeing privacy and ethical compliance. This novel framework opens the door for further adoption of autonomous systems in many contexts, illustrating the potential for AI to increase productivity and user satisfaction. The results indicate that this method may become a new benchmark for designing and deploying autonomous agents, thus leading to increased trust and utility in AI technologies.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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The post This AI Paper Proposes a Novel Ecosystem Integrating Agents, Sims, and Assistants for Scalable and User-Centric AI Applications appeared first on MarkTechPost.

LLMs have demonstrated impressive capabilities in answering medical questions accurately, even outperforming average human scores in some medical examinations. However, their adoption in medical documentation tasks, such as clinical note generation, faces challenges due to the risk of generating incorrect or inconsistent information. Studies reveal that 20% of patients reading clinical notes identified errors, with 40% considering them serious, often related to misdiagnoses. This raises significant concerns, especially as LLMs increasingly support medical documentation tasks. While these models have shown strong performance in answering medical exam questions and imitating clinical reasoning, they are prone to generating hallucinations and potentially harmful content, which could adversely impact clinical decision-making. This highlights the critical need for robust validation frameworks to ensure the accuracy and safety of LLM-generated medical content.

Recent efforts have explored benchmarks for consistency evaluation in general domains, such as semantic, logical, and factual consistency, but these approaches often fall short of ensuring reliability across test cases. While models like ChatGPT and GPT-4 exhibit improved reasoning and language understanding, studies show they struggle with logical consistency. In the medical domain, assessments of LLMs, such as ChatGPT and GPT-4, have demonstrated accurate performance in structured medical examinations like the USMLE. However, limitations emerge when handling complex medical queries, and LLM-generated drafts in patient communication have shown potential risks, including severe harm if errors remain uncorrected. Despite advancements, the lack of publicly available benchmarks for validating the correctness and consistency of medical texts generated by LLMs underscores the need for reliable, automated validation systems to address these challenges effectively.

Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington have developed MEDEC, the first publicly available benchmark for detecting and correcting medical errors in clinical notes. MEDEC includes 3,848 clinical texts covering five error types: Diagnosis, Management, Treatment, Pharmacotherapy, and Causal Organism. Evaluations using advanced LLMs, such as GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, revealed their capability to address these tasks, but human medical experts outperform them. This benchmark highlights the challenges in validating and correcting clinical texts, emphasizing the need for models with robust medical reasoning. Insights from these experiments offer guidance for improving future error detection systems.

The MEDEC dataset contains 3,848 clinical texts, annotated with five error types: Diagnosis, Management, Treatment, Pharmacotherapy, and Causal Organism. Errors were introduced by leveraging medical board exams (MS) and modifying real clinical notes from University of Washington hospitals (UW). Annotators manually created errors by injecting incorrect medical entities into the text while ensuring consistency with other parts of the note. MEDEC is designed to evaluate models on error detection and correction, divided into predicting errors, identifying error sentences, and generating corrections.

The experiments utilized various small and LLMs, including Phi-3-7B, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini 2.0 Flash, and OpenAI’s GPT-4 series, to evaluate their performance on medical error detection and correction tasks. These models were tested on subtasks such as identifying errors, pinpointing erroneous sentences, and generating corrections. Metrics like accuracy, recall, ROUGE-1, BLEURT, and BERTScore were employed to assess their capabilities, alongside an aggregate score combining these metrics for correction quality. Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieved the highest accuracy in detecting error flags (70.16%) and sentences (65.62%), while o1-preview excelled in error correction with an aggregate score of 0.698. Comparisons with expert medical annotations highlighted that while LLMs performed well, they were still surpassed by medical doctors in detection and correction tasks.

The performance gap is likely due to the limited availability of error-specific medical data in LLM pretraining and the challenge of analyzing pre-existing clinical texts rather than generating responses. Among the models, the o1-preview demonstrated superior recall across all error types but struggled with precision, often overestimating error occurrences compared to medical experts. This precision deficit, alongside the models’ dependency on public datasets, resulted in a performance disparity across subsets, with models performing better on public datasets (e.g., MEDEC-MS) than private collections like MEDEC-UW. 

Check out the Paper and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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The post MEDEC: A Benchmark for Detecting and Correcting Medical Errors in Clinical Notes Using LLMs appeared first on MarkTechPost.

Email marketing is like printing money when you get it right. On average, it brings in $42 for every $1 spent. But let’s be real…sending generic blasts to your entire list doesn’t cut it.

That’s where trigger-based email marketing comes in. 

Think of it as the perfect mix of timing, relevance, and automation. These emails aren’t random as they’re based on your customers’ actions (or inactions). Browsing a product? Abandoning a cart? Leaving a 5-star review? Boom. A perfectly timed email hits their inbox, and suddenly, they’re back on your site and ready to buy.

In this playbook, we’re breaking it all down – the must-have triggers for ecommerce, how to build email workflows that actually convert, and the tools to make it all happen. 

Ready to give your email game the upgrade it deserves? Let’s do it.

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What Is Trigger-Based Email Marketing (And Why Does It Work?)

Trigger-based email marketing is exactly what it sounds like – emails are automatically sent when a specific action (or inaction) happens. 

But unlike those boring, one-size-fits-all blasts that clog up inboxes, triggered emails hit at just the right time and feel like they’re speaking directly to your customer.

Why does it work so well? 

It’s all about psychology. Emails triggered by behavior feel personal and relevant as they’re responding to what your customer just did (or didn’t do). That’s why they can drive up to 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates compared to generic emails.

For ecommerce brands, the possibilities are endless. Some of the most effective email marketing triggers include:

Abandoned Cart Emails: Bring back customers who almost made a purchase but left something in their cart.

Post-Purchase Upsells: Suggest complementary products or encourage repeat purchases right after checkout.

Browse Abandonment Emails: Re-engage window shoppers who clicked around but didn’t take the plunge.

Trigger-based emails work because they meet your customers where they are – literally. They’re relevant, timely, and most importantly, they convert.

Now that you know why trigger-based emails are so powerful, let’s get into the good stuff like which ones you need and how to set them up for your store.

The Essential Email Triggers Every Ecommerce Brand Should Use

Trigger-based emails are versatile, reliable, and incredibly effective when used right. It’s why we love them so much!

Let’s talk about the types of trigger-based emails and the must-haves that should be in every brand’s toolkit.

1. Abandoned Cart Emails

In our opinion, this one’s the MVP of ecommerce emails. Nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned but abandoned cart emails can recover up to 10-30% of those lost sales (even more when using visitor identification for abandoned cart recovery).

Why It Works: Customers get a gentle nudge reminding them what they left behind and sometimes, that’s all it takes to close the sale.

Killer Example: Warby Parker keeps it simple and classy. Their abandoned cart email highlights the product left behind, includes a clear CTA to return to the cart, and sometimes sweetens the deal with free shipping.

2. Browse Abandonment Emails

Not everyone adds something to their cart but that doesn’t mean they’re not interested. Browse abandonment emails re-engage visitors who browsed your site but didn’t take the next step.

Why It Works: It’s a way to remind shoppers of what caught their eye without coming off as overly salesy.

Killer Example: ASOS nails this with emails like, “Still thinking about this?” They include large product images, links back to the site, and subtle FOMO messaging to encourage action.

3. Post-Purchase Emails

The sale doesn’t end at checkout. Post-purchase emails are prime real estate for upsells, cross-sells, and collecting customer reviews.

Why It Works: These emails keep customers engaged and build loyalty while increasing lifetime value.

Killer Example: Glossier sends a “You’ve got great taste” email post-purchase, suggesting complementary products and including a thank-you note to make customers feel valued.

4. Welcome Series

First impressions matter and a welcome series is your chance to introduce your brand, set expectations, and build a connection with new subscribers.

Why It Works: Subscribers who receive a welcome email show 33% more engagement with your brand than those who don’t.

Killer Example: Casper keeps it playful and informative, using its welcome series to educate subscribers about its products while staying true to its fun, conversational brand voice.

5. VIP and Loyalty Triggers

Everyone loves to feel special. Emails celebrating milestones (like birthdays or loyalty rewards) keep your top customers engaged and coming back for more.

Why It Works: Rewarding your best customers strengthens their connection to your brand and encourages repeat purchases.

Killer Example: Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is the gold standard. Their emails celebrate loyalty tier upgrades and reward points, often with exclusive discounts or gifts.

Mastering these trigger-based emails will without a doubt result in better engagement, loyalty, and sales. Now, let’s talk about how to set them up and make them work for your brand.

Building the Perfect Trigger-Based Email Workflow

Trigger-based email marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. To make it work for your brand, you need a plan that’s tailored to your customers and their journey. 

Here’s how to build a trigger-based email workflow that drives results (and keeps your inbox game at the pro level).

Step 1: Map Your Customer Journey

The first step is figuring out where an email can make the biggest impact. Identify the moments that matter, like:

Browsing: When a customer explores your site but doesn’t take action.

Checkout: Cart abandonment is a key trigger to tackle.

Post-Purchase: Opportunities to upsell, cross-sell, or simply thank your customers.

How Customers.ai Can Help: 

Tools like Customers.ai make this process more effective by identifying visitors that your other tools can’t. For example, Customers.ai can track return visitors that Klaviyo misses, allowing you to put these customers into return visitor flows vs. new customer flows. 

Step 2: Segment Your Audience

Not all customers are the same and they certainly don’t want the same things – so don’t send them the same emails! Use data like:

Purchase History: Tailor emails to what customers have bought (or browsed).

Engagement: Target active users differently than those who’ve gone quiet.

Demographics: Personalize based on location, age, or preferences.

How Customers.ai Can Help: 

Customers.ai takes segmentation to the next level by identifying and enriching customer data, tracking the customer journey, and letting you build audiences based on that contact data. The result? Hyper-targeted email flows based on real-time data.

Step 3: Choose the Right Automation Tool

Your tools are your foundation, so pick ones that work for your needs. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Klaviyo: A robust option for ecommerce brands with advanced segmentation and templates.

Customers.ai: The ultimate choice for combining visitor identification and email automation in one powerful platform. Bonus: It integrates seamlessly with your existing CRM and marketing tools.

Shopify Email: A simple option for those just getting started, though it lacks the depth of advanced tools.

If you want real-time triggers and visitor identification built into your workflows, Customers.ai is a must. It allows you to capture high-intent visitors that you might otherwise miss and can increase email marketing revenue immediately! 

Just ask one of our customers who saw a 35% increase in email revenue in less than a month >>  

Step 4: Craft Emails That Convert

The best workflows in the world won’t work if your emails don’t grab attention. Here’s what to focus on:

Subject Lines: Make them impossible to ignore (bonus points for adding urgency or personalization).

Visuals: Use high-quality images that showcase your products or tell a story.

CTAs: Keep them clear, direct, and action-oriented (e.g., “Shop Now” or “Claim Your Discount”).

Customers.ai helps you optimize email content by connecting real-time visitor data to your messaging, ensuring every email feels personal and timely. We give you information beyond name and email – get job titles, demographic data, and interest-data, and so much more. 

By mapping your journey, segmenting your audience, and leveraging the right tools, you’ll build a trigger-based email workflow that’s unstoppable. 

Next up: Let’s talk about what not to do and how to avoid the dumb mistakes most marketers make.

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Common Trigger-Based Email Marketing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Even the best email strategy can fall flat if you’re not careful and while trigger-based email marketing is powerful, it’s not foolproof. 

Let’s break down some of the biggest mistakes and how you can dodge them like a pro.

1. Overloading Your Audience with Too Many Triggers

Triggers are great…until they’re not. Bombarding your customers with emails every time they blink is a surefire way to earn an unsubscribe.

What to Do Instead: Prioritize your triggers. Focus on high-impact moments like abandoned carts, welcome series, and post-purchase follow-ups. Set limits so customers aren’t getting multiple emails in a short window.

Pro Tip: Manage frequency rules and ensure you’re not spamming your audience with overlapping triggers aka don’t get trigger happy!

2. Sending Generic Emails Instead of Personalized Ones

If your email looks like it could’ve been sent to anyone, it’s probably heading straight for the trash. Womp womp. 

Remember that today’s customers expect relevance and they won’t settle for less.

What to Do Instead: Use dynamic content and behavioral data to personalize emails. Think product recommendations based on browsing history or a “Hey [First Name], you left [product name] behind!” nudge for abandoned carts.

Pro Tip: Customers.ai lets you personalize at scale by syncing visitor data with your email platform for hyper-targeted messaging.

3. Ignoring Mobile Optimization

Here’s the deal: More than half of your emails are opened on mobile devices. If your email isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing customers before they even read it.

What to Do Instead: Keep subject lines short, use responsive templates, and make sure your CTAs are easy to click (no one likes trying to tap a microscopic button).

Pro Tip: Test, test, and test again. Preview your emails on mobile before hitting send to catch any formatting issues.

4. Failing to Analyze and Tweak Your Workflows

Setting up your triggers is just the start. If you’re not analyzing performance and making adjustments, you’re leaving money on the table.

What to Do Instead: Track metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions for each trigger. Identify what’s working and what needs improvement.

Pro Tip: Use your tool’s analytics features to see which triggers are driving results and which need a little extra love.

Mistakes happen but with the right strategies and oversight in place, you can avoid the big ones and keep your emails driving real results. 

How Trigger-Based Emails Drive ROI in Ecommerce

Trigger-based email marketing is a revenue-driving machine and it’s mind-boggling that more people haven’t jumped on the train. 

To help us convince you it’s time to get started, here’s a look at how these automated emails deliver ROI for ecommerce brands, backed by the numbers:

1. Recovering Lost Revenue from Abandoned Carts

On average, 69.99% of online shopping carts are abandoned, which means a huge chunk of potential revenue is slipping through the cracks. Triggered abandoned cart emails can recover up to 10-30% of those carts, according to Shopify.

The ROI Impact: For a store generating $50,000/month, recovering 15% of abandoned carts adds an extra $7,500/month to revenue.

Why It Works: These emails target high-intent shoppers who were already close to purchasing, giving them the gentle nudge they need to complete the sale.

2. Increasing Repeat Purchases with Post-Purchase Emails

Studies show that post-purchase emails, like cross-sells or upsells, can increase repeat purchase rates by 27%. These emails capitalize on the moment when customers are most engaged with your brand.

The ROI Impact: Encouraging just 10% of your customers to make a repeat purchase can boost customer lifetime value (CLV) significantly.

Why It Works: Happy customers are more likely to buy again, especially when presented with tailored offers or complementary products.

3. Driving Conversions from Browse Abandonment

Not every visitor adds an item to their cart—but that doesn’t mean they’re not interested. Triggered browse abandonment emails re-engage window shoppers and can deliver click-through rates of 40% or higher, according to Campaign Monitor.

The ROI Impact: Bringing back even a small percentage of browsers can turn curiosity into conversions, adding steady growth to your revenue stream.

Why It Works: These emails remind customers of products they were interested in, often with a subtle nudge like “Limited stock available!”

4. Building Loyalty with Personalized Triggers

Personalized emails generate 6x higher transaction rates, according to Experian. Triggered emails for VIPs, loyalty members, or milestone celebrations make customers feel valued and drive repeat business.

The ROI Impact: Loyal customers are worth up to 10x more than their first purchase.

Why It Works: Personalized touches like birthday discounts or “Thank you for your 5th order!” emails keep your brand top of mind and build long-term relationships.

5. Improving Email Engagement Rates

Trigger-based emails have open rates that are 2x higher and click-through rates that are 3x higher than standard bulk emails. More engagement means more conversions—and that’s the ultimate goal.

The ROI Impact: Higher engagement drives more traffic to your site, resulting in more opportunities to sell.

Why It Works: These emails are relevant, timely, and aligned with the customer’s behavior, making them impossible to ignore.

With stats like these, it’s clear that trigger-based email marketing is a must-have for marketers. Whether you’re recovering carts, driving repeat sales, or increasing engagement, these emails are a proven (and awesome!) way to grow your revenue and ROI.

Trigger-Based Email Marketing is Your Path to Growth

Trigger-based email marketing ensures you are able to do the thing we all want to do as email marketers – deliver the right message to the right person at the exact moment they need it. 

From recovering abandoned carts to driving repeat purchases, these automated emails are your secret weapon for boosting ROI.

The best part? 

You don’t need to overhaul your entire email strategy overnight! Start small. Pick one trigger (ahem…abandoned cart email) and set it up. Watch how even a single, well-timed email can make a measurable impact on your bottom line.

Ready to take your email marketing to the next level? 

Customers.ai makes it simple to implement powerful, data-driven email triggers that drive real results. 

Start your free trial today and see the difference for yourself.

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Trigger-Based Email Marketing FAQs

What is trigger-based email marketing?

Trigger-based email marketing is a strategy that sends automated emails based on specific customer actions or events, such as browsing a product, abandoning a cart, or making a purchase. These triggers are designed to deliver relevant, timely messages that align with the customer’s behavior, making them more effective than generic email campaigns. By responding to real-time actions, trigger increase conversions, and improve overall ROI. This approach is especially popular in ecommerce for its ability to personalize communication and nurture customer relationships at scale. 

How does trigger-based email marketing work?

Trigger-based email marketing relies on automation software that tracks customer actions or predefined events. When a customer completes a specific action, like signing up for a newsletter or abandoning their cart, the software automatically sends an email based on preset rules. This allows brands to deliver highly relevant messages tailored to each user’s journey, boosting engagement and conversion rates.

What are examples of trigger-based emails?

Examples of trigger-based emails include abandoned cart reminders, welcome series for new subscribers, post-purchase follow-ups, browse abandonment emails, and re-engagement emails for inactive customers. Each type of email is triggered by a specific action or behavior, ensuring that the message aligns with the customer’s needs or interests. These emails help brands stay relevant and maximize sales opportunities.

Why is trigger-based email marketing effective?

Trigger-based email marketing is effective because it delivers personalized, timely messages that align with the customer’s behavior or intent. Customers are more likely to engage with emails that feel relevant to their actions, which leads to higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. This strategy also streamlines communication, automates workflows, and allows marketers to scale personalization efforts.

What tools can be used for trigger-based email marketing?

Popular tools for trigger-based email marketing include Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Customers.ai, HubSpot, and ActiveCampaign. These platforms offer automation features that let marketers set up triggers based on customer behavior, such as cart abandonment or website visits. The right tool depends on your business size, ecommerce platform, and desired level of customization.

How do abandoned cart emails drive revenue?

Abandoned cart emails remind customers of products they added to their cart but didn’t purchase, giving them a nudge to complete their order. These emails often include product images, a direct link back to the cart, and incentives like discounts or free shipping. Research shows that abandoned cart emails can recover 10-30% of lost sales, making them a crucial tool for ecommerce revenue growth.

What are browse abandonment emails?

Browse abandonment emails are sent to visitors who viewed products on your website but didn’t add anything to their cart. These emails remind customers of the items they browsed and encourage them to return and make a purchase. They often include product images, scarcity messaging, or special offers to re-engage shoppers.

How do post-purchase emails improve customer retention?

Post-purchase emails keep customers engaged after their initial purchase, building loyalty and encouraging repeat business. These emails can include order confirmations, thank-you messages, cross-sell recommendations, or requests for product reviews. By staying connected and providing value, post-purchase emails enhance the customer experience and drive long-term retention.

What are welcome series emails, and why are they important?

Welcome series emails are automated messages sent to new subscribers or customers to introduce them to your brand. These emails set the tone for the relationship, provide helpful information, and encourage first-time purchases. A strong welcome series can increase engagement and convert new subscribers into loyal customers.

How can trigger-based email marketing increase ROI?

Trigger-based email marketing increases ROI by targeting high-intent customers with relevant messages that encourage specific actions. These emails have higher open and click-through rates than generic campaigns, leading to more conversions and sales. By automating these processes, brands also save time and resources while driving measurable results.

What metrics should you track for trigger-based email campaigns?

Key metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, revenue generated, and unsubscribe rates. These metrics help you understand how effective your trigger-based emails are and where you can optimize. For example, a low open rate may signal a need for better subject lines, while low conversions may indicate a need for more compelling CTAs.

What is the difference between broadcast emails and trigger-based emails?

Broadcast emails are sent to a large audience at a scheduled time, often with the same message for everyone. Trigger-based emails, on the other hand, are automated and personalized, sent based on specific customer actions or behaviors. While broadcast emails are great for announcements or promotions, trigger-based emails excel at delivering relevant, timely content that drives engagement and conversions.

Can trigger-based email marketing be used for B2B businesses?

Yes, trigger-based email marketing works well for B2B businesses by automating responses to actions like downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, or visiting key pages on a website. These emails can nurture leads through the sales funnel with personalized content that aligns with their stage in the buyer’s journey.

How does segmentation improve trigger-based email marketing?

Segmentation divides your audience into smaller groups based on criteria like purchase history, location, or engagement level. Combining segmentation with trigger-based emails ensures that your messages are hyper-targeted and relevant. For instance, an abandoned cart email can include product recommendations tailored to the customer’s preferences, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

What are the challenges of trigger-based email marketing?

Common challenges include setting up complex automation workflows, maintaining accurate customer data, and avoiding email fatigue by sending too many triggered messages. Brands must also ensure that emails are mobile-optimized and comply with privacy regulations like GDPR. With the right tools and strategy, these challenges can be managed effectively.

How can personalization enhance trigger-based emails?

Personalization makes trigger-based emails feel more relevant and engaging by including details like the customer’s name, product recommendations, or location-specific offers. Personalized emails generate higher transaction rates and build stronger customer relationships. Tools like Customers.ai make it easy to add dynamic content for seamless personalization.

What role does timing play in trigger-based email marketing?

Timing is critical for trigger-based emails to succeed. These emails are designed to reach customers at the exact moment they’re most likely to act, such as immediately after abandoning a cart or browsing a product. Delays in delivery can reduce relevance and impact engagement, so automation tools should prioritize speed.

How do loyalty programs benefit from trigger-based emails?

Loyalty programs can use trigger-based emails to celebrate milestones, reward points earned, or remind customers of expiring rewards. These messages keep loyal customers engaged and encourage them to continue interacting with your brand. Personalized triggers create a sense of exclusivity and appreciation, strengthening customer loyalty.

Can trigger-based emails help reduce churn?

Yes, trigger-based emails can reduce churn by re-engaging inactive customers with targeted offers, win-back campaigns, or reminders of their previous interactions. These emails show customers that your brand values them and wants to keep them engaged, which can prevent them from leaving for a competitor.

What are the best practices for writing trigger-based emails?

Best practices include keeping subject lines clear and attention-grabbing, personalizing content based on customer behavior, and using strong CTAs that guide readers toward the desired action. Emails should also be mobile-friendly and tested for formatting across devices.

How can A/B testing improve trigger-based email campaigns?

A/B testing lets you compare different versions of your emails to see which performs better. You can test elements like subject lines, CTAs, or email layouts to optimize performance. Over time, A/B testing provides insights that help refine your trigger-based email strategy for maximum ROI.

What industries benefit most from trigger-based email marketing?

Ecommerce is one of the top industries that benefit from trigger-based email marketing due to its focus on customer behavior and conversions. However, other industries like SaaS, hospitality, and finance also use this strategy effectively to nurture leads and retain customers.

How do you measure the success of trigger-based email marketing?

Success can be measured by tracking key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue attributed to triggered campaigns. Comparing these metrics to your benchmarks or industry averages can help you gauge the effectiveness of your strategy.

What compliance rules apply to trigger-based email marketing?

Trigger-based email marketing must comply with privacy laws like GDPR, CCPA, or CAN-SPAM. This includes obtaining explicit consent to send emails, providing clear opt-out options, and ensuring customer data is securely stored and managed. Non-compliance can lead to legal penalties and reputational damage.

How does trigger-based email marketing fit into a broader marketing strategy?

Trigger-based emails complement broader marketing strategies by automating key touchpoints and improving customer engagement. They work alongside paid ads, social media, and content marketing to nurture leads and drive conversions. By integrating data from other channels, you can create a cohesive and effective marketing approach.
The post Trigger-Based Email Marketing: A Step-by-Step Playbook to Accelerating ROI appeared first on Customers.ai.

Recommendation systems are essential for connecting users with relevant content, products, or services. Dense retrieval methods have been a mainstay in this field, utilizing sequence modeling to compute item and user representations. However, these methods demand substantial computational resources and storage, as they require embeddings for every item. As datasets grow, these requirements become increasingly burdensome, limiting their scalability. Generative retrieval, an emerging alternative, reduces storage needs by predicting item indices through generative models. Despite its potential, it struggles with performance issues, especially in handling cold-start items—new items with limited user interactions. The absence of a unified framework combining the strengths of these approaches highlights a gap in addressing trade-offs between computation, storage, and recommendation quality.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, ELLIS Unit, LIT AI Lab, Institute for Machine Learning, JKU Linz, Austria, and Meta AI have introduced LIGER (LeveragIng dense retrieval for GEnerative Retrieval), a hybrid retrieval model that blends the computational efficiency of generative retrieval with the precision of dense retrieval. LIGER refines a candidate set generated by generative retrieval through dense retrieval techniques, achieving a balance between efficiency and accuracy. The model leverages item representations derived from semantic IDs and text-based attributes, combining the strengths of both paradigms. By doing so, LIGER reduces storage and computational overhead while addressing performance gaps, particularly in scenarios involving cold-start items.

Technical Details and Benefits

LIGER employs a bidirectional Transformer encoder alongside a generative decoder. The dense retrieval component integrates item text representations, semantic IDs, and positional embeddings, optimized using a cosine similarity loss. The generative component uses beam search to predict semantic IDs of subsequent items based on user interaction history. This combination allows LIGER to retain generative retrieval’s efficiency while addressing its limitations with cold-start items. The model’s hybrid inference process, which first retrieves a candidate set via generative retrieval and then refines it through dense retrieval, effectively reduces computational demands while maintaining recommendation quality. Additionally, by incorporating textual representations, LIGER generalizes well to unseen items, addressing a key limitation of prior generative models.

Results and Insights

Evaluations of LIGER across benchmark datasets, including Amazon Beauty, Sports, Toys, and Steam, show consistent improvements over state-of-the-art models like TIGER and UniSRec. For example, LIGER achieved a Recall@10 score of 0.1008 for cold-start items on the Amazon Beauty dataset, compared to TIGER’s 0.0. On the Steam dataset, LIGER’s Recall@10 for cold-start items reached 0.0147, again outperforming TIGER’s 0.0. These findings demonstrate LIGER’s ability to merge generative and dense retrieval techniques effectively. Moreover, as the number of candidates retrieved by generative methods increases, LIGER narrows the performance gap with dense retrieval. This adaptability and efficiency make it suitable for diverse recommendation scenarios.

Conclusion

LIGER offers a thoughtful integration of dense and generative retrieval, addressing challenges in efficiency, scalability, and handling cold-start items. Its hybrid architecture balances computational efficiency with high-quality recommendations, making it a viable solution for modern recommendation systems. By bridging gaps in existing approaches, LIGER lays the groundwork for further exploration into hybrid retrieval models, fostering innovation in recommendation systems.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, the year 2025 has brought forth a treasure trove of educational resources for aspiring AI enthusiasts and professionals. AI agents, with their ability to perform complex tasks autonomously, are at the forefront of this revolution. Here, we highlight 13 free courses that delve into the intricacies of AI agents, ensuring you stay ahead in this dynamic field.

Multi-AI Agent Systems with CrewaiThis course explores how multiple AI agents can collaborate to solve complex problems. It covers frameworks, coordination strategies, and real-world applications.

Foundations of Prompt EngineeringOffered by AWS, this course delves into crafting effective prompts for AI agents, ensuring optimal performance and accuracy.

Introduction to LangGraphLearn the basics of LangGraph, a powerful tool for building graph-based AI systems, including agent-based architectures.

AI Agent Development on YouTubeThis comprehensive YouTube tutorial provides hands-on guidance for building AI agents from scratch, suitable for beginners and intermediates.

LLM Agents Learning PlatformA unique course focusing on leveraging large language models (LLMs) to create advanced AI agents for diverse applications.

AI Agents in LangGraphA deep dive into integrating AI agents within LangGraph, emphasizing scalability and robustness in AI solutions.

NVIDIA’s AI Agent CourseExplore NVIDIA’s cutting-edge techniques for designing high-performance AI agents tailored for specialized applications.

AI Agentic Design Patterns with AutoGenThis course introduces design patterns to streamline the development of autonomous AI agents using AutoGen.

AI Agents Workflow Insights on YouTubeAnother fantastic YouTube resource, it discusses effective workflows for managing and scaling AI agents.

LLMs as Operating Systems: Agent MemoryFocuses on the concept of memory in AI agents, enabling them to learn and adapt over time, akin to operating systems.

Building Agentic RAG with LlamaIndexA practical guide to using LlamaIndex for building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems with AI agents.

AI Agents for Beginners on YouTubeTailored for newcomers, this video breaks down the foundational concepts of AI agents in an accessible manner.

Serverless Agentic Workflows with Amazon BedrockLearn to deploy serverless workflows for AI agents using Amazon Bedrock, emphasizing cost-efficiency and scalability.

Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional, these free courses offer invaluable insights into the world of AI agents, equipping you with the knowledge to harness their full potential in 2025 and beyond.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Also, don’t forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

FREE UPCOMING AI WEBINAR (JAN 15, 2025): Boost LLM Accuracy with Synthetic Data and Evaluation Intelligence–Join this webinar to gain actionable insights into boosting LLM model performance and accuracy while safeguarding data privacy.
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Spatial-temporal data handling involves the analysis of information gathered over time and space, often through sensors. Such data is crucial in pattern discovery and prediction. However, missing values pose a problem and make it challenging to analyze. Such gaps may often create inconsistencies with the dataset,  causing harder analysis. The relationships between features, like environmental or physical factors, can be complex and influenced by a geographic context. Accurately capturing these relationships is critical but remains challenging due to varying feature correlations and limitations in existing methods, which struggle to address these complexities effectively.

Current methods for addressing missing values in spatial-temporal data rely on fixed spatial graphs and graph neural networks (GNNs) to capture spatial dependencies. These approaches assume that the spatial relationships between features are uniform across different locations. These approaches do not consider that features recorded by sensors often bear different relationships relative to their respective places and contexts. Therefore, these approaches do not properly manage and represent the different complex spatial relations of various characteristics, resulting in incorrect estimations about information-missing problems and the integration of detailed temporal and spatial interconnections.

To address spatial-temporal imputation challenges, researchers from Nankai University and Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China, proposed the multi-scale Graph Structure Learning framework (GSLI). This framework adapts to spatial correlations by combining two approaches: node-scale learning and feature-scale learning. Node-scale learning focuses on global spatial dependencies for individual features, while feature-scale learning uncovers spatial relations among features within a node. Unlike conventional methods relying on static structures, this framework targets feature heterogeneity and integrates spatial-temporal correlations.

The framework used static graphs to represent spatial data and temporal signals for time-based information, with missing data indicated by masks. Node-scale learning refines embeddings using meta-nodes to highlight influential nodes, forming meta-graphs for feature-specific spatial dependencies. Feature-scale learning produces meta-graphs that capture spatial relations between features over nodes. This design tries to capture both cross-feature and cross-temporal dependencies but at the cost of computational complexity.

Researchers evaluated the performance of GSLI using an Intel Xeon Silver 4314 CPU and NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU on six real-world spatial-temporal datasets with missing values. Adjacency matrices were constructed when not provided, and missing values lacking ground truth were excluded. Imputation accuracy was assessed using RMSE and MAE metrics under various missing rates, including MCAR, MAR, and MNAR. GSLI outperformed state-of-the-art methods across all datasets by effectively capturing spatial dependencies through graph structures. Its ability to model cross-temporal and cross-feature dependencies enabled superior adaptability to diverse scenarios, with results averaged over five trials demonstrating consistent accuracy even with increasing missing rates or mechanisms.

In conclusion, the proposed framework advances spatial-temporal imputation by addressing feature heterogeneity and leveraging multi-scale graph structure learning to improve accuracy. This work has thus shown, across six real-world datasets, that it performs better than more heuristic static spatial graph-based techniques and is robust to variations. This framework can act as a baseline for future research, inspiring advancements that reduce computational complexity, handle larger datasets, and enable real-time imputation for dynamic systems.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

FREE UPCOMING AI WEBINAR (JAN 15, 2025): Boost LLM Accuracy with Synthetic Data and Evaluation Intelligence–Join this webinar to gain actionable insights into boosting LLM model performance and accuracy while safeguarding data privacy.
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Data mining is vital for uncovering meaningful patterns and relationships within large datasets. These insights enable informed decision-making across diverse retail, healthcare, and finance industries. A key technique in this domain is association rule mining, which identifies correlations between variables in relational data, aiding applications such as customer behavior analysis, inventory optimization, and personalized recommendations.

A persistent challenge in association rule mining is quantifying the contribution of individual elements to the strength of the generated rules. Understanding this contribution is critical for interpreting results and applying them effectively. However, the complexity of interdependencies among data elements makes this task difficult. The derived insights may lack clarity and practical utility without an accurate measure.

Existing methods for evaluating the importance of elements in association rules often rely on heuristics, which may not accurately reflect the true contribution of each component. These methods can also be computationally expensive, particularly for large datasets, limiting their scalability and real-world applicability. This limitation underscores the need for a more efficient and precise approach.

A team of researchers from Bar-Ilan University and the University of Pennsylvania has developed a new measure of an element’s contribution to a set of association rules, termed SHARQ (Shapley Rules Quantification), grounded in Shapley values from cooperative game theory. Their work includes an efficient framework for computing the exact SHARQ value of a single element. The running time of this computation is nearly linear concerning the number of rules, addressing scalability issues while maintaining accuracy.

The SHARQ framework calculates Shapley values to determine the average marginal contribution of each element across all possible subsets of rules. The researchers devised an algorithm streamlining this process, ensuring exact computation with significantly reduced runtime. Further, the framework supports multi-element SHARQ computations, enabling simultaneous evaluation of multiple elements by amortizing the computational effort. This approach ensures the method is practical for analyzing complex datasets and large rule sets.

The researchers demonstrated the computational efficiency of SHARQ through its single-element algorithm, which achieves a runtime nearly linear in the number of rules. Additionally, they developed a multi-element SHARQ algorithm that amortizes computations across multiple elements. This design improves efficiency, ensuring the framework remains computationally feasible even when applied to large rule sets derived from complex datasets. These results underscore SHARQ’s scalability and practicality for real-world applications.

SHARQ enhances decision-making processes that rely on association rule mining by providing a robust and interpretable measure of element contributions. Its ability to articulate the role of individual data elements ensures actionable insights, making it a valuable tool for analysts and decision-makers across various domains.

In conclusion, this research addresses the challenge of quantifying the importance of elements in association rules by introducing SHARQ, a measure based on Shapley values. The framework’s efficiency and precision mark a significant advancement in the field, offering a scalable solution for interpreting complex relational data.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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Federated learning has emerged as an approach for collaborative training among medical institutions while preserving data privacy. However, the non-IID nature of data, stemming from differences in institutional specializations and regional demographics, creates significant challenges. This heterogeneity leads to client drift and suboptimal global model performance. Existing federated learning methods primarily address this issue through model-centric approaches, such as modifying local training processes or global aggregation strategies. Still, these solutions often offer marginal improvements and require frequent communication, which increases costs and raises privacy concerns. As a result, there is a growing need for robust, communication-efficient methods that can handle severe non-IID scenarios effectively.

Recently, data-centric federated learning methods have gained attention for mitigating data-level divergence by synthesizing and sharing virtual data. These methods, including FedGen, FedMix, and FedGAN, attempt to approximate real data, generate virtual representations, or share GAN-trained data. However, they face challenges such as low-quality synthesized data and redundant knowledge. For example, mix-up approaches may distort data, and random selection for data synthesis often leads to repetitive and less meaningful updates to the global model. Additionally, some methods introduce privacy risks and remain inefficient in communication-constrained environments. Addressing these issues requires advanced synthesis techniques that ensure high-quality data, minimize redundancy, and optimize knowledge extraction, enabling better performance under non-IID conditions.

Researchers from Peking University propose FedVCK (Federated learning via Valuable Condensed Knowledge), a data-centric federated learning method tailored for collaborative medical image analysis. FedVCK addresses non-IID challenges and minimizes communication costs by condensing each client’s data into a small, high-quality dataset using latent distribution constraints. A model-guided approach ensures only essential, non-redundant knowledge is selected. On the server side, relational supervised contrastive learning enhances global model updates by identifying hard negative classes. Experiments demonstrate that FedVCK outperforms state-of-the-art methods in predictive accuracy, communication efficiency, and privacy preservation, even under limited communication budgets and severe non-IID scenarios.

FedVCK is a federated learning framework comprising two key components: client-side knowledge condensation and server-side relational supervised learning. On the client side, it uses distribution matching techniques to condense critical knowledge from local data into a small learnable dataset, guided by latent distribution constraints and importance sampling of hard-to-predict samples. This ensures the condensed dataset addresses gaps in the global model. The international model is updated on the server side using cross-entropy loss and prototype-based contrastive learning. It improves class separation by aligning features with their prototypes and pushing them away from hard, negative classes. This iterative process enhances performance.

The proposed FedVCK method is a data-centric federated learning approach designed to address the challenges of non-IID data distribution in collaborative medical image analysis. It was evaluated on diverse datasets, including Colon Pathology, Retinal OCT scans, Abdominal CT scans, Chest X-rays, and general datasets like CIFAR10 and ImageNette, encompassing various resolutions and modalities. Experiments demonstrated FedVCK’s superior accuracy across datasets compared to nine baseline federated learning methods. Unlike model-centric methods, which showed mediocre performance, or data-centric methods, which struggled with synthesis quality and scalability, FedVCK efficiently condensed high-quality knowledge to improve global model performance while maintaining low communication costs and robustness under severe non-IID scenarios.

The method also demonstrated significant privacy preservation, as evidenced by membership inference attack experiments, where it outperformed traditional methods like FedAvg. With fewer communication rounds, FedVCK reduced the risks of temporal attacks, offering improved defense rates. Furthermore, ablation studies confirmed the effectiveness of its key components, such as model-guided selection, which optimized knowledge condensation for heterogeneous datasets. Extending its evaluation to natural datasets further validated its generality and robustness. Future work aims to expand FedVCK’s applicability to additional data modalities, including 3D CT scans, and to enhance condensation techniques for better efficiency and effectiveness.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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Sequential recommendation systems play a key role in creating personalized user experiences across various platforms, but they also face persistent challenges. Traditionally, these systems rely on users’ interaction histories to predict preferences, often leading to generic recommendations. While integrating auxiliary data such as item descriptions or intent predictions can provide some improvement, these systems struggle to adapt to user preferences in real-time. Additionally, the absence of comprehensive benchmarks for evaluating preference discernment limits the ability to assess their effectiveness in diverse scenarios.

To tackle these issues, a team of researchers from Meta AI, ELLIS Unit, LIT AI Lab, Institute for Machine Learning, JKU Linz, Austria, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, introduces a paradigm called preference discerning, supported by a generative retrieval model named Mender (Multimodal Preference Discerner). This approach explicitly conditions recommendation systems on user preferences expressed in natural language. Leveraging large language models (LLMs), the framework extracts preferences from reviews and item-specific data, transforming them into actionable insights.

Mender captures items at two levels of abstraction: semantic IDs and natural language descriptions. This multimodal approach ensures a more nuanced understanding of user preferences. By combining preference approximation—deriving preferences from user data—with preference conditioning, Mender allows systems to dynamically adapt to specific user preferences. Additionally, Meta AI has introduced a benchmark that evaluates preference discerning across five dimensions: preference-based recommendation, sentiment following, fine- and coarse-grained steering, and history consolidation, setting a new standard for evaluating personalization.

Technical Features and Advantages of Mender

Mender’s design focuses on integrating user preferences with interaction data seamlessly. It uses pre-trained language models to encode preferences and interaction histories in natural language. Its cross-attention mechanisms enable the decoder to predict semantic IDs for recommended items. Mender comes in two variants:

MenderTok: Processes preferences and item sequences holistically, supporting fine-tuning.

MenderEmb: Precomputes embeddings for efficient training.

Key benefits of Mender include:

Preference Steering: Tailoring recommendations dynamically based on user-specified preferences.

Sentiment Integration: Utilizing user sentiment to enhance accuracy.

History Consolidation: Merging new preferences with historical data to refine results.

Results and Insights

Meta AI’s evaluation of Mender highlights its significant performance improvements on datasets such as Amazon reviews and Steam. For instance:

On the Amazon Beauty subset, MenderTok improved Recall@10 by over 45% compared to baseline models.

In sentiment following, Mender effectively identified and acted on user sentiments, outperforming other methods by up to 86%.

For fine-grained steering, Mender achieved a 70.5% relative improvement, demonstrating its ability to align recommendations with nuanced preferences.

Conclusion

Meta AI’s preference discerning paradigm offers a fresh perspective on sequential recommendation systems, focusing on explicit user preferences articulated in natural language. By integrating LLMs, multimodal representations, and a robust benchmark, this approach improves personalization while providing a framework for future development. With plans to open-source the underlying code and benchmarks, this work has the potential to benefit a broad range of applications, advancing the field of personalized recommendations.

Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 60k+ ML SubReddit.

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Did you know that 98% of your website visitors leave without doing anything? No purchases, no sign-ups, just a blip in your traffic data.

These anonymous visitors are potential customers, leads, and revenue streams just slipping away under the radar. 

And the kicker? Most marketers are so focused on the visible 2% that they ignore the massive untapped opportunity sitting right under their noses!

At Customers.ai, we’ve seen brands turn anonymous visitors into real results: Think 30% more conversions, higher ROI on retargeting, and leads that might’ve otherwise been lost forever.

So, here’s the big question: How much ROI are you leaving on the table by not identifying your anonymous visitors? If you’re not sure, it’s time to find out. Let’s break it down.

See Who Is On Your Site Right Now!

Get names, emails, phone numbers & more.

Try it Free, No Credit Card Required

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The ROI Problem with Anonymous Visitors

Your site might be pulling in 100,000 visitors a month but if 98% leave without a trace, that’s 98,000 potential customers slipping through the cracks. 

Even worse, even if your conversion rate is 2%, how much revenue are you losing from the other 98% of anonymous visitors? 

Now, we know that traffic doesn’t equal revenue. But identifying and engaging even a small percentage of those anonymous visitors can drive a measurable ROI boost. 

Imagine capturing just 5% of that untapped audience. That’s an extra 5,000 leads or purchases each month! And that’s just the starting point. 

Every anonymous visitor represents a missed chance to connect, convert, and grow your business. Capturing even a small portion of these anonymous users can transform your ROI. Here’s how:

Lost Lead Generation Opportunities: Without capturing anonymous visitors, you’re effectively ignoring a massive chunk of your top-of-funnel audience.

Wasted Ad Spend on Retargeting: Retargeting campaigns are less effective when you don’t know who your visitors are. Instead of smart, targeted ads, you’re left with broad (and expensive) guesswork.

Lack of Insights to Optimize the Sales Funnel: Anonymous visitors leave you flying blind. Without data, you can’t identify where visitors drop off or what’s stopping them from converting.

If these problems sound familiar, you’re not alone. But the good news? These gaps are entirely fixable with the right tools and strategies.

How Visitor Identification Improves ROI

It’s one thing to know you’re losing potential revenue but it’s another to understand just how much you can gain by identifying those anonymous visitors. 

The right strategies and tools don’t just stop the leaks, they turn them into new opportunities to boost revenue and engagement. 

Here’s how visitor identification can make a real impact on your ROI:

1. Unlocking Hidden Data

When you start identifying anonymous visitors, you’re no longer working in the dark. Instead, you gain actionable insights into who these anonymous users are and how to engage them effectively.

Purchase Behavior: See which products visitors view, how long they stay, and whether they add items to their cart.

Abandoned Cart Recovery: Identify visitors who leave mid-checkout and use email or SMS to bring them back.

Repeat Visits: Track returning visitors, understand their intent, and tailor your messaging to nudge them toward conversion.

For example, brands using Customers.ai’s tools have seen a 25% lift in abandoned cart recovery rates and 5x ROAS by identifying anonymous shoppers and sending timely follow-ups. 

That’s money back in your pocket from visitors you’d have otherwise lost.

2. Boosting Retargeting Success

Most retargeting campaigns fail because they lack precision. But when you know who your visitors are and what they’ve done, you can build intent-based retargeting campaigns with ads that hit where it counts:

Better Ad Segmentation: Use data to target specific groups, like visitors who browsed but didn’t buy, with highly relevant offers.

Improved Click-Through Rates (CTR): Personalized ads can boost CTR by up to 4x compared to generic campaigns.

Higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): By reducing waste, you maximize the impact of every dollar spent on retargeting.

For instance, after Harvest Hosts implemented visitor identification and Super CAPI, they saw a 25x ROI because they were no longer targeting blind audiences.

3. Enabling Lead Generation

The key to turning anonymous visitors into known leads is offering value upfront. Here’s how you can do it:

Gated Content: Offer exclusive resources like guides, reports, or discounts in exchange for contact details.

Live Chat Tools: Use real-time chat to engage visitors and capture emails or phone numbers during the conversation.

Dynamic Forms: Trigger personalized pop-ups based on visitor behavior, such as exit intent or time on page.

Brands capturing just 5% more leads from anonymous visitors have reported up to 30% growth in their monthly lead volume. 

Small changes in visitor identification can add up to significant results.

Key Metrics to Track

When tracking the ROI impact of visitor identification, focus on these key performance indicators:

Conversion Rate Improvements: Are more visitors turning into leads or customers? Watch how conversion rates climb as you identify and target the right audience.

Cost-Per-Lead Reductions: Visitor identification makes your marketing more efficient, reducing how much you spend on acquiring each lead.

Retargeting Ad Effectiveness: Personalized retargeting campaigns become more effective, boosting metrics like CTR and ROAS.

By identifying and engaging anonymous visitors, you’re not just saving lost opportunities, you’re driving measurable growth for your business.

The Tools and Strategies You Need to Target Anonymous Visitors

Identifying and converting anonymous visitors isn’t magic, it’s simply about using the right tools and strategies to collect data, analyze intent, and act in real time. 

Let’s look at what you need to make it happen.

1. Customers.ai for Identifying Anonymous Visitors

If you’re serious about turning anonymous visitors into ROI, Customers.ai is a must-have. 

With features like real-time visitor identification, data enrichment, and seamless integrations with CRM and marketing tools like Klaviyo and Salesforce, Customers.ai helps you:

Identify previously anonymous traffic and connect it to existing customer profiles.

Unlock data that other platforms miss, including intent signals and behavior trends.

Boost retargeting performance with actionable insights.

Identifying your anonymous visitors is the first step in reaching them. If you don’t know who they are, you certainly can’t target them.

2. Data-Driven Strategies

Once you’ve got your visitor ID software in place, it’s time to use the data effectively to turn anonymous visitors into identified prospects.

Analyzing intent signals can help you understand what anonymous visitors are looking for and how close they are to converting. 

Focus on:

Time on Site and Pages Visited: Visitors who spend more time or view multiple product pages are more likely to convert.

Behavior Flow Analysis: Tools like Google Analytics or Customers.ai can map out the steps visitors take before they bounce, helping you identify bottlenecks.

Heatmaps: Tools like Crazy Egg or Hotjar show where visitors are clicking, scrolling, or hesitating, giving you insights into their interests and pain points.

Using these insights, you can prioritize high-intent visitors and create more effective targeting strategies.

3. Real-Time Personalization

Timing is everything when it comes to anonymous visitors. By delivering personalized experiences in real time, you can keep visitors engaged and move them closer to conversion. Here’s how:

Dynamic Content: Tailor homepage banners, CTAs, or product recommendations based on visitor behavior.

Targeted Offers: Serve discount codes or free shipping offers to high-intent visitors before they leave.

Exit Intent Popups: Use smart popups triggered by exit intent to capture email addresses or phone numbers before visitors bounce.

For instance, ecommerce brands using real-time personalization have reported a 20% increase in conversion rates by tailoring content to individual visitors.

The ROI Boost You Can Expect from Identifying Anonymous Visitors

Visitor identification might not seem like a top priority but when you see how identifying anonymous visitors directly impacts your ROI, it’s impossible to ignore. 

The brands that get it right are seeing serious results. Here’s how it’s working for them.

Case Study #1: Harvest Hosts

The Challenge: Harvest Hosts, a membership program connecting RV travelers with unique overnight stays, faced a challenge familiar to many: converting anonymous visitors into paying members.

The Solution: With Customers.ai’s real-time visitor identification, they pinpointed high-intent visitors and engaged them with personalized campaigns.

The Result: A 28% decrease in CPA. By identifying and targeting their visitors more effectively, Harvest Hosts maximized their marketing investment and grew their membership base significantly.

Read the full case study >>

Case Study #2: Mailer Profit Agency

The Challenge: Mailer Profit Agency needed to uncover revenue opportunities from their anonymous traffic while optimizing their client acquisition funnel.

The Solution: Using Customers.ai, they identified previously unknown visitors and delivered hyper-targeted outreach that resonated with their audience.

The Result: They saw $1.7M in attributable revenue from Customers.ai and improved their email campaign ROI, proving the power of identifying visitors who would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Read the full case study >>

Start Tracking Your Anonymous Visitors & Start Growing Your ROI

Every anonymous visitor is a missed opportunity but it doesn’t have to stay that way. With the right visitor identification tools and strategies, you can start turning those unknown clicks into real customers and measurable ROI.

Even small steps, like identifying just a fraction of your anonymous visitors, can lead to big wins – think higher conversions, smarter ad spend, and more leads in your funnel. The data proves it, and the results speak for themselves.

Ready to see the difference for yourself? Start tracking today and watch your ROI grow. 

Start your free trial of Customers.ai today and take the first step toward turning your anonymous traffic into revenue.

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Important Next Steps

See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.

Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.

Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.

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