London may be gearing up to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee but here at RichRelevance UK, we’re still riding high on the momentum from last week’s Future of Shopping event!
With about 100 retailers (including Argos, Boots, Dixons, Harvey Nichols, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Net-A-Porter, Sainsbury’s, etc.) in attendance, the audience was held rapt by an energetic 
programme packed with key learnings and takeaways from RichRelevance CEO David Selinger and bestselling author and renowned retail expert Paco Underhill. The presentation was followed by an expert panel discussion featuring IDC’s Christine Bardwell, PwC Logan Tod’s Matthew Tod, and CEO of Firebox.com, Paul Zimmerman. Together, they helped to pull all the day’s thinking back to centre.
Below are just a few of the key insights that surfaced from our gathering:
- Technology’s role is to respond and resolve, not replace human interaction or be put in place for “technology’s sake.” When utilising any technology, we must preserve the human dynamic to keep the connection strong between customers and marketers.
We are in the midst of a technological revolution affecting everything about the shopping process: the simultaneous explosion of social, mobile and local technologies. It is in these transition points where our business decisions have the most impact—where companies are made and lost. Our true fundamental strengths—compared against our partners and competitors—must be considered in the context of an entirely new shopper: the Super Consumer.
With a multitude of resources at her fingertips, the Super Consumer can shop five stores at once through a multi-tabbed web browser. Smart phone in hand, she walks down the aisle of one store while teleporting a sales representative from another store, in order to shop competitively. She is fearless and opinionated, posting her shopping experiences to the blogosphere and social media channels. Thanks to the plethora of user-generated product reviews, recommendations and detail specifications already available, her knowledge is practically limitless. She knows much more than the store employee by the time she’s ready to buy.
Empowered by unprecedented access and connectivity, the Super Consumer has the unique power to redefine brands from the bottom-up, and drive the creation of new markets, new products, technological innovations, social media activities and general consumption.
It’s imperative for retailers and brands to understand the Super Consumer, how she shops and –most importantly – what makes her happy.
Beginning today in London and upcoming in New York (6/14) and Stanford University (9/18), Paco Underhill and I will be speaking about the macroeconomic and technological trends shaping this new Super Consumer and how we in retail need to hearken back to our roots in merchandising and marketing so that we can define our strategies on a battlefield increasingly shaped by rapidly growing players such as Groupon, Amazon, and even eBay.
Please join us as we discuss The Future of Shopping.
Chief Evangelist Jake Bailey discusses how to help the industry fully leverage data surrounding ad context and consumer behavior on iMedia Connection.
The birth of the internet shook the foundation of many markets, in particular our own media industry. Over the past decade and a half, online advertising has blossomed into the potential genius alternative to the more traditional media outlets — wooing media buyers with the promise of “real-time metrics” and the technology that allows better targeting capabilities. It’s all these promises of marketing capabilities that has propelled online media into securing a larger slice of overall budgets — stealing dollars from traditional media bucket. However, in order for online media to surpass traditional media budgets, the industry must further innovate in terms of scale and targeting. This will involve delivering value above and beyond what advertisers are currently capturing from TV.
One of the critical components that will enable the shift in budget allocation is in the one thing that makes online advertising so unique: the underlying power of ad-targeting data. As it currently stands, the digital industry is overrun with data: “Data, data everywhere, but no one has the means to truly leverage it.” The digital ad industry is still a ways off from being able to leverage “data potential” from ad context and consumer behavior.
RichRelevance’s Darren Hitchcock blogs on Econsultancy.
The importance of fast load times in an online retail environment has been proven time and time again. Online, a shopper’s time literally equates to money.
Now, the research from our recent mobile study shows that it’s a shopper’s time on tablets that should be the focus on your website optimisation initiatives.
In the UK, 82% of mobile purchases are made on the iPad.
Tablets and speed: the stats
This past March, Compuware surveyed shoppers and found that almost 70% of tablet users expect a website to load in two seconds or less. If your mobile site isn’t fast enough, your customers will move along (and quickly) to the next click.
According to the study, a bad web experience will drive 46% of tablet users to competitive websites and 33% are less likely to purchase from that company. Comparatively, a Strangeloop survey reveals that shoppers using a PC are a bit more patient, with the majority allowing a full three seconds before making the jump. A shocking 80% of those users, once they’ve abandoned the site, will not return.
Performance is also key when digging deeper into our mobile study. Not only is mobile responsible for over 10% of all online business; but the study also revealed that browsers spend more time on iPads with page views higher than any other channel.
RichRelevance’s Chief Evangelist Jake Bailey shares his insights for marketers on iMedia Connection.
How often have you heard the phrase “reaching the right person, at the right time, with the right message?” It is a phrase that represents the Holy Grail of media. A phrase that promises hope to advertisers suffering from sleep deprivation and battling visions of dancing mortgage ladies in their heads. A phrase that, up until recently, was more of a dream than a reality.
Over the last few years, with the increase of consumer spending online, ecommerce sites have cemented their role as a critical marketing channel for brands that want to reach online consumers at the highest point of brand consideration. This ability has quickly changed the face of advertising and is reshaping how brands engage shoppers in wholly new media opportunities on retail sites, which were previously relegated to MDF and trade funds.
Let’s cut straight to the point, even though digital ad targeting has become significantly more advanced over the past few years, brand advertisers have significantly less clarity into the tools that help them reach and communicate with their most important consumers: those who are active and in-market for their particular product or brand. So, not only do brands have to deal with the fact that there are a number of entirely new marketing channels, they also have to deal with ad offerings that are confusing the market about whether or not they’re maximizing their advertising ROI. With that said, it’s no wonder to me that ad spend is still out of whack, and is largely being spent on TV. If we can’t provide the right mechanisms in the digital world, then brands will miss out on the huge opportunity to define, locate, and empower their most important customers.
We released a white paper today to help brands with this battle. Retailers sit at the center of facilitating this next digital advertising revolution, and the results we’ve seen thus far speak for themselves. This paper speaks to the WHO, WHERE, WHEN and HOW to connect with consumers, bringing them that much closer to establishing an effective targeted campaign that delivers results, but without wasting budget on unnecessary ad impressions. Every ad impression counts, and it’s the ad industry’s duty to ensure brand advertisers get the greatest return on money spent.
Give the paper a read, and take some time to consider the following: As long as there’s e-commerce, personalized brand advertising within the context of the retail environment is the most powerful, relevant method to effectively target your preferred audience.