SKT Text Commerce 'TDeal' Surpasses 100 Billion KRW in Transactions in First Half of the Year

SK Telecom announced on the 14th that its AI curation text commerce service, 'T deal,' achieved a transaction amount of 106.9 billion KRW in the first half of this year. This represents an 81.5% growth compared to the same period last year. SKT plans to continuously enhance its personalized recommendation service based on big data and AI.

Since its launch in 2020, T deal's transaction amount has shown high annual growth rates of 50-60%, recording 89.4 billion KRW in 2021 and 137.4 billion KRW in 2022. Now in its fourth year, the main product offerings are rapidly diversifying. The service is expanding its range from its traditional major sales categories such as general food and health supplements to digital appliances, fashion apparel, and fashion accessories.

An SKT model is introducing 'T Deal'.
[Photo by SKT]

Analysis of summer sales from June to July this year showed that digital appliances surpassed food for the first time to take the top spot in category sales share. Sales of travel tickets also increased significantly, indicating growing consumer usage across various product areas. The sales share of digital appliances rose from second place (22.5%) in 2022 to first place (27%) this year. Travel tickets and fashion accessories also climbed in ranking compared to the previous year, moving to 9th (3.2%) and 5th (5.7%), and 8th (3.3%) and 7th (4.8%), respectively.

In the meat category, four items?Donpang (pork), Ganggangsullae (galbitang), Kkachilhan Bakyeosa (Korean beef), and Uri Jip Chuncheon Wang Dakgalbi (chicken)?were included in the top 10 sales items, showing a significant increase compared to only one item during last year’s peak season.

The diversification of T deal’s sales is attributed not only to the increasing variety of supplied products and brands but also to positive customer responses to personalized product recommendations based on big data and AI curation, the company explained.

Text subscription commerce, which proposes shopping to customers via text messages, relies heavily on data analysis capabilities to understand customer needs. This is because it recommends key products that users need through short texts and requires confirmation of the user’s purchase intent.

To this end, T deal adopted a method where AI recommends the product sales messages sent to customers. Customers are segmented based on lifestyle and interests, and generative AI recommends the optimal product categories. Experiments with this AI recommendation method showed that the click-through rate (CTR) of messages increased by up to 16% compared to before. Based on this, T deal plans to expand the use of generative AI models to replace customized marketing phrases written by marketing staff.

Customer reviews and customer center VOC are also analyzed using generative AI. Potential customer inquiries and complaints are identified in advance and actively reflected in customer service and product quality management. Additionally, SKT plans to continuously enhance optimal personalized services for customers by utilizing the big data it possesses.

Shin Sang-wook, head of SK Telecom’s advertising business, said, “T deal uses SKT’s unique big data analysis technology to find products that customers truly need and offers all products with free delivery at the lowest online prices.” He added, “We will continue to leverage SKT’s technological capabilities to provide customers with greater benefits and more convenient services.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.