Business and Marketing

They must locate and promote to the one out of every 143 consumers who make or break their new products.

Consumer packaged goods marketers have long been aware they play a high-stakes game. Growth for them depends on successful new products and line extensions, but the failure rate for new listings has long hovered at around 80%. Now a study released by Catalina offers them a cure for their age-old problem, difficult as it may be: Target the 0.7% of shoppers who account for 80% of the volume for a new food or beverage product.

That's right, in every grouping of 143 consumers, just one of them determines the fortunes of a new breakfast cereal, soft drink, or frozen dinner, according to the Checkout Coupons company's analysis of more than 260 million consistent shoppers at 30,000 drug, mass, and grocery stores.

“The percentage of households that make or break the success of new CPG products is very small, says Catalina SVP of Strategy Marla Thompson. “Our study shows that purchase-based targeting can be a cornerstone of successful new product launches.”

Of the 50 new food and beverage products analyzed, just eight showed shopper concentrations of more than 1% driving 80% of volume. Only one had a concentration surpassing 2%. The study also uncovered extremely low retention rates for new products, with just 11% of triers still engaged with a new item one year later.

Catalina defined a consistent shopper as one who shops at least two times every eight weeks for seven consecutive eight-week periods.

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The pact is Sysomos' effort to provide its clients access to anonymized and aggregated Facebook topic data.

Social intelligence company Sysomos today announced a partnership with DataSift to provide its clients access to anonymized and aggregated Facebook topic data.

Sysomos' social listening and analytics products—MAP and Heartbeat—will soon include the addition of the social networking behemoth's data. With that social data, those tools will attempt to provide marketers insights into what audiences are engaged by and sharing on Facebook about events, brands, subjects, and activities. 

“More than 1.4 billion people use Facebook to engage with what interests them, and well over half visit Facebook every day,” Lindsay Sparks, CEO, Sysomos, said in a release. “The crucial addition of Facebook topic data to the Sysomos platform will enable marketers, advertisers, and agencies to better understand customers; reach new, relevant audiences; and more importantly, deliver more targeted and relevant customer experiences.”

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But its CPM of $6.29 is almost double that of its owner's.

Picture this: Instagram bests its owner.

Instagram released its advertising API to third-parties last month and is already posting some positive numbers, according to Salesforce.com, whose Marketing Cloud is an Instagram partner.

Instagram's click-through rate for August thus far is 1.50%, almost double that of Facebook, its parent company. At 42 cents, its average cost-per-click is two cents higher than Facebook's. But while Instagram shows promise as a direct marketing tool, right now it may be a tad pricey for brand marketers. Its cost per thousand of $6.29 exceeds Facebook's to the tune of 90%.

Salesforce analysts say it's likely that Instagram's large format ad type contributes to its high engagement rate. “Instagram is a relatively new platform for digital advertising, but these results show it has the potential to be a powerful one,” says Marketing Cloud CEO Scott McCorkle.

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Marketers have been handed magic tech beans to lift them to unheard-of heights. But according to a new study, they are developing acrophobia.

In the old English fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk, young Jack's cow stops giving milk and, on the way to the market to sell her, a man (Is that Marc Benioff?) gives him some magic beans. He plants the beans, a giant stalk grows, he climbs it, and finds himself in the lair of a giant counting his money. He steals a bag of gold and climbs back down the beanstalk. Then he climbs back up and steals a goose that lays golden eggs. On his third foray, he steals a harp that plays itself, but this time he is caught. The giant chases him and will surely kill him, so he cuts the beanstalk down.

Not a bad allegory for the advent of digital marketing, is it? Marketers have been showered with magic technological tools allowing them to erect towering new business platforms seemingly overnight. But the tools are so many, and the platforms so unwieldy, that few are able to keep it up and many may even daydream about—like Jack—chopping it down.

“We have this big responsibility on our shoulders now. It's going to make us or it's going to crush us,” said Liz Miller, SVP of the CMO Council.

This week the CMO Council released a report based on input from 268 senior marketing executives that placed them in two distinct camps as concerns digital marketing. Split almost 50-50 were the leaders who saw themselves ably working the system and the laggards who admitted they're adapting slowly or not at all.

“If you look at marketers' job descriptions today, they're doing a billion things. It's become a huge, massively important job,” Miller said. “Senior management has embraced digital and is saying, ‘Hey marketing, here are your nine million tasks for today.' So you have a lot of marketers reverting to their comfort zones, just grabbing the walls for a second.”

The poll indicated that marketing executives were in a tizzy managing the three legs of the digital stool—the API economy, the emergence of the digital enterprise, and the looming explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the most noteworthy findings was that leaders assigned all three of these areas high importance, while the laggards didn't. Asked what technology would “very significantly” impact customer engagement, only 28% of laggards named IoT compared to 89% of leaders. Three quarters of the pace-setters awarded similar status to digital enterprise and APIs versus only 43 and 24%, respectively, of slow adapters.

The dearth of digital proficiency among marketers became clearly apparent when they are asked how well they executed multichannel campaigns. Only 5% said they did it “extremely well,” and just 14% rated themselves “very good.” More than a quarter (27%) said they were slowly evolving in multichannel and 18% admitted they were “not good at this time.”

“Each one of these areas is complex,” Miller noted. “The access to third-party plug-ins through the API economy seismically shifts the very direction of commerce and data. All of a sudden one in-store experience in Best Buy also impacts Whirlpool. That leads directly into IoT, where it's not just my fridge telling me to pick up OJ, it's people sending out important data through their pacemakers or insulin monitors. And digital enterprise is not just about marketing, it's about supply chain.”

Miller said that this report, among the many reports issued by the CMO Council, sounded a singular alarm to her. “I got this overwhelming sense of marketers saying, ‘We're doing moderately well.' The fact that it's now seemingly okay to say ‘We're evolving a little bit' was terrifying to me.”

She wants to tell all those marketing Jacks and Jills running away from the giant to steel themselves, turn around, and face him. If they don't, they could well miss being a part of history.

“We're changing business! Marketing, the coloring-in department is changing business!” Miller exclaimed. “Those laggard marketers are going to go the way of brand marketers if they don't change.”

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Nutrition is the main concern among millennial mothers when preparing their child's lunch—more so than price and convenience.

Mobile may assume a bigger role this year, but another player in the back-to-school game has emerged: healthy foods. Indeed, marketers should take note that millennial mothers hold nutrition in a higher regard than even price and convenience.

According to a survey from Influenster, nine out of 10 millennial moms prepare healthy lunches for their children. Of this group, nutrition (88%) is the main concern—more so than price (65%) and convenience (52%)—when shopping for lunch food. In addition, gluten-free (8%) is the lowest concern; well-balanced (74%), tastiness (69%), low sugar (43%), and low fat (19%) are other concerns.

The survey—which polled more than 5,000 millennial moms—shows that six out of 10 millennial moms prepare their children's lunches differently than their mothers prepared theirs. On the other hand, millennial moms share a bond with the “old-fashioned” way in that despite the demographic being the most digitally connected generation of mothers, they still prefer to shop in supermarkets (88%) as opposed to online (7%). Big-box retailers (81%), farmer's markets (42%), local delis (23%), and convenience stores (13%) are their preferred places to do business. However, 57% do all their researching on the Internet before they head to the store.

Not much of a surprise as word of mouth (79%) is the top influencer for millennial moms trying to make a shopping decision. Online reviews (59%), social media (57%), brand websites (43%), television (37%), news websites (16%), and newspapers (15%) are the other influencers.

Top foods
Millennial moms rank the following packaged foods as healthy lunch box additions:

1. Yogurt (87%)
2. Cheese (82%)
3. Cereal/granola (72%)
4. Juice boxes (70%)
5. Peanut butter (67%)
6. Dried fruits (54%)
7. Milk (51%)
8. Nuts (49%)

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It acquires A/B testing and segmentation company Maxymiser.

Oracle added a new weapon to its marketing cloud arsenal today with the acquisition of Maxymiser, a company known for A/B testing and software that parses out metrics based on customer segments. An Oracle statement announcing the deal, which did not disclose terms, credited Maxymiser with being in possession of the “most powerful solution for optimizing Web and mobile customer experiences.”

Maxymiser is the latest plum to be picked among a slew of recent marketing cloud acquisitions among Oracle, Salesforce.com, and Adobe. The New York-based Maxymiser's client list includes Calvin Klein, HSBC Bank, Lacoste, Lufthansa, and Wyndham Hotels. Optimizely is one of its competitors.

The canned quote from Oracle's press release expresses the same hopes for multichannel relevancy and personalization that accompany all of these acquisitions. “Companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways to differentiate their brands while increasing both ROI and loyalty based on optimized customer experiences,” was the reasoning behind the buy attributed to Thomas Kurian, Oracle's president of product development.

Based on its segmentation analyses, Maxymiser's cloud-based software can deliver customers predictive offers and product recommendations based on their online behavior.

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Direct mailers and catalogers worry that the Postal Service won't be able to predict on-time delivery by the advent of the fall mailing season.

Late mail increased by 494 million pieces in the first six months of 2015, a 48% rise over the same period last year, according to a management alert released last week by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service. Due to drastic changes in service standards implemented in January, a rise in delays was expected, yet the sheer volume of lateness has big mailers concerned about the status of their fall mailings.

“The Postal Service made some massive changes with the 24-hour operational clock that has taken some time to recover from,” said Hamilton Davison, president and executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association.  

Single-piece First Class Mail was eliminated in January and a significant portion of Standard Mail was shifted from a two-day to a three-day service standard. USPS backed the move in part with a 2014 survey of consumers, 80% of whom said that the change would have no effect on them or that they could adjust to the change.

Mailers agreed to adjust as well, and they expected a falloff in delivery times. What they're more concerned about is being given ample time to adjust to them.

“At last weeks' MTAC  meeting, USPS officials explained why they feel ready to handle the busy fall mailing season with the usual level of performance,” Davison said. “But we need to have better mechanisms to understand what it is actually running rather than receiving after-the-fact reporting. Given notice, we can adjust to most anything.”

The Postal Service noted that several severe winter storms exacerbated the challenges presented by network and operational changes. Indeed, the OIG report notes that on-time delivery improved along with the weather. There were 472 million late deliveries in January 2014, 85 million in April, and only 64 million in June.

The Postal Service uses an External First Class Measurement system, which has IBM sending out test mailings and tracking them to obtain a view of delivery standards. It's an imperfect metric, said Grayhair Software analyst Jody Berenblatt, something USPS itself recognizes. “We can have a better system when and if the Postal Regulatory Commission approves the Postal Service's request to perform real-time measurement itself,” she said.

But bad metrics weren't the problem in the first half of 2015, Berenblatt maintained. “I get the weather and the significant operational changes, but they said they sent out tiger teams to fix the problem, so why wasn't it fixed?”

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Five mailers groups petition the PRC to define what constitutes trivial rate increases in operational changes installed by the Postal Service.

Upset over Postal Service procedure in which operational changes translate into de facto rate increases for certain classes of mail, a coalition of mailer associations filed a petition with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to address the problem yesterday.

At the heart of the group's petition is a desire for the PRC to define the legal term de minimis, literally “trivial,” in relation to changes made in postal operations. Currently, the Commission defers to the Postal Service's estimation of a de minimis increase in rates when instituting a change. Mailers argue, however, that attendant costs that go along with procedural alterations can be exorbitant, or even prohibitive.

One current example is the Postal Service's effort at creating the “perfect bundle” for the Automated Package Processing System (APPS) to minimize costs of broken bundles. “We have situations where certain mailer providers could not afford to make the investment in new equipment needed to create the perfect bundle,” says Joe Schick, director of postal affairs for Quad/Graphics. “It would change the cost structure and outweigh the benefits.”

The petition also asks the PRC to create a rule-making proceeding that would require the Postal Service to file a notice of an operational change and give mailers at least 15 days to respond with their evaluations. Should, based on those comments, the PRC decide that the proposed change will have a greater than de minimis rate effect, the Postal Service should be ordered to file a notice of rate change, say mailers.

“[The Postal Service comes] at you with a proposal: 'This is for efficiency and here's what we want you to do.' That change does not currently require a rate review in terms of what impact it may have on the rate cap,” notes Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom). “They don't even get around to making any determination at all whether it costs the mailers anything. We are asking the PRC to tell the Postal Service, ‘Hey, here's a yardstick.'”

Changes afoot in procedures for the Intelligent Mail barcode and pallets for the Flats Sequencing System could also add to mailers' postal costs above and beyond a CPI rate increase, mailers contend. Groups who took part in the filing of the petition include PostCom, the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, the Major Mailers Association, the Association of Magazine Media, and the National Postal Policy Council.

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CEO Adam Marchick says the $45 million will be used to explore new personalized pathways in multichannel marketing.

Mobile marketing automation provider Kahuna issued a double whammy today. It announced $45 million in Series B funding and released what it described as a “significant evolution” in its technology platform.

“This is going to cause an evolution of the marketing department,” proclaimed Kahuna CEO Adam Marchick (above) in an interview with Direct Marketing News. “Right now it has pushed marketers and email marketers and instead it will have engagement marketers.”

Marchick claimed Kahuna's upgraded platform is the first to present true capability to engage customers with personalized message at the right time and on the correct device. “You will be able to create different push messages, emails, and Facebook ads and use Kahuna to engage each individual the right way.”

One improvement instituted by Kahuna is the collection and rationalization of data to the individual level among billions of users, with data refreshed on a regular basis to include knowing which of several screens users are sitting behind. The marketing automation system helps marketers target campaigns to each channel, using historical data to inform the proper time to engage or to follow up with a customer.

“The personalization is an absolute key. One of our biggest challenges is reaching customers with personalized messages at scale and, using Kahuna, we've found push messages to be a huge boon for us,” says Michael Rodriguez, director of iOS and personalization products for The Weather Channel.

Because his company engages people several times a day in various on-the-go situations, Rodriguez says that relevant push messages are essential to keeping people safe and, in turn, keeping them using the Weather Channel app. “With push, the expectation of relevancy is at such a high degree, it's easy to turn away. But this system has been unique in providing us with visibility of the opt-in, opt-out situation.”

Tenaya Capital led the new funding round, which will pay for new talent for Kahuna, as well as global expansion. But it will all be in service of accomplishing the company's core mission, Marchick said. “We have just scratched the surface on automation,” he said. “How do you get to the point where you're sending out 10 million messages and each one feels like a handwritten note?”

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The CRM leader follows the example of Instagram and Pinterest with transactional capabilities for its Community Cloud.

Salesforce.com joins the party with a click-to-buy option in its Community Cloud

Instagram introduced buy buttons this year. Pinterest quickly followed suit with Buyable Pins. Now Salesforce.com joins the party with a click-to-buy option in its Community Cloud, claiming it as a first among enterprise community solutions.

It's an impressive move, according to consultant Brent Leary of CRM Essentials. "We've learned from Amazon the importance of constantly removing the friction that sits between consumers and their ability to quickly buy things they've decided to purchase. Now this capability from Salesforce puts the power and control of this capability in the organization's hands,” Leary says.

A press release from Salesforce announcing the buy buttons says they're a reaction to enterprise clients desirous of the revenue-driving abilities of a Facebook or Pinterest in an online community setting.

“Our goal is to make it easier for our customers to grow their businesses and today we're the first enterprise solution that enables buy buttons for any online community,” says Nasi Jazayeri, EVP of the Salesforce Community Cloud, Salesforce. “Now any company can deliver the same click-to-buy experience as popular consumer services and grow their businesses with social commerce.”

Leary is optimistic that that's exactly what will happen: “Making it easier to buy right in the middle of community conversations increases the likelihood a transaction will take place, if only because the proximity to purchase just got a little closer."

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Advertisers are leaving $14 billion in 'free advertising' on the table.

New research from Netsertive and Borrell Associates shows that brands are missing out on billions in annual revenue due to inefficient and outdated co-op marketing programs. In fact, up to 40% of co-op marketing funds earmarked by brand managers for local advertising remain unused each year.

“The Changing Face of Co-Op Marketing” report includes insights from more than 150 brands and local businesses; it explores how digital marketing trends are altering the co-op landscape and the persistent barriers to adoption that brands and local businesses face.

“We were stunned to discover that advertisers are leaving $14 billion in ‘free advertising' on the table—about twice as much as three years ago,” Gordon Borrell, CEO, Borrell Associates, said in a press release. “This is because co-op programs are out of sync with local advertisers' changing needs, particularly in the digital realm. With a few adjustments and the help of new technologies to grease the skids, brands have a big opportunity to tweak these co-op programs in a way that transforms local business partners into an incredibly sophisticated and powerful sales force.”

Other findings include:

• Co-op is a dirty word among brands and local businesses. Though 53% of brands and 65% of local businesses participated in co-op marketing programs last year, both boast dissatisfaction and constant challenges. Half of brands cite a lack of digital marketing knowledge among local businesses as the biggest barrier to co-op marketing success, while local businesses cite too much paperwork (38%), too many rules (38%), and a lack of information (31%) as their biggest challenges.
  
  
• Local businesses are leading digital marketing spend locally. When it comes to local marketing spend, a majority (61%) of local businesses prioritize digital advertising over newspaper (56%), direct mail (53%), radio (45%), and cable TV (35%). Brands, on the other hand, still favor traditional mediums—newspaper (85%), radio (71%), and direct mail (71%)—over digital advertising (69%).
  
  
• Search, display, and email marketing are still the most impactful local marketing mediums. Despite the plethora of digital marketing innovation, brands and local businesses still rely on search (62%), display (67%), and email marketing (46%) to drive leads and sales locally.
  
  
• Brands and local businesses aren't prioritizing mobile marketing. Despite consumers' growing device dependency, 73% of brands and local businesses aren't leveraging co-op funds for their mobile marketing efforts. Those that remain focused primarily on mobile search and mobile-optimized websites. As a matter of fact, 61% of local businesses report having mobile-optimized websites.
  
  
• Adoption of digital video advertising is lagging locally. A large denomination (83%) of brands don't provide co-op funds to support partner use of digital video advertising. In fact, 46% say that fewer than 20% of their local partners currently use digital video advertising and 68% rate partner knowledge of the medium as novice or poor. Also, 22% of local businesses report never having used digital video advertising.
  
  
• Millennials are driving local sales opportunities—and brands are missing out. While 43% of local businesses reported an increase in sales to millennials in 2014, the majority (68%) of brands do not yet offer co-op support for millennial targeting at the local level.

To combat this growing trend, Brendan Morrissey, CEO and cofounder, Netsertive, said in a release that “[i]t's time to revitalize co-op marketing programs with a focus on digital marketing channels and to reinvent the broken relationship between brands and their local business partners.”

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Telligent will become part of Verint's customer engagement optimization business.

Verint's Elan Moriah

Business intelligence provider Verint today announced its acquisition of Telligent, a move designed to energize the communities segment of its operation. The company will become part of Verint's customer engagement optimization business.

Telligent markets a set of social software applications for communities for creating forums, blogs, and social tools such as likes, ratings, and comments. The company has been cited by both the Forrester Wave and Gartner Magic Quadrant ratings as a strong performer in social software.

“This acquisition extends our offering and introduces a host of advanced capabilities to help our customers address digital transformation, social selling, and customer self-service head on,” said Elan Moriah, president of VerintEnterprise Intelligence Solutions, in a press release.

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The emergence of Alphabet, Google's restructured business hierarchy, had people furiously banging out their ABC's on Twitter Tuesday.

Google dominated Twitter trending lists throughout Tuesday after founder Larry Page announced the launch of Alphabet, a new parent company that aims to house Google's disparate business divisions.

The intent here is to use this new macro nesting company to allow “[Google] more management scale, as [it] can run things independently that aren't very related,” Page said in a company blog post titled “G is for Google,” which was also hosted on abc.xyz. Page announced that Sundar Pichai will now serve as CEO of Google, though it's unclear exactly which business operations will remain under his purview.

While a leaner Google certainly makes sense—especially considering how far the brand has expanded beyond search—this restructure may face challenges completely independant of Google's operations. German automaker BMW already owns the domain alphabet.com, which hosts its B2B business vehicle fleet services business. However this story unfolds, Alphabet has everybody talking.

Alphabet

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A survey shows that today's retailers have a golden opportunity to better understand consumers—though they should proceed with caution.

Consumers are like snowflakes: no two are alike. So it should come as no surprise, then, that retailers should ixnay a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing and in-store technology.

A survey from solution-provider First Insight shows that retailers in this day and age have a golden opportunity to use technology to understand consumers in a more meaningful way. With regards to in-store technologies, though, retailers walk a fine line between gaining and alienating customers—as more than 75% of respondents say they would not shop at a store that employed facial recognition technology for marketing purposes. However, as usual, discounts are the key to circumventing this—the number dropped to 55% when respondents were informed there would be a benefit to the technology.

The survey, which polled 1,085 U.S. consumers this past June, says that beacons are by far the most talked about in-store technology, though they also carry a low consumer awareness regarding their technology and benefits—70% of consumers don't know the definition of an in-store beacon. However, “old” technology still may reign supreme, as respondents list price barcode scanners as the most helpful in-store technology.

Price comes first, social media last
The biggest shopping days revolve around deals. Whether it's Black Friday or Cyber Monday, consumers are drawn to the best price for the highest quality products; for millennials, price is especially key as more than 40% of this group consider it the most important factor when making a purchase.

Despite social media's popularity, more than 60% of respondents never interact with a retailer's social platforms while shopping in-store—presenting an opportunity for retailers to refine their marketing strategies.

So long, celebrities and fashion mags
The days of wanting to be “Like Mike” are long gone, and consumers are adopting their own styles. More than 90% of respondents indicate they aren't more likely to buy an apparel item if an athlete or celebrity endorses it. That could lead to big savings for retailers, as marketers are planning to spend $600 billion worldwide this year—part of which will go toward hiring celebs for endorsements.

Consumers are also bucking another trend: They're saying goodbye to models in fashion magazines and are more enamored with top Instagram stars—with millennials at the forefront, of course. Just 5% of millennials identify fashion magazines as the way to keep up with fashion trends. However, 40% of respondents over the age of 50 say fashion mags as the key means to discover promotional materials.

Speaking of millennials, even though it seems they are always glued to their smartphones, 98% do not wish to be texted by retailers about promotions. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 50 say they prefer to receive promotions via email.

"This survey revealed the importance to retailers in understanding their target consumer, from their preferences regarding in-store technologies to the small but important details such as whether it's better to reach them by text or email," said Jim Shea, CMO of First Insight. "Consumers today expect the shopping experience to be personalized and want retailers to evolve along with their preferences."

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With the CPI close to zero, there's a chance for no rate hike in 2016. That could stymie operational improvements beneficial to mailers.

No rate hike could derail FSS savings.

The exigent surcharge's expected demise next April is, of course, a good thing for mailers. Even better, the CPI-U (urban consumer price index), which is used to set the percentage of the Postal Service's annual rate increase, was up only 0.1% this June over last June. That sets up a possible scenario in which, come spring of 2016, mailers would see the 4.3% surcharge go away and no higher rate installed—a hallelujah situation if ever there was one.

But nothing is that simple when it comes to matters postal. In fact, Joe Schick, Quad/Graphics' director of postal affairs, maintains that no CPI rate increase could turn out to be a bad thing for mailers. “It's good for the obvious reason, but it could be bad if it interferes with adjustments to mail preparation,” Schick wrote in a blog this week.

Under the Postal Service's annual request for, say, a 2% increase like the one granted for 2015 are rate changes all around that number for separate classes of mail. Big mailers like Quad have several efficiency projects surrounding some of those classes in the works with USPS that would require rate changes to be put into effect. But class changes are nearly impossible to attain without a blanket CPI rate boost.

“For instance, we have an ongoing request with the [Postal Rate Commission] about Intelligent Mail barcode full service, and the Commission ruled that the service change would constitute a rate change,” Schick told Direct Marketing News. “What kind of regulations changes can you make outside of a price change.”

Schick is mostly concerned about changes proposed for the Flats Sequencing System (FSS) mail that could award significant savings to his company and, in turn, its bulk mailer clients. Currently, Quad and other big mailers must dedicate each pallet to just one “scheme,” or set of contiguous ZIP codes. The proposed new system would allow multi-scheme pallets holding up to six schemes. But any savings mailers might gain from this change must come in the form of a lower rate OKed by the PRC.

“The exigent rollback would be considered a price change, so all they have to do is pull that out. They know what those numbers are going to be, so the process doesn't allow for other changes,” Schick said.

Schick noted that the Postal Service's new CMO Jim Cochrane and its VP of Pricing Cynthia Sanchez are aware of the situation and are working with mailers to address it. “They've been very straightforward with us,” Schick said. “They are very sincere in wanting to do the right thing.” 

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Third-party sellers "same store sales" increased 30% on Amazon, a four-point rise over June. Sales on eBay and other online marketplaces declined.

July's Prime Day online shopping event continues to rack up favorable metrics. This week's come from ChannelAdvisor, whose July “Same Store Sales Report” for third-party sellers had its Amazon receipts up 30%, a four-point rise over June. ChannelAdvisor's same store sales (SSS) numbers indicate year-over-year changes in the gross merchandise value its clients move in online marketplaces.

Amazon's strong July resulted in poor numbers for competitive online bazaars. Ebay's July SSS dropped to 5.8 from 7.2% in June, and other marketplaces dipped to 16.1 from 19.2% combined. Google Shopping/Product Listing Ads dropped from 28.7 to 13.2% in the period, while other comparison shopping engines fell to 4.3 from 15.8%.

More than Prime Day figured into Google Shopping's decline in July, according to ChannelAdviser. Budgetary adjustments made by marketers responding to skyrocketing cost-per-click rates likely played an equal role. A charting of CPC rates for keywords on Google released last month by ChannelAdvisor showed them rising from six cents in June 2014 to 26 cents this June.

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Will the creation of the Alphabet holding company result in greater focus on the operations of Google search?

In his blog announcing the creation of Alphabet, Google Cofounder Larry Page said the holding company structure will allow the company to independently manage unrelated businesses headed by strong CEOs and make the core Google search business better through greater focus. Marketers whose search strategies depend heavily on the company should be heartened by the news, observers say.

“This means [Google managers] can expand what they want to do as a business entity. I would think the move would serve marketers better in the long run,” said Thomas Ordahl, chief strategy officer at the WPP-owned branding agency Landor Associates. “Last week Google was a product brand, a consumer brand, a B2B brand. In the case of the core Google business, they can now focus more clearly on the needs of the people who pay the bills.”

Structurally, Alphabet gives the company the wherewithal to innovate without drawing from or casting a shadow on the core business, said Alex Lirtsman, chief strategist at digital agency Ready Set Rocket. “Google is a search engine and it's also a venture fund. This allows them to say, 'We're a long-term venture fund, but we're not going to be focused on what the quarterly numbers look like to affect what we're doing,'” he said.

The institution of Alphabet, for instance, better positions the company to reintroduce Google Glass as an industrial product. “They will be able to push innovation fast with less attention from shareholders. It resets the playing field and gives the core product a little breathing room to innovate, as well,” Lirtsman said.

Page had high praise in his announcement for Sundar Pichai, who becomes CEO of Google in an Alphabet world. “Google itself is also making all sorts of new products, and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation—continuing to stretch the boundaries,” Page wrote.

David Rodnitzky, CEO of the Silicon Valley agency 3Q Digital, doesn't think the move will have an immediate impact on marketers. He sees it as a management, not a marketing, move: “AdWords has tons of engineers and product managers busily working away on a myriad of new features. I think this change is more about creating focus for senior executives than it is about making AdWords better, worse, or more or less important.”

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Be an agent of change within your marketing department and adjust your holiday strategy based on customer preferences.

You don't have to be a spy to detect that marketers are already gearing up for the 2015 holiday season. And this year they're pulling out all of the gadgets: email, mobile, social, and more. But what exactly do consumers expect this holiday season? No need to call Tom Cruise to crack this code. Marketers with laser-sharp focus know that holiday shoppers want three things: convenience, personalization, and a channel-agnostic experience.

So this year's mission, if marketers choose to accept it, is to meet these expectations both online and in-store. Review the following data from a Listrak-sponsored Harris Poll of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers to refine your strategy and make the impossible possible. Good luck.

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78% of parents will use a smartphone while back-to-school shopping this year.

Mobile is helping parents ace this year's back-to-school shopping season. A recent study by Retale shows that 78% of parents will use a smartphone to gear up for the fall—a 7% uptick compared to last year.

The weekly ads and deals company surveyed 1,000 parents with kids in kindergarten through 12th grade about their shopping behaviors. And when it comes to back-to-school shopping, these moms and dads do their homework. Among the 78% of parents who plan on using their smartphones to shop, 63% intend to use their mobile devices to compare prices. Other popular shopping activities include searching for coupons/deals (62%), creating shopping lists (55%), accessing saved coupons (53%), checking store hours (50%), researching products (47%), finding nearby store locations (46%), checking product reviews (41%), and buying directly from the device (37%).

“Smartphones have increasingly become the go-to shopping tool for parents to research, plan, and organize their back-to-school purchases,” said Retale's President Pat Dermody in a statement. “Retailers need to keep up with mobile's rise in consumer shopping behavior, incorporating in-store and digital mobile content to drive visits and purchases. If they don't, parents will simply shop elsewhere."

Thirty-eight percent of parents perform these mobile shopping activities both in- and out-of-store. Location preferences can be seen in the chart below:

In other words, your omnichannel marketing should always be in session.

What's more, almost all (89%) parents say that retailers' availability of mobile coupons and deals determines where they shop. In fact, 32% of parents say they prefer to access back-to-school deals via retailers' apps or websites. Others prefer to access them through coupon or deal aggregator apps or sites (24%), on the product's app or website (23%), and by receiving deals via text messages from retailers (20%).

And while the mobile device is where many parents start their shopper journey, the store is where most finish them. According to the study, 82% of parents plan to make at least 70% of their back-to-school purchases in-store this year, and almost one third (32%) plan on purchasing all of their items in-store. 

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The new company's products will be a best-of-both-worlds combination, with DataMentors' technologies and Relevate's data products paired up.

Business intelligence and Data-as-a-Service provider DataMentors recently announced its partnership with Relevate, effective immediately. Brook Venture Partners led the financing, with co-investors Bay Capital and Spring Capital Partners.

The new company, which will adopt the DataMentors moniker, will boast DataMentors' CEO Bob Orf and President Anders Ekman in their same respective roles. Marketing data and services provider Relevate's CEO Steve Rao will take over the COO role, CTO Damon Horst will become CIO, and Vice Chairman Peg Kuman will remain with the company in her senior advisory role.

“DaaS, which is completely changing the game for marketers today, is a revolutionary new way of delivering in-market customers and prospects to a company's channel systems or marketing programs in real-time,” Orf said in a press release. “It's thrilling to be able to lead the charge by combining the strengths of two best-in-breed companies to provide marketers with a truly unique and unfair competitive advantage.”

The new company's products will be a best-of-both-worlds combination, with DataMentors' technologies and Relevate's data products paired up.

“We are extremely pleased to partner with Relevate as we push forward to bring new, exciting opportunities to help companies grow with technology and data,” Ekman said in the statement. “This partnership will pave the future for our combined company to continue to flourish as the leading Data-as-a-Service provider, and ultimately lead to more marketing ROI for our clients.”

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Its 20% stake in Suning will give it access to 1,700 same-day delivery stations.

Suning has distribution access to 90% of China.

What if Amazon bought a seat on the board of Best Buy? That's essentially what's happening in China, where Alibaba announced it will pay $4.6 billion for a 20% stake in Suning Commerce Group, which operates more than 1,600 electronics stores in the Middle Kingdom. Best Buy runs close to 1,800 worldwide.

The move by China's biggest—and the world's most profitable—Web marketplace signals the necessity of having immediate delivery options in place for even large, unwieldy merchandise. According to a press release announcing the deal, Suning will provide that capability to Alibaba's third-party sellers via eight national and 57 regional distribution centers covering 90% of China. It operates some 1,700 last-mile delivery stations.

“This new alliance brings forth a new commerce model that fully integrates online and offline,” said Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma in a statement.

Added Suning Chairman Zhang Jindong, “This collaboration signals a new trend in the Internet age: Strengthening China's traditional industries by leveraging the power of Internet.”

In the U.S., Amazon performs same-day delivery in New York, San Diego, and Tampa Bay as a free service to Prime members on orders of $35 or more. Ebay recently ended its same-day delivery experiment, judging it nonessential for its seller community. Deliv, a same-day delivery service, meanwhile, has expanded to eight markets that include Chicago, Los Angeles, and New Jersey.

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App installs drop off precipitously in February, but that doesn't stop marketers from paying dearly to obtain them.

Mobile marketers who still set promotional budgets on a monthly or annual basis need to reassess their spending strategies, according to an analysis performed by a mobile agency.

Fetch, a Dentsu Aegis unit that provides both creative and media services, analyzed more than 12 billion data points worldwide over the last year to determine the effective cost per install (eCPI) of apps. It learned that the metric varied widely from month to month, costing marketers small fortunes in wasted media.

Consider the “February Effect.” Fetch found that eCPI hit extreme heights in that month compared to relatively low costs per acquisition in January. That's because, in January, people are still getting to know the new phones they received as Christmas presents and are downloading apps with wild abandon. In February comes a download lull, yet marketers continue to promote at nearly the same levels as in January.

“They're still spending the money, but the installs are not coming through because most people already downloaded them the previous month,” says Fetch Head of Data Dan Wilson. “Demand for inventory is still high, so media prices remain high and marketers lose efficiency.”

Fetch's weekly eCPI analysis detected a huge spike in the third week of February. In fact, mid-month tends to be the most expensive period year-round. Insertion orders placed at the beginning of the month usually take effect mid-month, leading to a depletion of inventory and an inflation of prices.

The fact that this was the first time Fetch observed a February Effect gives even greater caution to marketers finding their way on mobile. The channel, though ubiquitous, is still evolving as a marketing medium. “User behavior is never constant,” Wilson says. “This sort of audience behavior is still very changeable and it's really important to keep on top of how that behavior is changing.”

Breaking eCPI down on a weekly basis, Fetch found weekends to be the most costly, likely due to high advertising volumes dampening results. Costs for incentivized install offers hit their nadir on Wednesdays, rose on Thursdays and Fridays, and found their high watermark on Saturdays. Non-incentivized installs, interestingly, saw high eCPIs on Thursdays and low ones on Saturdays.

As user behavior changes on a near daily basis, so must marketer behavior change, preaches Wilson. “In a perfect world, you'd have fluid budgets with no upper or lower limits, like investing in the stock market,” he says.

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Campaign Monitor today announced what it claims is the first transactional email service designed and built for marketers.

Campaign Monitor today announced what it claims is the first transactional email service designed and built for marketers. The new service is built directly into Campaign Monitor's existing platform.

The service aims to allow marketers to make every email a branded experience, with features such as a drag-and-drop email builder, out-of-the-box mobile readiness, optimization and testing tools, advanced personalization and segmentation, and rich reporting. 

“Until now, marketers haven't had the self-service email marketing technology to design and personalize every customer-facing email,” said Kraig Swensrud, the company's CMO, in a statement. “With Campaign Monitor's new transactional email service, millions of marketers globally are now empowered to turn every customer email into a personalized, branded conversation.”

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While traffic continued to decline, retailers were able to drive greater storefront conversions while bolstering duration rates.

One retailer's loss is its customers' gain. That is, according to Euclid Analytics.

The retail analytics company recently released its “US Retail Benchmark” report, which shows that to combat declining in-store traffic, brick-and-mortar stores are using aggressive promotional campaigns and retooling the in-store experience via omnichannel strategies. This has boosted engagement rates, though retailers are still struggling to maintain loyalty.

The report, which measures data on hundreds of millions of domestic shopping sessions between January and June of this year, suggests a moderately positive outlook for sales growth across all categories in the second half of 2015 due to increased economic gains from continued job growth, lower cost of living, and disposable income growth. Euclid also expects consumers' willingness to spend to catch up with their increased disposable income in the latter half of the year.

Other findings include:

• As traffic continued to decline, retailers were able to drive greater storefront conversions while bolstering duration rates—the average visit duration time in-store increased by about four minutes from 2014.
• In June the bounce rate declined to a 12-month low of 6.5%—this indicates that retailers are actively engaging shoppers through relevant, timely assistance or enticing store layouts.
• Storefront conversion—the number of shoppers who enter a store as a percentage of the total foot traffic—rose over the last six months to 9% from 8.5% last year.
• In the first six months loyalty from active repeat customers totaled 11.7% of total visits measured—a decline from 12.8% during the same time last year.

“The continued erosion of in-store traffic has been raising alarms among every brick-and-mortar retailer,” said Brent Franson, CEO at Euclid Analytics. “We're seeing hopeful signs that retailers are starting to counter this declining trend and making every in-store visit count. That said, the unexpected poor showing in June also demonstrates that retailers are not yet out of the woods. Ultimately, retailers must boost their loyalty metrics and win the hearts and wallets of the mobile-savvy shopper.”

According to the report, the best shopping month of Q1 and Q2 2015 was April (also the only month where traffic grew YoY—7.6%); the best shopping day of that period was Monday, April 6. Storefront conversion also hit a high for 2015—9.5%—as promotional activities successfully attracted value-conscious consumers.

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