News and Analysis
Acoustic Gets to the ‘Why’ of the Customer Journey
Acoustic is a global SaaS subscription company that provides customer-engagement tools for B2C brands. It has worked with brands including Pura, PayPal, Scientific American, and Ticketmaster. In 2022, Acoustic helped clients manage over 120 billion personalized interactions by focusing on the customer journey. John Riewerts, SVP of Engineering at Acoustic, explains the company’s newest offering […]
Emodo COO: AI Is Where We’re Continuing to Focus
As the mobile adtech division of the telecom giant Ericsson, Emodo is placing a major emphasis on AI-driven performance and personalization in programmatic advertising this year. The company is also doubling down on innovations around optimization, especially as it relates to targeting, innovative formats, and unique inventory. At the head of all these initiatives is […]
How LiveRamp Helps Brands Manage First-Party Data
Is the juice worth the squeeze? That’s what SaaS company LiveRamp wants clients to ask themselves when they opt for the relative ease of scaling ad campaigns in walled gardens like Facebook. Consumer perceptions and privacy regulations are continuing to evolve, and personally identifiable information (PII) via first-party data is a brand’s most valuable asset. […]
Commentary
How to Tell Customer Stories During a Pandemic
How do we continue to market our company and tell our customers’ stories when customer experiences have become a moving target? Here are five tips for how to tell your customer’s story during the Covid-19 pandemic.
NextNav Releases a Plug-in for Vertical Positioning
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers NextNav releasing a developer plug-in for vertical positioning, PointMe developing a solution for “point and click” in the physical world, Pointr & Comfy partnering to make workspaces safer to return to after COVID, and SKODA adding location-based services to their vehicles.
Retail Scams During the Holiday Season
Online retail was hot in 2019 and likely to be even more so in 2020. That’s good news for retailers, of course. Unfortunately, it comes along with some potentially bad news: These high traffic numbers motivate retail scammers to take advantage of the situation, and retailers may potentially be caught unawares.
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Pop-Up Distribution Centers Overcome Last-Mile Delivery Challenges during Covid-19
Ecommerce has suddenly become the primary sales channel as a result of Covid-19, and retailers are having to find creative solutions to meet consumer demand for both essential and non-essential goods. With Amazon announcing delays in shipments of non-essential goods in the US and limits on the quantity of goods retailers can ship, the task of getting products to end users becomes even more difficult.
Supply chain issues also resulting from Covid-19 complicate things further, but merchants are still tasked with fulfilling orders on time. This means looking into non-traditional fulfillment methods that can provide flexible and cost-effective solutions to the issue at hand. For retailers struggling to find ways to cope with over-forecasted demand, below are some viable options.
What Search Behavior During Covid-19 Means for Healthcare Marketers
The headlines are everywhere. Open any newspaper, and you’ll see story after story about coronavirus and its impact on American society. But new data on consumer search behavior shows Covid-19 isn’t the only healthcare topic on people’s minds right now.
In an analysis of consumer search trends during the coronavirus pandemic, a team from the healthcare provider scheduling and search platform Kyruus found that search terms seemingly unrelated to Covid-19, such as “diabetes,” “cancer,” and “depression,” continue to rank more highly than those associated with the virus.
Improving Customer Insights and Targeting through Data Integration
Businesses seeking to better reach their target audiences need the most accurate and up-to-date consumer data to inform their marketing strategies and meet their business goals. In fact, data-driven insights can literally make the difference between a hit or a miss when it comes to truly understanding audiences. But, as the sheer volume of collected data grows, the variety of collection methods, visualization formats, and management systems needed to organize and analyze this data can prove confusing and challenging.
As most companies pull data from several internal and external sources — which can be time-consuming and tedious — the need for a simplified organization methodology is incredibly important.
Enter data integration.
How to Move Your Classes or Programs Online – Tips for Small Businesses
A week before it ran several online classes, Practical Martial Arts didn’t have a video strategy or an online conferencing platform, and the couple was terrified about what the stay-at-home order meant for their beloved business, their customers, and their employees. But in a couple days they were able to pivot. And you can, too.
If you’re looking to offer online versions of your in-person business or are simply looking to connect online while we ride this out, below are some tips and resources to help you go virtual, too.
Location Weekly: Mark Michael, Warren Zenna, Pinterest Adds Shop Tabs Feature
In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association hosts Mark Michael of DevHub and Warren Zenna of Zenna Consulting. Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez also discuss Pinterest adding a new Shop tabs feature and Burger King encouraging kids to do math for free.
How Agencies and Advertisers Can Target Relevant Audiences During Covid-19
Since establishments have limited services to take-out, pick-up or delivery, advertisers are creating geofences where they know consumers are still going. Rather than using the actual footprint of a restaurant, advertisers can use custom polygons to include the pick-up area in the parking lot or the QSR’s drive-through area.
Getting creative to find restaurant audiences is just the tip of the iceberg, however. Even when large portions of the population are staying home, there are ways to find and advertise to audiences that are high-intent in a range of consumer categories. There are several commercial and public locations that you can target to help find audiences that are relevant to your clients and your campaigns. Below I detail optimal strategies for major categories of brick-and-mortar physical businesses.
As Agencies Feel the Squeeze, Covid-19 Reshapes the Martech Industry
One in four small businesses has temporarily shut down, and 43% believe they have fewer than six months until permanent closure is unavoidable. With the small business community in panic mode, budgets for digital marketing have been slashed, and agencies are feeling the pinch.
“Everyone has been in panic mode, and rightly so. Businesses are worried about who might have to be furloughed [or] laid off, getting their PPP loans, what kind of regulations do they need to comply with, [and] what their contingency plans are for keeping any amount of revenue coming in,” says Simon Schwartz, founder of Locasaur. “Businesses are not interested in being pitched new marketing tech.”
The Largest 2020 Ecommerce Driver is Global Expansion
Ecommerce is now a staple in everyday life, so much so that Americans spent $154.5 billion online in the third quarter of 2019, according to a US Census estimate. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced business for the near future to be almost completely online.
While this transition will take some getting used to, it also affords the opportunity to reach across conventional borders. We’ve moved beyond the novelty of being able to buy something online and receive it quickly. As we look to what the next 25 years have in store, continued success in the ecommerce world depends on superior customer experience — meeting customers where they are and when they need it most.
Heard on the Street, Episode 49: Connecting a Multi-Device World, with Tapad
The mobile advertising world continues to shift dynamically as both public and private sector influences reshape ad targeting and data collection practices. The phasing out of third-party cookies and increased privacy regulations, coupled now with the financial pressure related to Covid-19, make 2020 an especially challenging year for marketing tech.
At the center of all of this is Semcasting, whose CEO and founder Ray Kingman is the latest guest on Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast (listen above). Semcasting applies advanced IP targeting known as Smart Zones to validate audiences and make sure that marketers are reaching the right people.
5 Retail Tech Solutions Keeping Shoppers Safe During Covid-19
Beacons, sensors, security cameras, and touchless payment solutions are all being used in ways they haven’t been before. Technology vendors are even changing up their offerings, or in some cases pivoting altogether, to better serve the retail market during this ongoing pandemic.
Here are five examples of technology providers offering innovative solutions for enhanced social distancing and improved shopper safety during the Covid-19 outbreak.
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