News and Analysis
Report: Retail Lags in Omnichannel Customer Service
Retailers around the globe learned to adapt during the pandemic, quickly pivoting to offer curbside pickup, mobile payments, and online storefronts. Despite making strides in digital adoption, a new report finds that many retailers are still missing the mark on omnichannel customer service.
How Will the Metavearth Materialize?
Back to the metaverse’s meaning, concrete definitions are elusive … mostly because they don’t exist yet. But broadly speaking, there are two metaverse tracks. One involves virtual and synchronous worlds. The other adds digital dimension and context to the physical world. Both will take years to materialize.
Here’s What Happens When Brands Start Micro-Communities for Digital Engagement
“[Micro-communities] foster a collaborative relationship between brands and customers. So instead of spying on consumers through cookies, brands can simply ask consumers for feedback and offer them recommendations based on their likes and dislikes,” says Philip Smolin, chief platform officer at 100.co, an AI-powered consumer brand group that works in the CPG space.
Commentary
Half of Organizations Send the Wrong Marketing Messages to Customers
The result of this data deluge? Organizations lack the insight into their customers they desperately need to deliver meaningful experiences, secure sales, and retain customers. New research estimates 48% of them struggle to gain these insights due to the data silos and more than half admit they don’t have a full picture of their marketing data and their customer journey.
Given the many challenges marketers are up against, it’s no wonder they struggle to define their customer journeys and optimize customer interactions. Below I offer some advice for those in this data struggle.
Multi-Location Marketers Want to Do More Social Advertising, But One Big Thing Stands in the Way
Unlike search, social is a push medium that marketers can use to reach new audiences. Social can leverage rich ad formats such as mouth-watering images of restaurant dishes, explainer videos for complex products, and eye-catching celebrity or influencer endorsements that are much more impactful and engaging at storytelling than search.
Today’s local enterprise advertisers know that they should be leveraging the one-two punch of search and social together. One day they will. But until social advertising can offer the same streamlined workflow that can make managing hundreds or thousands of locations as easy as search makes it, social will still lag behind in the local marketing media portfolio.
First-Party Versus Third-Party Data: What You Should Know
Using first-party data is a win-win. As marketers, you are fostering an ongoing relationship with your customers and prospects by better communicating and serving them. But there needs to be a strategy and long-term commitment. In a survey of US digital marketers by Advertiser Perceptions and programmatic agency MightyHive, respondents said they were, on average, tapping into just 47% of their company’s first-party data potential. It takes the right strategy and technological infrastructure in place to activate first-party data at scale.
Latest Posts
How EU Data Regulations Could Benefit Global Brands
With less than three months to go until the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect, businesses around the globe are looking for information on how to stay in compliance with what’s been described as the most important change in data privacy regulations in the past two decades.
5 Shopper Personalization Solutions for Brands
Here are five examples of hyperlocal vendors offering the latest personalization solutions for brands and retailers right now.
Street Fight Daily: All Marketing is Local, How GDPR Will Affect Brands
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Digital Advances Have Ushered in the Golden Age of Local Marketing… How to Open Your Mind to Amazon’s Marketing Potential… Collateral Damage from Facebook’s News Feed Changes Piles Up..
Amazon Rolls Out Free Whole Foods Deliveries for Prime Members in San Francisco & Atlanta
Further encroaching on one of hyperlocal’s oldest verticals, Amazon sent shivers down the spines of grocers in San Francisco and Atlanta on Tuesday, announcing it would begin delivering Whole Foods orders for free to Prime members in those cities.
SMB Index: Local Stocks Take a Hit in February
In a turbulent February, which saw stocks give back gains from January over 2 days (Feb 7–9), the SCP SMB Index retreated 2% during the month.
How to Create a Seamless Online/Offline Shopping Experience
Thanks to advances made in the digital world, in-store identification can be linked to existing digital identifiers and unlock sophisticated, real-time personalization that is seamless across channels.
SMB OS Operators, Part I: Upserve
The first in our series of interviews on SMB OS is Upserve founder and CEO Angus Davis. Formerly Swipely, UpServe had been living out the principles of SMB OS long before we started calling it that.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Rolls Out Free Whole Foods Deliveries, Google Sells Zagat
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Rolls Out Free Whole Foods Deliveries for Prime Members in San Francisco & Atlanta… Google Is Selling Off Zagat… SMB OS Operators, Part I: Upserve…
6 Guidelines for the Path to Voice Everywhere
I want voice (control of everything), everywhere, but I have strict requirements for how it should be designed, engineered, and implemented. Here are six requirements for a reasonable deployment of voice everywhere.
SweetIQ Report Highlights Influence of Local Tech on Media Mix
Whereas in previous years the goal for businesses was simply to be “found” online, multi-location brands now have to contend with “being chosen” in an incredibly crowded omnichannel space.
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem