Helping marketers translate trends into actions, Get Customer Productive (让客户富有成效) is a weekly Robb Hecht podcast newsletter that marketing execs read to empower their brands, marketing careers and their customers - keeping them ahead of societal automation, social eCommerce, data strategy and AI algorithmic CX trends coming out of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google + China’s BAT (Baidu, Bytedance/TikTok, Alibaba, Tencent). Let me know how you think it can be improved, simply hit reply or reach me here!
👉Visit Brandhacker Stories Now - and provide your D2C brand building, digital transformation, eCommerce & subscription marketing insights and tips. As the D2C marketplace gets ever more crowded, what marketing tips do you give to your fellow marketers - to survive!?
[👀 The Week’s Insights👀 ]
👉Hello Automated Marketer,
👉3 Ways Asia Is Shaping Digital Consumers Of The Future. LINK (via Forbes’ Michelle Evans @mevans14 who claims: Asia will continue to write the digital consumer story for years to come). The three ‘ways’ are:
Marrying social life with commerce
The super app revolution (A super app is a multifunctional mobile app combining several features, such as communication, lifestyle, social, financial and retail, in a single platform)
A hotbed for digital wallet exploration
SO WHAT? Asia/China are increasingly leading the global digital/mobile only transformation. Michelle notes that 40% of China’s consumers find recommendations from families and friends “extremely influential”, compared to only 32% in the US and 26% in the UK - Euromonitor International’s 2019 Lifestyles Survey.
ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: Am I effectively using TikTok to reach my customers?
👯 This Week’s Influencers👯
@mevans14; @blakemorgan, @Shwanika, @hilarymilnes, @adexchanger, @natives, Piers Fawkes, Husam Machlovi and Patrick Toner
🛍️ Your Marketing Strategy: How to Build A D2C Subscription Brand
👉Le Tote & Lord & Taylor: the just 7 year old Internet clothing rental D2C retailer called Le Tote bought a US department store, 'Lord & Taylor', for $100m. LINK. SO WHAT? (Everything that the Internet did to media is happening to retail.) Rent is the new customer acquisition cost. And, retail location is now a Customer Acquisition Cost. ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: What’s next? Warby Parker buying LensCrafters?
👉Shopify Continues Efforts to Become the ‘Operational Amazon of D2C’. LINK. SO WHAT? Shopify is powering the entire D2C economy. While Amazon charges merchants 30% of a sale it fulfills, Shopify negotiates pricing with customers. ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: While I may have that Amazon presence, certainly I gain reach and delivery efficiency, but is the % taken from my sales efforts worth it?
👉The Hottest D2C Buzzwords & What They Mean: LINK(If you are still fuzzy on what CAC, LTV, AOV mean, this link is for you.)
👉Clorox’s DTC Playbook. LINK. Nutranext’s DTC group will launch its first new brand for a wellness product targeted to Gen Xers. Eventually, Clorox wants to leverage the data it gleans from DTC to build a customer data map that sits across all of its brands at Nutranext and Clorox, online and offline. SO WHAT? On the new brand, Clorox’s media plan is very much multichannel: build awareness but it’s more mid-funnel using Facebook, Instagram, even Pinterest, supplementing it with influencers, display and video for retargeting and for reinforcing the message. And then traditional closers like paid search. ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: Is this what you’d recommend for Clorox? How would I do it differently?
Build Your Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy
👉Blake Morgan interviews Michelle Peluso, SVP Digital Sales & Chief Marketing Officer at IBM for the Modern Customer Podcast, where she speaks about driving customer experience with data, how her marketing teams use IBM Watson to pinpoint areas of improvement everyday, blockchain, and so much more. LINK.
🧬 How to Drive Your Marketing AI, Algorithms & Automation
👉How the Instagram algorithm works & what it means for business: LINK
👉How to get started with TikTok for Marketers: LINK
👉How TikTok holds our Attention: LINK
👉Have you started taking courses at Pinterest Academy yet? LINK
🦁 Build an eCommerce everywhere / Amazon Strategy
👉Amazon Tests Data Sharing. Via AdExchanger.LINK. One reason CPG and household product brands have resisted selling on Amazon is that they can’t accurately forecast lifetime value scores or see how many placements it takes to convert shoppers, said one agency executive. SO WHAT?: Legions of D2C brands use Shopify, but if they could just get access to this Amazon data, Amazon could usurp Shopify’s customer base. ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: Does my eCommerce strategy use just Amazon, or a fusion of Amazon + Shopify. Why or why not?
🇨🇳 Chinese Big Tech & New Retail AI Innovations
👉 Alibaba’s New Retail Explained. LINK (Via Alizila). What is “New Retail”? New Retail has paved ways for traditional retailers in different verticals in China to digitize their operations by combining online and offline shopping experiences seamlessly using technologies. It has transformed companies and brand partners in categories from grocery and fashion to food and beverage and home. SO WHAT? If you’re working at a startup or legacy brand, start to observe if your business model is becoming antiquated vs. New Retail because China trends are going to be projected across the Pacific Pond. ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: Is my business truly mobile friendly? Do I have a CRM system that activates text messaging with customers?
👉 30 Minutes Delivery. LINK (Via ChinaSkinny). “One of the most powerful innovations in delivery is what happens behind the scenes. Like many things in China, companies are utilizing their enormous pools of data, and making sense of it with Artificial Intelligence - to improve delivery. Meituan’s Smart Dispatch system, for example, calculates 2.9 billion route plans every hour to optimize the delivery for its 600,000 electric bike riders to pick up and drop off up to 10 orders at once in the shortest time and distance. SO WHAT? China Skinny reports that this 30 minutes delivery is not just a ‘metro area thing’ - rather it’s an ‘all over China’ thing…increasing efficiencies and productivities. ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: How does my delivery service work in comparison? How can I improve my customer journey purchase journey with data?
#ModernMarketer Leadership Corner
👉CMO Confidence: the WSJ @natives reports that despite an ongoing trade war and looming predictions of a recession, marketers expect their budgets to grow next year. LINK.SO WHAT? While marketing budgets the past few years have been flat, the key point to note is that CMOs will need to expand their budgets to invest in more technology (not necessarily on actual working media). ASK & INSPIRE YOURSELF: if I had to buy one martech, AI or CDP tool this year for your company, which would it be and why?
🤡 What’s On Your Amazon Wishlist?
Well, here’s whats on mine:
👉Schism: China, Trading & the Fracturing of the Global Trading System, by Paul Blustein
👉The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy, by Robert Kuttner
🎧 What’s Your #BrandhackerStory?
👉Visit Brandhacker Stories and provide your perspectives now. We need your D2C brand building, digital transformation, eCommerce & subscription marketing insights and tips. As the D2C marketplace gets ever more crowded, what marketing tips do you give to your fellow marketers - to survive?
🎙️What Are You Working On?
👉Got Feedback or news? Hey, thank you for reading. 👨I’m @robbhecht - your Get Customer Productive modern marketing coach. Fancy sending some feedback on how we can make GCP better for you? I’m honored that you’re reading, and delighted that I am learning from you all. Now, tell me what you’re working on and let’s capture you in our next episode.
Have a great week - Robb
🎙️Readership Notes
👉Shout outs to those who have reached out and updated me on what they are up to: Piers Fawkes, Husam Machlovi and Patrick Toner.
PS. While this version will stay open for all, please support my work by recommending Get Customer Productive to your network as a resource. Send some ❤️ & simply retweet this if you’re on Twitter. Thanks!
🔥🎧 Podcast #9: A.I. Playbook Anyone?