Another excellent piece to share with your local direct client. Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD

How to Reach The New Consumer When It Matters Most

• by Russell Kern , February 9, 2022

How marketers market has always been ripe for reinvention. Today is no different. In fact, it’s more evident than ever that a reimagining is necessary in how we connect with multiple cohorts across multiple channels. The likes of Amazon, Target, and Netflix have certainly seen to that.

Enter the new consumers, who wants what they want, when they want it — with personalized recommendations on top of it.

Many marketers were quick to respond, believing technology held the answer to meeting the new consumer demand. It alone, however, can’t improve customer experience.

Not that technology doesn’t have its place. Your tech stack must be able to adapt and deliver messaging in near-real-time. Taking two days to send an email personalized to an individual’s shopping behavior is almost like sending no email at all. Another brand able to fulfill the desire for instant gratification can easily pick up the slack, and you’ll lose the sale.

Though speed is everything in marketing these days, that message will do nothing for conversion without relevance. It must resonate with consumers if you expect anyone to click, share, buy, or act.

Technology often falls short in this arena — and that’s where human creativity comes in. Technology used in tandem with marketer ingenuity offers the speed and relevance necessary to keep pace with the changing dynamic of the consumer marketplace.

Seeing that the new consumer is what some might call a multi-cohort buyer, brands are no longer competing — at least in terms of experience — with just direct competitors. Today, expectations are often set by the last brand interaction, meaning a brand is now competing with everyone. If a consumer comes to your site after a great experience on an unrelated site, that individual will decide within  50 milliseconds (according to an oft-cited study from Behaviour & Information Technology) whether they like what you’re offering.

And from a neuromarketing perspective, the fear of missing out or making a mistake is far greater than the emotional gain from a purchase. One study found that 62% of consumers, when given $50 and a choice to lose $20 of it or gamble all of it, were more likely to take the gamble.

Reduce the risk by adding another layer to the marketing equation with the addition of trust. Some of the most successful retailers, for instance, have a “100% satisfaction guarantee, no questions asked” policy. Find which trust factors work best for your target audience, and then go with the best option for each cohort.

The changing dynamic of the consumer marketplace requires marketers to really rethink how they connect with consumers. People make snap decisions these days, so you need to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time on the right channel — that’s a lot of “rights” to balance. But it’s all possible with a combination of technology and human creativity. Remove one, and your messaging will either arrive too late or fall too flat to win the sale.

 This article is good to share with your local direct business clients. Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD.

COMMENTARY

How To Achieve Loyalty-Driven Bottom Lines

• by Jennifer Stoll , Yesterday

As we continue into what can only be described as a retention marketing boom – a time when virtually all businesses are trying to retain customers at lightning speeds while facing staffing shortages and other pandemic-related challenges -- brands must place emphasis on loyalty strategies to compete in today’s market.

Here are some strategies for retaining today’s consumers:

Make yourself more available. Putting more marketing dollars toward tactics that help consumers reach you more easily is vital. In addition to the standard phone and email communications, social media is shifting toward a live chat vehicle. Consumers are reaching out to brands on social media in pursuit of customer service.

Investing in resources that allow you to assist customers in this way can have significant impacts on customer satisfaction, issue resolution and ultimately, retention. It also helps you showcase your commitment to consumers – and gain their loyalty – before they purchase.

Invest in prompt communications. Prompt responses from a brand can foster strong relationships that drive loyalty. Whether it’s a human or digital response, consumers thrive on knowing they have been heard, and in receiving a timeline for an expected response. When loyalty is threatened, with a negative review for instance, timely communication is just as important as a timely resolution. This is especially true when the matter is not a quick-fix and requires a longer period of time to fully resolve.

Develop a monetized loyalty program. As consumers become more price-conscious, robust loyalty programs that offer monetary rewards for both loyalty and referring others will shine. Show you understand your customers by providing a loyalty program that resonates with them and speaks to their interests. Platforms that allow customers to choose their reward – such as choosing a charity to donate to, or a gift card to download – are gaining popularity.

Retain the right customers. Analyzing your internal customer data, using the attributes that you have captured, and then surveying that same group to fill any gaps, can help create a holistic picture of your ideal customer.

It is also essential to look at the lifetime value of your customers, as well as their average tenure with your company. It is equally as important to break them up into clusters based on different attributes, such as acquisition source or demographic, so you can shift marketing dollars to the most profitable groups. Those with a high acquisition cost and low lifetime value may not be right for your company.

The abundance of brands with big marketing strategies all trying to attract the same customers places significant power in the hands of the consumer. So as marketers navigate the impact that Omicron is having on their marketing strategies and prepare for future variants’ possible effects, it’s time to focus on robust retention strategies that build a bridge of loyalty between businesses and consumers.

Expand Your Commerce Cross-Border in 2021: BigCommerce Multi-Currency Supports Your Global Growth

 Halie Adams / 5 min read

The world is getting smaller. Globalization means products that were once available to a select few can now zip across the world at frankly astonishing rates.

In the year 220, it would take over a year for a piece of Chinese porcelain to travel on the Silk Road from China to customers in Europe.

In the year 1820, it took 30 days for tea aboard a merchant ship to reach the Americas from Europe.

And in the year 2020, it takes 3 to 5 days for a fleet of novelty t-shirts to travel by air from Asia to the U.S.

Ecommerce is increasing as consumers in developing countries are embracing online shopping. Many businesses are taking the opportunity to expand their businesses beyond local markets to extend their reach to new customers across borders.

Forrester Research predicts that by 2022, cross-border ecommerce sales will reach $627 billion, up from $284 billion in 2017, and account for 20% of total ecommerce sales.

In fact, already one out of every seven online transactions is conducted across borders.

Data from Statista.

While more and more shoppers are open to buying from international retailers, they still have some concerns — primarily with pricing, shipping, and transparency.

Global brands competing to earn their business are offering unique products and working to build relationships that address potential customers’ top concerns.

As international shopping grows more and more mainstream, merchants are continually seeking ways to build trust amongst global audiences. They can achieve this by offering full translations of their pages, allowing customers to transact in their local currency, and offering a number of payment and shipping options that are recognized and trusted in the region.

BigCommerce is empowering merchants to build these trusted relationships with international customers and optimize selling cross-border.

Our multi-currency functionality allows shoppers to see and buy in their local currency. Also, our payments API allows us to partner with the best global payment providers, giving merchants the freedom to choose the gateway they are familiar with. This improves the experience for international customers and ultimately improves conversion rates. BigCommerce also offers a wealth of shipping options to further simplify selling cross-border.

Globalization is driving consumer expectations, and there’s a lot of competition out there with merchants trying to meet those expectations. In this article, we’ll demonstrate how BigCommerce can help you grow your business internationally and share success stories from businesses that are doing just that.

The BigCommerce Philosophy Behind Multi-Currency

BigCommerce is devoted to our merchants’ growth. In our globalized world that growth can’t be limited by borders. We built our multi-currency product to help our merchants grow internationally and help them build secure relationships with new customers and audiences across borders.

We focus on an open SaaS platform approach. This means we’re committed to and have made significant progress in opening up key areas of the platform and partnering with best-in-breed solutions across the globe. This enables our merchants to have everything they need to run a successful online store — no matter where they’re located or where they sell to.

Here’s how it works:

The frontend experience layer can be whatever the merchant wants it to be to suit their customers. It can be customized to local language and, as mentioned above, local currencies, so all audiences can get a personalized experience and transact with familiar pricing.

The parts in blue are the core functionality of the BigCommerce platform that allow merchants to operate their shopping cart, manage multi-channel selling, shipping and fulfillment, and more.

On the backend the 2-way REST API layers allow for seamless connection to your critical business management systems, like an ERP, allowing you to manage inventory, orders, and pricing all in one place.

What’s Happening Now

At the start of 2019, we opened the Shipping Provider API, allowing merchants to bring their own third-party or custom shipping service to provide real-time rates in cart and checkout.

This allowed for a new partnership with EasyShip, the all-in-one shipping platform for global ecommerce, connecting to 250+ shipping couriers, offering discounts of up to 70%, and managing customs and duties.

In the second quarter of 2019, we opened the Tax Provider API, which allows merchants to send a request to a third-party tax provider to calculate sales tax at checkout and submit order data to the third-party tax provider for future tax reporting and returns.

This allowed us to expand our current partnership with Avalara so we can now offer tax automation in not only the United States but also in and between Canada, the UK, and 27 EU countries. Along with the expansion of Avalara, we also released Vertex Cloud for enterprise U.S. and Canadian merchants and TaxJar for U.S. merchants.

In 2019, we began working on our platform and with payment providers to make multi-currency possible. This started with offering multi-currency credit card payments using Stripe, which enables businesses to not only display, but also allow customers to transact and settle in their local currency.

In January, we extended multi-currency capabilities to PayPal Express Checkout, a powerful market leader in payments, used by merchants and shoppers across the globe, Adyen a global payment platform offering local payment methods, and Elavon, consistently ranked in the top five global payment providers in the world. Throughout the year, we’ll be offering multi-currency through even more payment providers. More on that below.

Benefits of Multi-Currency

I touched on this in the introduction, but there’s a reason why BigCommerce has focused on advancing our multi-currency offering and why we think it’s so important for merchants as part of their international expansion strategies.https://www.adyen.com/

1. Avoid unhappy shoppers.

No one wants to be surprised at checkout. Customers are looking for transparency when buying from international companies, especially when buying from a new store for the first time. Seeing a sudden price change at checkout or discovering they will have an added fee for paying in their local currency can lead to a steep drop off at checkout.

Multi-currency lets merchants not only display product pricing in the local currency but also improve customer satisfaction by letting them transact and settle in their local currency.

2. Improve conversion rates.

Happy customers = more customers. By providing your international customers with the localized experience they expect, you will likely see an uplift in customers in global markets converting on your site.

“Since changing to the multi-currency we have seen a 20% increase in sales cross-border, and the customer feedback has been really positive.

— Mark Harrison, Ecommerce Manager, Quality Bearings

3. Customize for different markets.

BigCommerce multi-currency supports 100+ currencies, so shoppers around the globe can transact in their local currency. However, the product goes beyond that in the level to which you can localize the experience. You can customize how currencies are displayed to follow best practices in each region. You can also set up payment methods by currency, so shoppers can opt for the payment providers they know and trust.

4. Have complete control of pricing.

With BigCommerce multi-currency, you can set fixed pricing by currency through prices lists. This enables you to charge prices that make the most sense for your business in each market. You can further optimize profit margins by setting discounts and coupons by currency, so you can localize promotions by target markets too.

Quality Bearings Sees Quality Growth in Overseas Markets

Quality Bearings is another business that has benefited from expanding to global markets. The UK-based online retailer of bearings and engineering supplies noticed their site was getting overseas traffic and wanted to capitalize on it.

Selling cross-border is a major focus for them, and currently 80% of their business is outside the UK. In fact, they’re now selling in 110 different countries and counting.

Prior to using the multi-currency features on BigCommerce, they were using a simple currency converter, but customers were often dismayed to discover at checkout that they would be transacting in British pounds. The result was that they saw a drop in their conversion rates in markets overseas.

Mark Harrison, Ecommerce Manager, Quality Bearings explained the positive result they’ve seen after adding multi-currency. “We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for our customers throughout their whole journeys. We’ve heard from a few of our regular customers excited they can transact in dollars now.”

What’s Next?

At BigCommerce, we’re excited to be offering multi-currency as part of our product as a way to help our merchants optimize selling cross-border. BigCommerce is built for growth and helping merchants expand beyond borders is one way we’re facilitating that growth.

We’re also committed to continuing to expand the payment providers who can support multi-currency.

In early 2020, BigCommerce merchants will be able to use multi-currency with Klarna, one of Europe’s largest banks used by 80 million global shoppers and BlueSnap, a payments provider connected to 30 global banks and offering over 100 global payment methods.

In the coming months, we plan to continue to improve our multi-currency features by adding new payment providers like Barclaycard, a multinational credit card and payment services provider with over 10 million customers in the UK, and Braintree & Paypal by Braintree. Learn more here.

The speed at which items can travel the globe is only increasing, and so too is the appetite for international goods. Competing in our globalized world means reaching new markets first and not letting political borders limit your selling.

Multi-currency is a key piece of the puzzle for merchants seeking to seize these new opportunities and expand cross-border. At BigCommerce, we’re continuing to invest in multi-currency as part of empowering our merchants’ growth.

 

Young Media Consumers Spend More Time With Online Video, Gaming, Social Media, Less With TV, Movies

• by Wayne Friedman , 4 hours ago

Young media consumers continue to spend more time with online video, gaming and social media, and less time with traditional screen-based TV series and movies, according to a new study from Hub Entertainment Research.

Nearly 60% of the “screen-based leisure time” for 13- to-24-year-old viewers comes from gaming (25%), online videos (19%) and social media (13%).

For those ages 35 and older, gaming, online videos, and social media come in at a total of 28% -- 11% for gaming, 10% for online video and 7% for social media.

TV and movie consumption comprise only 25% of screen time for 13- to-24-year-olds, versus those 35 and older, where the percentage is 60%.

Looking more broadly across all media consumers, Hub says, online video, gaming and social usage usage is up 37% in 2021, versus 32% in 2020.

Traditional TV/movie consumption is at 48% in 2021 down from 53% in 2020.

Hub says 13- to-24-year-olds watch almost as much online video as traditional TV -- 13.7 average hours per week (online), and 15.3 average hours per week (TV), due to the variety of screen options for young media consumers. Fifty one percent of those 13-24 point to this.

“The million-dollar question is whether today’s young consumers will always prioritize non-traditional content — or whether they’ll start to resemble older consumers as they grow older,” says Peter Fondulas, Hub principal and co-author of the study, in a release.

“Our prediction is that their behaviors are so ingrained that non-traditional content will always be a significant part of their entertainment consumption.”

The research was conducted among 2,179 US consumers ages 13-74, who watch at least one hour of TV per week and have broadband service.

The data was collected in December 2021.

My apologies!

 So sorry all! New aortic value surgery along with two new stents for me and a wife who slipped on the ice and broke her femur what it attaches to her hip.

I'll start getting back to gathering media happenings that you love reading to help keep you up to date....

Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD

More to come in the days ahead!

NBC Says Beijing Olympics Scores Well For Marketers, Nielsen Shows Initial Low TV Viewing

• by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday

Although traditional prime -time Nielsen-measured linear TV viewing is down in the initial days of the 2022 Beijing Olympics versus other Olympics, NBC says Olympic marketers are getting high value.

Looking at all TV-video advertising, the company says there was a 98% completion rate for linear TV for all of Friday’s opening ceremony Olympic programming coverage, compared to digital where the average completion rates are closer to 50%, according to iSpot.tv.

In addition, there has been an ad interruption rate of 13% less across all TV programming, against the average for broadcast/cable programming. 

During prime-time periods on NBC, the Olympics offered a 14% lighter advertising load. Over four days so far of Olympics coverage (Thursday through Sunday), there were 2.4 billion impressions, per iSpot.tv.

NBCU offered no comparable impression data compared to previous Olympics.

Other results: Viewers have a 39% greater likelihood to search for brands that advertised in the prime-time opening ceremony against the average for broadcast/cable programming. This data comes from two TV brand measurers, Phoenix and EDO.

NBC adds that these viewing results are also up compared to the two previous Olympics -- 20% higher than the Tokyo Summer Olympics a year ago, and 32% more than the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

NBC also says brand recall and message memorability were up 53% and 70%, respectively, compared to the average for broadcast/cable programming.

NBC says the most liked commercial for consumers, according to iSpot, was Delta’s “Will to Fly" message.

The opening Beijing Olympics ceremony was down 63% to $8.7 million linear TV viewers from the 2018 Winter Olympics, and 17% lower than last year’s opening ceremony for the Tokyo Summer Olympics.