Do Business Well

According to research company Forrester (www.forrester.com), two-thirds of e-Shopping transactions are aborted after the shopper has already placed goods in the shopping basket, and nine out of ten buyers do not make a repeat purchase. e-Retailers need to make the purchasing process reliable, easy to use and efficient, removing the reasons for abandoning purchases. Human contact needs to be available to sort out problems — at least by email, but preferably also with a phone option. A software device such as HyPhone from Byzantium allows ‘phone- through’ without dropping the Internet connection (www.byzantium.com during office hours for a live demonstration). Continue Reading »

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Despite the disadvantages and the dotcom crash, the advantages are driving a growth in e-Shopping in the UK, at least in certain categories. Sales had reached £3.3 billion by 2001. It was forecast that ‘most people’ will buy groceries, books, CDs and even clothes by e-Shopping, making up 10 per cent of total shopping by 2009. It has been forecast that 94- per cent of e-Retailing will be at the expense of the high street, with only 6 per cent arising from incremental growth (Gibson 1999; Prefontayne 1999; RICS Foundation 2000; Verdict 2000, 2001, 2002).

According to Verdict, in 2001 grocery would account for half of all e-Sales — £1.3 billion, which sounds massive, but accounts for only 5.6 per cent of groceries. The market leaders in their sectors were Amazon (books, plus CDs and videos), Tesco (groceries), Dell (computers) and Next (clothing). Average spend has risen faster for men (+15 per cent) than women (+5 per cent), leading Verdict to comment that ‘the proliferation of female-orientated sites . . . have failed to motivate women to shop significantly more’. Continue Reading »

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Once a strategy has been chosen, the next step is to ensure that implementation takes place as smoothly as possible. A number of key questions need to be addressed:

• Have the costs been estimated accurately (in terms of both people and money)?
• Can the customer service facilities that the site offers be fully supported?
• Can delivery of goods/services take place within stated timescales?

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13. Java portal. This is a different form of portal, where you do not have to visit the portal but instead content is downloaded in line with your preferences. Avant Go! uses this technique to download content while a smartphone is being synchronized with a PC.

14. Mobile search. All the main search providers have mobile (WAP)-specific versions of their search engines. These are now becoming more sophisticated. Google Mobile search (www.google.co.uk/mobile) offers Local search to find a local business, and will then display a map (Google Maps is integrated) or phone number with the option of click-to-call on the appropriate handset. Google Local uses listings from Yell.com.

15. Mobile music. Beyond ringtones, many handsets are now designed to play and store MP3 music files and potentially rival the iPod — although we now have an iPod mobile version. As access speeds increase, tunes may be offered in promotions. Continue Reading »

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1. Applications. These are various types of productivity software that run on higher-end mobile phones which run the Symbian operating system or Windows CE. They can be used in a business-to-business environment for inventory and order tracking, as well as time management.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Through combining some of the techniques above, such as offering mobile content for incentives and text messaging for communications, mobiles can be a useful element in a wider CRM initiative. It can help build relationships with consumers who don’t have ready access to e-mail, or who simply find mobiles more convenient. The cost per message makes mobile CRM quite effective too, varying from 3p to 10p per message, according to volume.

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From the statistics above, you may think that the only application of mobiles is texting. Far from it; here are 20 marketing applications of mobile marketing, starting with the text-based ones. These are a summary of the main mobile marketing applications produced by Helen Keegan of Beep Marketing (author of the IDM (2005) module on digital marketing). The applications use Helen’s categories, with my examples added.

1. Text and win. This is a convenient way to manage a competition or prize draw and is surprisingly popular with consumers. Think of the recent on-pack promotions by Walkers to win a million iPods — there was a draw every five minutes. Admap (2005) reports that a Cadbury on-pack `Txt’n'Win’ campaign offering £1 million in prizes received more than five million messages — a response rate of 8 per cent — thanks partly to the novelty of this approach and the ongoing popularity of prize draws.

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A further aspect of list management is bounce management. While all e-mail broadcast tools will have some capability to deal with replies, they will differ in the wide variation of replies or bounces from different receiving mail servers in different languages. Bounces or returned e-mails are particularly important for large lists, since a large volume of replies can be generated from out-of-office autoreplies, particularly in holiday periods. Hidden amongst these will be genuine replies that may include feedback or requests for further information, so a method is needed to sift the wheat from the chaff and forward these replies to someone who can respond appropriately. Continue Reading »

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A basic part of managing lists involves facilitating subscriptions entry of customer profile details and also unsubscribe. This facility will typically be set up to occur automatically via the web site. It should also enable adding e-mail and other profile details collected offline, such as by phone and events. You should assess the package to see whether it enables you to import these details readily from other packages such as Excel. This is a basic capability, and most packages will enable you to tailor profile fields you add into the database.

You will need to decide whether to collect e-mail addresses and profile data via your web- site content management system or customer database management system, or through a data collection module which is part of your e-mail package. Continue Reading »

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