Data Strategy Can Help Best Amazon With Holiday Buyers

Retailers complain that Amazon e-commerce gobbles up more holiday dollars each year. In fact, Amazon is now the primary gift destination of 42% of U.S. shoppers, per recent research by Signal, a marketing tech and data platform company. Is there any way to compete with the Amazon Goliath? Yes--if retailers know how to weaponize their customer data, argues Signal's CEO Mike Sands in a recent article for Marketing Land. Sands suggests three data-driven strategies for competing with Amazon this holiday season. Sands points out that while Signal's research shows Amazon is a primary buying source for a chunk of consumers, Amazon is NOT the primary gift destination for another big group (40%). Retailers can use customer data to successfully woo those customers, Sands argues. Compared with Amazon, retailers have access to more first-party data across channels and devices via sales, customer service, loyalty programs, marketing and promotion channels, and interactions with store associates. That extensive customer data from multiple channels can by used to deliver relevant, targeted promotions that outdo Amazon's touted recommendations, which often miss the mark due to minimal customer knowledge. Using data-driven marketing, retailers also can leverage the omnichannel strength of multiple touch points to create a seamless, personalized shopping experience. "Gone are the days when holiday shoppers had to choose between the convenience of buying online from home versus the assurance of handling the product in a store. Now they can do it all — and they leave a rich trail of data every step along the way," Sands notes. He points to statistics showing that while consumers say they browse for holiday purchases most frequently on desktops/laptops (36%), they most frequently purchase gifts in stores (33 percent). Finally, since offer relevancy remains basic to wooing customers, retailers can use data-driven marketing to gain an edge over Amazon even in the digital arena. Some 43% of consumers surveyed still say digital advertising on websites or mobile apps influences holiday gift-buying. Retailers now can use addressable media for personalized, timely digital ad targeting by seeing customers as people not just impressions, notes Sands. Bottom line, retailers who make the effort to aggregate, clean, segment, profile and personalize omnichannel customer data can still enjoy happy holiday sales in the Amazon era. For Sands' full article, go to http://marketingland.com/3-retail-strategies-beat-amazon-holiday-season-182228

Key Lessons From Personalization Backfires

Personalization is at the top of every list of 2016 direct mail strategies--but that doesn't mean personalization is a no-brainer. Indeed, a recent blog post by Greg Cholmondeley, Workflow Practice Director of Caslon & Company and the PODi (Print on Demand Initiative) digital printing organization, warns that poorly executed personalization can create epic fails, too. He provides a great example of personalization gone-wrong: an e-mailed offer of "escape the cold" winter airfare deals--sent to him in sunny Fort Lauderdale, FL, with an offer of a cheap flight to snowy Akron, OH! For personalization to work, all aspects of data, offer and message need to be thought out and tested from a variety of data perspectives, Greg stresses. First, the data must be clean and up-to-date (and, bravo, the offending piece got his e-mail and closest airport location right), and the offer must be appealing (an airfare of $39 from a local airport certainly piqued interest). But special care must also be taken with messaging. And here is where the marketing flopped--by adding personalized elements to a traditionally designed static offer without thinking it through. Simply dropping personalized data into copy does not necessarily create a relevant direct marketing message. Greg notes that the marketers could have avoided the snafu with cold and hot versions based on recipient location. But his basic point is that successful personalization requires "relevant thinking" instead of "broadcast thinking." Are you using your data to create that "relevant" personalized direct mail offer? Read the full article at http://www.blog.podi.org/learning-from-personalized-marketing-fails

Direct Mail for 2016: Personalized, Mobilized, Analyzed

The holidays are whizzing by, and those 2016 direct mail plans are on the launch pad. Are you sure you're using the right fuel to reach direct mail heights? We like the way a recent blog post by IWCO Direct's Senior Customer Engagement Manager Krista Black boiled down that question into the three top trends to include in any plan for mail success: targeted personalization, mobile phone impact and multichannel analysis. When it comes to personalized mail, simplistic first-name fills aren't enough to generate customer response anymore. Effective personalization, Black points out, is about targeting with the right offer, right audience and right timing--to segment audience by demographics, geography, purchase history and psychographics for best response; to tailor a compelling offer to audience needs and likely objections; and to time mailings to fit recipient buying cycles. Next, mailers must accept that mobile has become the "first screen" of the majority of the target audience, Black advises. Recipients are likely to go first to their mobile phone after reading a mailer to search for a product, service or retail location. Leverage that trend in printed mail by including QR codes, PURLs, and keywords integrated with SEO/SEM. Finally, today's marketing is multichannel, and that presents a challenge in response and conversion analysis and attribution, Black warns. Marketing analysis needs to account for both direct and "halo" effects across channels--such as direct mail sending respondents via mobile to web pages. We would add a key fourth element for 2016 direct mail success: quality data. Marketers will need accurate, complete, up-to-date, verified, integrated multichannel data to achieve all three of Black's goals in direct mail plans next year--and we can help with that! For the complete post: http://www.iwco.com/blog/2015/12/11/direct-marketing-trends-2016/