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Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly

This week’s articles look at the impact in-store mobile usage has on consumer spend, what stores can do to transform the customer experience, how retailers should start taking advantage of Google’s accelerated mobile pages (AMPs), and more.

• Shoppers who browse retail sites when in stores spend more at the stores they’re in [Internet Retailer]: A new study finds that consumers who use their phones in-store spend up to 150 percent more than those who don’t!
• How Department Stores Can Transform The Customer Experience [Forbes]: Technology — such as apps that work to make a store more usable — community events, and food can all help improve the customer experience.
• SEO: Accelerated Mobile Pages for Ecommerce [Practical Ecommerce]: Retail sites have lagged behind with regard to implementing AMPs, but e-commerce sites can benefit from them.
• Big Data and Analytics: Creating New Value [E-Commerce Times]: Targeting, timely marketing, the ability to anticipate customers’ needs, and new business models are all benefits that can be derived from Big Data analytics.
• Google’s latest search ads allow shoppers to text retailers [Internet Retailer]: A new type of search ad — which will start to roll out in the next few weeks on Google — allows consumers to send SMS messages to retailers.
• How Hotel Marketers Can Win The Battle Against Online Travel Agencies [Forbes]: Giving consumers a reason to book direct, making the booking process easier, and implementing metasearch listings can help marketers as they engage in their relationships with online travel agencies (OTAs).
• 6 Charts Comparing Business and Leisure Traveler Satisfaction With U.S. Destinations [Skift]: Business travelers are slightly more likely to be satisfied with their trips compared to leisure travelers.
• Book on Google — answers to hoteliers’ questions [Tnooz]: As Book on Google continues to grow, find answers to several questions and an explanation of how it could work for hoteliers right here.

The post Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/news-and-resources/point-sale-retail-travel-weekly-25/

Marketers Don’t Sell Products, They Sell Experiences

The post Marketers Don’t Sell Products, They Sell Experiences appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/marketers-dont-sell-products-sell-experiences/

Turn your online customer into a brand ambassador

New Adobe Analytics Capabilities Make Powerful Insights More Accessible

Behind every great digital experience is robust data. Each time a consumer launches an app or puts an item in a shopping cart, a piece of data is created. Brands that are able to gather all of this and make sense of it can engage their audiences in ways that are intuitive and highly personalized. As consumers become increasingly selective about how they spend their time across digital channels, data is the secret sauce to draw in new customers and retain existing ones.

The tools we provide in Adobe Analytics bring together Adobe’s creative heritage with a robust data platform, to not only help brands analyze data and uncover insights at the click of button, but to also become better storytellers in driving action across their organizations. With Analysis Workspace, users have a visual editing platform to deliver, discover, and visualize insights and curate them to share with the organization.

Today we are announcing new capabilities in Analysis Workspace that furthers our mission to democratize analytics.

Flow Exploration and Fallout Analysis

The first step to delivering great consumer experiences is having an understanding of how people are navigating your digital channels and where they are hitting stumbling blocks. A new Flow Exploration capability within Analysis Workspace let’s brands visualize customer movement through digital experiences, showing the steps taken from entry point through to conversion or churn. Segments of users can be created based on usage patterns. A cohort of customers who are bundling related items, for instance, can be engaged with content on other suggested pairings.

The new Fallout Analysis in Analysis Workspace allows brands to easily drag, drop, and rearrange steps along the user experience to better understand at what point users are disengaging, in addition to insight around where they go after the fallout. With this data available, brands can implement the necessary adjustments to not only retain users but also improve the experience and drive more loyalty. Analysts can also create audience segments from users who stay in the funnel, or those who fall out, at any stage for remarketing and personalization.

A home improvement retailer, for example, might see that, on their mobile app, users who have to leave the shopping cart to view more items abandon purchases at higher rates and don’t return. This insight can be leveraged to re-design the cart experience as a floating interface that remains on the app screen.

Getting A Faster Start

Organizations are increasingly pushing every team member to become more data-driven in their decision-making. Given that, tools must appeal to the most novice user while still serving the needs of the most advanced analysts. We all know how difficult it is to stare at a blank page, which is why we are introducing new starter projects in Analysis Workspace. These will provide a more natural ramp-up for those trying Analysis Workspace for the first time. With out-of-the-box answers to common business questions across the web and mobile apps, as well as specific templates for vertical industries including Retail and Media & Entertainment, no one should have to be a data scientist to leverage insights to improve their work.

Seeing The Forest for the Trees

In this release, we are rolling out a series of new visualizations, as well as enhancements within Analysis Workspace that will provide users more tools to curate and present insights in ways that resonate most with stakeholders.

Time-series analysis: Within line graphs, users can now forecast expected future outcomes or automatically detect data anomalies and run contribution analysis in a single click to determine the cause of unexpected performance. A financial services company could tap into this to determine the cause of a spike in credit card applications during a typically slower month, for example.

Histograms: In a classic bar chart, each bar shows an individual value. A histogram is different in that it presents distribution. This is useful for brands as they’ll be able to pinpoint the most valuable and least valuable segments of customers, as well as the distribution of a certain behavior. A clothing retailer, for instance, can identify that most shoppers spend between $25 and $50 and turn that into a key segment for holiday promotions.

Date comparisons: At the push of a button, users can now compare data year over year, month over month, or day over day. All of this is presented in a single graphic to visualize the change, while serving up data points around percent changes as well as raw values. This can better inform everything from inventory to campaign planning.

The post New Adobe Analytics Capabilities Make Powerful Insights More Accessible appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/new-adobe-analytics-capabilities-make-powerful-insights-accessible/

How to Make Your Email Marketer’s Life Easier

Whether you’re a long-time email marketer or just starting out, more than likely, you know all too well the perils of an uninformed, misdirected email-marketing campaign. With brands using multiple channels nowadays to reach customers, email may not always be the best approach for every marketing message. Marketers must use research and analysis to determine not only when email is the preferred path over other channels, but also how to send effective email campaigns that remain within budget. The following best practices can help add a little order to your email-marketing regimen.

Nix the Silo or Vacuum
Email marketing simply cannot be done in a silo or vacuum. In fact, most brands — famous or unknown, large or small, etc. — work with the wider marketing team and other channels. When customers watch your TV commercials, hear your radio ads, read your magazine articles, or visit your website, your message should align with whatever message you’re sending through email. Your strategy across all channels needs to be succinct and complimentary — but not repetitive. Repeating the same message and content across channels is not what we mean by ‘cross-channel’ marketing.

Start With the Customer
Before you even consider an email campaign, contemplate whether that’s the best channel for reaching your customers. Ask yourself, “What are my customers expecting? What did they do to initiate this conversation? Should I respond via the same channel? Am I delivering what they need? Am I meeting them where they are?” Answering those questions will help you determine whether email is the best channel to use.

For example, a large pharmaceutical company has been sending emails to healthcare professionals for years — informing them of new products, providing them with new research findings, convincing them to meet with sales reps, persuading them to order samples, and so on. Unfortunately, they’ve noticed their email metrics continuing to decrease significantly.

After helping the company analyze marketing data across channels and customer journeys, we began collaborating to change their overall strategy. Since healthcare professionals spend very little time at their desks or on emails, and plenty of time online reading articles and conducting research, the messaging will start there — where the audience is. As healthcare professionals read research and interact in online forums, messages to engage in further conversations are sent to them. Healthcare providers will then continue to receive emails, further nurturing them along in their journeys with various brands. This restructuring accomplishes many goals, including:

• Meeting customers where they are;
• Utilizing multiple channels and choosing the right channel at the right time, and
• Protecting healthcare providers’ overall email reputations by not sending unwanted messages.

Determine What Works
Are you employing a marketing tactic simply because that’s what other companies are doing? If you are, it’s time to reassess your approach. The best strategy will always be to compliment your brand and deliver your customers what they need — not just check off boxes.

One of our customers — a large brick-and-mortar home-improvement store with an online presence — wasn’t driving the kind of online revenue you’d expect from a retailer. Many of their most popular items were large, bulky, and expensive to ship — think lawnmowers, grills, building materials, and so on. The company was interested in setting up a traditional, shopping cart-abandonment program — the kind many retailers use to capture additional revenue.

At first, they didn’t believe their online revenue could justify the investment needed to build the program. Further, when they compared their number of abandoned carts and average online orders to the industry averages, they really doubted the ROI was there to build the program. So, we changed the whole concept — working within their budget — to a remind-and-educate program. The new strategy will leverage web-analytics data by sending a reminder email when someone is browsing a large, bulky item that — in most cases — either won’t be worth the shipping costs or won’t be available to ship at all. The email will also educate the customer, further explaining that the item can be shipped to a local store for free if ordered online. This program will allow customers to complete online orders, save money on shipping costs, and enjoy the convenience of picking items up later from their local stores. This approach will not only connect with customers in more meaningful ways, but also help the company reach its business goal of capturing more online sales — and all within budget.

Beginner Advice
If you’re a new email marketer — whether just starting out in the business or new to a specific company — this tidbit is for you: Start with your brand’s customer journey. Get into the minds of your company’s customers by becoming a customer yourself — starting with a vague Google search or from the homepage of your company’s website. Next, consume the website as a brand new visitor would, bouncing from page to page. Browse areas, start a new shopping cart, download a whitepaper, watch videos, or read articles on the blog. Interact — anonymously, of course — with the brand on social media. Search for your mobile app. Test various ways a customer might begin interacting with your brand, paying special attention to the messaging at each stage. And, don’t forget to sign up to receive emails from your brand! Did you immediately receive a welcome message? Now, interact with the email content both as a newcomer and as a brand loyalist.

Why is all of this important? As an email marketer, you have to know what message makes the most sense for each customer. It’s your job to educate customers about your company, its culture, and how they can best engage with your brand. It’s your job to forge a connection with each customer. It’s your job to be a brand evangelist and reinforce the value proposition of your organization.

Another bit of advice is to keep your emails short and sweet. Include one primary call to action and one or two others that are related in some way. Don’t bombard your customer with content; rather, consider what overall goal you want to achieve with each message, and then guide your customer through accomplishing that action. More than one or two calls to action can be overwhelming for the customer; keep it concise, clear, and simple. Don’t give your customer a reason to become distracted and watch cat videos.

Looking Forward
Remember, sometimes an email-marketing campaign just isn’t the most effective route to take. The only real way to define your approach is to know your customers. Ask yourself and your teammates a ton of questions about the journey and study the data available. Once you determine whether email is the right channel, remember to be your customer. Guide customers throughout their journeys so they don’t have to figure them out on their own. Take that customer’s journey before you start your campaign. Energize your company’s values. Make your calls to action clear. Using these tips and tricks, you’re destined for success.

The post How to Make Your Email Marketer’s Life Easier appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/email/make-email-marketers-life-easier/

How to Link Digital Behavior to Your Customers

I’ve been working in the data industry for just under a decade and am excited to have joined Adobe as the Data Science and Analytics Evangelist. Over the last 10 years, I’ve been leading midsize to enterprise-sized implementations, analyses, and optimizations. I’m looking forward to adding this experience to help you make the most of your data and our products.

My role as an evangelist is to work with you, the data enthusiasts. I’m here to help you better understand Adobe’s vision with regard to data and analytics, to clear up any confusion that you may have about the Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), and to spark conversation about where our rapidly changing industry is headed.

Customer Attributes
In this post, we’ll be diving into Customer Attributes. You probably remember hearing about these at Summit last year; but if you’re like me, you’re busy and may have delayed their deployment. Well, the time is now. I’ve seen customers of all shapes, sizes, and industries that need this feature.

Here’s the simple definition: Customer Attributes is an AMC-level feature that enables imports of offline data based on a customer identifier, often a login ID. You can push in demographics data, loyalty-program data, and any other customer-based data that may affect your business or your customers’ behaviors on your digital experiences. And, you don’t have to worry if you push an attribute that doesn’t end up bearing any fruit, as they’re very easy to delete so you can start over again.

Customer Attributes Versus Classifications
Think Customer Attributes are just like Classifications? Well, they’re similar, but here’s how they’re different:

• Like Classifications, Customer Attributes enables you to upload labels to behavioral data retroactively (historical and future data). However, unlike Classifications, Customer Attributes are applied to the visitor rather than a specific action that visitor takes. This means that the attribute is linked to the entire lifespan of the cookie. In essence, Customer Attributes will apply to all visits — even those prior to the login ID being captured.
• There are no cardinality limits with Customer Attributes, so you’ll never see ‘Low Traffic’.
• Customer Attributes are available through the entire AMC, not just Analytics. So, you can target and report on these attributes in Adobe Target or automate a campaign in Adobe Campaign via Customer Attribute-driven segments.
• Customer Attributes can be set as Dimensions and Metrics. I have an example of this below for salary, but you could similarly use it to count loyalty-rewards points, customer lifetime value, etc.
• Customer Attributes do not require an eVar or prop. They are, instead, pushed in via the AMC ID service. eVars and props can be used as your source though; ClientCare can help you get this set up.

Now that you’re up to speed on the benefits, I’ve created a step-by-step guide to getting started with them. I’ve also included some screenshots of Analysis Workspace at the end to show you what the final product looks like. So, let’s dive in.

Step 1: Prerequisites — Get Your Marketing Cloud in Order.
For your organization to leverage Customer Attributes, you’ll need to ensure you have a few things checked off — and don’t worry; each item is relatively painless, and ClientCare will be happy to help you move along if you bump into any roadblocks:

1. Enable your organization for AMC;
2. Link your analytics company to AMC;
3. Enable the AMC ID Service on your Analytics-enabled site(s), preferably via dynamic tag management (DTM); and
4. Ensure you are set as an admin for Customer Attributes in the AMC Enterprise Dashboard.

Once these steps are out of the way, it’s time for the fun to start!

Step 2: Identification — Identify Your ID.
One of the must-have requirements for enabling Customer Attributes is identifying your customer. This almost always comes from a user login. It will be your ideal key for tying online behavior to offline customer data.

Most likely, if you’re using a tool like Adobe DTM, you already have a Data Element set up to capture this unique user ID. In fact, my test example of DTM has a Data Element called “unique id,” which you’ll see below.

Step 3: Push Your ID to AMC.
Now that you’ve identified the login ID, it’s time to send it to Adobe. In DTM, this is especially easy to do. If you aren’t using DTM, you can implement your ID using JavaScript. Here’s a quick tutorial for doing this in DTM:

1. Click the gear to open the settings for the AMC ID Service:

2. Open the Customer Settings accordion, add a friendly name for your ID attribute in the first textbox (labeled Integration Code), add the Data Element you’ve set up to capture the unique user ID in the second textbox (labeled Value), and select Authenticated as your Auth State.

3. Once you have everything set up, it should look something like this:

Note that I used “loginID” as my Integration Code value. Remember the name you chose, as you’ll need it later.

4. Validate that your ID is being populated on your site by leveraging the Adobe Debugger. You’ll see two rows similar to the screenshot below listed under your SiteCatalyst Image:

Step 4: Create a Comma-Separated Value (CSV) That Ties IDs to Your Attributes.
It’s time to link your unique ID data to your attributes. Consider starting with just one; they can be deleted and recreated an unlimited number of times and are historically retroactive to the visitor’s first hit.

Start with a blank CSV. In cell A1 (top-left cell), place the Integration Code name that you used in Step 3 (“loginID” in my example). In cell B1, place a friendly name for the Customer Attribute that you’d like to upload; I’ve selected Gender. I’ve also added Billing Address State and Salary in cells C1 and D1, respectively. Finally, import your customer-relationship management (CRM) data into this format.

Now, save your file as a CSV and keep it handy.

Step 5: Create Attributes in AMC.
Congrats! You’re done pushing data into AMC at runtime; now, it’s time to create your CRM attributes and integrate the data. This is done within the Profiles & Audiences section of AMC, accessed via the Product Selector dropdown:

Once here, switch over from Audience Library to Customer Attributes at the top:

Select the New button and provide a friendly name and description. Place the Integration Code name that you took note of in Step 3 (“loginID” in my example).

If everything works well, the File Upload module will become available to you. Note that you have the option to upload Customer Attributes via an easy-to-set-up file-transfer protocol (FTP) interface. We’ll be going through the browser import, but both will work great for you.

Once you’ve dropped in your CSV, Adobe will quickly analyze the file and provide you with a Schema to validate. For me, it auto-identified all three of my attributes and set each as a string; however, I’m actually going to adjust Salary to an integer:

You also have the option to adjust the Display Name and Description for each Attribute.

Now, go ahead and hit Save. Upon doing this, Adobe will automatically start crunching the data and providing you with a real-time update on the integration status.

Finally, click to configure a subscription: select your solution, report suite(s), and attribute(s):

If you have Target, this is also where you would enable the Customer Attributes for Target.

Go ahead and click Active, then Save — and, you’re done!

Extra Credit: View the Data.
Okay, I know I said “you’re done,” but … well, why not check the data? Customer Attribute data does take some time to populate, so you may want to double check it.

In Analytics, Customer Attributes are stored in a folder of their own within the Visitor Profile. Here’s what mine looks like now:

Open a report, and you can confirm that the data has been populated. You’ll notice a couple of features, including:

1. Updated current AND historical data. This means that data dating back to the very first visit will be tied to attributes for any visitor whose ID has been captured at any time in that visitor’s cookie lifetime.
2. Customer Attributes set as a Number can be added as metrics. In my example, this means that I’ll be able to add the numerical values of Salary to any report! I can easily pull in Salary as a metric to see which marketing channels are driving visitation from the highest-salaried customers.

Here’s a screenshot of my data in Analysis Workspace:

Now go have some fun with Customer Attributes!

The post How to Link Digital Behavior to Your Customers appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/link-digital-behavior-customers/