Have you read a column in the past week, month or year that's void of buzzwords? Probably not. In the age of 5,000-plus choices of what partners, technologies or agencies to choose from, I find it uncanny how the marketplace is fraught with complex ways to explain simple things. Blame it on analysts who define…
Accelerate Retail
New research from Voicebot.ai reports that nearly one in five adults in the U.S. already has access to a smart speaker (e.g., Alexa, Google Home), although they might not necessarily have their own. This equates to roughly 47.3 million people, or 20 percent of the U.S. adult population. Considering that Amazon.com didn’t release its Echo speaker until…
Email marketing is going on 20 years as a viable direct marketing channel. Although it has proved itself to be a recession-proof channel, how we do email hasn't changed dramatically over those 20 years. Change is coming, though. Are you ready to change with it? The consumer inbox still has limited interactivity and sporadic constraints…
1966. That's the year the first “chatterbox” appeared. Fifty-two years later, chatbots are on the verge of completely changing the customer/retail shopping experience. Like site search in the 2000s, many of these emerging customer touchpoints are being automated using a combination of simple keywords and rules-based logic. On one hand, these messaging bots can streamline…
There's lots of buzz surrounding digital-native brands and what's making them so disruptive and relevant today. While the definition of digital native is evolving, they are companies that launch as web-only retailers with the belief that superior technology can be a differentiator. They often engender loyalty by projecting authenticity and effectively leveraging social media. More…
This is an $18 trillion global spending story. Seventy percent to 80 percent of consumer purchasing is controlled by women. There's a reason why many retailers have shifted their language from share of wallet to share of purse, and why terms like clientele’ing are starting to replace terms like showrooming. Women are the gatekeepers to…