Happy Monday, Marketers! We hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. While we’re all thinking about ways to work off that extra serving of stuffing and pumkin pie, we’re diving right back into the world of marketing to start the week. Tips on retaining holiday shoppers (starting with Black Friday & Cyber Monday) kicks off today’s wide mix of recent performance marketing, partner marketing, and digital marketing industry news, reports, and insights.
Simple Steps to Addressing Your One-Time Buyer Problem
Initial Black Friday reports are showing strong sales for retailers, a good indicator for the rest of the holiday shopping season. But while things are off to a good start, Jordan Elkind heads of product at Custora says now it’s time for retailers to tackle the next challenge: what to do with all of those shiny new holiday shoppers. Why do one-time shoppers represent such an opportunity cost to retailers? According to Custora research, two-time buyers are up to nine times more likely to repeat than first-time shoppers. In a Marketing Land post, Elkind shares tips for retaining holiday shoppers over the coming year.
The ANA’s Call to Arms: Will Marketers Answer?
David Selby, managing partner and president of Schafer Condon and Carter opines about some of the issues raised at the ANA’s “Masters of Marketing” conference in Orlando last month. He concedes we are living in a very chaotic time, when it is extremely difficult to measure the true ROI of our marketing investments, let alone know where our ads are appearing or who is engaging with them. Brand-building and delivering growth and marketing ROI in this chaos is certainly not easy, but it is not impossible. In ad AdAge oped, Selby shares a few things he believes CMOs doing it well, particularly across emerging digital platforms, have in common.
How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Marketing
In an industry known for its love of buzzwords and hype, artificial intelligence (AI) has become marketing’s new ‘big data’. But where big data ultimately led to new layers of complexity, AI promises the opposite. Big data forced marketers to become data scientists (or hire them, if they could be found), but AI holds out the hope that marketers may get to go back to doing what they signed up for the in the first place. CMO.com investigates how the rise of AI technology and bots is set to change the nature of marketing strategy and the role of the marketing professional.
Are Big Data, Predictive Analytics, and Social Media Getting in the Way Of Basic Marketing?
Is it possible that all of the emphasis on “newer” marketing—coping with big data, social media, digital, and sophisticated analytics—is preventing marketers from getting the basics right? To explore this topic further, Kimberly Whitler, Forbes contributor and former CMO at companies, such as P&G, PetSmart, and David’s Bridal talked with Shreesha Ramdas, the CEO of Strikedeck, a Customer Success Automation startup based out of the Silicon Valley. Get their take on Forbes.com.