News and Analysis
Retailers Find New Ways to Level Up Marketing with ChatGPT
Generative AI has quickly become a booming industry, and retailers are taking notice. Throughout the retail marketing space, executives and agencies are rushing to figure out how to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar technologies to their advantage.
Survey: Media Buyers Concerned About Programmatic Disruption
Is the death of third-party cookies more hype than reality? The majority of media buyers are still using third-party data in their digital campaigns, with an average of 11.9 data providers used for each campaign, according to the results of a new study of media buyers, planners, and strategists released this morning and conducted by the data firm Datonics.
Why Are So Many Retailers Investing in Next-Day Order Fulfillment in 2023?
The continued growth and normalization of online shopping is creating increased demand for faster delivery times and forcing retailers to make significant investments in shipping to stay relevant.
Commentary
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?
Latest Posts
6 Marketing Automation Solutions for Cannabis Businesses
The cannabis vertical is filled with dispensaries, laboratories, growers, manufacturers, and on-demand delivery services. More broadly speaking, the industry is comprised of plant-touching businesses (growers, processors, dispensaries) and ancillary businesses (delivery apps, payment processors, technology solutions). What businesses in both of these categories rely on is marketing to attract and retain customers, which helps to explain why the number of marketing automation solutions for cannabis businesses is growing so quickly.
Here are six examples of marketing automation platforms aimed at the cannabis industry.
Consumerizing AI to Drive Stickiness and Usability
Organizations investing billions in enterprise software realized the obvious: that easier-to-use technology was not only more scalable internally, but that it delivered better ROI. Accessible platforms could be optimized faster and were “stickier” across teams. This gave way to the consumerization movement in IT and enterprise.
As we head into 2019, the enterprise’s consumerization is well established. Yet when it comes to AI, which will see over $235 billion in investment by 2025, this idea of consumer-like UI has largely fallen by the wayside.
That has to change.
3 Challenges Keeping Chief Growth Officers Up at Night
The role of the Chief Growth Officer is challenging enough without digital ad budgets getting upended. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Thanks to radical changes made by the three largest U.S. online ad platforms, the digital advertising ecosystem is undergoing a transformation, and it is forcing Chief Growth Officers to reconsider their marketing strategies. Here are three challenges keeping Chief Growth Officers up at night—and a straightforward solution for getting more sleep.
5 Proven Strategies for Ramping Up Your Mobile Coupon Marketing Program
The United States is one of the largest smartphone markets in the world, with some 96% of people owning a cellphone. Those consumers most likely to own a smartphone fall into the sweet spot of retail marketing demographics—those ages 18-29 (96%) and those ages 30-49 (92%), according to Pew Research. Retailers are realizing that mobile coupon marketing is the best way to get special offers in the hands of consumers.
Retailers that take advantage of the power of mobile marketing when combined with coupons have a new and effective means of driving foot traffic and purchases. Here we offer a look at five mobile coupon marketing strategies.
Heard on the Street, Episode 37: Redefining Location Intelligence
Beyond the advertising uses for location intelligence (ad targeting, attribution, etc.), it’s being applied to other areas of enterprise support. That includes everything from supply chain management to deciding where you should open your next store location.
“When you look at ad tech and sales and marketing, that’s where the money is now,” said Mike Davie, CEO of location Intelligence company Quadrant on the latest episode of Heard on the Street. “But we are seeing people get more sophisticated with use cases like infrastructure development [such as] where to put high-speed trains by analyzing migration between countries. They’re making billion-dollar infrastructure decisions based on ground-level information.
To Meet Consumer Demands, Automotive Marketing Goes Vertical
While customer feedback is coming in from every direction, the automotive industry has done a better job of funneling reviews into vertical-specific platforms than some other industries. Large auto retailers like AutoNation are making major data stack investments, while others are working to improve their online ratings and reviews by engaging more frequently on sites like Facebook and Yelp as well as on automotive-specific platforms like Cars.com and Edmunds.
Jump of 0.1 in Five-Star Review Averages Can Make the Difference on Conversion
When customers are looking for a quick fix and do not intimately know the shops around them, star-rating averages are crucial. A new report by location-based marketing firm Uberall indicates they are so influential in consumer decision-making processes that a mere 0.1-point jump in a store’s average rating can increase its conversion rate by 25%.
6 Ways Brands Can Reach New Audiences with TikTok
TikTok is currently unavoidable, in particular when it comes to targeting Generation Z. At the moment there seems to be no way for advertisers and marketers to bypass this platform. But what is it exactly, and what advertising opportunities does it offer brands and agencies?
Get Ready for America’s GDPR: CCPA
With regulation comes the emergence of new opportunities. The same logic that brought on GDPR will be stateside on January 1, 2020, when the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is put into effect. This legislation will allow California residents more control over their personal data. The objective is simple: provide better consumer protections and enhance the respect of privacy by improving transparency regarding the way companies are using their users’ data.
Jean-Noël Barneron of Herow provides one of the clearest breakdowns of CCPA, going into effect Jan 1, you’ll read.
Three Ways Indoor Maps Do More for Complex Retail Buildings
Once a venue’s maps have been digitized for wayfinding purposes, there are many ways to drive additional ROI from that same set of indoor maps. When location technologies are designed with interoperability in mind, it becomes possible to blend different technologies together to create smart solutions that provide value not only to business operations but also to consumers. By integrating digitized, layer-based indoor maps with other solutions such as the indoor equivalent of GPS, known as Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS), asset tracking and business intelligence, great things become possible.
Here is a shortlist of the top use cases that malls can implement to generate further ROI from their indoor mapping investments.
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature