Category: Martech

Martech

6 eCommerce Personalization Examples That you Can Implement Today to Grow Sales

Miley on November 18, 2021

There is a lot of competition in eCommerce and customers are becoming more and more demanding. Personalization to the rescue! It helps to retain existing customers and increase sales. SmarterHQ report says that 90% of customers are ready to share personal information to simplify purchasing.

So what is eCommerce personalization? In a nutshell, it is a process of providing a customized experience to each user of an eCommerce website by utilizing user data. Such a targeted approach improves conversion.

Here are 6 examples of personalization in eCommerce that will change your business drastically.

1. Personalized product feed (Wish)

Changing the homepage according to the user’s individual preferences is a smart move. Showing personalized feed is even smarter. You can offer products depending on customers’ social group, geographical location, previous online behavior.

For example, Wish, a fast-fashion eCommerce platform, owes most of its success to the hyper-personalized feed. The wish came up with a recommendation engine for a personalized shopping feed. AI analyzes customers’ personal information and creates a feed of the most relevant products. This makes shopping addictive and increases sales significantly.

Wish strategy

2. Price recommendations (Arcbazar)

It can be difficult to determine the right price for products and services. This becomes even more difficult when there are multiple sellers, especially with peer-to-peer transactions. Price recommendation algorithms can help find a golden ratio between competitive prices and good margins. As a result, you will get more sales and maintain an optimal profit margin.

For example, Arcbazar, a giant platform for architects and designers, has used machine learning to recommend the most relevant rewards for projects. There was an issue with customers leaving the order process unfinished as they were not sure what price to set. An AI-driven solution came to help. Now the Arcbazar system analyzes a customer’s intent, collects previous data from similar projects, and offers the most optimal price. This allowed increasing the number of successfully completed projects on the platform.

3. Chatbots

Chatbots can boost customer satisfaction by providing personal assistance and problem solving 24\7. They can answer typical questions or connect a customer to a consultant, collect payments, take orders, and schedule deliveries. So when building a chatbot make sure it can analyze users’ profile details to create personalized answers, which will increase conversion.

For example, the KAYAK chatbot is powered by AI and learns from previous answers to create personalized conversations with the users. Thanks to Natural Language Processing the chatbot interprets not only words but also the intent of phrases and is able to respond appropriately.

4. Personalized pop-ups

Retargeting your customers within your website is much cheaper than off-site. One way to do this is by making popup offers that match some specific user activity on the website. These pop-ups can be automated considering such parameters as browsing behavior, cart value, and the number of sessions.

Urbanara, an online homewares store, decided to offer a pop-up with a discount to new customers. When a first-time visitor adds items to the cart there is a pop-up offering discount or promotion in exchange for an email address.

5. Emails

Following the previous point, if you already have customers’ email addresses send them personalized emails. This helps to reengage customers to return to their abandoned carts and keep on shopping.

For example, Morvélo sends customers emails in case they’ve abandoned their carts. In this reminder, the store shows items that visitors intended to buy so they can finish the purchase.

6. Personalized search

Today users expect to find exactly what they want, not just something that slightly resembles it. So overall customer satisfaction depends on how helpful the onsite search is.

Usually, an onsite search is one of the first things your potential customers will use upon entering your store. They will look up the keywords trying to find what they came for. However, if your search is inefficient and you have a lot of products it can quickly turn into a painful experience.

For example, Neiman Marcus took advantage of smartphone usage and focused on the mobile experience. They created Snap.Find.Shop. a feature that allows customers to use pictures of items to find similar products. This made a search on the website much more fulfilling for visitors.

Wrapping up

The benefits of personalization in eCommerce are undeniable. It helps provide an individual experience to each customer which leads to growth in sales. In this article, we discussed eCommerce personalization tools like product and price recommendations, customized pop-ups, event-triggered emails, self-learning chatbots, and personalized search. Try them and let your business grow.

Martech SEO

9 Ways to Recover From a Sudden Fall in Traffic

Miley on November 16, 2021

A sharp and unexpected decline in traffic can be a dangerous occurrence that must be dealt with quickly and effectively. Panic can lead to poor business decisions, which is why you should have a set procedure in place if your traffic suddenly decreases.

To do a traffic drop study, use this 9-point checklist. A contingency plan like this one will eventually isolate the root of the problem, allowing you to apply the proper solution.

Verify Your Tracking Information

Assume you’ve opened your analytics account and seen a significant decrease in visitors. A sharp and rapid reduction in traffic is a sporadic event if you’re not performing black hat SEO. The first step is to double-check that you’re dealing with the correct data.

In the admin part of your analytics account, check the status of your tracking codes.

Open the “tracking code” tab in the top-right area of your admin page under “tracking info.” Under “Status,” there is a notification that indicates whether or not your code has been submitting data for the past 48 hours.

It’s possible that a site update or migration removed or changed the code, which would explain why your analytics account is lacking data. You may inspect the code on your website by right-clicking on any page in your browser. Choose “inspect.” To identify where your code is installed, use command + f (control + f on a PC) to open a search window and enter in “analytics.”

Verify that your code has been properly installed on your website. You may have addressed your problem if there are any errors in its installation. If your code is intact, you must double-check your information in the search console.

Use Search Console to double-check your information

The search console is your go-to resource for learning more about what’s going on with your site. A big decline in traffic could indicate that you’ve lost visibility and coverage, which could result in a revenue loss.

Analyze your site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google
Review your index coverage
Send you alerts about issues Google discovers on your site
Assist you in understanding how Google perceives your site
Remove the potential of pages being de-indexed and penalties being imposed.
Penalties from Google

Go to “security and manual actions” and look for “manual actions” under “security and manual actions” to discover if you’ve gotten a manual punishment. You should get a message like “No Issues Detected” because manual actions are quite severe.

If you are subjected to manual action, you will be provided guidance on how to resolve the issue and resubmit your site for review so that your pages can be restored.

Indexing Issues

To see if there has been a decline in the number of pages indexed on your site, go to the coverage tab and look at the number of pages indexed. No pages have been lost, and the site’s URLs have not been affected, as shown in the graph below.

Someone may have mistakenly used a noindex command or inserted a disallow rule to the robots.txt file, resulting in a reduction in the number of indexed pages.

On a WordPress site, the option to “discourage search engines from indexing” can be found in the general settings tab. Your site’s pages will be de-indexed if you choose this option.

The same option is available in the advanced tab beneath your text if you’re using Yoast as an SEO plugin. Fix any noindex and prohibit directives, then resubmit your sitemap in the search console if your pages were mistakenly de-indexed. Despite the fact that there is a simple remedy to this problem, the scenario is extremely risky because you will lose all search engine visibility.

Re-indexing your pages might take anything from a few hours to several weeks, depending on the size of your site and how many pages were de-indexed. If your pages have been indexed and your data gathering in analytics has been confirmed, move on to the next step.

Perform a Competitive Analysis

Google is the arena where companies compete against one another. It’s possible that your company isn’t the only one using SEO to obtain a competitive advantage (check out the best SEO Sydney agency to improve your profit). It’s possible that another website has simply outranked you due to superior content marketing and/or link-building tactics.

A competitive examination of the site that has pushed you down the SERP and stolen your traffic is the solution to this. You can begin by looking at how your competitors have responded to search intent, which is the most crucial component of ranking.

Look up the keywords that their page ranks for to determine if there are any gaps in the content. Some parts of your page are possibly out of date or no longer deliver the information that readers require. Update your page to reflect any missing content and to more thoroughly cover your keyword topic.

Examine your competitors’ backlink profiles to see if any links can assist you in gaining authority over them. Regaining the first position may simply require a few high-quality connections if the material is substantially comparable to yours.

Verify the information in your keyword tracking software

Falling rankings result in a decrease in traffic. To keep track of your SERP ranks, create a Rankwatch keyword tracking report. The statistics in analytics and search console will corroborate the keywords that have declined significantly.

A keyword’s ranking might drop for a variety of reasons. If the issue isn’t immediately apparent, eliminate the alternatives one by one. To prioritize a plan of action, make a list of likely factors that could have caused the reduction in ranks. The most common causes of changes in search visibility are listed below.

Ascertain that your content is pertinent to the user’s aim

The most crucial ranking factor is whether your content is relevant to the searcher’s intent. Users searching for your target keywords should find value in your content since it speaks directly to their search intent.

Now that BERT is fully functional, we have a better understanding of what a user is looking for in a search query. Despite the fact that the BERT update only affected 10% of search queries, its impact will be felt as Google continues to learn more about how people search.

If your website is lacking in specifics, adding focused material in response to user intent will increase the page’s performance by meeting search intent appropriately. Improve your keyword ranks with better content to reclaim lost traffic.

Evaluate Dropped Backlinks

A decline in ranking and, as a result, a drop in visits could happen from the loss of significant backlinks pointing to your page.

Check your backlinks to check if any critical links were lost during the time when traffic was down.

The most typical reasons for link removal are as follows:

The page was moved, merged, or removed
They failed to add your link back into the text.

Contact the proprietors of the sites that removed the links to see if they may be reinstated. You can make a better argument for link replacement by correcting any issues that led to their removal in the first place if you can figure out why they were deleted in the first place.

A few low-quality links will have no effect on your ranking or cause a significant decline in traffic. If no big links to your site have been lost, proceed to the following step and conduct a competitive analysis.

Keep an eye out for new SERP features

The introduction of Google SERP features is a trend that has been going on for quite some time. This is a problem that has resulted in more than half of all Google searches landing in a zero-click result.

Confirm whether a new SERP feature has emerged by searching Google for your term. A featured snippet, PAA box, local pack, or an increase in the number of ads may be absorbing a percentage of the query’s available clicks.

Examine Harmful Information and Recommendations

The phrase “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” isn’t always true, especially when you want to improve your business. A public accident or a series of unfavorable reviews might swiftly erase your visitors if the content is serious enough to harm your reputation.

Social listening solutions have become an important part of reputation management since they allow you to track any relevant mentions about your brand and competitors. Your version of the tale may influence public opinion and preserve your reputation in the aftermath of a devastating PR catastrophe. Early retaliation to negative news or reviews can help safeguard traffic and avoid potential client loss.

Take Away the Chances Of A Google Update

It’s always possible that Google has released an update that has caused the ranks to shift. Large fluctuations in ranks owing to big changes in how Google analyzes the content and backlinks are not rare, according to the history of Google upgrades.

There are a few websites, such as seroundtable.com and searchengineland.com that keep up with the latest Google developments and can provide you with the most up-to-date information.

Your company’s website is a significant asset. Dropping traffic counts are terrible for both your website’s growth and the bottom line of your business. Organic traffic takes time to build, but you may accelerate the process by using content marketing to produce leads. However, a minor increase in traffic as a result of these attacks will not be detrimental.

Development Martech

Skyrocket Your Sales With These 5 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks

Miley on November 12, 2021

Boosting your conversion rates is no walk-in in the park.

You’ll need to apply the right strategies, leverage the best-fitting tools, and learn a thing or two from others in the industry to convert more of your prospects into paying customers.

While there are many tactics to optimize your website for conversions and increase sales, this guide narrows down some of the tried and tested ways into five tips.

Read on to learn these five conversion rate optimization hacks to help amplify your existing marketing and sales efforts and grow your revenue.

1. Use popups

When used properly, popups can help you convince your casual website visitors to sign up to your email list and, ultimately, buy your products.

The key is to implement a strategy to ensure your popups help showcase your offer’s value to your potential customers instead of annoying them and driving them away.

Learn from these tips to use popups effectively.

Consider providing several offers such as premium content, PDFs, free stuff, and other products and assess which ones drive the most conversions.

Time your popups properly and avoid setting them to trigger as soon as visitors land on your page. Give shoppers a chance to explore first and get an idea about your brand before displaying your popups.

Ensure visitors can easily close your popups. The goal is to entice prospects into acting on your offer and not “trap” them into agreeing to subscribe or other actions. This can frustrate your visitors, causing them to abandon your website.

Configure a cookie, so your popup only appears once for each user. Again, the goal is to offer value and encourage conversions with your popups, not drive your potential customers away.

Emphasize your offer’s benefit so visitors can immediately see it. Doing so shows shoppers your product’s or service’s value instantly, enticing them to sign up or buy.

This popup from Frank & Oak is a classic example of a popup highlighting the offer with “Get instant 15% off.”

Some of the popular, easiest e-commerce platforms to use offer built-in popup features (or integrate plugins) you can easily customize and run.

2. Strengthen your headlines

Landing pages have great potential to drive conversions and sales. If you’re not optimizing them properly, visitors might not read further than the headline and immediately leave.

You can miss tons of conversion opportunities, hurting your company’s profitability.

An excellent approach to ensure your headlines help you convert visitors is to wrap your entire sales pitch into a single bold sentence.

Use impactful headline types that can help you generate leads better and drive conversions, such as:

Direct headlines
Command headlines
Instructional or How-to headlines

Additionally, use headline analyzer tools such as Sharethrough. The tool scores your headlines based on engagement and impression.

The tool also shows the strong aspects of your headline and provides recommendations to improve it.

Create headlines that catch your visitors’ interest, solve a problem, answer a question, or offer information.

3. Leverage trust elements

The hard truth is, you need to establish trust with first-time website visitors before they buy from you.

After all, new visitors don’t know your brand and your product’s quality yet. Some might have heard of your brand but need a bit more reassurance that your business is legitimate and trustworthy.

The solution? Leverage trust elements across your website with these tips.

Keep your website up-to-date. A modern website design helps indicate that your website is active. This helps reassure customers that you’re a legitimate business and nurture trust.

Display contact information prominently. Show your potential customers how they can reach you. It’s one way of reinforcing that you’re a real business.

You can also configure Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots for customer service to assist visitors in contacting you or answering common questions.

Providing support is an excellent way to nurture trust and generate conversions.

Show security seals. Display trust badges such as Norton and other security seals. This helps assure customers that their personal data, such as credit card information, are secure when they transact on your site.

Leverage media mentions. Show mentions of your brand by other companies and well-known institutions to enhance your brand’s credibility. These act as testimonials and social proof, helping you build trust with your prospects.

While it takes time and hard work to establish trust with your potential customers, using trust elements strategically can help reinforce your efforts and ultimately boost your conversions.

4. Utilize categories to showcase your products

Creating product descriptions that convert can help you reach your conversion goals and increase your sales.

You can take this to the next level by optimizing your product categories for conversions.

The key is to ensure you don’t bombard visitors with individual products on your homepage. This can overwhelm your potential customers, leading to a negative user experience.

Instead, design product categories to deliver seamless shopping experiences with these quick tips.

Display your top-level product categories as visual navigation elements. This helps visitors browse your site with ease and find the products they want quickly.

Show the number of available items under each category. This can instantly tell visitors you have the item they’re looking for. Ensure this doesn’t create clutter and overwhelm your users.

Optimizing your product categories helps show your products’ breadth and depth without visitors going through hoops to find the items they want.

Note: If you find integrating product categories into your online store too technical, get a web design agency to help you out.

They can create and organize your menus without ruining your site’s navigation. They can also assist in your overall strategy to optimize your product page and categories for memorable shopping experiences.

5. Create persuasive CTAs

A clear call-to-action helps tell your visitors what to do next while enticing them to act on your conversion goals.

This makes it crucial to create CTAs that your visitors are more likely to click than ignore.

Here are some tips to help you create irresistible CTAs.

Consider using only one CTA on each page. A single CTA reduces confusion and distractions, helping visitors focus on performing the action you want them to do.

Adopt web usability best practices. This helps you provide user experiences that most visitors are familiar with, simplifying navigating your site and responding to your CTAs.

Run split tests of your CTA elements. Test variations of your CTA button’s color, size, and shape. For instance, you can test which CTA button color variation drives the most conversions and tweak accordingly for better results.

Make your offers clear through proper context. People are more likely to convert when they know exactly what to expect from your offer. It also helps to apply scarcity to make your CTAs more persuasive, encouraging conversions.

For example, if you’re running a webinar on summit vs. conference, you can include “Register now before slots run out” on your landing page.

Ready to drive your conversions through the roof?

Increasing your conversion rate requires strategy and creativity.

Put in the hard work now, and you should see some significant improvements, helping you grow your sales and business.

Kickstart your conversion rate optimization efforts with the tips in this guide and assess which ones get you the best results.

Martech

Which Media Platforms are Best for a Marketing Campaign?

Miley on November 1, 2021

Did you know that marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us long after an impression or purchase? This is so because marketing campaigns make companies memorable. Businesses with a sale capacity of at most $25 million or spend almost 13.9% of the income earned on marketing campaigns. A marketing campaign promotes a focused effort that guides consumers towards the desired action and gives brands identity, personality, and emotion. But what are the best media platforms for conducting a business market campaign?

1. Facebook

Facebook ranks among the most widely used social media platforms in the world. The platform’s position as a social network with vast data resources is why it’s so appealing to marketers and hence preferred by more than ninety percent of businesses.

As such, any brand or company conducting any form of business must utilize this crucial business page. Using this largest social media platform allows you to access essential marketing and advertising opportunities that can be utilized for all kinds of businesses. In addition, it is an excellent platform for inbound marketing as it contains content that helps increase your brand’s visibility.

If you are conducting any form of a marketing campaign, Facebook offers a great channel to engage with your audience daily. If you are still wondering why you should choose Facebook for your marketing campaign, then the answer is simple; it is a beneficial place to invest your advertising budget.

2. YouTube

Other than Facebook, YouTube also ranks as the world’s most used platform with more than forty million user-base. Also, in terms of a viable option for videos, it ranks similarly to Facebook. Still, it outdoes Facebook because it hosts longer videos that attract users specifically browsing for this form of content.

YouTube is ranked as the ideal platform for companies targeting other businesses or customers through videos. The platform utilizes TrueView Video Ads, TrueView In-Stream Ads, TrueView Discovery Ads, or Bumper Ads.

If you haven’t unlocked the power of YouTube marketing, you need to try a YouTube course designed for all business types.

3. Instagram

According to a Hootsuite survey, a billion individuals use Instagram every month for various purposes, including marketing. More than 70% of firms in the United States use this media channel for marketing. Instagram ranks for general marketing, including content creation and paid ads, so whether you’re a big or small business seeking an excellent platform to execute your marketing campaign, you should consider it.

Instagram works well for both still photos and video, with the former taking precedence. When the focus is on the visual component, this is good because the text is less necessary. Instagram includes a variety of ad kinds, making it one of the most popular social media platforms for paid advertising. Carousel advertisements, stories ads, images ads, and video ads are among them. They also included shopping tags and the option for company accounts to link their photographs straight to their website, allowing consumers to discover more about products easily and swiftly. Instagram is a popular choice among paid advertising marketers in the eCommerce industry.

While Facebook and YouTube have broad user populations, Instagram is more oriented toward a younger and female audience, making it a perfect target if your campaign’s consumer persona matches this – but a terrible choice for older male clients.

4. Linkedin

LinkedIn is the most suitable choice if you are looking for a marketing platform geared towards professionals.

The platform offers many filter options and is ranked as the best platform for B2B lead generations, which allows marketers to connect with more qualified users.

While the platform has a special focus on professionals, it also provides for commercials. LinkedIn is a no-brainer if your business needs to cater to commercial clients, brands, and business-focused customers. The platform offers marketers a wealth of demographic data hence is ranked due to its unique style of generating potential business leads.

The platform utilizes dynamic ads, text ads, sponsored InMail, and sponsored content types of advertising.

5. Twitter

Twitter is a hugely popular and extremely fast-paced social media network. With this platform, every word matters since tweets are limited to 280 characters. While stepping on its popularity, it allows marketers to instantly capture their audience’s attention and deliver a link to the information and items they want.

Twitter allows you to have a content presence that drives inbound traffic and also paid advertising presence that drives outbound traffic. This is accomplished through various advertising methods, including promoted tweets, promoted trends, and promoted accounts.

Final Thoughts

Businesses can use media platforms to run marketing campaigns to reach out to their customers in various ways. It’s worth mentioning that your clients are already connecting with competitors via social media. As a result, if you’re not using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest to talk directly to your audience, you’re missing out on a lot. Great social media marketing efforts achieve exceptional results for businesses, cultivate loyal brand champions, and even drive leads and sales.

Martech

Social Commerce in 2021: Why it is Important?

Miley on May 4, 2021

If you’re marketing your brand online, you can’t ignore social media. At 3.96 billion, more than 50% of the world’s population now uses social media platforms.

This means that you would have access to a massive segment of your audience if you make your presence felt on these platforms. While numerous brands use social media marketing to drive brand awareness, lead generation, and sales, they tend to miss out on social commerce.

Going into 2021, social commerce is an important strategy that you must add to your brand’s marketing plan.

But why is it important?

Before we answer that, let’s take a quick look at what exactly social commerce is.

What is Social Commerce?

Social media marketing focuses on leveraging social media to drive traffic to your website to generate sales. However, social commerce differs from it in that it’s all about developing an ecommerce experience on social media itself.

In essence, instead of driving traffic away from social media to generate sales, it’s all about offering your prospects the option to checkout on social media directly.

Doing so has a lot of advantages; let’s take a look at them to understand why you can’t afford to ignore social commerce in 2021.

Importance of Social Commerce

Whether you’re starting an online business or already have an established one, here’s why you should incorporate social commerce into your digital marketing strategy.

1. Rise of Ecommerce

The adoption of ecommerce has been gradually increasing over the years. Ecommerce penetration increased to 15% of retail sales by the end of 2019.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the penetration manifold. By April 2020, this penetration had increased to 25%.

Image via WARC

This increased adoption of ecommerce has provided a tremendous boost to ecommerce stores. And this also means that you need to make your presence felt on social media because that’s where a lot of product discoveries begin.

In fact, about 60% of people discover new products through Instagram — and that’s just one of the many social platforms.

By incorporating social commerce into your strategy, you can improve the chances of your products or services getting discovered on social media.

2. Smooth Shopping Experience

One of the biggest advantages of using social commerce over social media marketing is that all the steps of the sales funnel happen on social media in the case of social commerce. However, in the case of social media marketing, you need to get your audience to first discover your product and then convince them to click on your CTA and head to your website.

These steps not only complicate the process but also increase the chances of people dropping out of your funnel as there are additional steps involved.

What’s more?

Some people may not trust your website and might not buy from you. But this wouldn’t be the case on social media as the chances of them trusting the social media platform are greater.

And that’s not even the best part…

When you use social commerce, you’ll be able to reduce the number of steps required to complete the transaction too. You could offer options like one-click purchases to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you. This can have a direct impact on your conversion rates.

3. The Push from Social Platforms

Social commerce has an important place in social media’s future. When you adopt social commerce, you’ll also benefit from the push that social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are giving to it. These platforms have come up with special features to make it easier for brands to list their products for sale on their platforms.

Facebook has come up with the Facebook Marketplace while Instagram has developed Instagram Shopping. Using these features, you can sell your products on Facebook or Instagram and help your customers complete the purchase without having to leave the platform.

This greatly simplifies the work that you need to do to list your products on social media as all of the infrastructure is provided to you.

4. Shoppable Posts

While this particular feature is specific to Instagram, it makes social commerce even more attractive for brands. You can pick out products from your shop and add them to the posts that you share on the platform.

These posts will sport a small shopping bag icon and your audience can shop for the products directly from these posts. All that they need to do is click on the post and select the product of their choice and checkout. It’s that simple!

But wait, there’s more…

That’s not the only thing that you can do with Shoppable posts. To unleash the true potential of Shoppable posts, you need to partner with Instagram influencers.

The idea is to get them to create shoppable posts for you. For this, all you have to do is send your products to them and encourage them to create posts where they’re using them.

They can then make these posts shoppable and you’ll instantly have access to their wide and engaged audience. All their followers will be able to purchase your products after seeing them in the post within a few clicks.

This can help you make a lot of money as you’ll be able to get the benefit of both a short sales process and the engaged audience of an influencer.

For instance, note how Shop WeWoreWhat has shared this post featuring Danielle Bernstein. Their followers can purchase both the products displayed in the post by clicking on them and checking out.

Image via Instagram

Final Thoughts

Ecommerce registered exponential growth in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to take advantage of this, it’s essential to do everything you can to reach your prospects.

And that’s exactly why you can’t afford to miss out on social commerce going into 2021. It helps your prospects complete their purchases on social media, shortens the sales process, and offers a smooth shopping experience.

What’s more?

Various social platforms like Facebook and Instagram are even coming up with new features that encourage social commerce.

One such powerful feature you can leverage is shoppable posts on Instagram. You can amp up your reach and sales even further by partnering with influencers and getting them to create shoppable posts for you.

Do you have any questions about social commerce and its importance? Let me know in the comments section below.

Author Bio:

Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.

Development Insights Martech Products

Tips for Improving the Operation of Your Small Business

Miley on October 31, 2020

As a small business owner, you have to account for every cent you spend and make the most of your time. The good news is there are new technologies that can reduce your overhead and allow you to focus more of your time on growing the business.

Infographic created by WSI, an eCommerce fulfillment provider

Your Online Company

Today, it’s common to have a small business online. However, many small companies still need a warehouse or storage facility to house their inventory and pack and ship their products. Thankfully, you can eliminate the cost of having additional space and eliminate the expense and stress of shipping packages by investing in fulfillment services.

Use of Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are the norm. You use them multiple times each day to do things like purchase gas, order dinner, and check the weather. Having a mobile app for your business will boost branding with a continued presence. It will also help improve the customer experience with 24/7 access to your business services and products resulting in additional income.

Social Media Platforms

While social media isn’t really new, many small businesses are just now beginning to realize its benefits. Unlike expensive ads on the radio or television, social media puts you in touch with millions of potential customers for a nominal fee. Figure out your target audience and then reserve a time slot that allows your ad to pop up at the best possible time of day.

Processing Payments

Not too long ago you had limited payment options as a small business owner. Unfortunately, this will more than likely cost you sales. Having a credit card terminal that accepts all types of cards is essential. If your business is mainly online, make sure to include PayPal and Securepay.com.

A Strong Website

Having a website is nothing new. In fact, most businesses large and small have one. However, the difference between a website that produces sales and one that doesn’t is the content. People want to know a bit about your company, and they want to be able to move from one place to another with ease. Keeping them on your site longer is critical. Having new technologies such as a Chatbot that comes up to see if a customer needs help or an animated whiteboard that describes your services/products.

CRM Software

As a small business owner, you want to develop a personal relationship with your customer to achieve loyalty. CRM software lets you best manage contact information and track the interests of your customers to increase sales while building a relationship. A higher rate of customer satisfaction leads to additional sales.

Outsourcing Services

Small business owners need to keep the focus on marketing. Unfortunately, having to handle things like payroll, IT management, customer service and various administrative tasks will consume valuable time. Thankfully, you can outsource all of the above within your tight budget.

Automation Programs

Quickbooks and Sites such as SalesForce allow for automated monitoring of sales, inventory and overall bookkeeping. It also decreases the margin of human error while creating efficiency. Utilizing these technologies frees up your time and that of your employees, allowing for an increased amount of time dedicated to other important matters.

Secure Data

Keeping a good reputation among your customers is essential in maintaining a competitive edge. Using cloud storage or virtual vaults will limit access to customer and business information and the ability to alter existing documents.

Small business owners must continue to find new ways to remain out in front. The good news is that by adopting newer technologies you can retain existing customers and attract new ones to help you achieve your long-term goals.

Development Insights Martech

Best Practices in Performance Development Planning and Training

Miley on October 9, 2020

The advent of the Covid-era has led to a significant change in emphasis from in-person training to internet-based online training. However, managers need to be cognizant of the fact that not everyone is suited to purely online methodologies for training. Individuals have a preferred learning style and online classrooms are not everyone’s favorite approach.

At the same time, employees have to accept the reality of the current circumstances and many will simply have to adapt accordingly. Performance development is a critical aspect of an employee’s progress within the organization and it cannot be put on hold beyond the medium term.

In the past employers have usually tried to identify an individual’s preferred learning style and adapt their training accordingly to achieve the best results. Classroom-style in person courses were available for those that preferred this approach while online learning was often a second choice. Many organizations also included other training methodologies such as individuals in specific impact projects so that they could learn “on the job” and build their skills accordingly. Coaching and mentoring were similar approaches that delivered new skills outside of a classroom-type environment.

These latter two approaches to performance development training are still viable under the new social distancing environment produced by Covid. Employees can still be engaged in unique high impact projects, albeit remotely. Although the remote aspect may reduce the overall learning from working on the project it should still expose the employee to the key learnings that they need to understand the particular topic from the project.

Similarly, although it is certainly more difficult to provide coaching and mentoring under social distancing conditions, it is certainly not impossible and these approaches will still deliver value. The traditional approach to coaching and mentoring may need to be adapted, but the general concept remains valid.

Using an employee performance evaluation software can be extremely helpful for performance development planning, as it can give mentors a clear picture of the strengths and weak spots of every employee.

Performance development planning is particularly important for the most ambitious employees in an organization, and these employees are also likely to be some of the most valuable. Therefore it is important that their development and training is not forgotten in the Covid crisis. These employees need to clearly understand what new skills and competencies they must develop in order to advance within the organization if they are to stay motivated and continue to contribute to the overall high performance of the organization.

Clear performance development planning helps employees to understand their overall place in the company and also increases their loyalty and motivation. It draws a connecting line between their personal goals and the overall goals of the company, which makes it a key element of personal motivation. By providing this context for their work, an organization provides more meaning for the employees in their daily jobs.

One final point: performance development plans need to be individualized for every employee. Managers need to have undergone formal performance management training that enables them to discover the most important aspects of personalization for a performance development plan. For example, managers need to understand the personal goals of the employees that they manage and need to help them to develop performance management plans that align the individual’s personal goals with those of the organization.

Martech Products SaaS

Customer Data Platforms

Miley on October 1, 2020

With increased businesses and competitors, most marketing organizations are looking for efficient ways to target customers. Customer Data Platforms (CDP) has become influential in helping marketing organizations achieve their marketing goals. They are assisting organizations to deal with several marketing channels and ways to counter competition. This article will look at what Customer Data Platforms are, their work, features, and examples.

What is Customer Data Platforms?

A Customer Data Platform empowers marketers with the client’s data and provides the full details of these customers. It brings together artificial intelligence and data science, which pulls together marketing data to create personalized experiences for clients. It helps support the company’s marketing activities based on the client’s experiences. They unify data collected from different sources to create one, full-detailed customer profile. These CDP mobile apps help marketers collect data in real-time, making them segment it and efficiently serve their clients.

How does Customer Data Platform work?

Customer Data Platforms have many capabilities and responsibilities. They are used to collect data from different sources, filter it, and restructure it in a manner suitable to fit marketing systems. The data is then used to offer personalized marketing activities to clients. CDPs come in various forms. They can also carry other functions, such as analyzing data, predictive processes, and content marketing. The main tasks of customer data platforms include the below:

They identify clients’ information.
They upload and store customer data in the systems.
They accept input of data from different sources and formats.
They compare and merge data of a client from various sources.
Provide the processed data to external systems, including marketing
It enables marketers to control and use the data in marketing activities.
Apply other processes that make the data usable in different fields of marketing.

How is a Customer Data Platform Important to Your Business?

There are different reasons why an organization will need a CDP mobile app in their organization. The main reason is that it benefits its marketers in their marketing functions. Its benefits are as below:

The CDP integrates the existing and future marketing tools of an organization. It is necessary because marketing systems come with different technologies, making them not compatible with each other in an organization.
It enables organizations to better understand their customer’s behavior on different channels when offering various media campaigns.
It provides real-time personalization of clients. CDP enables marketers to develop real-time personalized content for their customers based on personality and behavior.

Benefits of a Customer Data Platform

Below are some of the benefits of a Customer Data Platform app to businesses:

It provides a complete customer view: it helps companies get complete customer information, which is comprehensive and accurate, making their engagement more manageable. It maximizes efficiency by reducing redundancy and inaccuracy in the customer’s data.
Leads to improved advertising: since a CDP helps to come up with customer’s data in a targeted way, it increases online advertising effectiveness.
Simplifies customer data: traditionally, marketers had a challenging task of synchronizing data from different sources. CDP automates the whole process and gives marketers ready–to–use data, making them concentrate on other marketing strategies.
Web personalization: CDP allows companies to create personalized customer experiences directly to their websites. It’s only possible when companies get real-time information concerning website visitors.
Helps businesses gain insights: through data mining, companies can get more information regarding their customers.

Best CDP Software Providers

There are different CDP Software providers you can find online. Some of the best include the below:

Tealium: It’s the largest according to the employee count, and it’s the most recognized CDP software. It has over 1000 Pre-built integrations for business use and has a robust API toolkit.
Lytics: has over 50 employees and allows aggregation of data, which resolves data for individual customers. It has AI capabilities that are useful in most businesses.
Redpoint Global: It works with various vendors to create data solutions to clients. Founded in 2006, it has robust data segmentation and incorporates vendors for data enrichment. Gives quality data and provides data stitching services.
Segment: Provides strong, out of the box integrations and has over 200 SaaS vendors.
Treasure data: Offers CDP with over 100 connectors that help unify raw data to produce a single customer experience.
Blueconic: Provides a highly scalable solution for businesses. It’s a suitable ML based product. Its software leverages several AWS services.

Customer Data Platforms are becoming popular in implementing marketing strategies. It helps companies and their marketers concentrate on other things by simplifying customer’s data, used in marketing strategies. They are must-have instruments that every company should have in its marketing toolkit.

Development Insights Martech Products SaaS

How Small Businesses Use Mobile Apps

Miley on September 30, 2020

Mobile phones are everywhere, which has made staying in touch easier and has simplified many daily tasks. As technology grows, our lives become richer. Through filters, we are better photographers (and models). With voice assistants, we all have our very own robot secretary. Just about any fact-related argument can be settled anywhere by opening the encyclopedia, we carry around in our pockets. We don’t need a notepad and pen as long as we have our phone. For modest monthly fees, we can access vast libraries of music, movies, and television shows.

Mobile technology is great for our personal lives, but it’s great for our business lives, too, as you’ll see below.

Time Saving Apps

One of the greatest conveniences of mobile app technology is saving time. To see what we mean, just look at how apps have changed something as ubiquitous as banking. Whereas a business owner (or manager) once had to drive to the bank with an uncomfortably large amount of cash and wait in line for the business teller, the majority of payments are now handled electronically. Checks can be deposited by snapping a photo. Mobile banking apps can save bundles of time.

It doesn’t stop with banking. If you travel for business, there are apps to help you manage business flights, hotel reservations, car rentals, taxis, rideshare services, and dinner reservations. Business travel, like personal travel, is made easier through review apps like Tripadvisor.

Metrics-at-a-Glance Apps

Whether you’re in the back of rideshare, flying in a plane, or waking up in the morning, you can now pull up a snapshot view of a variety of business metrics thanks to mobile app technology. You can most likely monitor your website analytics software, access your CRM, and whip up sales reports with a mobile app. NachoNacho provides a list of CRM tools at a reduced cost.

Physical Plant Management Apps

Many security alarm companies now offer mobile apps so that you can wait until you’re out of the building to set the alarm. If you have security cameras, chances are you can access live (and stored) footage from an app. There are apps to manage smart thermostats and apps to turn the lights on and off.

Office Equipment Apps

Modern office equipment, such as printers and copiers, often comes with a bundled app. For example, Xerox commercial printers can be managed with the Mobile Link app. You can use your phone’s built-in camera to scan documents, manipulate PDFS, and send just about anything you want to the printer.

Cloud Storage Apps

If you use Dropbox, Google Drive, or another cloud storage platform to access electronic apps, you can download a mobile app to help you access and manage those files. This is especially convenient when you want to send a file with your mobile email app.

Social Media Apps

We typically think of social media apps as something for personal use, but you can just as easily manage your business accounts with a mobile device. It’s a good idea to always double-check which account you’re posting to; it can be amusing to accidentally post something for work to your personal account, but the reverse can be damaging. Facebook offers a separate app to manage business pages, but with Instagram, you simply switch between accounts in the same app.

Communication Apps

Typically we think of office communication platforms like phone, fax, and email. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, many business owners have discovered other useful technologies. Teams can–and do–hold video chat meetings with Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangouts, helping to eliminate the need for physical contact. Many office suites provide real-time collaboration features, improving productivity, and further eliminating the need for a physical office.

Asset Tracking Apps

No matter what industry you are working in, a significant amount of work is now done off-premise by employees working remotely, in the field, or simply in a different location. An asset tracking mobile app enables teams who are handling company equipment in the field to easily update information through their smartphones or tablets. They can scan equipment labels to quickly check items in and out, make maintenance requests, reserve equipment, and much more for simplified off-premise operations. Meanwhile, all this activity gets logged into the central system so the organization has visibility into the field operations.

Insights Martech Products SaaS

6 Mobile Shipping Apps for Small Businesses

Miley on September 30, 2020

For small businesses, keeping track of your packages can be daunting and time-consuming. Choosing the right labels and shipping companies can ease your worries so that you can focus on your clients’ needs. Luckily, there are mobile apps that can reduce the shipping process for small businesses, as outlined below.

Package Tracker Pro

Package Tracker is a mobile app that lists shipping companies, including DHL and FedEx. The mobile application is available on Google Play Store with a small installation size at $1.99. Package Tracker is available for Android users in an all in one package that lets you track deliveries, keeps you informed, and allows you to customize your packages to suit your needs.

Package Tracker Pro has been in the market for a while and has a robust support system for the users. Some of the features that the app offers include:

Push notification to keep you informed about your packages in the form of ringtones or vibrations.
It allows you to add new options to your carrier list.
The app can show tracking routes on your screen if obtainable.
You can sync your tracking information from your PC to your mobile phone without retyping, which helps save you time.
You can archive tracking numbers to the sync site.
Generous support from the developers who are available to answer any questions you may have.

Package Buddy

Package Buddy is a free Android mobile app for shipment tracking purposes. The app that is downloadable from Google Play Store has an allowance of over 100 courier services. The free version is excellent for personal or domestic use to manage small packages. For small businesses, the pro version is available for $2, and you can integrate it with other android devices for your commercial requirements.

This app’s features include a barcode scanner that enables you to add a package to your tracking list and the capacity to share shipping data with others easily. It also consists of a filter function that allows you to sort your information by the status of whether you are sending or receiving parcels.

17TRACK

17TRACK is a mobile app compatible with both android and iOS users supporting famous couriers such as DHL and UPS. The app is great for businesses that order from China or have issues shipping to North America. 17TRACK is free with in-app purchases if you want to upgrade.

Features of this shipping app include push notifications to keep you updated on package status changes. It also comes with automatic syncing across your compatible devices and allows you to track multiple numbers simultaneously. The app can automatically detect your packages and which shipping companies they are on by entering a few digits of your tracking codes.

You can only track about 40 packages with the free version at a time. You can upgrade to a limit of 100 or 200 at a monthly charge of $2.99 or $4.99 consecutively.

Delivery Status Touch

This app is made for iOS devices and is available for download in AppStore for $4.99. Delivery Status Touch covers a wide range of shipping companies, both local and international, like Japan Post.

The features of this app include readable maps that tell you exactly where your package is. The app enables you to see the current transit packages and their delivery dates when you open it.

Delivery Status Touch allows you to sync your delivery dates to your calendar. You can also install it on your desktop and easily switch from the mobile device, depending on where you are.

FedEx Mobile App

FedEx is a development one of the biggest shipping companies which enable users to track packages and create shipping labels from wherever they are. FedEx app allows businesses to track all packages they send and receive. It also has a barcode scanner to add your boxes in the shipment list and enable you to sort it through using your tracking codes and references.

An upgrade to FedEx app that is available in some regions is the FedEx delivery Manager. With this addition, you can leave instructions for the courier services on when and where you want your packages to be delivered, sign digitally, and even send the package to FedEx location to pick later.

While this app is great, if your business heavily depends on shipping companies, you might consider enlisting the aid of a company like Shipware to conduct a FedEx audit. Due to a service and billing errors, you may be eligible for a high number of small refunds from FedEx on an ongoing basis. Shipware doesn’t have an app yet, but they have a history of helping small businesses who use FedEx and other shipping companies, so we thought we’d mention them here.

JumpTrack

JumpTrack is another Android and iOS compatible app that allows users to store proof-of-delivery like photos and signatures. The app will enable you to track shipment status and even trucks that carry the packages with GPS. You can also share the tracking information via email to your customers. This app is excellent for companies with complex supply chains that want to oversee their shipping.