With a platform for open commerce innovation, Magento Inc. has seen an increasing number of businesses embrace its technology, to the point where it now handles more than $155 billion in gross merchandise volume annually. The world of online retail is evolving rapidly, and the company has built a portfolio of cloud-based solutions for merchants to integrate the digital and physical buying experience.

“It’s the rocket ship in e-commerce,” said John Furrier (@furrier, pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “There’s still e-commerce in our future, and it’s never going away. These guys have an interesting approach.”

Furrier spoke during the kickoff discussion as part of theCUBE at the Imagine 2018 event in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was joined by Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara, pictured, left), and they discussed the importance of personalization in online retail and tracking consumer sentiment. (* Disclosure below.)

Technology to drive personalization

Personalization of content through the right marketing approach plays a big role in today’s e-commerce experience. Creating personalized product recommendations for online shoppers can be a balancing act between serving as a helpful resource and becoming too aggressive with the hard sell.

“We want to be able to have something where we know they know us, but we don’t want to be marketed to,” Martin said. “It will be interesting to understand how the modern technology stack can facilitate that.”

An important part of personalization is also understanding the consumer mood. A portion of the keynote discussion at Imagine 2018 focused on the Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team and how it channels the ups and downs of fan sentiment into an effective e-commerce strategy.

“When they lose, there’s no sales. … When they win, they sell everything out,” Furrier said. “We can understand sentiment from the data and adjust the content and marketing mix base upon what’s going on in real time. That’s a game changer.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Imagine 2018 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Imagine 2018. Neither Magento Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE