Lift Conversion and AOV, Come Rain or Shine, With Weather Segmentation

Posted March 25th, 2010, by Stephen Cobb

Wild weather struck many parts of the world this Winter but some savvy retailers were employing weather-based geo-targeting of web site traffic to use that weather to their advantage. Now that Spring is here and the last of the snow has come and gone—hopefully—the time is ripe to look at how retailers can benefit from weather-based merchandising online, even if that weather is unseasonable.

Marketing based on weather at customer location

Consider a simple example, an offer of free shipping on snow boots that will be displayed as a banner on the site’s home page; but this offer will only be shown to people who visit the site from locations where it’s snowing.

This is accomplished by checking the weather at the physical location associated with the IP address of the computer from which the site visitor is doing their browsing (there are several ways you can do this, for example this feature is built into Monetate Real-time Marketer) .

Online campaigns of this type can win you extra sales in several ways. First of all, suppose someone lands on your home page and it’s snowing where they are; they see the offer even if they didn’t come to your site looking for snow boots. The offer could trigger an impulse purchase. In fact, you might be able to snag impulse purchases without giving up margin, for example, by displaying a message like “Check out our great selection of snow boots” instead of an offer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Blog, Strategy, real-time marketing

When’s Mum’s Day? Get the right message to the right visitor at the right time and place

Posted March 10th, 2010, by Stephen Cobb

Depending on where you live and your relationship with your mother, forgetting Mother’s Day could be a crime or a sin or both. That means retailers can earn valuable goodwill by reminding customers of this date, not to mention increased revenues from offers and promotions centered around this event.

However, to do this right, you first have to know where your customer is. That’s because “Mother’s Day” happens at different times in different places. For example, Mother’s Day in the US falls on May 9 this year. But it will be Mother’s Day in the UK in just a few days, this coming Sunday to be precise.

To be completely accurate, March 14 in the UK is Mothering Sunday. (While use of the term “Mothers Day” in the UK has grown in recent years, a lot of people—and most importantly, to me, my Mum—still prefer to call it Mothering Sunday; and if you look at this ad that I clipped from a UK retail site you can see it uses a clever linguistic compromise to avoid both terms.)

So let’s assume you’re tracking traffic to your US-based online store by country of origin. You see a fair number of UK visitors who sometimes buy from you. If you want to make an effective Mothering Sunday pitch to this traffic segment… Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Blog, Strategy, marketing, real-time marketing

Retail Rebounding? Sold out NRF event and other hopeful signs

Posted March 3rd, 2010, by Stephen Cobb

If consumer spending does in fact drive the American economy, and if the economic recovery is to be driven—as President Obama and others have suggested—by innovation, then I have some good economic news to report.

I’m not just talking about the latest Fed report which suggests consumer spending was stronger in February and might have been even stronger if half the country hadn’t been snowed in for half the month.

Consider the title of the event we are sponsoring in San Francisco this week: The Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference. I think that pretty much covers the consumer spending and innovation factors, right? Now consider this: The event is full, at capacity, sold out.

And it didn’t sell out at the last minute. The event was already sold out last week. And this event is not being held at the Motel 7 by the airport. It’s at the Westin St. Francis. Not what you’d call a small hotel.

Furthermore, this is not some annual junket that’s been on everyone’s calendar for years. In fact, this is the first time this event has been held, ever. It was created late last year by the NRF (National Retail Federation) as a joint effort of RAMA (the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association) which is NRF’s division for marketing professionals, and Shop.org, NRF’s digital division. You can follow news from the event via the hash tag #innovate10 on Twitter.

So what does it mean if you put on a brand new conference about retail innovation in March and it sells out, despite the fact that there was another big show for electronic retailers (eTail West) just the week before? I think it’s a strong indication that retailers are feeling bullish about consumer spending, particularly in the second half of the year.

Right now many retailers are putting together their strategies for that critical sales period, the fourth quarter. They want to make sure they are up to speed on the latest developments, from mobile marketing and smartphone shopping, to recurring purchase systems, customer reviews, private shopping sites, localized delivery, geo-targeting, post-click optimization, and so on.

As a supplier of what we think is pretty innovative retail and marketing technology Monetate just had to sponsor this event. And we were delighted when retail industry veteran Bob Myers, formerly of QVC, agreed to join our roundtable on real-time marketing. What we didn’t know when we signed on as a sponsor last year was whether or not anyone would attend. The fact that there’s a sold-out crowd at the St. Francis right now strikes me as good news all round.

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Posted in Industry, Opinion

Mobile Commerce Heats Up: Coverage in DM News and Mobile Commerce Daily

Posted March 1st, 2010, by Stephen Cobb

Monetate Mobile on the iPhoneLast week we officially announced the availability of Monetate Mobile for several mobile device platforms and our press release sparked a lot of interest. There was an article in Mobile Commerce Daily with some nice product shots and this quote from David Brussin:

“from a retail perspective the important trend we see is more and more smartphone users treating mobile devices as an extension of the desktop or laptop browser experience, not as a separate mode of communication.”

Then we were contacted by DM News who wanted David’s thoughts on mobile commerce specifically as it relates to companies selling technology. Here’s part of the piece he wrote:

“your mobile marketing must now live up to the same standards as your “traditional” online marketing, in all respects, including depth of information and user experience. Read more…“

All this was happening while we were exhibiting and speaking at eTail West, so things got a little hectic. However, seeing the excitement about our new product and getting compliments on our new booth, plus making many new friends at the event, made it all worth while. Adding to last week’s hectic pace was the fact that we had to head from eTail West in Palm Springs for this week’s Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference in San Francisco.

We are proud to be a sponsor of this conference, particularly as this is the inaugural event. And we are delighted to be hosting the first retailer roundtable. We hope to see you there.

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Posted in Blog, Events, Industry, News, mobile