Here’s Why October Is the Perfect Time to Pressure-Test Holiday Strategies
With consumers still spending – and their evolving shopping preferences and behaviors becoming increasingly clear for Halloween and beyond – October presents a prime opportunity for retailers to pressure-test and refine their holiday 2020 strategies.
Here are three considerations as we enter one of the most critical quarters in retail’s history.
Self-Serve Restaurant Ordering in a Post-Covid World
We expect to see a continued rise in touchless retail shopping and contactless transactions à la Amazon Go Stores.
But one of the less-discussed technologies in the Covid-advantaged bucket is self-serve mobile restaurant ordering. The idea is that ordering and paying from your table can reduce server interaction — which has Covid and non-Covid benefits considering it can save diners’ lives and their time.
How to Turbocharge Social and Email via Cross Promotion
At a time when marketers have limited resources to create new content, social posts and user-generated content can be a welcome addition to email marketing campaigns and newsletters. Email and social media can also be used to cross-promote, creating two sticky channels that drive home important messages. What’s more, while everyone is at home and online more than usual, marketers can get creative with new forms of social engagement over email, too.
Making Local Content Work for Retailers
Customers expect businesses to answer their questions and meet their demands in one easy-to-find, easy-to-navigate-to location. They want to know what a store carries, where the store is located, and if they can easily buy a product online instead. Increasingly, especially since the advent of Covid-19, they also want to know if they have access to services like curbside pickup or what safety provisions a business provides. This is why, now more than ever, marketers need to leverage local content strategies to our advantage.
Location Weekly: Walmart Delivers Covid Tests via Drone
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers Walmart delivering Covid tests via drone in Vegas, United Airlines launching an interactive flight search map, Amazon Sidewalk moving beyond the connected home, and Toronto-based WXM Tech cooking up TraffikFlo for Covid traffic management.
How McDonald’s is Using AI in Marketing to Better Understand Customers’ Needs
McDonald’s waited until it could produce an AI-driven app that provides customers with personalized deals based on their purchasing history. In other words, McDonald’s bet on quality over quantity. This, of course, is just one of the ways that AI presents opportunities and challenges alike in regards to martech.
As we’ve previously noted, as AI adoption increases, brands are searching for a competitive edge. McDonald’s is no exception to this, and a look at how the company is using AI is instructive as to the opportunities AI presents for other firms.
Forever-Changed Buying Patterns Mean Rethinking Customer Loyalty
Online ordering and curbside pick-up became an essential service for everyone from major retailers like Home Depot and Target to restaurants and small specialty shops. Bookstores began delivering orders without a delivery fee. Even car dealerships have had to rethink their entire sales model, with many moving the full customer experience online.
While these business transitions were driven by the pandemic, the new consumer buying trends — and the business measures put in place to adapt to them — will likely become a permanent fixture even as the economy enters a recovery phase.
Why Advertisers Are Turning to In-Game Offerwalls
Think of offerwall as a mini in-game store that lists potential tasks that a user can complete in exchange for in-game currency. The task or event could be a variety of actions such as installing another app and carrying out a specific task, completing a survey, or signing up for a service. It’s popular with engaged users who want to experience premium content by investing their time rather than money.
Game developers benefit from increased retention and the ability to engage with and monetize a user that otherwise may not have turned ROI positive — in some cases even turning them into paying users. The benefits for the advertiser are numerous.
Location Weekly: Torrid Deploys Personalized Maps in Email Marketing
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers 51Degrees partnering with Digital Element, Stirista acquiring Nikaza’s attribution and location intelligence engine, Torrid finding success with email marketing using personalized maps, and FedEx launching real-time package tracking with SenseAware ID.
The Hidden Costs of Mobile Ad Fraud
Some businesses treat the problem of ad fraud as a “tax,” considering it to be an unavoidable cost of digital advertising. Fraudsters siphon up to 30% of any given advertiser’s budget using a variety of tactics, such as app install farms or click spoofing.
While this wasted spend is certainly of consequence, accepting ad fraud as a tax of doing business assumes that your drained budget is the only side effect (an inherently flawed approach). Ad fraud, if left to run rampant, poses additional threats to your performance and business.
How Brands Can Support the Safe Return of Youth Sports to Communities
As the school year kicks off virtually for many children and families across the nation, all eyes are turning to the possibility that youth sports could help provide much-needed activity, socialization, and emotional support during an otherwise overwhelming and disorienting time. Without a doubt, youth sports in a pandemic must look a lot different than they did in pre-pandemic times, but one thing is truer than ever: Brands can play a valuable role in helping youth sports return safely to the field and enabling the kids who need these activities the most to participate.
How E-Commerce Sites Can Remain Competitive in a Rapidly Accelerating Digital Age
Customer experience isn’t anything new, but new ideas can be applied here, especially in the digital space. The question now revolves around how to create the same welcoming environment you’d create in a physical store online. It can be as simple as choosing colors for your website to elicit certain moods or using certain tech features like a chatbot to welcome customers as they “enter” your store. And it’s about making sure that customers can find your store — and this is where our affiliates become a key part of our strategy.
How Accurate Geolocation Data Fosters a Better Customer Experience
Having the most reliable data the first time you ask for it is a no brainer for the consumer, but its obvious importance is often overlooked by the provider. Data quality should be a dominant component to support a business’ reputation. But what if the data were slightly off? What implications does that have?
Rebuilding Retail with Customer-First Experiences Online and In-Store
There’s so much discussion around returning to the old normal, but retail’s future depends on getting as far as way from normal as it can. Retailers need to seize the opportunity and reimagine the experiences they provide—and create the next normal.
What would this look like? As a guiding principle, retailers should be finding ways to put the customer first in the experiences we provide.
How In-House Agencies Can Provide Value During and After Covid-19
When asked what the most critical resources for producing ads post Covid-19 were, 55% of ANA members said in-house teams, as compared to 42% for other internal teams and 26% for external agencies.
In many respects, Covid just accelerated the already impressive growth of in-housing. Moving forward, these teams’ proximity to the business and growing strategic importance mean they are in a good position to deliver greater value to their organizations in three critical ways.