This is issue no. 142 of 180. The last issue had a ⚡️43.79% open rate with a 8.32% of you going to this article on the five revenue killers of your eCommerce brand.
Canada Goose, a maker of luxury winter down jackets, is preparing for an initial public offering (“IPO”) that could value the company at as much as $2 billion, sources reported on Friday. An IPO of Toronto-based Canada Goose – which could take place as soon as early 2017 – would demonstrate the explosive growth the company has experienced, following its transition from selling jackets primarily to adventurers on expeditions to shoppers in more than 50 countries, eager to pay $1,000 for warm, high-end coats. - The Fashion Law
VOICE FIRST: Amazon’s bet is that it can use Alexa to close the deal with the consumers who already know what they want to buy from a marketplace — AKA Amazon. And then, to persuade everyone who’s left to start their search there, too. Here’s why that’s not a stretch. Alexa and Amazon are voice-activating behavior that consumers already do today as part of their shopping experience — and making it available to consumers across a variety of connected devices.
MEDIA: Social media, and more specifically dark social, has a role to play for brands hoping to be "much more laser-focused and targeted to the people you are speaking to", Alt said. That said, he believes there is still a place for traditional advertising "where you need to generate big reach and big hype or if you want to make a brand statement". He warned brands against using dark social to send persistent product messages, saying "kids would recognise what you are doing and probably leave the group". "It is not the purpose to sell products", he added.
BRANDS: According to Ellwood, Group XP wanted to move past the idea that the "'experience' of certain celebrated brands" was actually the best consumer experience. "It took for us to decode and categorize the elements of brand experience from the bottom up to really draw out how innovative approaches to business models and technologies specifically come together to create customer experiences that can generate completely new revenue streams," said Ellwood.
MEDIA: With more money going to branded and native content, publishers have to figure out how to ensure that their audiences actually look at them. Publishers can meet advertiser view goals by buying traffic, but that gets expensive. That leads to companies like Iris TV and the AOL-owned Gravity, which tailor the queues of videos shown to users based on data that publishers have about their viewers. Iris helps increase time spent on site and the number of ads a publisher can serve.
ECOMMERCE: Macy’s began selling online in China last November when it opened a storefront on Tmall Global, a web shopping site for imported products operated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. While the retailer did not disclose its sales on Tmall Global, it said more than 300,000 consumers have taken advantage of the social media-like features of Tmall Global to follow Macy’s so they can learn about new products and other information.
ECOMMERCE: Customized gift e-retailer CafePress Inc. doesn’t face the same product lag time or inventory issues as Royal because CafePress creates goods on demand, applying designs created by consumers to stock mugs, T-shirts and bumper stickers as they are ordered. This allows CafePress to jump on the latest candidate messaging or gaffes as the election cycle rolls on. For example, within days of Hillary Clinton using the phrase “basket of deplorables” to characterize some of Trump’s supporters, CafePress had about 100 products for sale riffing on that theme.
BRAND: When social media became all the marketing rage, the focus of measurement shifted to emphasize “engagement”—so much so that even analog channels now aim to drive engagement with audiences. The challenge, however, is this: in our noisy digital ecosystem, tapping a quick “like” is now native to how we consume information. The barrier to completing these actions is so low that they have become passive and routine. We can no longer assume that a like or share means that someone is truly engaged.
A 2PML Poll: The Two Arguments
From the very beginning, Two PM Links has been a daily letter free of politics, bias, or any alluding to my positions on social issues. I figured that we all needed a place free from this type of banter.
But just eCommerce, data, and online publishing are frequent topics, so are brands and the issues that they face. Of the $2.45T in spending power, millennials will spend 70% of their money with brands who stand for causes that they believe in [1]. Millennials are overwhelmingly for the outspoken nature of brands and their social messages. Though, it's easy to see how their is a generational divide. This particular divide manifested in shock as AT&T's CEO recently spoke out on issues near and dear to he and his employees. He began with the words, "Tolerance is for cowards." [2]
Social issues have been brought to the forefront of consumers’ minds — in part because of the election year — but perhaps also because we are witnesses each day to the strife and indignities suffered by so many minorities and special interest groups. [...] Among industries and companies championing women’s rights, animal rights, LBGT rights, or other social issues, I was fascinated to learn that only a few consumer packaged goods — beauty and fashion, and certain food brands — were positioned successfully with brand promises established around social concerns. Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream seems to have pioneered a kinder, gentler, and humbler path many years ago.
For every Tristan Walker or Stewart Butterfield or Randall Stephenson or Susan Wojcicki, there is a CEO who believes that her or his expressed indifference is a tactical advantage. Though, in a time when brands are increasingly personified and consumers align with the identity of a brand - it rarely works out that way. There are two arguments that can be made: (1) a business has one purpose and that is to make money (2) a business has one purpose and that is to hire great people and grow. Often enough, it's the business that prescribes to argument (2) that ends up scaling. And as such, the latter method of leadership tends to lead to more empathy and social involvement.
For those leaders who believe that growth is a matter of fostering human resources and not just optimizing for the bottom line, it's even harder to separate workers and the causes that weigh upon them. Which begs the question for the founder / CEO has worked tirelessly to build a platform from nothing. Why just sit on that tall and sturdy platform with your feet dangling over the edge? To many, that is the spineless imagery of indifference.