Kevin Ertell: What I think is really interesting about Monetate

Posted July 20th, 2010, by Stephen Cobb

We’re delighted to announce today that Kevin Ertell, one of the most-widely respected innovators in online retailing, is joining Monetate’s Strategic Advisory Board. In conjunction with that announcement we’re posting a short video that we recorded last week in which Kevin talks about the challenges facing online retailers. He explains why he thinks Monetate is “exactly the right solution for retailers to create a great customer experience that is right for every individual customer.” Take a look:

For those readers who are not familiar with Kevin, you can read more about him in today’s news release. Kevin has spent time running some serious online retailing operations such as borders.com. We can heartily recommend his terrific blog: Retail: Shaken Not Stirred. And you might want to follow him on Twitter.

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Posted in Industry, News, Opinion, marketing

West to eTail and Other Real-time Marketing News from Monetate

Posted February 19th, 2010, by Team Monetate

real-time-newsIf you’re a retailer attending next week’s eTail West event in Palm Desert, California, we’d love to meet up with you there. On Tuesday and Wednesday you can find us at Booth 64, our brand new booth that reflects our focus on real-time marketing. Stop by for a demo of Monetate Real-time Marketer (and a chance to win an Apple iPad, seriously).

There are more details about the event in the news release (that’s a .pdf document). You can find all of our contact information here, including a link to our handy contact form.

We are also sponsoring the Email Marketing & Personalization Summit on Monday. David Brussin will be joined by David Kaplan, VP, Marketing at Tafford Uniforms, a Monetate client. They will be discussing the practical application of real-time marketing to online retailing. Here’s what Mr. Kaplan had to say about that recently:

“Real-time marketing makes a big difference for us and our customers; it means they see relevant content on every visit, which makes their site experience all the more compelling. We can make sure of that because we can target content by behavior, location, source, or any traffic segment we choose.”

You can find more about the Summit in this news release (.pdf). And you can read more about what we’re doing with real-time marketing at Technically Philly, an online news magazine that recently sat down for a chat with with David Brussin. More…

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Posted in Blog, Events

Email Marketing & Personalization Summit, Monday, February 22nd

Posted November 19th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

Desert-SpringsSome blog posts have a specific task to perform and the role of this one is a formal announcement:

Monetate is sponsoring the “Email Marketing & Personalization Summit,” an intensive, one-day, attendance-limited event, to be held at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort in California, on February 22nd.

Now I can get back to being informal: I think this is going to be great! The summit is an information-packed event that features a series of round tables at which retailers can get seriously practical advice on a variety of hot marketing topics like the one that is being presented by Monetate CEO David Brussin:

“Up Close And Profitable: How Segmented, Targeted Marketing Drives Revenue Lift On Retail Sites”

David will be joined by a senior marketing executive from one of today’s most successful online retailers. (BTW, David is a master of this subject and if you’ve not had an opportunity to hear him talk before, this is a great chance to do so, in a controlled setting where there will be plenty of time to ask questions and engage in one-on-one discussion.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Events, Industry, Personalization, marketing

Leading Consumer Brands Segment, Target, and Personalize with Monetate

Posted September 1st, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

60th post on the Monetate blogIn case you missed it on the wire and in the social networks, below is the text of our latest news release. We wouldn’t normally post a release on the blog, but we’re particularly proud of this one because it demonstrates Monetate’s growing penetration of multichannel retail market. You can find an archive of our news releases here.

(We’re also pleased to note that this is the 60th posting on this blog since it was launched at the end of August last year. Your readership and comments have been much appreciated. Thanks!)

More Leading Consumer Brands Segment, Target, and Personalize with Monetate

To provide web site visitors with an even more personal, relevant, and compelling site experience, Casual Male Retail Group selects Monetate

Philadelphia, PA / September 1, 2009 — Online marketing tools like personalization and behavioral targeting are one way that retailers seek to meet and beat the challenge of today’s tough economy. One supplier of such tools, Philadelphia-based Monetate, today announced that five more consumer brands have joined the growing list of web sites employing its platform to segment, target, and personalize. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in General, Housekeeping, Industry

Lift Without Loss: New e-retail white paper offers help for tough times

Posted August 20th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

white_paperHow would you like to get more revenue from your online store traffic without making additional cuts in pricing or shelling out for bigger shipping subsidies? Well, today we published our “Lift Without Loss” white paper that explains how you can do this, using a variety of field-tested strategies that have yielded positive results. The white paper is complimentary and no registration is required. You can download it here.

As e-commerce sites seek out competitive advantages in today’s challenging economy it’s clear that the strategy of targeting web site content to specific traffic segments has a major role to play. And there is zero doubt in my mind that this strategy can, when properly executed, increase conversion rates or average order or both.

However, targeted content is often equated with discounts and other offers like free or reduced shipping. We all know that these cut into margins, and nobody wants to cut into margins unless they have to, especially in today’s tough economic climate. Fortunately, targeted content does not have to be about discounts. It can be as simple as a welcome message.

Consider “The Case of ModCloth and the Foreign Fashionistas” that we describe in the white paper and on our Case Studies page. A simple greeting, tailored to the origin of the site visitor, was able to double revenue from a significant slice of site traffic without affecting margins. This was not a fluke. We are consistently seeing improvements in conversion rates and average order value as a result of targeted messaging campaigns. And we have described how they work in this white paper. We hope you find it helpful.

  • Download the white paper.
  • Let us know if you put any of these strategies into practice.

.

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    Posted in Industry, Strategy, case study

    Tagging the Personal, Relevant, Compelling Site Experience

    Posted August 10th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

    57-60 SecondsA few months ago I wrote a post about Monetate’s “60 Second Integration Guide” and said that it listed all the steps needed to add “segment, target, and personalize” capabilities to your online store or other commercial web site. With those capabilities in place, you can give visitors the kind of personal, relevant, and compelling site experience that leads to higher conversion rates and average order values.

    A lot of people downloaded the guide but some were skeptical that a process so simple could provide a full set of “segment, target, and personalize” capabilities. Well, today I’d like to present two audio clips, the first of which just happens to be 60 seconds long. In this clip, Monetate’s co-founder and CEO, David Brussin, describes the tag that is the key to all of Monetate’s functionality. The simplicity of the tag, and the fact that it can be inserted into any web site with very little effort, is also the key to that 60 second integration. Here’s David:

    Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

    Bear in mind that this one tag takes care of all four of the functions required to display relevant content, personalized for each visitor segment that you want to target. These functions are as follows:

    1. Collecting and segmenting data about site visitors,
    2. Displaying customized marketing and merchandising content,
    3. Incorporating discounts offered to certain segments, and
    4. Analysing the results.

    Here’s how David describes–in 36 seconds–the four-way functionality of the Monetate tag:

    Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

    So what does this means for online marketing today? It means that the goal of creating a personal, relevant, and compelling site experience for each visitor is now readily attainable. It requires no technical training, no big I.T. project, no changes to your page layouts or product shots, no installing of placeholders or containers. Just one tag and you’re done.

    To put this in a wider context, last month was the tenth anniversary of the publication of “Smart Personalization” by Forrester Research. That report concluded: “typical Web personalization efforts fail to produce results that match market expectations.” Fortunately, in the decade since then, things have changed. And while it may have taken the better part of ten years for marketers and technologists to turn things around, we can now say with confidence: If you have an online store generating more than a $1 million in annual revenue and getting over 100,000 unique visits a month, delivery of the personal, relevant, and compelling site experience is not only attainable, it can pay for itself many times over, in better conversion rates and higher average order values.

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    Posted in Industry, Personalization