Got a promotional marketing campaign from the past year that you’re super proud of? Then we have just one simple question for you: Why wouldn’t you want to get your best work in front of this panel of judges?

The jury for this year’s PRO Awards, the industry’s largest and longest-running recognition program for B2C and B2B promotion marketing, is stacked with CMOs and high-level marketers from the likes of e.l.f. Beauty, Dickies, IBM, Disney Parks, Walgreens and Bayer.

Their brands are household names because they’ve mastered the art of promotion marketing. And come next week, this crew will share their thoughts on industry trends, best practices and stand-out brands in the marketplace. Get your work in front of them today.

The post 2023 PRO Awards: Call for Entries appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Though keeping up with Apple’s latest tech updates can feel like an endless exercise, it’s not all bad news for mobile marketers. Check out these marketing-friendly features, according to an article in Multichannel Merchant, that can actually boost brand engagement rather than hinder it.

The post Marketing-Friendly Features From Apple That Boost Engagement appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Consumers expect highly-personalized experiences when interacting with brands today—particularly if they’ve volunteered their time, money and personal information in exchange for them. But it’s what you do with that data that counts.

For first-party data-rich companies like DoorDash and e.l.f. Beauty, the key to leveraging consumer data to create exceptional brand experiences—while also adhering to privacy stipulations—is honoring that “implicit value exchange,” according to DoorDash CMO Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, who spoke on a panel at the POSSIBLE marketing conference in Miami last month.

The two companies have mined scores of data sets to fuel innovative marketing programs as creative solutions for their customers. For instance, the data insights team at DoorDash noticed that some consumers were ordering twice on the platform from different stores within a short period of time. So to solve the problem—and ultimately enhance the user experience—the brand created a new service called DoubleDash, which allows users to purchase items from nearby stores without the added service or delivery fee that incurs from multiple orders.

The advantage of having access to a trove of first-party data is that it’s actionable, which inspires marketers and their cross-functional teams to make decisions as close to real-time as possible. “We have something like 25 million monthly active users on our platform, so we have an enormous amount of first-party data,” Amoo-Gottfried said. “It’s coming right from the platform; it’s coming from behaviors.”

Another data point DoorDash is monitoring is communications to drivers, whom they refer to as “Dashers,” in real-time. “If a Dasher goes to a store and a store’s closed, we actually get a note,” Amoo-Gottfried explained. “But then how do we get the feedback from the Dasher that the store is closed? And in real-time, and take that store down and say, ‘this store’s closed, here are some other options that you have.’ We’re constantly learning as we go, from everything [in the app].”

First-Party Data Magic

Similarly, e.l.f. Beauty draws insights from its passionate community of loyalty members. “That’s where the first-party data magic really comes into play,” according to Ekta Chopra, the brand’s Chief Digital Officer, who spoke on the conference panel alongside the DoorDash CMO. “Our app has 1.2 million downloads, and 95 percent of our loyalty members love to shop in the app. So we learn how they like to shop, and which channel… As a brand that is in every single retailer, we don’t care where the consumer shops. But we do want to have that relationship with the consumer. The first-party data really allows us to do that.”

Honoring that relationship by providing an enhanced experience while adhering to data privacy regulations is critical, however. “The most fundamental thing is the implicit value exchange,” Amoo-Gottfried said. “How do we help use this data to actually create a better experience, and how do we ensure there are a ton of guardrails?” That translates to actively deciding not to use certain subsets of data if they don’t serve that purpose, he said. “There’s entire categories of things that we won’t target on, even though we might be aware of what they are, because we think it’s problematic to target on that identity factor… Get the things that you actually need and don’t touch the other stuff. We try to figure out which pieces are most predictive.”

Chopra agreed that the relationship between brand and consumer starts with trust, and that’s something she takes very seriously. “As marketing leaders, you have to pay attention to that, because one data leak is something that will really hurt your reputation, and especially as a public company, it becomes a bigger responsibility.”

Data Privacy Hacks

For marketers who are laser-focused on data privacy and compliance, Chopra has a few tips. First, she recommends working with your legal team to ensure there are data privacy considerations when crafting your data processing agreements (DPAs) with vendors. “Depending on how big you are and what kind of data you’re storing, it can get really complex,” she said. “So having that strong partnership with your legal team is important.”

Second, your cyber security policy should include a data privacy component to it and be right-sized appropriately—depending on the size of your customer base—so that you have adequate insurance in case any data leaks occur.

Third, consider the sensitivity of the data consumers are sharing with you and practice good data hygiene accordingly. “They’re giving you certain information that’s really private in some cases, depending on if you’re in the medical field—and beauty there’s some elements, too,” Chopra said. “You should know where that data is transferring in your ecosystem, whether it’s this system or that system. There are tools, of course, that can do that. But from a good data hygiene perspective, understanding that is super important.”

While companies seek to mine more and more consumer data, great responsibility comes with that exercise. “As you become bigger, of course you want more data… but you should also know that it adds a layer of complexity with private information,” Chopra said. Moreover, at a certain point you may be asked to delete it—and you need to be ready for that and have the tools in place to prove it, she said. “So when people do come in and do an audit, you can show it to them.”

The post Brands on Fire: How DoorDash and e.l.f. Beauty Leverage First-Party Data to Fuel Personalization appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Mobile shopping—and in particular mobile product discovery—is at the forefront of ecommerce sales through 2024, despite the fact that research suggests unsatisfactory shopping experiences on mobile devices are causing nearly one third of American adults to opt out of purchases. An article in Multichannel Merchant reviews key steps to improve mobile product discovery along the customer journey, from strategically differentiating omnichannel experiences to creating a hyper-personalized mobile experience.

Photo credit: camilo jimenez on Unsplash 

The post Three Ways to Drive More ROI From Your Mobile Experience appeared first on Chief Marketer.

According to a fan study conducted by Wasserman and the Drone Racing League, approximately 800 million people across the globe between the ages of 16 and 34 are enamored with technology, but not when it comes to traditional sports. However, this group still craves tech-driven competition, innovation, gaming and cryptocurrency.

Enter the “tech-setters,” the target demo the Drone Racing League has set its sights on. And if the impressive growth experienced over the past year is any indicator, it’s been pretty successful at it. We spoke with Drone Racing League CMO Anne Marie Gianutsos about the property’s explosive growth, the expanded partnership with the U.S. Air Force announced this week, how it engages fans on social and its plans to compete in the metaverse.

Chief Marketer: You expanded your partnership with the Air Force this week. How did that originally come about?

Drone Racing League CMO Anne Marie Gianutsos: Our partnership with the Air Force dates back to 2017. When you think about why it makes sense for drone racing and the Air Force to come together, we have shared values around technology and innovation. Specifically, we knew that we could help them discover and enlist some of the best minds in drone operations, drone development and aerospace engineering. We’ve renewed this partnership annually over the past five years, and this year we’re announcing a major expansion.

This is going to be the first time that we’ll feature U.S. Air Force gates within our real-life races. And these are custom-built gates that are professional racing zones. Then we add a virtual component by building those exact same branded gates into the DRL SIM game that’s available on Xbox, PlayStation, Steam and Epic Games. So, pilots at home can download the game and fly through those Air Force gates on their own time, on the same maps.

CM: Why does the Air Force see players as an appealing demo? What marketing channels and tactics are you using to reach them?

AMG: There is a lot of synergy between the Air Force, the military and our fan base. When you look at us compared to the general population, our U.S. fans on social are 23 times more likely to follow the Air Force. And they are 33 times more likely to follow U.S. military accounts across the board. We’ve actually had pilots who have raced with us after serving in the military. When we’ve studied it, close to 20 percent of our fan base has reported serving in active duty in the armed forces, which is a higher than the military backgrounds of fans of the big five sports.

So that’s military, armed forces-specific, but generally when we think about the demographic, we conducted a robust fan study globally with Wasserman, our research and insight agency. During this process, we discovered 800 million people around the world between the ages of 16 and 34 that are obsessed with technology, and they don’t follow traditional sports or esports. But they love tech-driven sports, like drone racing, innovation, gaming and crypto. It’s the ultimate audience for brand marketers, and we dub them the “tech-setters.”

So, other insights that you might find interesting about our fan base is that 70 percent of our fans don’t follow the big five sports, so right in line with that tech-setter audience. We have also studied our fan base to see how they view DRL partners. Sixty percent of our fans report that DRL helps these partners look more innovative.

CM: How does the mobile game that you created factor into your marketing?

AMG: We believe that DRL is a sport for everybody, and if you want to fly, it does take real skills. So our mobile game, and our gaming strategy overall, is to help level up drone skills. We have the DRL SIM video game, on those four platforms, but we also have the mobile units. We launched Drone Racing Arcade, which is a fun and free mobile game on iOS and Android. A big part of gaming and drone racing is that we invite our audience in and every year we open up a spot where someone can win a professional contract to fly in the league. We call that the SIM Tryout Tournament, and that launched this year on May 19th.

CM: What’s the crossover between the gaming audience and your specific audience?

AMG: In our global footprint, we have a huge component of gamers, people that like to play anything from your mobile, casual games all the way to competing professionally on console games. The gaming trend seems to be accelerating. When I look at this past year alone, we’ve added 50 percent more players year-over-year. We also are attracting people through monthly tournaments so that players can earn cash prizes on our mobile game. We’re going to be launching a military appreciation tournament on May 21st just in time for National Armed Forces Day.

CM: Let’s talk about social media. To what do you attribute your success and follower growth?

AMG: Almost 90 percent of our fan base is interested in creating digital content. We think about that as a digital storytelling native. We engage with our fans on social media in a number of different ways. One of the most prominent is that we stream our races on Twitter. Last season alone we saw record viewership, at over 80 million views. We engage with the greater community by featuring race highlights and also incredible FPV, which stands for first-person-view content, on Instagram. And then we do all sorts of fun things with our content on TikTok with overlaying, mash-ups, FPV and layering in all the trending sounds. That’s been a secret to our success and growing our following on TikTok to over 4 million fans.

CM: How do you incorporate live events into your marketing strategy?

AMG: Think about drone racing as blending the digital and the real. We compete drone racing in real life, in stadiums and palaces around the world. We bring a fleet of 600 drones to every in-real-life race. We compete in esports on our DRL simulator game. And this year we’re going be competing in the metaverse, which will be a more immersive digital experience, one where fans can help impact the experience that they have. It will be more of a two-way communication there versus in esports where you’re watching something that’s happening on a feed.

CM: Do you have any tips for marketers who are looking to grow their social media followings and try new platforms?

AMG: Being curious and doing your own research is always a great tip to start. Understanding how your particular content is going to resonate, because not all social platforms behave the same or have the same audiences. TikTok is definitely one for us, but it may not be for other brands. We also encourage brand marketers to get out of their comfort zone. Try out some of the things that are trending on the particular platform that you’re focused on, and study that platform for trends in virality. And then we also think it’s important to work with the influencers that are making an impact on the platform of your choice.

CM: How will players experience the metaverse?

AMG: We’re doing a bunch of things in the metaverse. Our title partner is Algorand, a leading blockchain in terms of speed and sustainability. In addition to the professional race in the metaverse that will be part of our upcoming championship season, we’re also building a play-to-own game on Algorand’s blockchain that will launch later this year. Think of it as a Mario Kart for drone racing. It’s going to be fun and enable people to play for free and also play to earn cryptocurrency.

CM: So all these different iterations of the league connect together.

AMG: Yes. We want to be the professional drone racing league across in-real-life, in virtual stimulation and in the metaverse. We really see this vision as creating a new era of sport that bridges all of these different experiences that fans expect right now.

CM: Do you have any advice for brands looking to get involved in the world of cryptocurrency?

AMG: It’s always so important to know your audience. Our audience is 41 times more likely than the general population to be into blockchain and cryptocurrencies. So that was a natural indicator for us to move into this space. But for others, I would say it starts with understanding your consumer’s current and potential relationship with crypto. And that will really be the cornerstone of their strategy. It’s about asking questions. Are they engaged? Do they own a crypto wallet? Are they familiar with blockchain and NFTs? And that will help to dictate the strategy that you’re going to need to take to get into the space.

Another thing I would say is that we should always be reviewing opportunities to meet our consumers’ expectations and adding value to their lives. So if you have an audience that’s perhaps less comfortable, you’re going to want to create experiences where blockchain is more in the back seat; at the Drone Racing League, we have people leaning in, so we can go to the leading-edge applications for cryptocurrency, like play-to-own games.

CM: Lastly, what are some trends that you think marketers should be watching right now?

AMG: First and foremost, brands should be asking themselves, what does Web3 mean to me? I’m obsessed with this. I think Web3 is going to be such an important catalyst for change in how we experience our brand relationships and how we interact with the world. In the sports world, there’s a very clear line between spectating the sport and having a hand in the creation of the sport. And I think that’s going be the delineation between Web2 experiences and Web3 experiences with sports, with the expectation moving into the co-creation space.

Another one that I would watch in marketing specifically would be thinking about how to create deeply personal experiences for your customer base. And that is going be enabled by cross-platform, audience measurement. I’m seeing huge advances in this space. Cloud is going to be an enabler of this, where we can finally start to identify who is interacting with us across every single platform. And then serving back an experience that is very smart and tailored to how people are interacting with our brand.

The post Marketers on Fire: Drone Racing League CMO Anne Marie Gianutsos on Social Engagement, U.S. Air Force Partnership and the Metaverse appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The Weather Company has access to a trove of first-party data, which gives it a distinct targeting advantage in a post-cookie world. But it’s also investing in AI technology—through IBM Watson Advertising—to create quality content; focusing on a subscription model; and deprioritizing revenue gained from short-term advertising within its apps in order to create a richer experience for consumers. Here’s a look at the strategy behind the brand’s recent decision to reduce its in-app ad footprint by 42 percent, according to a piece in AdExchanger, plus how the company is using AI to improve its subscription offering.

The post The Weather Company on Reducing In-App Advertising and Prioritizing Subscription Model With AI appeared first on Chief Marketer.

BlackBerry loyalists were dealt a blow earlier this year when the company ended support of its iconic smartphones. Once hailed as the preferred devices for business executives, heads of state and other fans of handheld physical keyboards, the beloved “crackberry” is now a relic of the past.

In actuality, the company has not manufactured the phones for several years now, and for the past six it has been licensing other companies to do so. Marketing the services that it provides today is quite a different exercise. Effectively pivoting from a hardware focus to a software one, the company now specializes in providing cybersecurity software and embedded operating systems within vehicles, with an eye on securing automobiles within smart cities of the future.

We spoke with BlackBerry CMO Mark Wilson about the company’s pivot, the significance of competitor analysis in today’s business market, the role that brand equity plays in product differentiation and how compelling content marketing can help B2B businesses cut through the clutter.

Chief Marketer: Let’s talk about pivoting towards not producing BlackBerry phones. Were you involved in the messaging for sunsetting the product? What were the challenges of conveying that to the public?

Mark Wilson, BlackBerry CMO: It’s been six years since we manufactured a phone. Instead, we’ve licensed our brand to other people to manufacture phones and use our software. We’ve pivoted our business model from being hardware-focused to software-focused. It’s changed dramatically in terms of how we build things or support things. So in that pivot from hardware to software, we knew we would eventually stop supporting devices that were seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. We wanted to delay that as long as possible out of respect for our customers. In time, we needed to make a financial decision around what that meant, so eventually we ended support for those devices. We worked with our carrier partners to make sure that those customers knew that it was coming and they had ample time to kind of get ready for it.

CM: How are you involved in creating smart cities?

MW: Long-term, we see the IOT market and the cybersecurity market converging around the smart city. Everybody has talked about smart cities, but not a lot of people are actually delivering something for a smart city. But once you have all the automobiles and traffic signals and everything connected, in a highly secure way, we think that’s actually a sweet spot. Everything going on in the Ukraine right now is a great example of why you need that. They need to be secured because people can begin to take down the national power grids. The value of a smart city can quickly be eroded if that’s not secure.

CM: What’s the process for securing automobiles in smart cities?

MW: If you look at those electric vehicles, there’s more software in those cars than there ever has been. I think on average, there are a hundred million lines of software code now written into the car. So as these cars become more software-based, and as the experience becomes more software-oriented, you want to make sure you’re securing all of those types of smart things that are connected into the infrastructure of a city.

Our software is also in the signaling lights within cities. There’s something called vehicle-to-vehicle—how a vehicle is talking to another vehicle, as well as the cloud. We have a major partnership with AWS in terms of providing that car-to-cloud connectivity. Once you’re showing how all of those things are connected, that’s how you’re going to start to deliver into the smart city.

CM: When do you anticipate this becoming a reality?

MW: Things like vehicle-to-vehicle you can experience today. A lot of that will be government standards in terms of when those things get rolled out. We see it as several years away. It’s coming, and sometimes these things move very rapidly. With autonomous vehicles, it’s starting, but it’ll be a groundswell effect. We think that that’ll accelerate much faster. How far out is that? It’s difficult to predict. And then how quickly does it gain mass adoption? All of those things are to be figured out.

CM: Your business is primarily B2B at this point. Who are your primary customers and how are you marketing your services to them?

MW: Our customers are the largest banks, governments and auto manufacturers. In addition, we have a big focus on the mid-market, and we do this particularly around cybersecurity. We have an AI prevention-first approach to cybersecurity. We use AI algorithms to identify things that are coming into your organization that look like malware or ransomware. And then we stop them from actually executing in the first place. That works well with mid-market clients that may not have security operation centers or 24/7 support. Instead, we’ll deliver that as a managed service.

CM: What channels do you use to market your products and services to customers?

MW: We look at the buyer’s journey and then we map how we reach buyers at different parts of the journey. We’ll advertise in business publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post. We’ll do digital advertising and a lot across search marketing. We do a lot through social—organic and paid social, a lot of earned media. It’s omnichannel in terms of how we’re going after the market. We do a lot of thought leadership. We publish threat research reports that get picked up in the news and that’s also shared with our customers.

CM: What tactics are working well for you right now?

MW: We do incredibly well with content marketing. I’ve seen content marketing evolve in my career, and I think it’s a great tactic. The hardest part for marketers doing content marketing is having something interesting to say. They might fall back and create content that is not that compelling, which I think is a huge mistake.

For BlackBerry, we lean into our threat reports. We’ve done things like uncovering hack-for-hire organizations where nation states would engage for-profit companies to execute hacking campaigns and social engineering campaigns, as well as private companies using hack-for-hire organizations to go after competitors. We have our own research team that identifies these exploits and vulnerabilities, threats and actors, and we basically package that up and then go out and tell the world about it.

We do something called Threat Thursdays, where every week we’re sharing new vulnerabilities out in the market. Some of them are really big, like exploits in the mobile space. Some things are small that are more bespoke in terms of tactics, but every week we’re publishing something new. On a longer-term basis, every quarter we come out with very extensive reports.

CM: Let’s talk about trends generally. Are there interesting or up-and-coming trends in B2B marketing that you have your eye on?

MW: The digitization of marketing has been a boon for so many marketers. And your ability to understand your market has never been better. It’s not new, because we’ve been focused on it, but it’s becoming more and more relevant every year. Our ability to understand trends based on more data coming in has only gotten better.

The other trend is something we lean into a lot: understanding your competitors. If you did a competitive study 10 years ago, you would probably hire a research firm and do it once a year to try and understand what’s happening in your market. Today, we understand what’s going on with our competitors on a weekly basis. We’re much smarter about understanding what our competitors are doing, what seems to be working for them, what doesn’t work for them. We’re much more mindful of having an outside-in perspective in B2B marketing. I see this trend only picking up.

CM: What excites you most about the marketing industry right now?

MW: What’s interesting about B2B is product differentiation. That cycle only gets more and more compressed. Years ago, you might have a product advantage for several releases. Now, you have product advantage for a release. The differentiation at that offer level is more difficult to maintain or extend. I think that brand becomes more valued in terms of where you see the differentiation. Your ability to provide that level of trust as an advisor or as a trusted solution, particularly in the markets we’re in, where privacy and security matters, that equation of trust means so much from a brand perspective.

There are things that you want to build more brand equity in. If we can move past it being a nebulous concept into something that’s more concrete, that makes it more of board conversation. All of this is getting to more quantification of marketing. And marketing becomes a more strategic conversation

CM: How should marketers think about measuring that brand equity?

MW: I would do it across three things. We measure our brand awareness, brand perception and brand preference. That’s at the highest level as it relates to brand. If you know awareness deeply, and your awareness relative to your competitors, and if you know perception and preference, you can begin to get an idea how valuable brand is in terms of creating pull in that journey. Are you just pushing opportunities through the funnel or are you pulling them through the funnel? Once you begin to quantify that you can start to be much smarter in terms of how you allocate your investments across push tactics as well as pull tactics.

CM: Where do you see the greatest opportunity for marketers today?

MW: There’s so much opportunity for marketers right now. A lot of it has to do with all the data that we have access to and how we use it. There are more things that we can do now that we never did. That competitive analysis example: any marketer who’s not doing that, it’s a huge missed opportunity. Of course, they need to know their value proposition and the best way to get their value proposition communicated out to the market. But there’s so much more richness that marketers can do beyond just that.

The post Brands on Fire: BlackBerry CMO on Pivot From Mobile Phones to B2B Cybersecurity appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Think Outside the App

Mobile apps are undoubtedly a key way to engage shoppers, but simply releasing an app won’t cut it. Consumers expect an omnichannel experience that produces a seamless shopping journey. Marketers should include promotion across all channels, including social, store signage, receipts, weekly promotions and others.

Beyond Physical Displays

In-store promotion using physical displays, through shelf positioning and compelling visual signage, remains a key tactic for retail marketers. Go a step further by incorporating mobile devices so that shoppers can use them to navigate the store aisles. Having access to shopping lists and data on purchasing decisions, for instance, can help marketers target consumers right on the mobile devices.

For more tips on mobile marketing strategies, including promoting private label products and prioritizing the user experience, read on in Multichannel Merchant.

The post Mobile Marketing Strategies: Four Common Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on Chief Marketer.

What’s more, users have to actively opt in to each individual app, and ATT forbids the use of workarounds such as fingerprinting. “It is more than a technical change,” says Gartner analyst Eric Schmitt. “It is a clear policy change from Apple.”

Gartner estimates that 56 percent of mobile phones in the U.S. are Apple devices. Among that majority of iOS users, experts anticipate average opt-in rates of just 20-30 percent. While your digital ads will still reach the app users who opt out, the lack of tracking data means they might not reach the targeted audience you want.

“The days of lights-out performance optimization are coming to a close,” Schmitt says. “One of the areas with greatest exposure is paid social campaigns. And if you have a lot of investment in performance marketing campaigns based on retargeting and look-alike targeting, those programs are really at risk.”

What’s a chief marketer to do? Schmitt offers a few suggestions:

* Make sure your team is upgrading software, updating pixels and data flows, and following other guidance from major platforms such as Facebook, Google and Instagram. Facebook, for instance, has implemented Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) to help compensate for a lack of individual tracking data.

* Estimate the potential business impact. Review revenue, subscriptions and traffic previously and currently generated by performance-based marketing, as well as expenses related to the programs. Then create scenarios based on several potential opt-in rates. “Opt-in rates are really difficult to predict,” Schmitt notes. “They’re going to vary by app for sure. I think it’s possible that for social media apps they might creep up over time. If users start getting ads for things that aren’t relevant to them, they might say, ‘Okay, I’m cool with [being tracked]’ and opt in.”

Another thing to keep in mind is that ad prices might change. If less-effective targeting leads to a decline in advertisers, platforms could reduce prices. Then again, they might not. Right now, it’s impossible to predict.

* Consider pulling back on creative tests of digital ads. “Measurement is going to degrade,” Schmitt says. “There’s not enough data to test as many variables.”

* Be flexible regarding media commitments. Fluctuating opt-in rates and ever-changing publisher adjustments in response to ATT could cause performance to vary wildly month by month (or even week by week), so make sure your media plans can be tweaked as needed.

* Consider allocating some performance-marketing dollars to alternative channels. Content marketing, podcasts and Twitch are a few options you could test or expand your investment in. “I think there will be holdbacks for sure, and the potential for reallocation is there,” Schmitt says. “The challenge is there’s no alternative out there that offers comparable returns.”

* Keep the C-suite and other stakeholders informed of these changes and the possible effects on business. “The CMO is going to be in charge of not only managing change but also keeping the wheels on the car regarding marketing,” Schmitt says.

The post Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Requirements: What Marketers Need to Do Now appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Contactless Shopping

Contactless consumer experiences, including “buy online pickup in store” (BOPIS) and new payment options, have developed during the pandemic, adding more efficiency to shopping experiences. The challenge moving forward will be to implement technology that enables a smooth experience from back-end to front-end and considers inventory management, fulfillment and payment processing.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions are expedient and convenient for the consumer while allowing businesses to manage cash flow, predict demand and manage inventory. Moreover, delivering a quality customer experience at every interaction encourages retention.

SMS Messaging

Marketing to consumers through mobile devices is increasing. If your brand offers an SMS program, consider offering incentives on first orders, designing campaigns that are personalized and specific to text, and automating the process through a cloud-based marketing platform to allow for trigger messages.

For more on these marketing trends, read on in Multichannel Merchant.

The post Three Pandemic-Born Customer Experience Trends That Are Here to Stay appeared first on Chief Marketer.