Uncategorized Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Omnichannel Personalization SaaS Solution

28 Jun
2016

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common?

These 4 Billion-Dollar Companies Are Leaving the Competition In the Dust…

The customer is always right, right? Well, it all depends on what kind of experience customers have with your brand. Their experience will not only dictate how often they’ll complain, but how successful your company will be. Think of some of the biggest new brands – ones like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon. All started within 15-20 years, but all have seen incredible success. Want to know why? Because they spent a lot of time and money making the customer experience the best it can be.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Recently, taking the customer experience to the next level is possible through personalizing the content. It’s been an important cornerstone of successful marketing for some time now.

Think back to how this got done before the web. Companies were talking to customers, giving them surveys to try and find out as much as they could about them.

These days companies have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, and are embracing data to make it work for them. This article will explore how four companies (Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Best Buy) adapted over the past five years to see amazing growth, largely because of personalization.

Google

This company needs no introduction, and I bet you can already start to connect the dots on how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to great success. First, we need to take a step back and understand how Google makes its money. 89% of it comes from ad revenues, so for all intents and purposes, we’re only going to focus on that. So the question is, how do they leverage personalization to see the 66-billion-dollar revenue they pulled in last year.

Personalized Search

Google works best as a profile-based service, which means that to get the most out of it, you’ll need to sign into an account. From Gmail to YouTube, Google accounts work with a lot of services that people use regularly. Sure, you can still use it without signing in, but that is where the real personalization begins. This first point is pretty obvious. Depending on what you search for, and what your browsing history is, Google will serve you different sites.

Despite this fact, most people still don’t mind using it. By knowing what you’re searching for, they can offer products they think you’ll want to see. Yes, they are skewing the data. If you want a completely unbiased web search, consider using something like duckduckgo.com. Google is banking on a complex algorithm that takes sites you’ve visited and continues to show similar ones. If they know the type of sites you enjoy, why not show you more of the same?

Personalized Ads

This takes the first point to the next level and is made obviously clear after searching for a specific topic that you wouldn’t usually search. As an interesting experiment to illustrate this, I changed up my searches for a week. I love cars and do a lot of car-related searches. Understandably, most of my ads (when ad blocker was turned off) were for car-related products. I tried searching for something completely unrelated to cars: bird watching. Google noticed and then started showing me tranquil ads for bird watching equipment. Anyone can run this experiment, and it’s interesting to see how your search affects everything around you.

Though this may come off as creepy to some, it makes sense. If I am genuinely interested in all this bird watching stuff, maybe a company is offering a sale on those killer binoculars that I was looking for; so, I’ll click an ad, Google will get paid, and I’ll have some nice binoculars. Thanks, Google!

Personalized Videos

This last example is the natural progression from search and ad personalization. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s already happening. Depending on what you usually watch, it will curate your content to show you related videos.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Though most, or all, of us, hate video ads, they know it’s a numbers game. Sure, you may close an ad every time, but 1 in 100 people might click it, and 1 in 1,000 might go on to buy the product. With these ads being served to millions of people every day, there is a lot of money to be made.

Google has mastered personalization to try and give you what you’re looking for before you even look, and the numbers speak for themselves. If this approach weren’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it.

Next, let’s look at everyone’s favorite streaming site: Netflix.

Netflix

“Netflix and chill,” may be a popular saying, but they are not chill about their dedication to providing you with shows you want to watch. Unlike Google, Netflix doesn’t make their money through ads, but through subscriptions, so their main focus is retention and keeping existing customers happy. They do this by filtering through their sea of available content to give you only what you want to watch.

Let’s look at how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to create a unique experience for all of their 81.5 million subscribers.

Recommendations

The “Recommended Shows” sections of Netflix aren’t new. In fact, they were working on improving their recommendation algorithm when they were still mailing out DVDs. Way back in 2006, they announced a $1 million prize to any team who could help improve their recommendation algorithm by just 10%. It’s clear they’re serious about constantly improving recommendations, and things have only gotten better for them since they made the jump to streaming in 2007.

Compared to a DVD watch list, instantly streaming content gave them a lot more data about people’s viewing habits. While they only had a list to work with in the past, now they can see what shows you watch, how much of each show you watch, what time you watch, and a lot more. This knowledge about your viewing habits helps them keep you engaged by ensuring you always have something new to watch.

Multiple Devices

Once Netflix made the jump to streaming, it opened up a whole new platform to reach new potential users. The thing is, not everyone’s the same, and different people prefer to watch movies or TV on different media. Netflix quickly understood this dilemma and saw the potential to have their service on different platforms. Rather than just being available through their site on a PC, they opened it up to Roku, Xbox, Apple TV and many others.

Netflix has one thing down: they are available to personalize content wherever and however their customers want it. From laptops, to phones, and even gaming consoles, Netflix is available wherever you want to use it.

Breaking The 4th Wall

The last piece of personalization that helps Netflix deliver a seamless customer experience is by now bringing recommendations right to your inbox. They knew people spent a lot of time just browsing for something to new watch, so now they help out by emailing suggestions directly to you. By using all of the data from your account, if a new show or movie that they think you’ll like comes out, they’ll let you know. You can even add it to your list from your phone!

Delivering useful content and recommendations is the type of omni channel personalization that has separated Netflix from the competition. They’re able to deliver a seamless experience from start to finish.

Amazon

You may have heard of this company. They used to sell books online, but are now the largest marketplace in the world, and are a perfect e-commerce example for how personalization helped them dominate the marketplace. As an e-commerce site, they make their money by selling products, and make even more money by recommending other items.

The motivation for recommendation is getting you to purchase more items. As the web grew, and more data points became available about their users, they were able to track more and more information, and make appropriate recommendations.

Frequently Bought Together

If you’ve ever used Amazon, you’ve seen this section, and it’s an ingenious piece of personalization. These recommendations are not serendipitous or a fluke. They are cold and calculated. Fortune describes it pretty well:

The company reported a 29% sales increase to $12.83 billion during its second fiscal quarter, up from $9.9 billion during the same time last year. A lot of that growth arguably has to do with the way Amazon has integrated recommendations into nearly every part of the purchasing process from product discovery to checkout.

Not only does this work, but they have multiple areas, each offering different suggestions: frequently bought together, customers who bought this item also bought, sponsored products relating to this item, and what other items do customers buy after viewing this item.

Those are four other suggestions to upsell and get you to buy more products. It’s no wonder why Amazon is the leader in the marketplace. This alone shows their understanding and value of customer data.

Follow Up Emails

If you’re running an e-commerce business, then you know that it’s a fact that a certain percentage of people will abandon their carts before purchasing. It doesn’t mean that they hate your brand or don’t want the product; life is complicated, and lots of things are vying for our attention.

With nearly 44% of cart abandonment emails being opened, a good percentage of those result in sales. This kind of personalization and customer experience isn’t hard to achieve, and any e-commerce business should be doing it. All it takes is a simple email with the items they left in the cart to try and rekindle the relationship and emotion felt in the first place.

Amazon Dash

This last product of Amazon’s takes personalization from the digital into the real world. If you’ve been following along, then you understand that people like to interact with brands on their terms, and that repeat business is key for a successful brand.

Amazon took their one-click checkout feature and made it into a real button. They realized that certain people would buy the same staples like Tide, Gatorade, or razors, so they made it even easier for you to buy them with one touch. Going from multiple steps to one press of a button is the next step in personalization and takes the customer experience to the next level. I’m excited to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Not mentioned in the title, but equally as interesting is Best Buy, and they’re the last example of how a brick-and-mortar company can also adapt to the online data revolution and go toe-to-toe with the best of them. Worldwide, they have a 22% hold in the electronics market and are trying to close the gap with Amazon. To do so, they’re implementing similar tactics as Amazon and capitalizing on the shift to personalization.

Catching Up With The Rest

If you’ve bought something at Best Buy recently, you’ll notice that they too are sending recommendation emails. If you bought an Xbox and they have your email address, you might get emails suggesting new game titles you might like.

Of course, Best Buy stores benefit from the ability to offer instant gratification, but they also separate themselves from other online retailers by offering store-exclusive content. That means if you preorder a game at Best Buy, you’ll get exclusive access to limited-edition content, not available to anyone else. With prices being pretty consistent for video games, offering the bonus of additional content is an interesting approach to helping close the gap with online retailers.

Price Match

Around 70% of Best Buy’s inventory is available cheaper elsewhere online (Amazon, eBay), so how do they still manage to compete? To combat this, they’ve implemented a pretty liberal price-match policy for brick-and-mortar as well as online retailers. This policy is a pretty bold statement and makes a strong case for those who prefer to buy all of their electronics at once to do it all at Best Buy. If online retailers can’t compete with price, then they’ll have to get creative to compete with Best Buy moving forward.

Personal Contact

Though brick-and-mortar can seem like an excessive overhead in our digital society, Best Buy uses it to leverage their “blue shirt” experts and staff, who give a real personal touch. This is something an online store just can’t do on the same level. Sure, they could have a pop-up live chat window, but it just can’t replace actual face-to-face, human contact. Their staff is well versed in what they’re selling (sometimes that’s because they are actually employees of the brands they are recommending, instead of being Best Buy employees), and can usually understand your concerns and make real-time recommendations.

Though large businesses are generally not known for their speed in implementing change, all of these companies have done a great job of using data to their advantage to keep things personal for their customers and deliver an amazing overall experience. And as far as it looks, the customers have returned the favor by staying loyal to them and purchasing time after time.

15 Jan
2015

Using Marketing Personalization to Tap into the Disconnected Consumer

Today’s consumers are bombarded with marketing. For consumers, the never-ending onslaught of marketing messages across digital and traditional marketing channels is a desensitizing experience, and customers quickly learn to ignore and filter marketing that does not instantly resonate with their needs.

Marketing personalization helps cut through the noise by smartly combining state of the art marketing tech with traditional marketing know-how. By personalizing a customer’s experience, disconnected customers quickly turn into engaged, loyal brand advocates.

Marketing personalization is the most important capability for marketers in years to come. 74% of consumers get frustrated with content that doesn’t appeal to their interests. Customers simply don’t have the time or attention span to sift through hundreds of marketing messages that aren’t personalized for them. Studies consistently show that personalized marketing increases various KPIs by significant amounts. One research brief found that personalized marketing improved clickthrough rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. Personalized content that targets an individual is more likely to receive attention and, as a result, increase revenue.

So, how can companies reach out to disconnected customers with a marketing personalization strategy? Companies can adjust their marketing strategies based on how personalization would be most effective for each individual customer. In most cases, personalized marketing either acts as an initial introduction to new products or is the final push a customer needs before finalizing their purchase.

Initial Introduction

I often receive emails from my favorite retailers announcing new products and special offers. Oftentimes this content is specifically tailored to my past purchases and buying behaviors. For example, consider the following email I received from Nordstrom. At the bottom of a confirmation email for new shoes I had recently purchased, Nordstrom listed other items that I might be interested in.

Nordstrom's recommended products for me, based off that first purchase — Nordstrom’s recommended products for me, based off that first purchase

Before receiving this email, I had no plans for shopping with Nordstrom in the near future. I was disconnected from the retailer. However, upon seeing the recommended apparel, I was intrigued. I had become reconnected with Nordstrom. And, a couple weeks later, I drove down to Nordstrom for a closer look at one of the products that had been recommended, which I later ended up buying.

Personalized birthday emails are another way to introduce disconnected customers to the retailer. A timely birthday email with special offers can create an opportunity for the birthday guy or gal to spend recently acquired gift money or gift cards on the retailer.

Final Push

Personalization can also be the final push a disconnected consumer needs when he or she has not completed a transaction. Abandoned cart emails are a perfect example of this. When a customer strays from a website leaving behind a shopping cart full of products, an automated email that checks in with the customer can lead to a completed sale.

Cart abandonment emails are a must-have for any online retailer. According to Salecycle, nearly half of all cart abandonment emails are opened and 1 out of 3 clicks result in a purchase made on site. These emails prod disconnected customers back to the website, reconnecting them with the retailer.

A Final Note

When considering disconnected customers, implementing omnichannel strategies is a must. Marketing personalization can appear across a variety of platforms. A customer who is inactive on email may be disconnected from a company via email. However, this customer may be accessible via SMS or social media networks. A customer that is not responsive to a certain channel should not be regarded as “disconnected,” as this could simply be a matter of channel preference. An omnichannel strategy can help distinguish truly disconnected customers.

16 Oct
2014

See you at DMA 2014!

Meet nectarOM at DMA 2014

Our team will be at DMA 2014 in San Diego from October 26th to the 29th at booth 1016, so come stop by and say hi to us when you have a chance.

DMA 2014 hosts some of the best and brightest data driven marketers and offers the marketing world a chance to connect over the rapidly evolving marketing space.

Learn more about DMA 2014 at: //www.dma14.org

Stay classy, San Diego

05 Mar
2014

How Big Data and Dating are Colliding

Online dating is not new. In fact, it’s been around for quite some time, but has only recently been exploded in the mobile space. It wasn’t too long ago that a negative stigma of online dating existed within American society. It was thought of to be mainly for “older” people or people who really had trouble finding someone via traditional avenues such as bars, Church groups, blind dates, or through mutual friends. People thought it was a poor way to find love, because the relationship was created through digital means versus in person social interactions.

Oh, how times have changed.

With the invention of the smart phone/iPhone apps, dating has been taken to a whole new level. It has now actually become trendy to use digital devices to find another person. While the traditional dating websites such as Match.com and Plentyoffish.com have created apps as an extension of their websites, let’s take a look at the popular/up and coming aka “trendy” dating apps.

Tinder: Perhaps considered the most controversial of the dating apps, Tinder uses a combination of looks and geographic data as a means for a connection. This app connects to a user’s Facebook account, and uses the data from this social media website to display mutual friends between 2 individuals. Ultimately this has resulted in a more superficial dating app, where the majority of people are not looking for long term relationships.

Coffee Meets Bagel: This app also integrates Facebook data into the user experience by leveraging mutual friends of friends to find matches for the user. Once a day, a user will receive one “bagel”, that is, they will receive one potential datable candidate a day. Within a 24 hour time period, they have the ability to either LIKE or PASS the person. If both individuals LIKE, then CMB will give you a private phone line to set up phone calls and/or exchange texts without giving away your actual number.

Lulu: This particular app is not really considered a mutually beneficial dating app, rather, it’s a girl-reviews-boy app. The app was launched in 2011, but has recently come to limelight within the past year because of its controversial nature. Lulu used to be a safe haven for women to rate their experiences with any guy who has a Facebook account. Essentially, any male on Facebook was automatically listed on the app, whether they opted in or not. Recently, however, Lulu changed the rules so that guys have to opt-in to be rated on the app.

The digital dating world has evolved from a mostly static user profile description to a vastly dynamic and data mining method. Using Facebook information has become the norm in these dating apps primarily because the Facebook platform allows direct access to data on its 500 million users.

In the near future, it won’t be surprising to see a dating app that uses Instagram or Snapchat as a means for connecting.

27 Feb
2014

How the Power of Big Data is Used to Discover Hidden Planets

Astronomy, like many other sciences, is heavily reliant on data analysis. Scientists looking at stars and planets record a multitude of variables including heat signatures, brightness levels, radiation, and even high level chemistry equations. As a result, it’s not too difficult to see how scientists make discoveries much later than the data shows.

In 2009, the space observatory, Kepler, named for early astronomer Johannes Kepler, was launched with the mission of discovering more exoplanets. Exoplanets are Earth-like planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system. Kepler was extraordinary at its job, almost too good in fact. Using a photometer that monitors the brightness of almost 150,000 stars, as of February of 2014 Kepler has discovered over 900 confirmed planets as well as another 3600 unconfirmed.

Discovering 900 planets out of over 4000 candidates is no small feat, but on February 26, 2014 scientists discovered an astounding 715 new planets from the Kepler’s old existing data via big data analysis. Using a tool called ‘verification by multiplicity’ NASA scientists were able to comb through overwhelming amounts of data with pinpoint accuracy. This sophisticated big data technique has roots partly based in probability and can be used for “wholesale validation” according to Jason Rowe, a member of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).

Thanks to big data analysis, a groundbreaking astronomical discovery has been made. The next question though is “How do we apply this to the business world?” A giant space observatory returning an overwhelming amount of data is not that far off from a company with millions of customers. Using this same principles one could glean industry insights that are invaluable to any company’s success.

17 Feb
2014

3 Marketing Trends of 2014

Marketing is just like any other tradition here in the United States: as time progresses it begins to change and adapt to new trends that emerge. In 2014, the marketing world has had a lot of new developments thanks to the innovations such as mobile apps, social media, big data breakthroughs, and other discoveries. As a result, there has been a noticeable shift in how marketers create their strategies to promote products and services. Today, we will discuss 3 of these new marketing trends that have emerged in 2014.

1. Don’t Just Personalize, Hyper-Personalize In 2013, personalization was the name of the marketing game. How was this accomplished exactly? By tracking spending habits and recording clicks while signed in to their website. Then the companies would take that information and use it to send personalized offers via email, text or through the website. Hyperpersonalization takes this one step further. By integrating various existing data sets such as personal information and social media data, companies are able to know more about their customers than just their spending data. For example, utilizing information from Susan’s Facebook page, a company might be able to learn that Susan is expecting a baby in a few months and to send her offers for baby clothes. Hyperpersonalization is like knowing what the customer wants before they actually want it

2. Measure Social Media ROI Accurately Measuring ROI from social media in the past has been anything but exact. Every company that has invested in social media has had a different method of measuring the effectiveness of their social media efforts with varied results. In the past, companies measured their social media success by how much revenue it directly generated for them. While this may work for other marketing avenues, it may not necessarily work for social media. In 2014, measuring social media ROI has evolved from looking at revenue generated to the buzz that is created from the efforts put in. Creating buzz around a company will increase a company’s audience and engagement by increasing word of mouth; hence the word “viral”. Understanding how to optimize content to go viral is key in the success of social media implementation.

3. Real Time Geographic Marketing Geographic marketing is not a new innovation. It has been around since the early days albeit in a more primitive fashion; for example, a large billboard perched above a building has an arrow which points down, indicating it is a restaurant to stop at while driving. Over the past few years email has been the primary source of geographic marketing by sending offers to customers within certain distances from companies. In 2014 this will be taken one step further. With the rise in mobile device usage, real-time geographic marketing will be employed by sending SMS messages or emails to customers’ mobile devices when they are certain distance from a company. So if I am in a mall looking for a gift, I might get an SMS on my phone alerting me that a clothing store in the same mall has a sale. That is the power and convenience or geographic marketing.

Marketing will always have a place in any business strategy because it is the most basic form of communicating with potential customers. The best way to look at is summed up in the expression: “The players haven’t changed, but the game has.” By staying on top of the newest developments one can expect to enjoy the benefits of being top of mind.

30 Jan
2014

Evolving Trend of Mass Customization

In the early 1900’s Henry Ford was credited with the invention of the assembly line. This innovation allowed for large quantities of identical products to be produced in relatively little time. This movement became known as mass production and shaped the way industries would conduct business and build products for years to come. Fast forward to the early 2000’s and mass production, while still in place in many industries, is slowly being eked out by a new trend called mass customization. Mass customization has the same principles of mass production but with one significant difference: the companies were able to create the same products but with different features and specifications for the customer. This notion revolutionized the way we perceive consumer products. Fast forward to 2014 and mass customization, still widely used, is now being employed in different fields of business namely, Marketing.

1. E-mail marketing: Mass marketing customization is the notion that marketers are able to communicate a similar but slightly personalized message to a large audience as opposed to just sending out the same message to an entire audience. Among some of the most basic but effective forms of mass marketing customization is email marketing. One is able to include individual customers’ names and shopping preferences in the message which achieves two goals: (1) It gives the customer the assurance that the company cares about them personally and (2) can help solidify a sense of brand loyalty with that customer.

2. Website Personalization: One recent innovation in mass marketing customization is website personalization. Website personalization goes one step further than email marketing as far as personalized interactions with customers. On some retail websites, customers are given the option to create an account and sign in as they shop or look for products. This is incredibly beneficial for retailers because when a customer is logged in and browsing, his or her data, transactions, and preferences will be saved and made available to the retailer for various marketing promotions. As a result, the next time that customer logs on to the website, they may be greeted, offered promotions on items that they would be interested in, and given discounts and special deals. All of these will enforce a sense of loyalty and synergy between customer and company.

3. Personalizing TV and Digital Ads: Since mass marketing customization is still very new to the marketing world, the possibilities for growth and discovery are endless. One of the most interesting concepts for mass marketing customization is the notion of personalizing TV ads. Traditional advertising uses the television as a channel for communication. Unfortunately these ads are standardized for every single person watching the same channel. One concept of mass marketing customization is to shatter that old precedent and find a way to send relevant ads and commercials to viewers based on information about their interests, hobbies, career, and a multitude of other filters. Just imagine: running out of food while watching a football game and all of the sudden a commercial appears for a local pizza restaurant. Presently, this may be accomplished through digital TV ads – that is, the data from individuals who are browsing the web will have digital advertisements pushed through to them before watching video content sites such as Hulu and ABC video.

Mass marketing customization is beautifully simple in concept. Match relevant advertisements, promotions, offers, etc. with the right audience in order to ensure a mutual benefit for both the customer and the company. The big question though is “Where do I start?” Our products are designed to help facilitate mass marketing customization and provide an avenue for the average marketer to accomplish these seemingly difficult tasks. We love mass customization, and we are sure you will too.

20 Jan
2014

The 3 Biggest Complaints of 2013 Holiday Shopping

When you think of the holidays you think of delicious food, time with family and friends, receiving presents, and if you’re lucky, a White Christmas. When talking about giving presents, however, the Christmas mall rush is not something to be reckoned with. Within the past few years, the advent of digital shopping has drastically changed the Christmas gift-buying experience. Arguably, 2013 was the year of the digital shopper; just as an indication, total e-commerce grew 24% to $4.6 billion on Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving (Business Insider, Link) Customers are shopping online more than ever, shopping for deals and buying presents all from the comfort and convenience from their own home.

With such a dramatic increase in online shopping, it’s no wonder that the limits of delivery infrastructure were tested. The overwhelming amount of individuals shopping online combined with weather issues across the United States actually triggered an overload on the parts of carriers such as UPS and FedEx. This has inadvertently resulted in customer complaints over the holiday season.

Top Three Consumer Complaints

Failed promise of timely delivery: The biggest complaint of 2013 on the customer side is the failed promise of a timely delivery and it ironically stems from digital shopping becoming “too easy” and “too time-efficient.” That is to say as more and more customers shop for items on their phones instead of going to the physical stores, the retailers are put in a bind because they become forced to extend their shut-off day for shipping and will rely solely on the postal service to deliver the items on time even if Christmas day is just two days away. Stella Service, an online service that measures customer service and satisfaction, stated that 8 out of 25 prominent retailers failed to deliver on time before Christmas day, even though the orders were before the cut off day. By not meeting the delivery time, retails are losing customer loyalty and profit in the long-run.

Item out of stock after placing order: After talking with several of our colleagues, friends, and family, we noticed another negative trend. One apparel retailer did not synchronize their stock inventory with their website, failing to keep up with inventory count. As a result, a coworker of mine had placed an order for a shirt and paid for it only to receive an email a few days later saying the item was out of stock. Obviously by having these issues you will not only lose sales but valuable customers as well. This retailer did take steps to mitigate this issue however. They called my coworker and personally spoke with her about the problem and gave her a gift certificate. While the retailer did a good job of handling this problem, all of it could have been avoided in the first place if they had kept their inventory up to date.

Wrong Item: The final complaint was delivery of an incorrect item. Another friend of mine had ordered a pair of boots from a seller through Amazon prior to his hiking trip. They arrived in a timely manner but had one slight issue: they were a completely different pair of boots. Obviously my friend did not let this go and since he needed the pair in the next few days before he left he had to wrestle with returning them and then waiting for a new pair to be delivered. He ended up getting the correct pair of boots in time but the fact that the first pair was the wrong one was a huge pain for him and he had to jump over a ton of hurdles just to get the right pair. The moral here is for companies to perform quality control on anything they ship out because messing up orders like that can hurt their image and brand loyalty.

While 2013 still saw an increase in traffic and sales across the board last year one thing is becoming apparent: the tried and true old methods are becoming obsolete in this technology-driven consumer society. If retailers want to maximize their sales in this coming 2014 holiday season they will have to go back to basics and adopt the “underpromise and overdeliver” mantra in their delivery, pricing, and customer experience areas.

17 Dec
2013

Randi Zuckerberg Dallas Digital Summit Keynote Part 1

Randi Zuckerberg Emerging Tech Trends Recap

While attending the Dallas Digital Summit these past few days we were fortunate enough to listen to Randi Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media and sister to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Randi spoke on a very relevant topic that everyone faces today and that is the shifting trends of technology. She spoke of 10 trends and how they are changing around us every day. As a recap, here are 5 of Randi’s trends. The other 5 will be presented in next week’s blog:

BRANDED NEWSROOMS= This means that tech providers such as yahoo or large companies on twitter on facebook are now a more followed source of news than actual news stations. The rapidity that word travels on these social media sites far exceeds that of televisions and newspapers as we are now able to learn events as they occur almost real-time.

TEENS ARE THE HOLY GRAIL OF TECHNOLOGY= Randi explained this as the younger more tech-savvy generation is shaping the way information is dispersed, new things are learned and overall how the world is viewed. This always connected generation is able to effectively utilize all the information around us and break through clutter to discover new knowledge.

THE MAKER MOVEMENT= People purchasing products in the store, for example, see the inferiority in consumer goods and believe that they can create a higher-quality product. This is no new way of thinking, however, people have always been trying to build a better mouse trap but in today’s world the internet is giving these people the channels to actually distribute to consumers now.

THE RISE OF ENTREPLOYEES= This is the notion that within companies employees will see opportunities to create their own ideas and carve niches. Unfortunately, the everyday working man does not have the time nor capital to pursue their idea, but today, there are companies that will provide funds and time for their employees to create their own startups from within in exchange for equity.

LIFE-LOGGING= Life-logging is the idea of capturing your everyday life through pictures, diaries, social media, etc. So widespread has this “selfie” culture become that there are now apps reminding you to take daily “selfies” and there are even devices that you can purchase that will snap pictures of your day-to-day activities to record them for you.

For Randi’s next 5 emerging social trends stay tuned for our next blog!

22 Oct
2013

5 Reasons Why You Need Marketing Personalization

All things considered, it’s a must…

There’s lots of decisions to be made and various avenues to consider as a marketer. One of the more prominent, hands down, is Marketing Personalization. The road map of promoting your products, generating interest, acquiring customers, obtaining & expanding a loyal customer base and boosting your revenue is vast. It’s no easy feat.

When it’s time to substantiate a plan of action, there’s a slew of questions darting from every direction. The most pressing of all questions leans towards, “Is there a need for marketing personalization and how important is this?” An extreme “in a nutshell” answer is YES and VERY. But, you’re not here for one word answers…

Let’s sift through to some of the more salient fundamentals of marketing personalization…

1. You’ve got some hardcore competition – Ninety trillion emails are sent out each year. Approximately 70% of those emails are not personalized and are considered generic while 25% contain a trivial amount of marketing personalization. Bottom line…less than 10% of emails received are considered legit by the recipient. The rest are deemed as “spam” and dispersed to the trash bin unopened. That’s not where you want to be. We’ve all heard the expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” With 90 trillion emails being sent every year, there’s a tremendous amount of competition. Swimming in the sea of mediocrity isn’t going to cut it. You’ve got to do more than make an impact or come up with a catchy slogan. You need to gather,disparate and segment your data efficiently to deliver the most relevant content, products and offers.

2. Customization vs Personalization – Although similar, these two terms are sitting on opposite ends of the stick. To differentiate the 2, lets think about a cup of coffee. A customized cup of coffee is based on general information. John likes coffee. Regular. Cream and sugar. He enjoys a cup of coffee periodically throughout the day. A personalized cup of coffee transpires from connecting big data, connecting the dots and creating a 360 degree customer profile. Jane is a coffee aficionado. Regular. Columbian Dark Roast from a local cafe down the street. Medium cup. Two raw sugars. A splash of skim milk. She enjoys a cup at 9 am, noon and 3 p.m. Jane does not drink coffee after 6 pm. Customized is good. Personalized will get their attention.

3. 360 Degree Customer Profile – As they say, no 2 snowflakes are the same. The same holds true for your customers. Without marketing personalization, John is simply a 35 year old male who lives in a small town. It’s flat and notably generic. There’s very little data to create a relevant marketing campaign for John. Adding marketing personalization into the mix allows you to segment and individualize each morsel of your big data to execute hyper-personalized communications. One-to-One marketing connects your customer dots from across the board through social, email, website, CRM, mobile, transaction, and 3rd party channels. With all of this information, you’re able to create a 360 degree customer view on John. Based on this data, you now can leverage and distribute the most relevant information, products and offers to John in real time..

4. Turbo-Charged Personalization – You’ve noticed that John is spending a lot of time in the home office categories and purchased several small ticket items. This was compiled from his behavior and transaction data. The big question is why? With turbo-charged personalization, the channel to social information opens. In the world of marketing personalization, this enables you to stand out from the rest because now your customers shared social information is included. John is shopping home office items because he started his own business and will be working from home. However, he’s on a budget and waiting for the big ticket items to go on sale. As a marketer, this is your opportunity to deliver hyper-personalized messages in real time based on pre-planned points.

5. You’re aiming to please – Over 70% of online customers have expressed their frustration when companies send them emails with offers, products and information that have no relevancy to their life or needs. Your goal is to please your customer, not irritate them. Without marketing personalizaion, you’re going in blind. Marketing compaigns will be generic and lack value to your customers. Maybe you sent John an email that included special offers for pet food and baby items. The offers are stellar and select items are over 80% off. That’s great, but how does this apply to John? It doesn’t. The email isn’t opened and immediately transferred to the virtual trash bin. With marketing personalization you’ll have the big data to hyper-personalize communications. You’ll know that in addition to John embarking on a small business venture, he’s also in his mid 30’s, allergic to animals, single, and he’s an outdoor enthusiast. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, traveling and mountain climbing.

As a marketer, you’ve invested a great deal of time and money. You’re on the right path. Now it’s time to face forward and onward march. Adding a solid marketing personalization plan gives you the opportunity to take what you already have and move towards success. In this day and age, customers expect personalization throughout their entire buying process. They want to be acknowledged, enticed, and have their interest sparked with emails loaded with offers, products and information compatible with their life…in real time. When a customer is checking emails, you’ve got only a few seconds to catch their attention and make an out-of-this-world impression. It’s not the time for impromptu.

Nectar can provide your company with the easiest One-to-One Marketing Suite and help you connect your customer data, increase customer engagement and revenue.