News and Analysis

95% of Consumers Plan on Buying Most Holiday Gifts Online

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While brick-and-mortar sales remain a robust part of the holiday shopping experience, online shopping is asserting clearer dominance than ever before this year. A walloping 95% of consumers plan to do the majority of their holiday shopping this season online, according to multi-channel engagement platform Leanplum.

5 Ways to Improve the Customer Experience for Holiday Shoppers

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The retail space starts to feel chaotic this time of year, with brands pulling out all the stops to win over holiday shoppers. Amidst all the talk of sales and discounts, retailers this year are looking at integrating new customer experience initiatives designed to bring in first-time shoppers and encourage long-time loyalists to spend even more than usual.

To learn even more about the customer experience strategies retailers are launching this year, we checked in with a few industry experts. Here are their thoughts on the best customer experience strategies retailers are trying out this holiday season.

Which Emerging Social Platforms Will Win Big This Holiday Season?

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Retailers looking for an edge this holiday season are testing the waters with newer, emerging social platforms in a bid to generate awareness and market their products to huge audiences of tech-savvy teens and twenty-somethings.

On TikTok, a mobile app for creating and sharing short videos, retailers are poised to connect with a base of more than 500 million users.

Commentary

The Shift in B2SMB: It’s All About Platforms

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Major changes are coming to SMB marketing as the market shifts away from media towards cloud-based services, artificial intelligence, marketing automation and location marketing. This cluster of tech movements represent real opportunities to help SMBs target and engage customers, and become more efficient.

Foursquare Data Shows Up Today in More Places Than You’d Think

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It’s remarkable to see how often Foursquare data is popping up today in the apps that garner the most consumer traffic and press attention. These votes of confidence would seem to solidify Foursquare’s position as the forefather of natively digital location data.

Report: Matching Up With Local Merchants’ Marketing Objectives

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Our analysis of local merchants shows that SMBs are spending more money on digital marketing — particularly social media and email — because they find those channels most effective. But there appears to be some missing links between new customer acquisition and their favorite tactics.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Profits Skyrocket, Gannett Expansion Faces Ad Difficulties

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Profit Nearly Triples on Mobile Ad Sales and New Users… Gannett’s Expansion Strategy Runs Into Bad News on the Ad Front… How Businesses Creating New Website Platforms Can Optimize for Search…

7 Call Analytics Platforms Using Machine Learning to Identify Caller Intent

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Providers are introducing adaptive learning technology to categorize data and generate insights from inbound phone calls, giving merchants the ability to better understand what types of telephone calls are being driven. Here are seven examples of call analytics and attribution providers using advanced technology to identify caller intent.

Street Fight Daily: Shopper Intent and Location, Brands Tap Pokémon Go

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… flok Launches Chatbots to Bolster Customer Engagement for Local Businesses… Can Insights on Shopper Intent Improve Location Data?… This Brand Found a Clever Way to Connect with Pokémon Go Players…

flok Launches Chatbots to Bolster Customer Engagement for Local Businesses

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With chatbot technology, communications between local businesses and their customers via flok can now evolve into more complex conversations. These conversations yield better data for the business owner and more detailed information as well as a more engaging customer service experience for the consumer.

The New Proximity: A Second Phase in Mobile Brings Here and Now to Life

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The first phase of mobile software relied on us to express a desire and thereby to enable a service. Our actions initiated services that capitalized on the phone’s ability to maximize proximity. Now we’re entering a second phase where, for many of us, connectivity and location awareness will be active for longer stretches of our days.

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Debuts Attribution Dashboard, MyTaxi Merges with Hailo

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare Debuts a Dashboard for its Foot Traffic Measurement System… MyTaxi Reportedly to Merge with Hailo in Bid to Compete with Uber… Verizon-Yahoo Deal is the Best Possible Outcome for Consumers and Marketers…

YP Announces New ‘Audience Cartography’ Platform for Targeting and Attribution

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YP has announced the release of its new location data visualization methodology, Audience Cartography, which allows multi-location businesses such as restaurants, retailers, and auto dealers to refine advertising campaign targeting and establish attribution.

Inform Your Multichannel Customer Experience Strategy

Mihm & Blumenthal: How Google’s Monetization Shift Will Impact Local Search

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In this new feature, local marketing gurus David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal kick around some of the biggest ideas affecting the local search ecosystem and the broader industry. This edition looks at the latest changes from Google and how local marketers should react.

Case Study: Sailing Company Leverages Online Reviews to Maximize Sales

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Online reviews can make or break a business in the tourism industry, which is one of the reasons why Kai Kanani Sailing Charters is pulling out all the stops to drive a higher volume of reviews on third-party websites like Yelp, Facebook, and TripAdvisor..

Street Fight Daily: Verizon Acquires Yahoo, Retailers Leverage Instagram for Loyalty

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Cuts $4.8 Billion Deal to Sell Core Business to Verizon… How Retailers Like Michael Kors Are Turning Instagram Into a Customer-Loyalty Vehicle… Retail Emails Lead to Quick Sales…