Electronic Retailer magazine’s sister publication, Online Strategies, has launched its own homepage. Check it out here!
Archive for the ‘Web Analytics’ Category
2009 ERA D2C Convention Video!
Thursday, June 25th, 2009Watch as ERA CEO Julie Coons delivers a sneak peak of what attendees can expect from ERA’s upcoming 2009 D2C Convention in Las Vegas September 13-15. Register now! Early bird ends July 1!
Click here to visit ERA’s YouTube channel!
Microsoft Launches Google Rival “Bing”
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009“Why don’t you Bing it?â€
A year from now, if you hear someone say that — and actually understand what it means — Bill Gates will be a happy billionaire. That is because it will be a sign that Microsoft is finally making progress in its quest to challenge Google in the Internet search business. Bing, the name Microsoft gave to the new search service it unveiled Thursday, is its answer to Google — a noun that once meant little but has become part of the language as a verb that is a synonym for executing a Web search. After months of, uh, searching, Microsoft settled on Bing to replace the all-too-forgettable Live Search, which itself replaced MSN Search. Microsoft invested billions of dollars in those services and failed to slow Google’s rise, so a new name certainly can’t hurt. Microsoft’s marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on “The Sopranos†but rather a sound — the ringing of a bell that signals the “aha†moment when a search leads to an answer. The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found†as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business group. And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing’s potential to “verb up.†Plus, he said, “it works globally, and doesn’t have negative, unusual connotations.†Some branding experts said choosing the name Bing was a good start, but also the easiest part of the challenge facing the company, since most people turn to Google without even thinking about it.
To read the entire New York Times article, click here.
To check out Bing for yourself, click here.
Loading ...5 Steps to Smart Discounting
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Retailers know that if there was ever a time to keep their customers happy it’s now. They also know that finding new customers costs more time, resources and money than keeping existing customers. One way retailers are trying to keep economy-squeezed consumers satisfied is with discounts, and the key to effective discounting — without sacrificing ROI — is understanding your customers’ needs and motivations.
Here are five ways to make sure your discounting is on-target, customer-centric and profitable:
1.   One size does not fit all
The same discount offer will not fit the needs of all customers. Some are impulse buyers willing to pay full price; some are “coupon clippers†who won’t buy anything at full price but will buy something they don’t need if it’s on sale. Then there’s a range in between. Understand the differences between your customers and then use that insight to vary offers based on their discount-sensitivity.
2.   Test for the right mix
Start to learn customer differences by looking at the percentage of total items they purchase at a discount. Then compare how they respond to communications with a discount vs. those without. Try replacing discount offers with more relevant, full price product offers for those customers less sensitive to discounts. The right mix of discount and non-discount oriented offers will gradually emerge.
3.   Don’t over-discount
Many companies use discount offers and coupons in most of their customer communications, trying to drive loyalty. Although it’s often an effective strategy that drives traffic and purchases, discounting constantly trains customers to look for and wait for deals – lowering the chance that they will buy at full price. And then there’s the ongoing cost of the discount itself.
4.   Accept their terms
Make your offers consistent with customer shopping preferences. For example, if they like to buy in-store, your offer should emphasize store location and convenience in addition to the discount. You might prefer them to purchase online, but offering free shipping if they purchase online is not likely to work.
5.   Don’t rush to slash
Try to understand what motivates or turns off individual customers. For example, you probably have a large number of customers who have abandoned online shopping carts multiple times. They may be hesitating to complete the purchase because they just can’t stomach the shipping charges. Try testing free shipping for these people before you rush to discounting the product. You might just increase your conversion rate in the process.
Andy Cutler is chief strategy officer at Mercury, a Boston-based, insight-driven marketing agency that drives growth and profitability for clients through enhanced customer experiences.
Toronto Networking Reception Pics!
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Below are a few photo highlights from ERA’s recent networking reception in Toronto.
Click here to get info on all upcoming events!
Registration is now open for the 2009 ERA D2C Convention!
2009 eRetailer Summit Photos!
Monday, April 6th, 2009Below are a few photos from ERA’s eRetailer Summit held recently in Miami. Check back often, more photos will be posted soon!
Don’t miss out on future ERA networking, education and fun!
ERA Webinar: Optimizing Your DRTV During a Downturn
April 7, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. EDT
ERA Webinar: Changing the FTC Rules on Endorsements & Testimonials: Why You Should Care!
April 16, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. EDT
ERA Government Affairs Fly-In
April 20-21
ERA Toronto Networking Reception
April 29, 2009
Don’t be a Gilly! Follow ERA, Silly.
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009Don’t be a Gilly! Instead, get to the head of the class and ahead of your competition by attending ERA’s webinars, receptions and meetings. You’ll learn about best practices, new trends and also network with your industry peers in a fun, relaxed setting.
Upcoming Events:
ERA Webinar- Optimizing Your DRTV During a Downturn: Your 2009 DRTV Stimulus Package—March 19
ERA Chicago Networking Reception—March 22, 2009
ERA Government Affairs Fly-In—April 20-21
ERA Toronto Networking Reception—April 29, 2009
Re-think, Revamp and Reinvigorate Your 2009 Marketing Mix
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Retailers are facing one of the toughest economies in recent history. Experts predict that the first half 2009 will be dismal in regard to consumer spending. Therefore, retailers need to work even harder to engage their existing customers in order to stay top-of-mind during what is likely to be a difficult first quarter. Now, in the wake of a challenging holiday season, businesses must re-think, revamp and reinvigorate their marketing mix in order to succeed in the coming months.
Budgets are tight, so begin by finding free or low-cost ways to engage new customers (particularly those acquired over the holiday season) and give them incentive to return again and again. Among the freshest new tactics are social networks, gadgets/widgets, and community toolbars, which can be used to distribute coupons, release “how-to†videos, announce sales, deploy online surveys and more.
The key to success with this “Web 2.0 marketing†is to increase the amount of interaction you have with your customers and they with each other. For example, one retailer, Incredible Technologies (makers of the Golden Tee golf game), is using a branded community toolbar to activate community building by sharing specials and promotions that they think will appeal to their customer’s interests. They also showcase their customer forum, user international tournament stats, and their Golden Tee YouTube channel where users can post video of their best golf shots. Golden Tee did all of this for no cost.
Not a techie? Don’t worry about it. All this stuff is really easy to use. Give it try? What have you got to lose but customers?
Adam Boyden is president of Conduit.
You Found Your Niche; Now Find Your Nano-niche.
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
The world of affiliate marketing is immense. Those who are already in the affiliate marketing space know that breaking into this world can be a challenge, especially if you’re trying to promote a product or service that thousands of others are already promoting.
Many successful affiliates have found that if you really try to promote your “niche,†you will have greater success in driving sales. However, now that many current and prospective affiliate marketers know this trick of the trade if you will, it’s time to take it one step further.
What we are talking about comes from the idea of nano-niche marketing. Just like the Apple Nano is the smaller version of the iPod, a nano-niche is a smaller, more specific version of your niche.
Everyone has a niche, whether it is a hobby, or a sport, or simply some topic you know a lot about. For example, common hobbies include crafts, art or music. A nano-niche is breaking the hobby down one step further — a craft could be knitting hats, art could be painting landscapes, music could be the clarinet for beginners, etc.
The point is, the smaller you can focus your niche, the more focused you can make all of your affiliate marketing efforts (i.e. your blog, your video, etc). By honing in on a specific audience group, you can tailor your efforts and really engage with your audience. And the fact of the matter is, the more targeted your niche can be, the more likely it is that there will be an audience out there that has yet been reached.
Ultimately, successful affiliate marketing relies on driving sales through promotion. Therefore, if you are able to target and drive very specific traffic to your website, your conversion rates will be higher than just marketing to a huge general audience – driving your sales up immensely.
Although many people new to the affiliate marketing industry think to go big right off the bat, it is in fact more likely you will find success in the nano-niche, in the targeted and specific areas that others have yet to discover. So instead of going big, take that one extra step to go small – right to the audience that really wants and needs your product or service.
Dush Ramachandran is vice president of sales and business development at ClickBank.
Retailers – Get Your Customer “Big Pictureâ€
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
Make no mistake about it, the 2009 economy is doing no one any favors and there are few bright spots to find. One good result is that poor economies force us to become more efficient with our resources. We need to get the most out of what we have at our fingertips.
Over the past few years, multichannel retailers have been forced to purchase systems to help optimize their channels. One system manages email, another manages direct mail, a third manages your web data, and still a fourth manages your search engine optimization and search engine marketing tactics. In the end, we have a number of disparate operations that have no understanding of the big picture in your marketing strategy. Now is the time to consolidate those efforts into a single source of truth.
For those of you who market across multiple channels, integrating the full customer view is a key to understanding the efficacy of your efforts. Take, for example, search engine marketing. Using just the data that you get from Google or your web analytics team, you can determine which search terms drive the most traffic or the most conversions and continue to invest down that path. But, is this really the right investment? A search term may drive more traffic, but is it the most desirable traffic that you are seeking, and what percent of offline transactions are affected by the search engine marketing? Now, if you were able to overlay the search information into the marketing database, you can see how many offline transactions were affected by search and apply lifetime value and profitability analysis to the keywords to make a more informed decision.
Here comes the good news- as customer interaction channels have proliferated, there has also been an explosion in integration technologies such as SOAP based web services to underpin our ability to programmatically pull together these new channels. The vendor community has done a pretty stellar job of using web services to create application programmatic interfaces (API’s) to aid in the integration effort. Now is the time to apply your energy and efforts to using those capabilities to create a comprehensive view of your customer and your marketing activities around that customer.
For those of you with IT departments to handle this opportunity, congratulations and consider yourself lucky! Those of you who do not have that luxury might be considering outsourcing; look for a solid marketing automation provider that offers a good hosting option. You’ll want a database structure that supports online and offline channels as well as an extensive capability to integrate with downstream execution engines such as email, behavioral targeting, POS and call center applications. Your goal? A single source to manage your entire marketing eco-system - consolidation that can cut your marketing infrastructure budget by 35-50 percent.
In the end, this economy is forcing organizations to adopt new ways to become more efficient. Often adopting new technologies to help consolidate decisions and efforts into one source does this. If there is a bright spot to the economy of 2009, it may be that it helps to usher in a new era that empowers marketers to make better decisions across their channels and become more efficient with their marketing budget. The knowledge and technology to accomplish this is within reach; now’s the time to find it and use it.
Jeff Hassemer is vice president, product management of Entiera.
Online Dating, Miami and Saturday Night Live!
Friday, January 30th, 2009
I’ll admit it- I’m single. My friends and I have debated at great length the notion of taking our relationship aspirations to the web. But isn’t online dating creepy and weird? Well, maybe…but how is it any more creepy than meeting someone random at a bar? Regardless of your online dating opinions, from a business standpoint, we can at least all agree that these sites serve as an interesting, optimized e-commerce model!
I invite you to join me at the eRetailer Summit in Miami, March 1-3, to hear Greg Waldorf, CEO and founding investor of eHarmony.com, deliver the keynote address. Waldorf will share his extensive experience working with high-growth companies as an entrepreneur, investor and executive. Waldorf will speak on the growth of eHarmony, as well as the effectiveness of leveraging a multichannel marketing approach in growing a company, among others topics.
Furthering its theme of connecting you with the right people, the eRetailer Summit opens on Sunday, March 1, with the Solution Zone where ERA’s session speakers will make themselves available to answer attendee questions one-on-one. And in response to attendee requests for the maximum opportunity to network with peers, ERA is launching a three-hour Pool Party Extravaganza immediately following the Solution Zone from 3:00-6:00 p.m. The party will feature lively music, fabulous food and drinks, massage stations and henna tattoo artisans.
While I still have yet to actually take the plunge into online dating, perhaps Waldorf’s keynote address will change my opinion? I’ll keep you posted.
P.S. - Before booking your Miami travel plans, I suggest you check out this recent “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring travel expert Judy Grimes. Move over Tina Fey!
I’ll see you in Orlando, just kidding, Tampa, just kidding, Miami.
Click here for more details on the eRetailer Summit.
Pat Cauley is Electronic Retailer magazine’s eMedia editor.
ERA Santa Monica Networking Reception Photos!
Friday, January 30th, 2009The following are photo highlights from ERA’s networking reception held January 27, at the Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, Calif. Check back often, more photos will be posted soon!
Don’t miss out on future ERA networking, education and fun!
Webinar- Jack Myers’ Prozac for a Depressed Media Industry: February 19
eRetailer Summit: March 1-3
Chicago Networking Reception: March 22
Landing Page Neglect – Are You Losing Money?
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
In the online marketing world, a lot of time and resources are spent buying media, tracking pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, driving organic traffic via search engine optimization (SEO), and installing and customizing web analytics software to properly track all online marketing activities.
Dedicated in-house or agency staff craft keyword lists, write ad copy and manage keyword bidding to achieve the proper profitability, cost per action (CPA) and return on investment (ROI). Copywriters adjust our sales copy to improve click-through rates (CTR).
But we’ve almost completely ignored our website and landing page. Sure, we occasionally do facelifts, or even wholesale redesigns of our sites. But these changes are rarely tested and are simply assumed to improve the situation. They are just a cost of doing business.
Missed Opportunity
In almost every other area, performance is scrutinized under a microscope as we drill down on mind-numbingly detailed reports. Once someone converts, extensive retention e-mail campaigns are set in motion to persuade visitors to deepen their level of engagement.
We worry about every single word in our e-mails as we test headlines and offers. We analyze “bounce rates,†“open rates†and “unsubscribe rates†with almost religious fervor in order to extract the last penny of revenue and profit possible over the lifetime of our interaction with someone.
Even though we spend obscene amounts of money to buy traffic, the effort devoted to the landing pages to which that traffic is sent is negligible. A couple of hours of a graphic designer’s and copywriter’s time are often all that the landing page merits. With a cursory review by the higher-ups, the landing page goes live.
Worse yet, we assume that the quality of the landing page can’t be changed, so we don’t even look for ways to improve it. We turn all of the other knobs and dials at our disposal and continue to neglect the biggest profit-driver under our control—the conversion efficiency of the landing page.
This is costing a lot of money in the form of missed opportunity. Double- or triple-digit conversion rate gains are routinely realized through engagements. Yet, there’s still a widespread perception among online marketers that their landing pages are already solid and can’t be improved through testing.
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
There are three important activities in online marketing:
• Acquisition: Getting people to your website or landing page.
• Conversion: Persuading them to take the desired action(s).
• Retention: Deepening the relationship and increasing its lifetime value.
But not all of these receive equal weight or attention in most companies.
Because of the large amounts of money spent on acquisition and retention, sophisticated systems have been created to maximize the ROI of these activities. But the efficiency of the website or landing page has been largely neglected. Many companies are beginning to understand that website and landing page conversion can have a dramatic impact on online marketing program profits. That’s where the new battleground is in the coming years.
You can meet with Tim Ash of SiteTuners as he optimizes e-commerce sites for increased revenue live at ERA’s eRetailer Summit on Monday, March 2, from 3:00 p.m.—4:00 p.m. Register here! To have your company’s website considered for a makeover, contact Ashley Cavell at acavell@retailing.org or via phone at (703) 908-1020.
