Mobile Personalization: Boost Mobile Revenues with Relevance

Mobile commerce is big. And getting bigger. It has only been six years since Apple introduced the iPhone, arguably the first shopping-friendly smartphone–though even that didn’t happen with the first generation.  And today we are spending billions of dollars shopping and buying on our phones.  Next up: Mobile Personalization!

“The runaway hit for retail this year will be mobile commerce. The best way to leave money on the table is not to have a commerce-enabled mobile site and application.”
-Mobile Commerce Outlook 2013

“Over the next five years, total mobile sales are expected to grow 33% annually to $31 billion [from $8 billion today], making up 9% of online sales in 2017.”
-Forrester Research

According to BI Intelligence, by January 2013, 29% of mobile users had made a purchase with their phones. According to Internet Retailer, Walmart estimated that 40% of all visits to their internet shopping site in December 2012 were from a mobile device.  And this is happening despite the small screens and the often difficult-to-navigate mobile sites that exist today.  Imagine what mobile personalization can do for this small screen.

There are a few retailers who are doing mobile commerce right.  Amazon leads in this area.  They not only save all your information and sync it across your digital devices, they also make checking out a breeze.  And on top of that, they offer mobile personalization for your shopping experience, which makes for a very easy and pleasant exchange; you almost WANT to give Amazon your money.

But how about retailers who don’t have the time (and money) already invested in building an e-commerce (and m-commerce) powerhouse?  How do these retailers take a bite of the growing mobile pie?

First and foremost, you have to optimize your website for mobile.  Without a mobile-optimized website, no one will shop on your site using their smartphone. Everything else is secondary.

But let’s say you have a mobile-optimized website. You even have an app for iOs and/or Android. How can you rise above all the noise of all the other retailers trying to get the consumer’s attention?  The most effective (and least disruptive) way to do this is mobile personalization:  making your customer’s mobile experience as relevant as possible for him or her.

Imagine shopping on that tiny screen and you are immediately shown products that are relevant for YOU.  You don’t have to try to fat-finger your way through several incorrect screens to get to the item you want.  I would certainly be less frustrated and more likely to purchase if I didn’t have to spend my valuable time repeating steps just to try to give a company my money.  This is what mobile personalization gives you.

Technology exists today to bring all the data you have together to paint a picture of each of your customers.  Powerful algorithms are applied to these customer pictures to determine the most relevant products, offers or messages for each of them.  Then if you have a mobile-optimized site, it’s just a matter of displaying the most relevant content in front of each customer.  And before you know it, mobile personalization has helped you take a bite out of that mobile pie.

Nectar Online Media

can help you integrate your data (and even gather some), personalize your content and deliver that content for display on your mobile site.  Find out more!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Using Big Data to Drive Revenue

Connect the Customer Dots

I recently read an article called “In Media, Big Data Is Booming but Big Results Are Lacking” written for All Things D, that included several very interesting tidbits of information:

  • 90% of the world’s data has been accumulated in the past two years.
  • We’re generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day.
  • Many companies are logging and contextualizing all this information but little is happening to the information once it’s stored in the database.
  • And, “Even though almost every CEO says their companies are becoming data-driven, the fact is that most high-level decisions are still being made from bullet points, not data points.”

We all know that we have a LOT of data to contend with: transactions, onsite clicks, email interactions, loyalty cards, social networks, mobile apps, m-commerce, customer service calls, 3rd parties, and the list goes on.  Having access to all this data is great, but it’s just a bunch of noise unless you do something with it.  The key to getting value from your big data is connecting all those dots among the different customer data sets.  Imagine if you could put ALL of your disparate sets of data into ONE huge database, and you have a tool that allows you to associate the data from each set with specific customers.  Wow!

Think of what you can learn about your customers. Think about the value you can deliver for your customers.  Think about how much more engaged your customers will be when you speak with each of them as if you know him or her. Think of how your customers will buy more from you because they are more engaged.

Now think nectarConnect.  Because that’s what nectarConnect can do for your business.  This SaaS product combines all your disparate sets of big data and connects the dots to give you a 360 degree view of each of your customers. At scale.  nectarConnect then works with other elements of the Nectar Solution Suite

nectarConnect brings order to your data chaos.  Now you can use all that valuable customer data you’ve been collecting and make it work for you.  That’s how you use big data to drive revenue.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Mad Hyper-Personalization: The Evolution to 1:1 Marketing

Don Draper of Mad Men works on Madison Avenue
Don Draper of Mad Men works on Madison Avenue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In honor of the Mad Men Season 6 premier this weekend, we’d like to take this moment to take a walk down Marketing Memory Lane, From mass marketing to demographic segmentation to customer segmentation to personalization. And now with Nectar, hyper-personalization.

Before the era now inextricably linked with Don Draper, all consumers received the same products, the same messages and the same ads, in the same medium(s). As Henry Ford once famously said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

Then came those famous Ad Men (and yes, they were mostly men) of Madison Avenue. They realized that men and women actually hear, read and remember things differently.  So these Mad Men placed “male-oriented” products, like aftershave, in sports magazines or the sports section of the newspaper.  Products “for women” were advertised on TV during the middle of the day, thus the term “soap” opera, a tip of the hat to sponsor Procter & Gamble and their detergents.  This demographic segmentation became more and more specific as time passed, differentiating marketing for marrieds vs singles, high income vs low, urban vs suburban, black vs white, and so on.

As companies began to gather more and more data on their customers and computers became increasingly powerful, smart businesses realized there was an even better way to market.  Customers could be grouped into similar segments and marketed to according to their similarities.  After all, not all women are created equal.  Some of us like brand names. Some of us refuse to buy anything without a coupon.  And some of us try to shop as infrequently as possible–hard to believe, but we exist! The hypothesis was that If brands could speak to each segment in a way that resonated with that segment, customers would buy more. And they did! Segmentation not only improved customer loyalty, it also reduced the cost of doing business.

With the advent of the internet and the wealth of data it provides, targeting has become increasingly defined.  Savvy companies track not only customer purchases, but what customers are looking at when they are on the brand’s site.  Some even combine internal digital data with bricks & mortar data. All this data allows businesses to relate to their customers more effectively.  This 0ersonalization is the precursor to hyper-personalization.

But what if a brand could speak to a customer on an individual level, aka hyper-personalization? That’s what Nectar’s proprietary software allows brands to do!  By combining all digital data available (purchases, online and email click behavior, CRM data, mobile, and so on) with social information, companies can now market to their customers in a 1:1 manner, yet do it at scale.

Today, we may go to the office in blue jeans rather than dapper suits, we may no longer be able to smoke wherever we please, we may not be able to have the 3-martini lunch anymore, but we can speak to our customers in a way that’s much more relevant for them: hyper-personalization.  Now, please excuse me, so I can go spend an hour with Don Draper. Cheers!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Amazon eCommerce: Why the Company is Killing It

The most recent retail sales figures from February surprised most people. Everyone expected a modest increase because of the expiration of the payroll tax holiday. But, WHOA, they were much better than the future prognosticators’ expectations. And the biggest winner? Amazon, eCommerce. Everything from a-z indeed.

Slate magazine said it best in their tweet: “Retail sales were up in February as Amazon just KILLED department stores.” According to Slate, general merchandisers (including department stores) saw sales declines of 4% while Amazon eCommerce saw 14% sales increases.

So now the question is why?  Why is Amazon eCommerce doing so well while similar brick-and-mortar stores aren’t? Let’s look at what Amazon does well:

  • They have a vast assortment, yet it’s relatively easy to find what you want in a very short amount of time.
  • You get your order when Amazon says you will and in the condition they say.
  • They offer adjunct services to keep you in the Amazon family (and website), like Prime, which not only gives you free shipping but lets you watch shows for free.
  • They allow you to shop on amazon on every device imaginable.
  • Customer service responds to your questions or concerns very quickly.
  • Returns are simple.

In other words, Amazon eCommerce makes the shopping experience easy, consistent and pleasurable.

But other department stores with online stores do this too, right?  Many of them do.

And many argued vociferously, as recently as a few months ago, that the reason Amazon was winning was because of the price advantage related to not having to charge taxes.  Well, guess what?  Amazon has started charging sales taxes and they’re STILL winning.

Could it be that not only do they make it easy, consistent and pleasurable, but they connect with us, the customers, because they seem to KNOW us?  How often have you gone to Amazon.com to browse for one thing and ended up buying more than you expected?  I have. Lots. And I contend that it’s because they always seem to know what I need (okay, it’s want). Regardless, I always buy more than I probably should because I like what Amazon recommends for me.  I like how they personalize my shopping experience.

Well, here at Nectar, not only can we personalize your company’s shopping experience, we can hyper-personalize it!  Want to learn more?  It’s easy. Contact us for a demo!

Want to learn more or just shoot the breeze about hyper-personalization?  Contact me at patricia@nectarom.com.

Patricia Blair

VP Marketing, Nectar Online Media

 

Want more startup and social media info? Follow Nectar Online Media on Facebook & Twitter!

Related articles

Finalist

Enhanced by Zemanta