Nift CEO Elery Pfeffer on AI, Personalization & the Future of Shopping

The founder of Nift, which recently partnered with Planet Fitness, discusses how AI drives innovation, enhances customer experiences and transforms how brands connect with their audiences

Artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, is reshaping how companies engage with customers and deliver value. The technology is making customer acquisition more effective while helping to increase customer lifetime value.

Here, Elery Pfeffer, founder and CEO of Nift, a platform designed to help customers discover new brands through personalized gifting, shares his thoughts on the evolving role of AI.

Athletech News: How is AI affecting the customer shopping experience and commerce media networks today?

Elery Pfeffer: AI is very quickly reshaping how consumers make decisions, do research and engage with brands. And the more interruptions they face along their digital shopping journeys, the more they’re inclined to use AI — because it gives them the answers and content they’re looking for, faster, and without the intrusive, irrelevant messages they’ve learned to ignore.

Those consumer behavioral changes are pushing commerce media networks to raise the bar in terms of relevancy, and many brands are now changing how they think about their content. They’re tapping data intelligence to identify their customers’ true interests and intent, so they can deliver contextually relevant content that enriches the customer experience instead of interrupting it.

This is one of the areas where AI is proving to be truly transformative, as it’s making personalization scalable and enabling companies to deliver individualized experiences to millions of people simultaneously. That’s never been possible before, and it’s reshaping how consumers expect to interact with brands. Also, as consumer adoption of AI continues to rise, AI and machine learning models will continue to improve based on those interactions, and the customer experience will continue to get better.

ATN: What does commerce media success look like today, and how has AI changed that definition?

EP: A year ago, retail media networks were dominating headlines in the trade press as more and more companies across the big box, department store and grocery sectors looked to leverage the consumer experience to unlock new revenues. Today, the consumer environment is far more complex and the path to commerce media success is cloudier. Business leaders still aren’t sure when or how tariff negotiations will conclude or how new tariffs will affect their supply chains and their consumer businesses. At the same time, consumers keep raising their expectations about what a great customer experience entails.

The combination of these factors is leading companies to realize they have to integrate their commerce media networks and their traditional commerce businesses to drive revenue growth and achieve their overarching business goals. Today, every company’s success hinges on higher consumer engagement and satisfaction, and if a consumer platform’s commerce media effort undermines that, it gives customers a reason to ignore the company’s messages, at best, and to avoid the platform altogether, at worst.

ATN: For those new to Nift, can you explain how it works, and what makes it valuable for both your platform partners and the brands in your network?

EP: Consumers are annoyed by the constant barrage of random ads that interrupt their digital experience, and companies with commerce platforms are looking for ways to tap new revenue streams while making their customer experiences more positive and engaging. At the same time, DTC brands, retailers, and service and subscription providers are dealing with rising marketing and customer acquisition costs and competing fiercely for consumers’ attention in a saturated advertising environment.

Nift addresses all three groups’ pain points by giving its commerce partners a unique way to say “thank you” to customers at any of nearly 20 touchpoints in the shopping journey with an exclusive gift that lets recipients discover and try products and services from leading e-commerce brands they’ve never tried before.

Nifts are essentially high-value thank-you gifts designed to surprise and delight customers. They give our platform partners like Afterpay, iHeartRadio, Klarna, Meetup, Tinder and Tripadvisor a unique way to increase brand sentiment and loyalty without interrupting the customer journey. Each partner decides when and how they will offer Nifts, and our AI-powered platform ensures each Nift is tailored to the recipient and contextually relevant.

Customers who receive a Nift just answer a couple of questions about their lifestyle and preferences, and then our platform matches them with two personalized gift options. Our growing ecosystem includes thousands of brands, including DTC leaders like Chewy, Fabletics, Harry’s, HelloFresh and Scentbird. These brands, in turn, benefit from our low-risk, performance-based model that often delivers significantly better ROI than traditional advertising, with conversion rates up to 10 percent, versus 1 to 3 percent with traditional digital ads.

Our proprietary data show that 72 percent of customers like the partner that gave them the Nift more for having given them a gift, and that 88 percent rate their gift positively. In addition, 70 percent of customers who redeem a Nift say they plan to use the brand again.

ATN: Nift has always focused on helping people discover new brands. How has the company evolved over the years?

EP: When we launched Nift a decade ago, we were focused on solving a problem that Fortune 500 CMOs perpetually struggle with: how to reach consumers who would likely love your product but who aren’t currently shopping for it. We initially focused on local businesses, adding only brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants and bars to our brand network.

We quickly realized, though, that customers have needs that are more specific and that their range of needs isn’t limited to just physical businesses in their area. To provide a great, well-rounded customer experience, we needed to be able to meet customers everywhere they are — which means not just in physical stores, but online, in-app, on email, text and social — and help them discover new brands that are relevant to them based on their interests and purchase history.

ATN: You’ve built a proprietary matching engine to pair customers with offers they’ll love. What data powers that engine, and what sets it apart?

EP: Customers receive Nifts only from companies they already know and trust. Our platform and patented matching engine use proprietary AI to ensure we have clean, enriched data that allows us to consistently offer their customers gift options to try brands that are relevant to them based on their interests, purchases and history with the partner’s platform.

When consumers receive a Nift, they provide a few details and are then matched with two custom-chosen gift options. They pick one to activate, and the brands in our network have access to that valuable first-party data. We also conduct tests to optimize the gift structure based on each brand’s KPIs, considering unit economics, perceived value and other factors.

ATN: What are the biggest challenges brands face in acquiring new customers, and how does Nift address those pain points better than other platforms?

EP: Consumers habitually ignore unwanted ads, which makes it even more challenging for brands to grab their attention. The advertising environment is saturated, and marketing and customer acquisition costs keep rising. Nift addresses these pain points by giving consumers a new, positive way to discover and try products and services from these brands that are competing so fiercely to engage and acquire new customers.

Our platform pairs consumers with offers from brands that they’re highly likely to want to engage with, and the relevant first-party data we share with the brands allows them to retarget customers who select their gift, but don’t redeem it right away. We also offer low-lift onboarding and maintenance for brands and help them optimize the gift structure.

ATN: You recently partnered with Planet Fitness. Because most member interactions are in person, how does this showcase Nift’s ability to create meaningful digital touchpoints and extend engagement?

EP: Fitness companies, along with consumer payments, retail and streaming media companies, are all searching for customer-centric ways to boost brand sentiment and loyalty while driving incremental revenue. Through our partnership, Planet Fitness is able to not only surprise and delight its customers in a unique, memorable way, but also extend its brand relationships well beyond any single gym location and beyond any particular moment in time.

Also, our partners control exactly when and how they offer Nifts. So, Planet Fitness might thank a member with a Nift via email on a certain day to acknowledge their visit to the gym that morning. Another day, the company might send a Nift directly through the Planet Fitness app to thank a customer for downloading the app. The company could also offer a Nift as a birthday gift or on a customer’s membership anniversary, extending the brand relationship throughout the year and beyond a physical location into the channels that the customer prefers.

ATN: What’s next for Nift? As the landscape continues to shift, where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth and impact?

EP: We’ve always operated with the knowledge that it all starts with the consumer. So, every decision we make — from how we invest in data science to how we deploy resources to how we use AI to which brands we welcome onto the platform — is designed to ultimately make the consumer experience better. And since meeting consumers where they are has become even more important, we’ll continue to evolve to be present across each channel customers are choosing, whether that is an e-commerce site, a mobile app, a physical store, or text, email or social media.

In terms of growth, we see three major factors intersecting right now that create significant opportunities for us: AI’s impact on consumer behavior; increased economic and business pressures, including tariffs and supply chain challenges; and companies looking to leverage the consumer experience to create a new, passive revenue stream via commerce media networks. Each of these presents new possibilities for us, but the confluence of the three factors is a particularly powerful accelerant for our business.