In the first half of this year, I talked about retailers revamping their marketing mix in the wake of the 2008 holiday season. Now as we approach another holiday season, online retailers have the benefit of knowing more about how their customers react and respond in tough economic times. Now is the time to harness that awareness and strengthen your bonds with customers. Whether you are a marketer, or business owner who wears the marketer hat, you can introduce some new ways to deepen the customer connection.
Expand beyond the walls of your website: September signals a flurry of activity running the gamut from back-to-school functions to various business networking forums. So take this approach and apply it to the online world. For example, many retailers are developing portable widgets that link to their content and services and finding other “outposts” across the web to place the widgets. In addition, the concept of an app store, such as the Conduit Marketplace, is one venue that allows businesses such as eMusic, Cartoon Doll Emporium and Pretentious Pooch to distribute their content and services beyond the walls of their websites. Customer acquisition and overall satisfaction get a boost with this expanded online presence, as more and more customers laud the efforts of retailers who develop convenient applications to meet their needs.
Make information easy to access: Time and again, one popular method retailers use to try to keep consumers satisfied is discounts. Once you understand your customers’ needs and the factors driving their decisions, you need to alert them to the promotion without spending so much time and money doing so that it drains your coffers. Savvy online shoppers know to search for coupons and promotions on sites such as RetailMeNot and A Thrifty Mom. As a matter of fact, these sites have even created customized applications on which shoppers can receive updates via their browser. These sites go the extra mile to be on the same page as consumers by not only lending a virtual helping hand with coupons and discount codes, but also providing a simple conduit to the information their users covet.
Provide convenient forums for feedback and questions: Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter offer another means to gather feedback and answer questions about your company and products. Don’t be shy about utilizing these avenues, but you must plan to be diligent about updating and responding so that negative comments don’t go unanswered. If you decide to create a business Twitter persona, or already have one, decide whether the primary function will be to serve as help desk or a personality that provides color and commentary within your industry. Then make sure that you have a consistent voice as you disseminate messages and responses. Make sure you aggregate all of your social networking tools on your website and create a conduit to customers with a branded community toolbar. Pretentious Pooch, an upscale pet supply store based in Baltimore, is a great example of a small retailer that has been able to deploy social media, content, and e-commerce in a single location to drive loyalty and sales.
In this world where “flat is the new up,” it is critical to make each visit of every shopper count. With fewer shoppers coming to your site, you have to be instantly engaging, catering to your shopper, making your site a destination. And, you have to get your shoppers to put as much as possible into their cart and then actually check out.
The question is - how can you take the flat or even decreased traffic and turn it into profit? Here are eight tips to help you entice your shoppers to buy more.
1. Shipping Offers - Lets start with getting people to your site. Shipping is something that shoppers are always concerned with. Free shipping, if you can afford it, always moves people to buy more. If your model does not support free, shoppers are also happy with flat fee shipping or even shipping with a minimum purchase (they will buy just one more product to qualify).
2. Incentives and Bundles - So, you got them to your site with a shipping offer, next, motivate them to buy more with incentives. Who doesn’t like getting a gift with a purchase or a special bundle of products for an extra discount? The shopper feels like they’re getting a bargain while you get to move more products.
3. Rebates - If you can’t offer discounts, another tactic to entice shoppers is to offer rebates. People get wide-eyed about rebates and will buy more to get them. Even if they do not actually redeem the rebate, they will be more loyal to your site for the service.
4. Personalized Product Recommendations - Next, lets turn to the customer experience. Today’s savvy shopper expects merchants to know them. Serving personalized product recommendations helps customers find what they’re looking for (and sometimes things they did not even know they wanted). The product detail page is the most logical location, but place recommendations throughout your site and most importantly in the shopping cart - it is a good place to put those impulse purchases - just like candy at the store check out.
5. Video - Another way to enhance the customer experience is to tantalize and engage your shopper with video. This medium can be used to demonstrate how a product works, show how apparel fits, or even do a virtual wine tasting. Video can answer questions shoppers have so that they buy even more than expected.
6. Ratings and Reviews - Lets face it, shoppers are social creatures, and love to talk and get advice from one another. Rating and reviews helps people get feedback from each other. Some shoppers can’t resist the temptation; they have to buy top rated items and will fill their cart.
7. Customer Service - Speaking of people talking , another thing that really helps is something just so simple - offer stellar customer service, and you will not believe how far that will get you. People talk and when they have a great experience, they will tell everyone they know. I do all the time!
8. Alternative Payment Methods - Okay, you have used tips 1-7 on your site and the shopper has stuffed their cart - this is when you are at risk for the dreaded cart abandonment. There are many things you should do to motivate your shoppers to click submit, maybe that is for a dedicated article. Suffice it to say, make it easy to check out. Alternative payment methods make it easier for anyone to check out - so make sure you offer them.
The bottom line is that you need to employ many different tactics to boost your average order value; it is the only way to take flat traffic and turn it up!
Lisa Joy Rosner is MyBuys‘ vice president of marketing.
Mobile devices like the iPhone and G1 are letting consumers take advantage of the growing number of high-speed networks, an opportunity that e-commerce retailers are recognizing as users are increasingly using websites for shopping from mobile devices. Some people are even using their mobile devices as their primary online browser.
Any retailer looking to the growing mobile audience for new revenue should deliver shopping sites that are mobile friendly. This means paring back content – or re-organizing it – so that users can access relevant items more easily.
While wireless devices have come a long way, their screen size limits what can be displayed and still be read by the average user. Features such as panning and zooming can only compensate so much for the smaller real estate available on handhelds.
Most websites are still using cascading stylesheets (CSS) optimized for personal computers. Designing and embedding CSS specifically for mobile users will help ensure that the user experience on handheld devices is high quality. The CSS Mobile Profile 2.0 developed by the W3C (the standard-setting World Wide Web Consortium) is now available, giving retailers a widely supported standard to follow.
Other common shopping features, such as large tables of product images and Flash animation, also need to be rethought. Just a decade ago, many websites were built successfully without these features. As screen resolutions and bandwidth grew, these were added to create richer online experiences. Handheld devices may not support all of these technologies, so the emphasis should be placed on simplicity, clarity and speed. And make sure that commonly accessed features, such as viewing the shopping cart are readily reachable.
While the technical aspects of mobile are important to consider, retailers must also focus on marketing fundamentals, such as understanding the needs of this changing audience. Research and analysis on what users want and how they want to interact with your site are critical. One quick tip: use the mobile device itself to gather research information, rather than relying solely on traditional research channels.
Retailers that can use messaging, web content, e-mail, and social networking in an integrated fashion, centered on the handheld device, let users engage with their brands. A basic practice: rather than just asking for e-mail addresses on your sites, permit users to give you addresses for text messages as well, and let them know about special mobile content.
One last piece of advice: do not let mobile marketing become a new outlet for spam. Mobile devices give unprecedented access to retail customers; respecting your customers’ time will lead to longer, two-way relationships.
David King is CEO of Fulcrum, a leader in advanced analytics, technology and multichannel program solutions for marketing.
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.
E-mail marketing is an effective marketing method with a very high ROI. Unfortunately, spammers and scammers have made it more difficult for legitimate senders to get their e-mails past Internet Service Provider (ISP) junk filters and into the inbox, while consumers are all too ready to hit the spam button. The good news is there are steps you can take to avoid the spam label and increase your e-mail marketing effectiveness.
1. Here are some key words to skip: Urgent, money back guarantees, and why pay more?
2. Avoid using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation marks in your subject line and in your E-MAIL CONTENT!!
3. If something sounds too good to be true, the junk mail filters probably agree. Do not claim a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and other grandiose offers.
4. Never send out an e-mail that is one giant image. The filters will likely filter it but even if it gets to the inbox, the recipient will have no enticement to turn on images. A good balance is 60 percent text and 40 percent graphics. Do not forget the ALT text.
5. While discussing money is unavoidable, try to avoid excessive mentions of money in your e-mails as the spammers and scammers have made that hard to get through.
6. I think most of us have seen e-mails with red font, flashing objects, etc. Keep it simple to maximize your chances of getting into the inbox.
7. Do not buy a list both because this violate the terms of service of almost all E-mail Service Providers (ESPs) and because your recipients are more likely to hit the spam complaint button that is a common feature of many e-mail clients these days. More than one complaint out of each 1,000 e-mails sent is very likely to get you blocked by one or more ISPs and make it more difficult to get emails through to your best customers.
8. Do not harvest e-mails from the web to send in bulk. Not only will you run into the same problems as when you buy a list, you will also be violating the CAN-SPAM Act.
9. Keep your e-mail frequency reasonably steady to keep your sending reputation intact. For instance, if you send only once every six months the ISPs and the recipients may have forgotten about you resulting in delivery problems and spam complaints.
10. On the other hand, do not send so often that you annoy your subscribers. You probably want to send at least once per month, but you’ll need to carefully consider what volume will start to annoy your subscribers—who will unsubscribe from your list or worse, hit the spam button, sticking a label on you that can be hard to remove.
As we wind down the holiday buying season and start to look ahead to next year, the question on many direct response marketers’ minds continues to be how to target the right customer with the right offer. And perhaps even more importantly, how can this be done without increasing CPA.
Marketers need the ability to capture their audience’s response through any channel. For instance, what happens when your customer sees that spot on TV and decides to purchase via a mobile phone or the web days after the airing? What about the customer who saw the ad, visited the site and did not buy? Or, what about the client who did not see the spot, but is a potential buyer because of his or her past history?
The key is to cover multiple media channels and add new channels for response. It’s much more cost and time efficient for marketers to integrate all channels, as opposed to planning for TV, online and mobile separately. It only makes sense to consider multichannel response options because you can’t tell a customer where to buy; you can only suggest mediums through which to engage. Try to cover as many POS areas as possible, so the experience for the consumer is as integrated and easy as possible. You will extend the reach and effectiveness of media buys and capture sales that might otherwise be lost.
Not all customers want to transact the same way, so behavioral targeting and dynamic scripting which changes “on the fly†adapting for each customer’s specific responses is critical. By providing them with multiple options in the most important segment of the purchasing funnel – the actual buy itself – you can convert them from a shopper to a buyer.
Let’s take a brief look at a typical customer journey. Let’s assume that the consumer sees something they like on TV and calls the 1-800 number flashing on the screen. Depending on what the consumer is asking for in the phone call, you need to provide them with the right automated response and guide them down the purchasing path. Next, look at all the buying criteria and create individual scripts for each product. If the transaction was not completed the first time, follow up with email or SMS campaigns to help close the deal.
For your next keystone-marketing event, don’t leave sales on the table. Direct your consumers’ response through a multichannel program to capture ALL the sales generated by your advertising activities. Make a New Year’s resolution not to lose the right customer to the wrong channel or wrong offer.
Amid the current economic crisis, some retail experts believe that retailers aiming at wooing more consumers into the store during the upcoming holiday season may want to provide the layaway payment plan to needy consumers. This plan will allow shoppers to reserve craved merchandise while unable to pay right away. The layaway plan may have several benefits to retailers offering them:
First, with its help, certain customers would be able to buy the merchandise that they would otherwise not be able to, and that would translate into more sales. Furthermore, the customer may evermore appreciate the additional service, as this purchase might be one of major emotional and psychological import, such as a wedding ring. When good times come, the appreciative shopper may pay back to the store by becoming a more loyal customer.
Second, the customer would need to pay at least one more trip to the retailer to pick up the merchandise once all payments are made. This means more traffic into the store and chances are that the shopper will purchase some additional products, while there on the second trip. Increased store traffic will also have psychological impacts on other shoppers and even on store employees. In this holiday season, store traffic is a hot commodity for retails large and small.
Third, the layaway plan offers a less risky financing alternative to the retailer than does store credit card issuance, because the retailer sets the rules and the regulations are not as stringent as in the case of credit card issuance and compliance is easier. In the case of approving credit cards, the borrower could default on payments and declare bankruptcy, causing major losses to issuers. Whereas in layaway, the retailer can simply forfeit the deposit and return the laid-away merchandise back to the store shelf.
Fourth, this plan is all about providing delayed gratification to the consumers (and their beloved ones for gift purchases) and will encourage the customers to do more responsible budgeting. In this way, I consider the layaway plan a socially responsible response to the economic crisis, given that reckless spending among consumers and homebuyers is widely regarded as one of root causes for the crisis.
For the downside, instituting the plan might involve personnel, legal and administrative expenses for the retailer—and unless demand for the service is sizable, the expenses may be hard to justify. Also, a successful and well-utilized layaway plan may necessarily cause strain on the inventory space and make some merchandise unavailable to those shoppers who are able to pay on the spot. Finally, this plan may make most sense in geographic areas where the impacts of the economic crisis have taken a bigger toll.
The ERA Minute is a new feature where ERA members can film marketing tips that will be distributed throughout all of ERA’s channels and social networking outlets. If you’re interested in making the next ERA Minute, contact Peter Howson at phowson@retailing.org. In this ERA Minute, MicahTek’sMarvin Jones shares thoughts on custom queue messaging: how to sell to your customers in your call center queue.
What do you think call center reps should discuss with customers in the queue?
Acquiring new customers is a challenging and costly endeavor in the best of times, let alone during an economic downturn. This is why converting first-time customers into repeat shoppers is incredibly important to e-retailers. To that end, online marketers must effectively re-engage new customers by combining individually targeted promotions and offers with one-to-one product merchandizing. Personalization-based marketing and merchandizing services, when deployed wisely and cohesively across all sales channels, can greatly improve an e-retailer’s bottom line while positively impacting the consumer’s overall shopping experience.
Too often, e-retailers rely on traditional techniques to encourage buyers to return. These tactics range from promotional discounts to free shipping. While useful in obtaining new customers, these techniques are not as effective for re-engaging one-time customers and don’t leverage the capabilities unique to online retailers. What’s more, these techniques often eat into profits and typically result in training shoppers to wait for such discounts at the retailer’s expense.
Personalized direct marketing, however, is a cost-effective alternative proven to help e-retailers build customer loyalty without giving margin away unnecessarily. By enticing customers with relevant product promotions after they leave the store—for example, recommendations made in a confirmation e-mail or personalized offers in e-mail marketing campaigns—e-retailers can increase the frequency of repeat visits and average purchase size. Once a customer has responded to an offer, it’s important to continue presenting the most personally relevant products to that shopper based on his or her previous and in-session behavior throughout the online shopping experience.
Online shoppers have grown accustomed to searching through an overabundant inventory, spending time browsing for items on a site that does not quickly (if ever) recognize who they are, remember what their interests are, or predict what they are most likely to purchase. The amount of time spent searching and browsing can cause the consumer to abandon a shopping cart, purchase fewer items or shop at another store. Personalized product recommendations give consumers a more relevant experience, similar to the personal interaction they expect at their favorite brick-and-mortar store, providing customers with recommendations tailored to their particular tastes and needs. So, what are the best practices for implementing personalized product recommendations as part of direct marketing campaigns?(more…)
“Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master.â€~ Philip Kotler, U.S. marketing guru
I think the quote above succinctly sums up one of the truisms known to marketers. The business school practice of breaking down the definition of marketing into the 4 Ps is really oversimplifying a complicated art and science process that is fundamental to business success and growth. If you are developing a smart marketing mix, you must also toss in gut instinct, research, sales history, customer patterns, trends, competitive analysis and so many more factors. Even with all of this, success can explode from unexpected opportunities while sometimes the most thoroughly researched, planned and executed campaigns can fail miserably. Still, that is the beauty of marketing: it is never dull or routine. And today, marketers have far more resources to help drive sales and engagement than ever before.
As I begin a new chapter in my career by joining ERA in March, I think about the resources available to us today. In doing so, I can’t help but to reflect back on my first entree into the workforce, then too, in the marketing arena. It’s easy to dismiss as simpler times. It was the mid 1980s: typewriters outnumbered PCs, printed mailing labels predated Excel files and voice mail and fax were office novelties. By evaluating the bottom line and ROI, we believed our marketing efforts were successful back then. But who could predict that the introduction of the Internet and email to the masses was just around the corner? This would forever change the way we, as a society, communicate and access information and entertainment. It would also open the door to new strategies and tools to add to the marketing mix.
Today, it is much more than access to the Internet that allows marketers to brand product, advertise value and engage customers. Video streaming, HDTV, HD Radio, podcasting, TV on demand, mobile devices, blogging, wikis and online social networks have all played a role in expanding the marketing function and enhancing the customer experience. Some might suggest we are on the brink of the golden era of marketing. Perhaps. But what is certain is that today’s consumers have become more integrated into the marketing process. For marketers, this is a time of unleashed creativity. There are more opportunities than ever before to connect with customers, track patterns and utilize multiple formats to convey messages. Direct mail, TV/print advertising and other more traditional forms of marketing are still certainly relevant, but marketers no longer have to rely on a finite number of tactics to promote product. And few industries are leveraging these platforms as aggressively as the direct response community.
It makes for smart practice then that the association that represents this community would also leverage multi-platforms as necessary. At ERA, we too are on the brink of entering our golden era of marketing. Not because of my new role, but because it is what our community will expect and demand. I hope that you will check out the new ERA website, which debuts next month, and I encourage you to pay frequent visits to this blog. These enhancements are just the start of many advancements ERA will introduce to allow us to better brand ourselves, fine tune messaging, build member integration and promote the industry and its value and services through new and emerging technologies. These extensions and improvements in communications help us to better enforce our mission to drive, grow and shape the future of electronic retailing. Let’s master the marketing mix together.
In the first half of this year, I talked about retailers revamping their marketing mix in the wake of the 2008 holiday season. Now as we approach another holiday season, online retailers have the benefit of knowing more about how their customers react and respond in tough economic times. Now is the time to harness that awareness and strengthen your bonds with customers. Whether you are a marketer, or business owner who wears the marketer hat, you can introduce some new ways to deepen the customer connection. 
In this world where “flat is the new up,” it is critical to make each visit of every shopper count. With fewer shoppers coming to your site, you have to be instantly engaging, catering to your shopper, making your site a destination. And, you have to get your shoppers to put as much as possible into their cart and then actually check out.
Mobile devices like the iPhone and G1 are letting consumers take advantage of the growing number of high-speed networks, an opportunity that e-commerce retailers are recognizing as users are increasingly using websites for shopping from mobile devices. Some people are even using their mobile devices as their primary online browser.
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.
E-mail marketing is an effective marketing method with a very high ROI. Unfortunately, spammers and scammers have made it more difficult for legitimate senders to get their e-mails past Internet Service Provider (ISP) junk filters and into the inbox, while consumers are all too ready to hit the spam button. The good news is there are steps you can take to avoid the spam label and increase your e-mail marketing effectiveness.
As we wind down the holiday buying season and start to look ahead to next year, the question on many direct response marketers’ minds continues to be how to target the right customer with the right offer. And perhaps even more importantly, how can this be done without increasing CPA.
Amid the current economic crisis, some retail experts believe that retailers aiming at wooing more consumers into the store during the upcoming holiday season may want to provide the layaway payment plan to needy consumers. This plan will allow shoppers to reserve craved merchandise while unable to pay right away. The layaway plan may have several benefits to retailers offering them:
Acquiring new customers is a challenging and costly endeavor in the best of times, let alone during an economic downturn. This is why converting first-time customers into repeat shoppers is incredibly important to e-retailers. To that end, online marketers must effectively re-engage new customers by combining individually targeted promotions and offers with one-to-one product merchandizing. Personalization-based marketing and merchandizing services, when deployed wisely and cohesively across all sales channels, can greatly improve an e-retailer’s bottom line while positively impacting the consumer’s overall shopping experience.
“Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master.†~ Philip Kotler, U.S. marketing guru
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