What to avoid when looking for Ecommerce payment solutions
For most ecommerce retailers, payment gateways are seen as a necessary evil. Yes, they help you accept payments from your customers, but they’re not at the top of your list of organizations you like working with. They’ve developed a reputation of being sleazy, money-grubbing middlemen that take advantage of retailers, both big and small.
Some modern payment gateways, like Stripe, Braintree, and Sezzle, are finding ways to create more value for retailers and they’ve developed good reputations because of that. But problems remain. And if payment gateways want to shake their negative image within the e-commerce community, these are the five things they should focus on improving first.
1. They’re too expensive.
Payment gateways have long been rebuked by retailers for their high processing costs. The average rate today is 2.9% + 30c per transaction for online, or card-not-present, transactions. These costs…
Chart of the Day: Customers around the world chose retailers with loyalty programs over ones which don't.
As this chart from Nielson shows, customers spending decisions are highly likely to be influenced by the presence of a customer loyalty program, with 65% of US and European customers reporting they'd buy from a retailer with a customer loyalty program over one that didn't, all else being equal.
A majority of those surveyed also reported they'd be more likely to continue doing business with a company that has a loyalty program, and on average over 60% said they'd be more likely to shop at online retailers if they provided similar loyalty benefits as in-store retailers.
That said, before you go rushing off to start a customer loyalty program for your online store, there is one caveat. All the survey respondents for this data set were themselves already members of a customer loyalty program. This means they may be predisposed to…
Chart of the day: Marketers are finding the difficulty of external/internal linking and web page load speed outstrips the effectiveness
In the November 2016 Search Engine Optimization Survey from Ascend2, they found that 57% of the 256 respondents understood that relevant content creation was the most effective tactics to boost their SEO traffic but at the same time it was also the most difficult. I'd suggest that this is mostly due it being time-consuming for marketers to create great content but also the competition to make it unique is high when it seems like everyone is doing inbound marketing.
Interestingly, the two tactics that were marked are more difficult than effective were external linking and web page load speed. Generating links to your site is hard and requires dedication from everyone in the marketing team to create high-quality engaging content that other site/bloggers will want…
Mobile is radically re-shaping the travel industry
The future of the travel industry is in customers’ hands — at their fingertips, to be exact. With a few apps, some swipes and clicks, and one-on-one conversations with big brands through social media, an entire travel experience will be planned and confirmed by the customer alone.
That’s a complete transformation from how it used to be. Not too long ago, if someone got the itch to visit an exotic location — or his grandmother in another state/country — he would pick up the phone and dial a travel agent. The expert on the other end of the line would then go to work conducting research and collecting brochures.
Fast-forward 10 years, and most travel agencies have closed shop, their agents succumbing to other lines of work. The world of travel has shifted…
How digital innovation is engaging audiences and improving customer experience in the airline / aviation sector
This is the first in a new series looking at digital innovation and transformation in different B2B sectors aimed to inspire business-to-business marketers, this post from regular B2B marketing commentator René Power looks at how digital technologies are being deployed within the blossoming air travel and aviation sector to enhance customer experiences at every stage of the process.
As you read, think about what ideas you might take forward into your own sector?
Air travel is a growing sector
There continues to be an explosion in air travel, which makes it a very lucrative industry to be in. Air travel numbers themselves are mind-boggling. Published forecasts predict the total number of people flying on U.S. airlines will increase by 0.8 percent from 2013 levels to 745.5 million in 2014 and grow to 1.15 billion in 2034.
But it's not just the U.S. The International Air Transport…
Chart of the Day: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Cart Abandonment Rates Jump to 68%
Cart Abandonment is the scourge of e-commerce retailers everywhere, and this year it seems to be on the increase, particularly where there are promotions. New data emerging from the two busiest ecommerce days of 2016 (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) shows extremely high cart abandonment rates across the board. These are particularly high on mobile devices, where 78% of carts are abandoned.
E-commerce retailers should be asking themselves, are 4 out of 5 people abandoning their carts because they're having second thoughts about purchasing, or is it because the checkout pages aren't properly optimized for mobile? If a customer has to use fiddly forms that are hard to complete on a Smartphone they are far more likely to abandon their cart.
It's not all bad news though. Although the cart abandonment rates are huge, many of these customers can be nudged…
Marketing Automation offers the key to effectively nurturing leads through the customer's journey
According to a research published by Smart Insights in 2016, 47% of businesses don't have a digital marketing strategy. The findings show that businesses have a big challenge structuring their digital marketing strategy and knowing where to start.
So, how about we start by laying down some of the groundwork that you need to lay down in order to create and implement aworld-class digital marketing strategy.
The strategy includes 4 key stages of the Smart Insights RACE framework - plus the initial Plan stage. Just in case you're not familiar with RACE, the stages are as follows:
1. Plan:
This stage involves creating the overall strategy with SMART goals and measurable KPIs to run your digital marketing strategy.
2. Reach:
Most customer’s journey’s begin through doing personal research instead of simply talking to a sales person. This means that providing content to feed this…
Examples of companies successfully using events to generate high-quality leads
Whether you’re organising events or attending them, face-to-face marketing can be one of the most powerful lead gen tools in your arsenal. Pair this up with a killer data capture campaign and you’ve got a recipe for success. We asked four companies to share their lead generation tips so you can follow their success.
Content
According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing – but costs 62% less. An industry report, for example, is a particularly cost-effective way to capture leads and get eyes on your brand.
Salesforce recruitment specialists Mason Frank International did just that at Dreamforce 2016, when the company unveiled its latest salary survey.
“From a lead-gen standpoint we wanted to engage job candidates by supplying genuinely useful information on how much…
