We’ve been enjoying bringing thought and discussion around the key themes of Integrated Marketing Week to our subscribers and blog community early with Google+ Hangouts.
If you missed our recent Hangout on big data, catch up with a quick read on some of the key points here!
Providing tailored product recommendations is a proven way of boosting online sales, with two-thirds of companies (66%) stating that personalisation improves both customer experience and business performance.
Speaking at a Screen Pages ecommerce event recently, Emailvision personalisation director Neil Hamilton ran through some best practice tips for how to create effective homepage product recommendation banners.
The effectiveness of these blocks can be improved using personalisation, whereby the products shown are specifically tailored to the customer based on their past on-site behaviour.
Our new Realities of Personalisation Report, published in association with Monetate, found that just 30% of businesses currently personalise their websites based on a visitor’s previous behaviour, so a majority of businesses are yet to implement the technology.
At the recent Neolane & Celerity co-hosted breakfast seminar Ashley Friedlein spelt out what agile marketing is and how it’s going to change us all.
In his introduction he said we’ll all be talking about ‘real time’, ‘agile’, ‘on demand’, ‘automation’, ‘speeding up’ and ‘event triggered’ in the months and years ahead.
What was clear from all the presentations at the event was that personalisation, real-time, agile marketing practices will become the norm.
According to Neolane’s recent survey, 19% of marketers are currently personalising their websites in real-time. But Neolane predicts that this figure will jump by 3X to 59% by the end of 2014.
Even the Google Now android app has forseen this as our future too. In its latest ad it claims we’ll be able to access information that is relevant to us right now.
Based on predictive algorithms it claims to be “one step ahead” – suggesting new routes to work if traffic is heavy and recommending places to eat where you are, even telling you the best things on the menu.
Last Wednesday, Stefan Tornquist (VP Research, US at Econsultancy) moderated a lively discussion on Measurement, Analytics, and Attribution that quickly maxed out the attendance capacity of the Hangout.
I was joined by digital analytics gurus Jim Sterne (founder of eMetrics Summit & Digital Analytics Association) and Tom Cunniff (founder of Cunniff Consulting) to discuss what marketers need to do beyond gathering information, and how to apply measurement and analytics to strategy across the business.
A lot of important points on the current state of attribution and what’s in store for the future were discussed during the first half of the hangout, which are summarized here…
All ecommerce sites could benefit from having product recommendations, with research showing that they can potentially increase revenue by up to 300%, improve conversions by 150% and help boost the average order value by 50%.
However, the precise format varies from site to site and should be tested to make sure it’s converting the maximum number of customers.
The copywriting needs to fit with the brand identity and it’s also important to strike an emotive chord and pique the customer’s interest.
This isn’t an easy task considering the fact that you generally only have room for about three or four words, but there is still a great deal you can do with the limited space.
There are many complex ways of increasing your online store’s performance. From analytics to data segmentation, once you’ve mastered the infrastructure of selling online, reaching new customers and selling more can become much easier.
But there are simple tricks to achieve bursts and spurts too…
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog on how the new Microsoft WSRD data was impacting email marketing. For webmail accounts managed by Microsoft, WSRD data is increasing effecting whether your email goes to junk, or into the inbox.
These accounts relate to quite a high percentage of some retailers’ email lists (50%+) so how Microsoft treats your mail can have a large impact on the revenue you make from email.
In order to ensure your emails stay in the inbox, this post takes you through developing the customer relationship and increasing user engagement through producing a welcome/nursery programme.
One of the B2B roundtables at this year’s Digital Cream London event focused on marketing automation, the findings of which have just been released in our free-to-access Marketing Automation Trends Briefing, sponsored by Oracle Eloqua.
According to Econsultancy calculations, major marketing automation vendors have secured more than $150 million in additional venture capital funding in the last few months.
Coupled with the consolidation spree we’ve witnessed lately, the market shows strong growth and potential, with some analysts predicting 50% industry revenue increase in 2013.
Though more than nine out of ten marketers agree that personalisation is critical to their success, almost half of companies lack the necessary technology to properly implement website personalisation.
The findings come from the new Econsultancy/Monetate Realities of Personalisation Report, which found that 47% of companies cite IT roadblocks as a major barrier to adopting or improving website personalisation.
A similar number of respondents (46%) pointed to legacy technology, while 44% cited lack of budget.
In contrast, among respondents from marketing agencies lack of knowledge (54%) and inability to translate data into action (51%) took the first two spots.
Lack of budget and lack of staff are the third and fourth most cited barriers for both companies and agencies surveyed, highlighting the importance of prioritising resources that are often scarce.
Successful ecommerce thrives on working with the the best business partners that ensure you stay one step ahead of your competitors, but over the last decade things have become pretty stagnant in the affiliate channel when it comes to service provider choice.
Large brands tend to review their affiliate network provider every two to three years and differentiation between service providers has become harder to see.
A worrying trend has arrived driven by a lack of innovation. In order to lock in market share contracts have been increasing and the small print surrounding notice periods has been growing.
While some abandonments are never a good thing, abandoned baskets in the online channel can be a rich source of revenue.
This post tries to explain why, and how to make the most of this opportunity.
Inbound marketing: is it just another buzzword?
In this two-part article, I’ll explain what it really means and why its lead generation potential is causing a stir.