ChoiceStream

As businesses worldwide increasingly focus on e-commerce as a vehicle for driving new revenue streams, most e-commerce sites still struggle to leverage the growing wealth of customer data to which they have access. This failure to integrate customer relationship management (CRM) activities with online visitor behavior is wasting a significant opportunity. However, a tight integration between web activity and CRM is often hard to come by and resulting disjointed marketing and sales practices can lead to frustrated and disgruntled customers. So, while the majority of organizations appreciate the value of personalization (Forrester Research notes that organizations have wanted to personalize their Web marketing for the past 15 years), only a small percentage actually follow through. The final word of advice from CRM Buyer is, “Use the personalization capabilities available today to move swiftly, offer a killer deal, and potentially gain a lifelong customer.”Read the full article at CRM Buyer

A recent study from Yahoo says “Word of Mouth (WOM)” marketing demonstrates the Internet has grown more influential when it comes to informing people through conversations about brands: even more so than TV in certain categories. The study also finds the best vehicles for influencing WOM come from consumers who play in social networks. Among the media channels influencing WOM, the Internet has grown while others like television and print remain flat. The level of Internet references rose to 15% in January 2010, compared with nearly 12% during the same time in the year-ago period. Yet, despite the buzz around social media and its role in WOM, most conversations take place face to face. Media -- both online and off -- are influential in driving these conversations, but it's important to note that 76% of WOM conversations take place in person. Meanwhile, two-thirds of WOM is positive, and only 8% is negative. Read the full article at MediaPost

Marketing and software companies are increasingly using sophisticated technologies for smartphones and other mobile gadgets to track consumers and target ads based on their location. The new commerce using phone users' location to sell ads is raising privacy concerns among U.S. lawmakers and privacy advocates. Recent studies have found many of the businesses that use location technology don't clearly inform consumers about the kind of data they track, how it is used or with whom it is shared. Such marketing has spread rapidly in the past year, fueled by the growth of high-speed wireless networks and the popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices containing global positioning chips and other technologies that can pinpoint a user's location. A study at Carnegie Mellon University earlier this year found that a third of the 89 location-based applications it examined lacked a privacy policy; others didn't clearly disclose what kind of data they kept or shared with others. However, spending on location-based mobile ads is still small, and most major marketers, leery of privacy issues, want to make sure that users have given their consent to being targeted this way. Stay tuned.Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal

By better understanding shoppers, retailers can create loyalty and increase sales according to David Blakelock, vp of technology for web and catalog retailer Boston Apparel Group. “As Internet retailers we’ve been the ones attacking big brands,” said Blakelock. “But what do you do about the guys in garages just starting up and coming up with the next big idea?” Retailers need to home in on who their customers are and what they’re seeking, he said. “You need to know what interests your customer.” To listen more effectively to customers, Blakelock urged retailers to organize in a central location the data they already collect—from product reviews to purchases to customer complaints. Then they can segment their customers and send them targeted messages. “The only way you can break through consumers’ cluttered inboxes is by creating something relevant to the customer,” he said.Read the full article at Internet Retailer

With less than 100 business days left before holiday shoppers start scouring web sites for perfect presents, retailers should be readying their own checklists with strategies to reach those consumers, says Brian Gallagher, director of strategic services at GSI Commerce. “The holiday shopper is not necessarily going to be the same person shopping on your site at other times of the year," said Gallagher. "Assume they have no idea about what they're going to buy." Among the advice: Retailers should facilitate purchases by setting up gift centers on their sites where visitors can search by such characteristics as age, gender or price points. Retailers can also help visitors find products by improving site navigation. "Picking up spelling mistakes by the search engine or do synonym mapping," Gallagher recommended. Read the full article at Internet Retailer

According to a new press release from research firm Aberdeen Group, one of the top pressures dictating multi-channel marketing decisions of retailers is consumer frustration with disjointed experiences across channels. "Consumers have grown frustrated with disjointed experiences across channels. This stems from disparate pricing and promotions to inventory availability,” said the report’s authors. In response to this pressure, retail organizations are urged to integrate disparate data for a better marketing approach. "A centralized marketing database allows for a single view of the customer, and allows all departments to access information about the customer. Additionally, with one centralized database, marketers are able to develop marketing outreach programs geared around demographic or psychographic specific characteristics, without having to consult multiple databases that may have conflicting data.”Read the full article

For months e-commerce and social networking sites have been strongly recommending that retailers and merchants everywhere consider making social networking integration part of their immediate future. Quite simply, social shopping is the “it” the trend that is going to define e-commerce for the foreseeable future. EcommerceJunkie sites some prime examples that underscore this belief: comScore unveiled some data earlier this week that shows Q1 2010 e-commerce spending revealed that regular Facebook and Twitter users spend more online than run-of-the-mill internet users, and by quite a bit. Meanwhile, on Facebook, there was a direct correlation between amount of time spent on the site and the amount of money spent online. One of the most important points to take away from all of this information is that those retailers who are targeting consumers on Facebook and Twitter are going after web users who actually do spend money online, which can only help contribute to the growth of sales on social networking sites.Read the full article

Companies are shifting more resources to help staffers who deal with the public to reduce frustrations and improve loyalty. Just over a quarter of the 1,405 companies surveyed by Accenture late last year said customer service would be the first area they'd increase funding for as the economy recovers. Some companies have begun that practice this year. Businesses are changing their approach, too, dedicating more of their efforts to the customer segments considered most lucrative. It's an outgrowth of the recession, when companies scrutinized customer-service spending to see which business practices delivered the biggest returns. Some executives also see a chance to woo frustrated customers from rivals through word of mouth and by creating pleasant experiences. In another Accenture survey of 5,000 consumers, 69% said they had switched at least one provider because of poor customer service in 2009. An example of renewed focus on service comes from Comcast. In January, Comcast started putting its 24,000 call-center agents through additional training. So far, Comcast has seen a decrease in repeat customer calls. "Our primary focus has been on ensuring that we're delivering superior customer service and that clears the way for us to be able to up-sell," says Tina Waters, senior vice president of customer operations at Comcast. Stay tuned. Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal

“Location, location, location” has served as a retail store mantra for as long as anyone can remember. Now, as more consumers shop on e-commerce web sites, “localization” has become one of the most important concepts, says Stephanie Tilenius, vice president of e-commerce at Google Inc. Among the main areas to which retailers need to pay attention, Tilenius says, are the increasing tendency of consumers to use mobile phones for shopping; the rise of social media as an influence on shopping; the personalization of search to make online shopping more efficient; and how consumers seek out local data when making shopping decisions. “Localization will have a major influence on online retail,” she says, noting that one in five desktop searches on Google relate to location. “Everything will be localized down to you. This means retail information needs to be useful, relevant, timely and personal, and presented in a geographic context.” Google in February hired Tilenius, a nine-year veteran of eBay Inc., to her newly created position. Tilenius says the line between offline and online is vanishing. “It’s all commerce,” she says. “To thrive in this new environment, where the web is becoming a richer and more dynamic shopping platform, retailers need to constantly innovate and experiment.”Read the full article at Internet Retailer

Luxury items, jewelry and products sold online were the fastest-growing U.S. sales categories in the retail sector in May, but weakness in apparel and electronics suggest consumers may still be wary in their spending. "Overall the environment in May was relatively soft," said Mike Berry, director of industry research for MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which estimates total retail sales across all payment forms. "It looks like the consumer is taking a pause." The strongest sector was eCommerce, which logged its sixth straight month of double-digit gains and 10th consecutive month of gains. Within that, children's apparel and family apparel showed gains of 30.4 percent and 26.2 percent, respectively.Read the full article at Reuters