And that’s a problem with a lot of communication. You can gather all the data and automation in the world, but if you don’t add any human thought to it, then it underwhelms and loses its value to the customer. Which is a shame for emails in particular, where the size of the prize is potentially huge (the median email marketing ROI is 122% according to eMarketer)

The “white noise” in your inbox is the underwhelming, wallpaper emails that you probably get with frequency but that don’t do anything to convince you to interact with them or the brand that sends them. Bland is not where you want your brand to be. So, here are five ways you can bring a bit of colour and timbre to your emails – particularly during an unprecedented surge in internet use (up 30% according to Vodafone):

1. Don’t invest more money – invest more time

Moneysupermarket is a great example of a brand which has spent much more time thinking about its communications, sent fewer emails in response, and got better results. It’s not always about investing more in an email programme, just investing more time in thinking about and planning it.

2. Start with the effect you want to have

One of the ways brand emails slip into the realms of white noise is by following a very linear path with emails: “we’ve got new products – let’s tell the world about them”.

Or they might spend too much time looking at a plan for a year in one go, filling slots, and end up scrapping around for content: “what can we send this segment at the end of October?”

The starting point actually needs to be “what do we want customers or potential customers to think, feel or do at the end of the year? And what effect do we want it to have on our business?” A monetary effect is an obvious one, but objectives can also include brand-building. 

3. Not every brand could (or should) be like Amazon

Amazon are undeniably big email communicators (in the US, Amazon owns a massive 30% market share in e-commerce according to Vero. I’m not saying Amazon has got their strategy wrong, but not every brand is Amazon.

Not every business has that level of data around their customers, what they browse for, what they buy. And not every brand has the breadth of products they can cross-sell effectively.

If the sole goal is to keep going until a customer buys, then Amazon’s strategy is working. But the power of the Amazon approach is often reminding people they need to buy something else from Amazon, rather than the product in the email. Think about your customer journey and if you’re not Amazon, don’t use theirs as a blueprint.

4. Try the pub test

Keep your eyes on the prize. Each time, there should be a value exchange for the customer or prospect. What are you asking them to do, and what’s in it for them? If in doubt, think about the pub test. You’re talking to your mate over a pint (in the good old days when we could!) – you ask him to give you his email address and tell him all the cool sh*t he’ll get if he does. Would that convince him?

There’s a lot more to email than a quick lever to pull in the quest to sell more. Even if sales are your key objective, blanket “white noise” emails will do more harm in the long run, than good.

5. CRM in the time of COVID-19

As I’m writing this, the world has gone into lockdown for who knows how long and the one thing people can’t do is be targeted for a quick buck. The doors are now closed. But CRM (and especially email) provides the perfect channel for continuing to communicate with your audience. To do this effectively, however, understanding all that I’ve talked about above is vital. You have to understand the role you would normally play in a customer’s life and then transition that away from sales and into authentic value.

I believe this will make us all better at understanding how people really perceive our brands, enabling us to communicate with them on a more human level once things go back to ‘normal’.

The post If Emails are White Noise, You’re Doing Them Wrong appeared first on PerformanceIN.

It’s that magical time of year when people everywhere come together amongst the twinkling lights and Christmas tunes and remember just how wonderfully… horrendous shopping can be. If you’re reading this article, chances are it’s a welcome relief from the alternative (a department store) or you’re scarred by your first foray into the nation’s high streets. If you’re like me, every year you tell yourself that next year you’ll do it all online. But old habits die hard, and once again, we will find ourselves deploying a combination of well-thought-out online shopping and the frenzied last-minute dash to John Lewis.

This week everything comes to a crescendo as shoppers mobilise en-masse for Black Friday, which seems to have become the starting gun for the annual epic Christmas shopping extravaganza. Beginning in the US, when retailers noticed a sales spike on the first Friday following Thanksgiving, since 2005 Black Friday has routinely been the single biggest day for retailers stateside. More recently, other countries have followed suit. In the UK last year consumers spent £5.8 billion over the four days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday according to the Centre for Retail Research.

While the opportunity to benefit from a spike in revenue is huge, this highly competitive world can be a retailer’s nightmare when it comes to predicting and capitalising on consumer behaviour. One moment a shopper could be online casually browsing TVs, aftershave or Peppa Pigs. The next, they’re in a store shouting “WHERE ARE THE SNOODS!?”. It’s hard to keep up.

It’s estimated that most digital users, create around 700 megabytes of data each day. Over the course of a year, that’s a pretty sizeable digital footprint that includes information about who we are, as well as what products we prefer or avoid. It’s more than enough data for retailers to know when consumers are most likely to be in the mood to make a purchase and what’s likely to convince us. But all this information is useless without the right technology to organise it into something meaningful. For larger retailers who count their shoppers in the millions, it’s impossible for any human to process the amount of data created by all its customers and make it actionable. And don’t forget, it’s not just digital attributes and data points. Retailers have been collecting customer information through CRM, loyalty cards, checkout transactions and email addresses in-store for decades now. Many are wondering how anything can be done with it.

Advances in technology, specifically artificial intelligence, are painting an entirely different Christmas scene, to that of irate shoppers marauding through our towns and cities. For the first time AI is making it possible to predict the potential of every online moment for a prospective customer so that retailers can finally utilise oceans of data to deliver relevant offers and ads to the people who are most likely to act on them – and all without them having to leave the house. For example, with AI-powered, predictive marketing, we can analyse millions of data points in real time to identify who will want a product, when they will be most likely to buy it and the creative or offer that will convert them at that moment.

AI also gives retailers the opportunity to make each moment throughout the customer journey more effective and engaging. By combining the functions of media and creative, and optimising these across all channels, it becomes possible to predictively tell stories that are most relevant to each individual and create more compelling, personal, relevant brand experiences. And that can make all the difference to retailers competing for consumers’ elusive attention this Christmas when they’re more interested in creating an Elf Yourself greetings card.

Research has found that personalisation in retailing can boost sales by 15 – 20%. In a recent survey by Harris24 commissioned by Sizmek, Almost half of those surveyed (49%) said they would be more likely to engage with a digital ad for a Black Friday deal if it was personalised to their preferences, featuring brands or products they are interested in. This figure rose to 73% among those aged between 18 and 34. Given how competitive retail is right now, that boost to revenue could be the difference between a bleak Christmas and survive the January slump to sell Hatchimals to crazed last-minute shoppers next year.

When it comes to digital advertising, implementing AI is no longer optional. It should be on every organisation’s Christmas list for increased efficiency and marketing ROI in 2018. In order for retailers to survive in a very crowded, competitive market (and for the collective sanity of the nation’s shoppers), it’s time we made use of the data we’ve all been adding to our wishlist for so long. Not only will this enable brands to increase online conversions and access unprecedented levels of insights, for the consumer it means better experiences, more personalisation and ads that are welcomed – especially when you’re trying to find that gift for granny, sister, dad or daughter. Speaking of which, can someone tell me what a Snood is?

The post Black Friday 2017: When it Comes to Customer Data, be Careful What You Add to Your Wishlist appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Britain is one of the slowest countries in Europe in terms of mobile site load speed, according to an analysis by Google.

The UK languished in tenth place out of 17 countries, with mobile web pages taking an average of 8.9 seconds to loads – a concern indeed, considering it also found 53% of users will give up if it takes longer than three seconds, while 50% think it should be quicker than two seconds.

When it comes to which types of sites are the best (or least worst) performers, the speediest were found to be Classified & Local (8.148), Finance (8.227) and Education & Government (8.600), all coming in over six seconds more than the best practice of three seconds.

Unfortunately, considering the impulse nature of online shopping, Retail sites were the slowest performers – clocking a paint-drying 10.290 seconds – followed by Automotive at 10.259.

With mobile taking a bigger proportion of both users’ browsing and online purchases (one in three, according to Google), the results should be a wake-up call for the importance and potential rewards of speeding up brands’ mobile user experience.

Run faster

Not just setting out to paint a dismal picture, Google revealed a number of measures developers can take to speed up their mobile sites, including ‘lazy loading’; having above-the-fold content load first, while JS and CSS-heavy files can be loaded later, once users start reading and interacting.

The search giant also suggests grouping similar files together (eg. JS with JS, CSS with CSS, etc) to reduce the number of requests a site must make to the server, while small images under 10KB can be combined into a sprite or web format.

Finally, Google recommends compressing images to below 100KB wherever possible; “GZIP can also reduce the size of text-based resources like CSS or JS by as much as 70-80%.”

See how well your mobile site performs by using Google’s Test My Site tool, which also benchmarks it against other sites in your industry as well as showing the potential impact of following its quick fixes.

The post UK Ranks Tenth in Europe for Mobile Site Load Speeds appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Luxury retailers risk missing out on a large slice of their potential customer potential through failing to properly understand the digital behaviour and cues of their consumer base. Blunt segmentation of affluent and high net worth audiences based on wealth or location has never been good enough and yet it still pervades the majority of digital targeting.

Examining our own data, we know that mindset and values can be a much more interesting focus for niche audience understanding. This is what makes LCP Consulting’s research all the more intriguing – why aren’t retailers using the tools available to get to know their consumers more?

Failing to move with the times

Our experience with luxury brands is that they have been resistant to embracing the power of their own data due to a mistrust of the efficacy of digital advertising or poor understanding of how to effectively extract value from it.

But as media and marketing continue to evolve around digital technologies and as their target audiences spend more and more time in the digital world, luxury brands cannot keep missing out on the data-driven insights that can ultimately inspire action amongst increasingly complex consumer-bases.

Luxury digital audiences must not be forgotten

Data capture and analysis of purchase behaviour, shopping habits, and psychographics have a vital role in uncovering essential insights that will inform not only marketing strategies but important business decisions. 

Take Kiki McDonough, a Sloane Square Jeweller. They were able to identify a high-value new target audience based on in-depth on-site data analysis: women more affluent and younger than their in-store counterparts, academically and professionally high-achieving, more culturally-engaged (e.g., art, fashion, drama), and purchasing via tablets.  

One of the most salient insights across luxury brands is that luxury audiences are becoming happier and happier to make the final purchase through digital channels. Despite worries that high net worth individuals are harder to target online, and the continued importance of the in-store experience, we are increasingly seeing tangible results from highly targeted digital advertising campaigns.

Luxury audiences going mobile

According to statista UK smartphone penetration rate now stands at 81% for those up to 64 years of age.

It would, therefore, be ill-advised to assume affluent and high net worth consumers are not interacting, being inspired, researching, and purchasing outside the desktop or laptop environments.

This is still an untapped opportunity for luxury brands to connect with their audiences and any first-party data analysis must take this into account – mobile behaviour remains distinct from other digital interactions with advertising and brand websites and understanding where it fits into the purchase journey has to be carefully considered.

Making the most of your data

PwC’s Total Retail consumer survey tellingly recorded 59% of consumers wanting real-time personal offers or services designed especially for them. Tailor made experiences or opportunities have long been fundamental to consumers love of luxury brands – and long will it continue. 

Without meeting a client or customer face to face, how do brands maintain this level of relevance and personalisation? The reality is that only through a broad range of tools, platforms and bespoke research can brands get closer to the conversations, needs and behaviours of customers and prospects that allow them to get anywhere close to the in-store experience. 

To get it right and make the most of the data they have access to, brands need to ensure they’re looking at it in context alongside broader market insight, media consumption and trend analysis, as well as (ideally!) real conversations with real customers. This more holistic view can be fed into product evolution, creative development, and of course smarter, more effective marketing.

The post Harnessing First-Party Data for Luxury Retail Brands appeared first on PerformanceIN.

One of the executives I work with doesn’t buy his own clothes. Instead, his wife does all the shopping. For the two of them, it’s an arrangement that works well; she cares about what he looks like and he doesn’t mind as long as he’s comfortable. And while this works really well for them, it doesn’t help the brand marketer who is trying to target him based on the assumption he buys his own clothes. 

Purchase journeys are complicated

We think that because we know who a person is – boy vs. girl, geolocation, age, etc. – we also know what they care about and what they’ll respond to. In some cases that’s true. Men are most likely to buy men’s shoes, as women are most likely to buy women’s shoes. But this is not always true. 

Look at toys for example. There are some common assumptions here: if you buy toys for kids, it’s likely you’re a parent and if you’re a parent it’s likely you’re under 50. Except on analysis, that isn’t the case: over a third (35%) of people who buy toys don’t have kids in their household and 38% are 56 and over. That means you could miss out on up to 73% of your potential buyers if everyone over 56 doesn’t have a kid in their household.

Don’t be fooled by fakes

Sociodemographic data can be misleading. Built using a small amount of seed declared data, sociodemographic segments are models based off of onsite behavior. These segments typically include lots of bot behavior because they are trained on ads, which means you could end up relying on data from fake cookies and fake people. One way to avoid being scammed by bot data is to rely on transactional data; bots will never buy anything. Validating segments this way enables you to mechanically exclude fake cookies and focus on the people who are actually in the market to buy something.

Target customers for the future not from the past

One point that is often forgotten when it comes to sociodemographic data is that it doesn’t take into account where someone is in the shopping journey. This means segments will often contain people who’ve already bought the product they were initially browsing for and are no longer in need. That’s not an issue where repeat purchases are likely, but it becomes problematic when people only need one item, as in the case of many big-ticket purchases like a refrigerator. In these instances, people don’t typically buy two refrigerators so targeting them after the purchase was made is a waste of time and money. 

The difficulty with sociodemographic data ultimately is that it works on the assumption that we think we know who people are. And as we all know, assumptions aren’t always right, and where sociodemographic data can miss the people who really matter, it’s essential that you make sure to take the intent of the shopper, not just your assumptions of the shopper, into consideration to ensure you’re reaching the people who are genuinely interested in make a purchase. Taking this holistic approach to targeting will improve campaign effectiveness, leading you to higher ROI.

The post A Cautionary Tale of Relying on Sociodemographic Data appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Consumers are learning to game the online shopping system, according to research by email marketing platform provider dotmailer which reveals popular tricks used by shoppers to secure the best deal.

It will be no surprise that ‘abandoning a basket’ to check competitors ranks highly, while significant portions of savvy shoppers admit to entering fake details on the same website to receive multiple new customer rewards.

The findings come as UK online shopping reaches an estimated £133 billion worth in the UK, and as a result consumers are becoming more “sophisticated” in how they approach purchases.

In fact, the research of 2,061 UK online consumers found that 80% now willing to put the time in to find the best possible deal, including signing up to mailing lists (39%) and waiting for online sales days such as Cyber Monday (30%).

Meanwhile, 6% will set up different customer accounts using alternative email address to capitalise on new sign-up offers.

When it comes to cart abandonment – a key pain point for e-commerce marketers affecting nearly 70% of sales - dotmailer found that 13% are doing so to secure a better a deal elsewhere, while 17% will abandon their order at different sites to compare deals.

“Increasingly savvy”

At the same time, however, “tried and tested” methods are losing their effect; less than a third of shoppers (32%) regularly click on email offers sent by brands and almost a tenth (8%) will create an account to get a discount but cancel soon after purchase.

“People will always try and game the system, and it is up to businesses to face the challenge by providing incentives and communications that will keep the customer engaged,” commented Skip Fidura, client services director at dotmailer.

It’s no surprise that Fidura believes email to provide the solution, but with 81% of consumers considering the bulk of brand emails spam, he admits marketers have a challenge on their hands in order to satisfy the 61% who welcome relevant comms.

“The call to action for brands is clear – as consumers are becoming increasingly savvy, businesses must respond in kind. Email remains a highly effective tool, however ensuring emails are relevant and personalised will ensure consumers don’t disregard brands,” said Fidura.

“The prevalence of email throughout our lives shows how crucial it is as a channel, but brands need to understand how to make the most of it to glean the best results.”

The post Consumers Admit to “Gaming the System” to Get Best Deals Online appeared first on PerformanceIN.

SMEs (Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) do not need to be an ASOS or John Lewis to deliver effective email marketing to their audiences.

Even though these well-known retailers may have hit the top spot as the most influential brands in email marketing, complex business operations, advanced technologies or big budgets are not needed to gain success from email. These brands simply used smart tactics and techniques to get their customers’ attention online and these methods can be adopted by anyone and everyone.

It is no secret that email marketing works. In fact, 80% of shoppers prefer to interact with retailers via email and with an ROI (Return on Investment) of £30 for every £1 spent, according to the DMA, it is a no-brainer for businesses of all sizes.

Unfortunately, despite its obvious benefits, there are still some clear mistakes being made. Email marketers take note, here are the five most common mistakes our industry makes.

1. Forgetting to introduce yourself

Welcome emails offer an effective way to introduce your brand to new customers and subscribers. Having recently given their permission for you to send them communications, this first contact is the best opportunity your brand will ever have to kick off a regular conversation.

With today’s consumer expecting to receive a welcome email, or a basic thank-you message at the very least, it is the marketing equivalent of an open goal – yet too often the opportunity is missed. In fact, 14% of brands do not send welcome messages, missing out on a readily-available chance to foster engagement with prospective customers.

And for the best impact, make sure your welcome emails have exciting subject lines that stand out from the pack; include a clear, call-to-action for the recipient; and ensure that your messages are optimised for smartphones (research has found that over a third of consumers only use mobile devices to read emails).

2. Bombarding customers with boring content

Newsletters have long been a staple of email marketing, offering a chance for brands to update consumers on their latest developments and offers of interest. However, despite their potential, the recent DMA report found that only around a quarter of marketers felt newsletters to be an effective means of communication.

Part of the reason for this may stem from a lack of personalised, targeted newsletters. Our own research found that while 92% were sending offer-led newsletters, many of these were described by customers as irrelevant or inappropriate. This must change. When used properly – with snappy copy, personalised content, and well-timed offers – newsletters can be a vital touch point between customer and brand. Through dynamic content, that changes depending on the target audience, organisations can ensure they are developing worthwhile newsletters that informs, excites, and captures the attention of their audiences.

3. Not closing the deal

Imagine a customer walking into a store and browsing the contents before picking up an item, taking it to the checkout queue and then suddenly dropping it and wandering out of the store. It would be an odd sight in the real-world, but online it is an all-too-common experience for retailers. Abandoned carts happen for any number of reasons – from distracted customers to website issues – but it does not have to mean a lost sale.

Sending a reminder about abandoned carts can be hugely effective in prompting customers to return to your site and complete the sale, yet our research found that 60% of retailers are failing to follow up on these golden opportunities.

Importantly, while cart recovery emails should incentivise customers to head back to the site, it does not have to be a discount code. Anything from recommended products through to warranty information can help spur a return visit that leaves your business better off.

4. Missing out on feedback

Just as in any relationship, when it comes to communication between brands and customers, it should be a two-way street. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling you have not been listened to, which is why asking for feedback following a purchase is wise (as long as you are willing to act on the feedback).

An automated post-purchase email is an effortless way of showing that you care and value your customer’s opinion. Yet, nearly half of companies 46% do not send anything.

The other benefit to post-purchase feedback requests is that your business can collect invaluable insight into how your services can be tweaked, refined, or improved.

5. Too many messages

Consistency is crucial. Jumping from message to message or style to style can confuse customers and turn them off. It seems simple but following clear brand guidelines can be all important and will do wonders when it comes to ensuring customers have a distinct understanding of what your business is and what it can offer them.

Email marketing cannot be forgotten in the age of digital – and our research shows it is certainly not dead. Companies sent an average of four marketing emails per week, but it is more about the quality, not the quantity. Of course, achieving both of those is the ideal.

The post The Five Most Common Mistakes Made by Email Marketers appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Consumers today are “conflicted”, says the Direct Marketing Association (DMA); they want to be loyal, but don’t know who to trust.

This paradox manifests itself in the regulatory body’s latest batch of research, Customer Engagement 2017, which finds that while consumers are becoming increasingly loyal to brands, they are spending a lot more time researching the right brands and retailers to buy from.

It’s meant that the rate of those that stay loyal for both routine and special purchases has risen from 40%-50% in the last year, while 80% of consumers now show “some form” of brand loyalty.

“Now in its second year, this report on the growing complexity of customer engagement and loyalty highlights that trust can be built in many different ways,” said Scott Logie, chair of the DMA Customer Engagement Committee and MD at REaD Group Insight.

“To a certain extent, it can be bought through rewards and cashback. However, for sustainable loyalty and trust there is a need for brands to be more genuine, have strong values and be seen to live these values.”

This behaviour doesn’t look set to falter any time soon; trust in brands in decreasing among the younger generation, with over half (53%) of 16-24-year-olds finding it difficult to know which marketing messages to trust, against 38% of the over 65 bracket.

Meanwhile, 55% of consumers are using the same brands, shops and sites without looking for alternatives.

Loyalty “bubbles”

For the majority of brands, this represents the difficult and expensive task of penetrating the “bubbles” of consumer loyalty to a finite number of dominating brands, such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Netflix.

“With people spending more of their time in fewer places and increasingly on mobile, brands must focus on fighting for share of mind rather than just share of wallet,” comments Alex Timlin, VP of client services at Emarsys.

While all brands will have to readdress how they approach the issue of trust, says Feefo CMO, Matt West, marketers will have to make use of every bit of marketing tech at their disposal, including “authenticated customer reviews, to more personalised loyalty programmes and the fast-evolving use of artificial intelligence.”

Used correctly this kind of approaches could empower brands to give customers “new reasons to trust them,” West adds.

New technologies

Artificial Intelligence, in particular, represents a “huge opportunity” for businesses to paradoxically appear “more human” to their customer base while scaling, according to Sam Madden, commercial director at Wiraya, but its success in this regard relies on a greater understanding of a brand’s consumers and preferences.

“This will, in turn, enable greater trust and transparency to be communicated in a world where engagement is increasingly digital first,” Madden adds.

The DMA’s managing director, Rachel Aldighieri, shares this view, adding that automated marketing technologies will also give marketers “more room” to focus on building deeper, more emotional loyalty.

However, Aldighieri also warns that new technology should be used with caution; “Brands need to understand where new channels will be the most appropriate and effective in the short term, and which consumers will be best disposed to adopt them.

“The pace of technological change will continue to outstrip the legislation governing it, reinforcing the importance of self-regulation and evolving effective best practice in the data and marketing industry,” says Aldighieri.

Learn how to integrate Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from performance marketing experts at PI LIVE this October. 

The post AI Could Rescue ‘Frugal’ Consumer Loyalty, Say DMA Members appeared first on PerformanceIN.

The UK’s economic climate is in for a bumpy ride over the next few years, and retailers are going to find it hard not to get caught up in the middle of it all. This month in July, GfK reported a record decline in consumer confidence, last seen in March 1990 in the build-up to a UK recession.

Optimising the website should be every retailer’s first move in order to understand the gaps in the buyer journey and identify where they are losing customers. And nowhere can this drop off be seen more than in cart abandonment. Every retailer knows how severely a high cart abandonment rate can damage their bottom line. But not enough retailers know of data-driven strategies they can use in 2017 to guarantee that more of their visitors who place items in their basket follow on to purchase them.

1. Instil urgency

Our psychologies are wired to avoid loss. So much so that psychologists have shown that we would rather avoid a loss than acquire an equivalent gain. This is known as loss aversion, and this psychology can be influenced by retailers to drive purchases. For example, you could show a countdown timer during sale periods or display stock levels – both designed to suggest that the product they want to buy could soon be unavailable.

Retailers can also provide real-time figures of customers viewing the product to indicate its popularity and so infer it will run out of stock. These tactics also play upon another behavioural psychology known as scarcity bias – the psychology of placing a higher value on an object perceived to be scarce than on an object considered to be abundant. Utilising retargeting strategies, an email could be sent to a user of a product they have browsed but not bought, indicating it is running low in stock and so stirring a sense of urgency to transform abandoners into buyers.

A mistake many marketers make is to cover their product and checkout pages with phrases like ‘last chance’ and ‘hurry’. This can instil an emotion similar to the phenomenon known as banner blindness whereby users consciously and subconsciously refuse to interact with advertising. In this case, shoppers instinctively ignore these types of urgency-fuelled phrases. Marketers must, therefore, be more intelligent with their wording. Use terminology that infers the popularity of a product, and so the likelihood of it selling out, without using cliche and so untrustworthy wording; for example, ‘Hot Buy’ or ‘A customer favourite’.

2. Offer flexible finance

Of 100 users who place an item in their basket, on average only 23 will complete the purchase, whilst the remaining 77 will abandon. Although there are a plethora of causes for this, there will always be one that stands out most firmly in the customer’s mind – price.

To tackle this, and without simply offering sales and cutting prices that will damage the bottom line, retailers should offer flexible customer finance at the checkout. At the precise moment when a customer is hesitating at the thought of spending a large lump sum, retailers can present a finance offering, allowing the customer to pay for the item in flexible monthly instalments at 0% interest.

The obstacle to purchase is therefore immediately removed, reassuring a range of shoppers who could otherwise have abandoned. It’s not all about cost, however. Many customers of finance are accepting of the price, but would rather the convenience of spreading the cost, rather than paying upfront or using a credit card that charges a high APR or that they are untrustworthy of. Offering finance, therefore, caters to a variety of buyer of personas.

3. Optimise the checkout for mobile

Mobile shopping has undoubtedly boomed in the past few years. In fact, according to the latest IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking report, an average of 54.5% of all retail sales came through mobile devices in Q1 2017. However, although this figure may seem promising, a study by Barilliance reveals that retailers could be doing much more to boost these sales on mobile.

According to the report, mobile phone cart abandonment stands at an unappealing 85.65%, whilst desktop drops to 73.07%. To reduce this abandonment on mobile, you must ensure your checkout is not only mobile optimised but has a mobile-first design. Firstly, you must take into account how a user interacts with their mobile. Studies have shown that most people use their smartphone with one hand, with the majority using their right thumb. You need to, therefore, ensure that you position the most important elements in areas easily reachable by the right thumb. Wide end-to-end CTA buttons will also improve usability.

Utilise mobile UI elements too, such as increment selectors rather than drop down menus, the phone’s inbuilt data selection UI and digital wallets to facilitate a one-click checkout. Implement these elements and retailers can truly take advantage of the boom in mobile shopping.

4. Implement dynamic cart recovery

Of the users who view a checkout form, 43.5% begin filling it out yet only 12.20% complete the form. This is an exceptionally large drop-off but it can be improved. These users shouldn’t be considered lost. By implementing a cart recovery tool, you can dynamically capture these user’s email address they have entered before abandoning the form.

With this information, you can then deliver automated emails to these high-intent users and bring them back to site to complete the purchase. What’s more, these emails can be personalised, containing the products that were in their basket before they abandoned, as well as targeted promotional content based on their order value to drive them to purchase. Easy to set up and delivering high CTR, cart recovery can be a highly effective conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategy.

We are a nation of browsers with a psychology of constant change, so cart abandonment will never disappear altogether. However, this is not to say that it cannot be extremely reduced if retailers adopt the right strategies for their customers and in the process, upturn the record fall in consumer confidence.

The post 4 Cart Abandonment Strategies You Need to Maintain in 2017 appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Ad fraud is eating up advertisers’ budgets and they are looking for a corrective action.

Forrester’s latest report on ad fraud and viewability estimates that the amount of money wasted on invalid impressions reached $7.4 billion in 2016, and this is only for desktop and laptop impressions in the US. At the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard, called the current system “antiquated” and demanded increased transparency around media buying and viewability.

It’s clear that there is a serious industry problem that requires attention, but there is some debate over how it should be solved. who should take the lead? Here are different types of companies that have staked a claim on cleaning ad traffic.

Marketing tech companies

Digital marketing hubs are investing in ad tech to provide CMOs with a one-stop-shop for CRM, including the ability to verify digital ad measurements.  

Oracle’s data cloud has new fraud detection capabilities following the Moat acquisition. Salesforce added to its portfolio the ability to track traffic across multiple devices and channels after acquiring Krux. Adobe also made a move towards digital ad serving with its acquisition of TubeMogul a video demand side platform.

Network security vendors

Network security companies including antivirus and firewall vendors have the most experience fighting hackers, which enables them to use more sophisticated methods to discover fraud schemes.  

Many scams will fall below the radar of fraud systems are limited to looking for suspicious traffic. Take for example the Traffic Alchemist scam, where fraudsters bought junk traffic known for long viewing times, disguised the sites to appear reputable, cluttered the site with hidden pop-up ads and then cycled the traffic through site clusters to keep measurements within a normal range that won’t raise suspicion.

Ad verification companies

Marketing technology companies and ad networks can also choose to build their own relationship with ad verification companies that specialise in tools developed specifically to inspect and clean digital ad traffic.

The advantage those companies have is that they specialise in fraud detection and the ad tech industry. It isn’t clear if the movement towards consolidation will result in bigger players owning the technology and embedding the capabilities into their platforms, or if these specialised players will continue to provide their services independently or through partnerships with larger vendors.  

Ad networks

Ad networks are highly motivated to provide clean traffic. Their whole brand depends on traffic quality and they can’t afford to be blacklisted because of bots crawling their networks. They need to guard their reputation by partnering with vendors or acquiring technology that ensures verifiable measurements of ad effectiveness.

Ad tech companies

Ad technology companies which provide a wide range of services from ad creative to ad targeting and measurements also provide anti-fraud solutions. Retargeting company Ad Roll detects and blocks invalid traffic, and has a Trust and Safety team dedicated to fraud detection. Sizmek, an ad serving company, eradicates ad fraud with its latest solution, StrikeAd. Mobile app tracking firm Adjust announced that a group of app marketing platforms came together to battle mobile ad fraud.  

No single solution

There isn’t a simple solution to stop ad fraud and there is no one single player that can be trusted to ensure ad quality. Even after Google has cleaned up its traffic, it’s possible that data marketing hubs such as Oracle will still find suspicious data that slipped through their net. Multiple layers of defense are needed since no single system is 100% fool proof.

The best hope is to have all the players agree on a standard definition for quality traffic that can be enforced by objective third-party auditors. Eventually, there should be readily available third-party tools that will be accepted by the industry to root out fraud. Similar to scanning and cleaning files from viruses, all ad traffic should be purged of fraud before being shared and analysed.

The ad tech industry is still nascent and fraud and fraud detection solutions keep evolving. Until there are industry-wide policies for cleaning traffic, each player will most likely clean the traffic the best way they can, which probably won’t be good enough for advertisers.

Eventually- when more hold back their budgets – companies will need to reach consensus and the auditors will move in to bring trust back to digital advertising.

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