In the UK, it has leapfrogged Valentine’s Day as the third biggest retail event of the year and, in the USA, 72% of adults polled say they will be joining in the Halloween holiday capers. Around the world, this celebration of all things spooky has become hugely popular – and thus is a major opportunity for retailers. Here’s some data behind Halloween and a look at what it’s all about.
Marketing has come a long way since the scattergun approach. Customer-centricity has driven the need for polished personalisation and technology is empowering ‘laser-guided marketing’. Doron Youngerwood discusses this concept and offers some artificial intelligence ideas and tips to guide marketing ‘artists’ into becoming marketing ‘scientists’.
Customers post good and bad opinions of products and services – and they also share witty and sarcastic opinions. All of which have been notoriously difficult for brands to measure. Sentiment analysis in the social listening world has not enjoyed the best of reputations as a lack of any advanced technology has meant that accurate results have depended on a process of repetitive, tedious and time-consuming manual tagging of documents. As a result, many brands tend to sideline sentiment indicators in their reporting. Now all that is set to change, says Richard Sunley. Machines have been learning how to fathom irony . . .
Dr Sharon Tal and Prof Dr Marc Gruber have co-authored a book on how organisations can discover and leverage their most valuable market opportunities. Here, they offer GMA readers advice and expertise on how established firms can grasp the mettle to significantly create value and promote new growth.
Remember when shops used to be closed on Sundays? Or closed for a half-day during the week (presumably so staff could have time off)? It seems ridiculous now, as we shop whenever we like, either in the high street or online. In fact, research shows that shopping ‘out of hours’ – late night shopping – is evolving and consumers are increasingly settling down in the evening for a bit of second-screen retail therapy. So how savvy is your brand at providing a first class customer experience for those ‘night owl’ potential purchasers?
Marketers need to ensure they reduce the hassle that often surrounds payment methods, to improve the user experience, says Shane Leahy – particularly now, as consumers often use two screens simultaneously; gamers, for example, who want to be able to download content via mobile payment while mid-game on their tablets.
Developing a good, relevant and personalised experience has been proven to help marketers with building customer relationships. Research shows that brands sending birthday offers are likely to improve the experience for more than half the 18-21 age group, but for less than a third of the 50+ age group. So who wants personalisation and who doesn’t? Take a look:
Collecting and analysing marketing data takes humans a long time, but AI-enabled insight instantly identifies data patterns and enables marketers to match people to the products/services they want, at the right time and at top speed. So is 2017 the year AI becomes the age of acceptance for marketers?
Providing customers with personalised content can lift revenue by 15%, according to Harvard Business Review, so why is it that businesses so often settle for producing generic marketing – or, worse, create messages that simply do not translate? Robert Berkeley says they need to do more to localise content if they are to draw in customers and grow their businesses.
Marketing consultant Robert Howells presents the third and final part of his series of articles looking at data strategy and business goals. He has traced businesses from start-up (and discussed data quality being more valuable than quantity), through SMB (examining analytics and scale) and now looks at more established businesses – mature companies’ data and what they should being doing with it as a tactical asset.