Category: UK

Report says ‘Manic Monday’ will outstrip ‘Cyber Monday’ with 151 million visits to online retail sites and £676.5 million spend:

2014 Predictions

• Black Friday – Spend: £555.5m (More than £385k per minute). Online traffic to retail sites: 124 million (17% increase compared to 2013)
• Cyber Monday – Spend: £649.6m (£451k per minute). Online traffic to retail sites: 145 million (26% increase compared to 2013)
• Manic Monday – Spend: £676.5m (£470k per minute). Online traffic to retail sites: 151 million (26% increase compared to 2013)

New figures produced by the global information services company, Experian, in conjunction with IMRG, the UK’s industry association for online retailers, have tipped online Christmas shopping to set new records this December.

Buoyed by increasing consumer confidence in delivery times and click & collect, and also fuelled by the widespread use of mobile technology, the Experian-IMRG projections estimate that the key peaks for pre-Christmas online shopping include Cyber Monday (the first Monday in December) and Manic Monday (the second Monday in December). Huge online spending increases in 2014 are also predicted as people are more comfortable shopping online and leaving it increasingly later in the run up to Christmas.

Insights are taken from the combined datasets of Hitwise, Experian`s online competitive intelligence tool, and the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index using historical data and trends to make estimated predictions for 2014.

According to Experian and IMRG:

• Manic Monday will surpass Cyber Monday and will be the busiest pre-Christmas online shopping day in the UK, with 151 million online visits to retail sites spending an estimated £676.5 million.
• Online traffic on Manic Monday is expected to be up 26 per cent year on year, with shoppers spending an average of £470,000 each minute.
• Online sales on Black Friday are expected to reach £555.5 million, with smartphone and tablet devices accounting for £196.6m.

James Miller, senior retail consultant at Experian Marketing Services, said: “Christmas 2014 is on track to be another record breaking year for online retail in the UK. Continuing a trend we identified last year, Cyber Monday will no longer be the busiest pre-Christmas online shopping day, with Manic Monday expected to take the lead. With increased confidence in the standard of delivery services and ‘click and collect’, we expect to see people break away from traditional shopping habits. This is why it’s key for marketers to make sure their Christmas campaigns reflect these peaks of interest and know their audience in order to offer them the gift ideas they are looking for through the best channels to engage them on.

“We have identified a number of key demographic types, who are believed to be behind the rise of online sales during the festive period. Online shopping is an important leisure activity for a wide variety of people, from active middle-income families with teenage children to young singles. These tech-savvy groups are typically early adopters of new technology trends, prolific online shoppers, and active users of mobile and tablet devices.”

Tina Spooner, chief information officer at IMRG said: “The US phenomenon of Black Friday is now firmly embedded in the UK e-retail calendar and, while the first two weeks of December are traditionally the peak festive trading weeks for the online retail industry, Black Friday now marks the start of the online shopping season. Smartphones and tablets are set to account for over half of all traffic to retail websites during the festive season and on Black Friday alone, online spend via mobile devices is set to reach over £196m.

“E-retail sales have grown 17% year-to-date in 2014 and retailers are increasingly confident in their online performance during the fourth quarter, which indicates the industry is gearing up for another record-breaking Christmas.”

Opt-4, the data protection and permission marketing consultancy, has launched a new online service for the data protection community called The Data Protection Network.

The Data Protection Network (DPN) has been developed to provide dedicated expert opinion, thought leadership, quality resources and learning materials to both experts and non-experts in the field of data protection and privacy.

The new platform can be accessed at: www.dpnetwork.org.uk and registration is open to anyone with an interest in data protection. With a newly assembled governance board of industry experts on hand, the site promises to deliver a wealth of materials and practical resources. Data Protection Officers (DPOs) and those handling personal data will be able to learn about the law, apply their knowledge and comply with the requirements.

Chairman of the Governance Board, Robert Bond – partner and Notary Public at leading law firm Charles Russell Speechlys – welcomed the new resource: “This is an exciting time in the development of privacy law. The draft European Data Protection Regulation will require Data Protection Officers to have a thorough understanding of the law and its implications. DPN will provide practical advice and keep DPOs updated on changes as they happen.”

All of DPN’s resources are written, developed and edited by experts in the data protection and privacy field and the library is packed with the tools DPOs need to craft quality policies and establish solid processes that govern good data protection practice.

Rosemary Smith – DPN co-founder – said: “The Data Protection Network has been established in the belief that those who are responsible for data protection and privacy are not necessarily lawyers or experts, they may just have been handed the baton and asked to make a difference.”

Jenny Moseley – DPN co-founder – added: “Our mission is to empower talented individuals and give them the tools they need to master data protection. The website will be supplemented with webinars and events”

For more detail about the DPN and to become a member, visit: www.dpnetwork.org.uk/membership

Data just released by the Advertising Association/Warc shows UK advertising spend grew at its fastest rate for three years in Q2 2014.

Growth of 8.5% year-on-year (reaching £4,515mn for the quarter) was the highest since Q3 2010.

Across the first half of 2014, total UK adspend rose by 6.3% year-on-year, leading to an upwards revision to the full year forecast to 6.4% (up 0.4pp from July’s forecast) and 6.5% for 2015 (down 0.2pp from July’s forecast).

Tim Lefroy (pictured), chief executive at the Advertising Association, said: “Growth at twice the rate of UK GDP is quite a headline, but the real story is of digital and creative leadership in e-commerce. As the Eurozone wobbles, it’s a reminder that our consumer economy is central to the UK’s economic narrative.”

Q2 performance was boosted by double-digit growth for TV, radio and internet and coincided with GfK’s UK Consumer Confidence Index moving back into positive territory at the end of June. Having declined for 21 of the previous 23 quarters, recruitment advertising has now registered three consecutive quarters of growth and was up 5.8% YOY for Q2 2014.

A new survey from customer communications expert Enghouse Interactive, polling the views of more than 2,000 adults across the UK, has revealed a stark generational divide when it comes to consumers’ likes and dislikes in engaging with businesses and brands.

Nearly three times more 16-24 year-olds (46%) than 55 and overs (16%) claimed that a brand’s ability to engage with them via social media was important to them. And while just 9% of respondents in the 16-24 age bracket said engaging with a brand using online communications was not important to them at all, that figure rises to 41% among the 55+ category.

Jeremy Payne, International VP, Marketing, Enghouse Interactive, said: “Our survey findings are polarised around age.

“The lesson is that a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work in today’s complex market; businesses need to know their customers and deliver customer services tailored to their needs.

“If your business model is predominantly online or you’re marketing to a young audience, you’ll want to offer social media engagement,” he added. “If you are mainly engaging with older consumers you should focus on traditional channels. And if your market is a mixture of both, you’ll need a broad solutions offering, encompassing traditional voice-based telephony and the latest online solutions.”

Customer service via email preferred

The research also revealed a split in the way the public use different communications methods. Email was the preferred method of business engagement with nearly half of respondents (46%) referencing it, almost 12 times the proportion citing social media (4%).

While the social media revolution may be dramatically changing the way we communicate with each other, when it comes to engagement with brands, a social takeover appears to be some way off. The majority of respondents (54%) to have claimed that it is not important that the brand they are dealing with can engage with them over social media. This finding should give any business basing customer service solely on channels such as Twitter and Facebook food for thought.

Yet, when it came to actions taken as a direct result of poor customer service, a significantly larger proportion (17%) said they would spread the message on social media than via email (11%).

“We are increasingly seeing social media being used as a tool to share experiences, typically bad ones, of customer service but it’s not being used as much for problem resolution,” added Payne. “Email continues to score much more strongly for the latter application. The reasons are clear. It’s more direct. It offers the advantage of providing a clear audit trail, with time/date stamp evidence, so consumers can gather all the evidence they need in the event of a protracted dispute.”

The age split came to the fore again in assessing an individual’s preferred method of engaging with a business or a brand. Among the 55 and over age range, email is the preferred communications option with more than half the sample (52%) favouring it. However, among 16-24 year-olds, it is only the fourth favourite option, referenced by just 17% of the group and therefore trailing behind smartphone (25%), self service via company website (23%) and social media (18%).

Whatever the preferred interaction method, the public prizes customer service highly when it comes to buying from a brand. 42% said they usually or always based their decision to buy solely on the organisation’s reputation for customer service, rising to more than half (52%) of 16-24 year-olds.

“This emphasis on customer service underlines once again just how important it is for organisations to protect their reputation and focus on customer satisfaction,” continues Payne. “With the ongoing move to cheaper digital self-service channels for customer service, which are typically much cheaper to run, many businesses are making savings.  The savvier amongst them are reinvesting that money to ensure that when people do need to speak to staff directly, they can get connected into the business and access somebody equipped with the relevant knowledge to solve their problem.

“After all, businesses need to have a strategy in place that allows them to respond proactively to the kind of polarisation in customer preferences that this survey shows up so clearly. And that means they need to know what interaction methods their customers like and be prepared to provide them with a service that delivers just that.”

Major UK ecommerce players will be able to view behavioural information to establish a consumer’s trading record via a new Transactis initiative

A number of leading UK retailers have announced they are sharing data through a fraud and loss prevention coalition being launched by consumer insight and anti-fraud specialist Transactis – forging a powerful new weapon in the battle against both professional and opportunistic fraudsters, while strengthening processes that ensure genuine customers receive better service.

The initial members of the Transactis’ TRADE scheme include multimedia retailer QVC UK and multi-brand online retail group Shop Direct – whose divisions include Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com. The scheme aims to vastly improve merchants’ ability to spot potential fraudsters at any customer touch point and act rapidly by enabling them to tap into behavioural data across multiple brands.

Sharing data via TRADE not only better equips retailers to identify, investigate and challenge potential fraudsters, but it makes it quicker and easier for them to authenticate genuine customers making legitimate claims for missing deliveries, lost returns and other order problems. The result is that honest consumers – who make up the vast majority – will see data checks clear the way for expedited responses to reported distribution errors and similar issues.

With these key players signed up to the new data-sharing initiative, TRADE already brings together customer information from nine million UK households – 39% of the marketplace – and is inviting other retailers to join. Members are able to make quick decisions on questionable customer conduct and suspect transactions based on analysis of consumer behaviour patterns across a wider information base than previously available. TRADE is the first database that shares real-time fraud and loss information from both ‘cash’ and ‘credit’ etailers.

TRADE allows retailers to more quickly and easily identify fraud and loss risk related to order processing, identity verification, goods lost in transit, returns and other related activities by providing a view of the broader pattern of each customer’s behaviour across a much larger range of transactions. The scheme draws on data not just on individual consumers but on addresses so that, through sophisticated data matching techniques, retailers can detect fraudsters using multiple identities across several organisations and other tactics for masking dishonest activities.

John Pears, director of credit risk and operations at Shop Direct, said: “TRADE has been put together with input from retail players that really understand the impact of fraud and the need for a loss prevention platform that addresses the challenges they face each day. The retail industry – especially the companies involved in ecommerce and other forms of home shopping – needs a system that takes this type of loss prevention to the next level.

“Previously, we’ve had to rely on data developed for use by financial institutions, which does not fully address the very specific cyber threats that online retailers are facing today. TRADE will add a new, universal layer of fraud data that will enable retailers to identify these threats more effectively and reduce fraud losses as a result.”

TRADE provides member retailers with all the information they need to quickly decide how to proceed at any point in the customer journey – their initial contact with the company to registration to order to payment to fulfilment. The result is decisions can be made in real time on whether there is strong risk of identity theft, no intent to pay, a false goods lost in transit (GLIT) claim or another form of fraud or misrepresentation.

Dave Webber, product and professional services director at Transactis, said: “There is a very narrow window for a retailer to review an order and decide what action to take. Not only is there the relationship with the customer to consider – for instance, the retailer can’t just wait and see what happens if a delivery goes missing – but there is the cost that further investigation would entail, so there is a real need for the company to have relevant information that enables it to quickly and efficiently assess a situation and prioritise the use of its resources.”

Martin Spencer, finance manager of QVC UK, said: “Best practice and doing things the right way – for both the business and the customer – depends on having the right tools to tackle retail fraud. TRADE provides a new and essential instrument for doing this, providing a ground-breaking means of cutting down losses arising from first-party fraud against retailers engaged in ecommerce. It is a solution that the whole sector could pick up on – to everyone in the industry’s advantage.

“Companies in the retail industry have not really worked together before to deliver a collective anti-fraud service that covers both card and credit transactions, so TRADE is providing a real opportunity for a level of information-sharing that has not previously been possible. This will not only ensure quicker and more effective fraud screening, but it will mean that we and other TRADE members can do a better job of making sure genuine customers get the best possible service.”

For more information, visit www.transactis.co.uk/trade