There are cases where it’s to your advantage to act as your own merchant of record. But there are also cases where accepting the responsibility of being the merchant of record has many disadvantages.

Going It Alone

Myth: It’s relatively easy to open a merchant account with an acquiring bank and install a payment gateway. Fact: The process for acquiring the ability to process even simple credit card transactions in just your local currency involves a lot of time and effort and maintenance. Banks must conduct financial audits, risk analyses, and investigations into what products you sell and what your chargeback rate will likely be. All these aspects influence the price and rate you receive on your gateway fee.

On top of the time, money and effort of getting up and running with simple credit cards in your domestic currency, there is also maintenance work to worry about. You need to make sure your customer and payment data is secure, that you’re collecting and remitting sales tax where it’s necessary to do so, that you’re handling customer questions about billing, managing refund requests and dealing with chargebacks. All of these things involve huge costs in the form of overhead and operational inefficiencies to your business.

The Difficulty of Going Global as Your Own Merchant of Record

If your business is growing beyond your domestic borders, being your own MoR in those cross-border regions gets even more difficult. To build a truly global payment infrastructure you have to deal with acquirers, not just once, but all over the globe with different rates for different currencies. And you need backups in place in case one goes down. I mean, how would you feel if you lost even just a few hours of orders?

From a MoR perspective, you’d have to set up all your international merchant accounts if you want to grow your global customer base. You need to handle payment contracts, not just for payment methods, but for currencies too. In fact, you need to sign contracts for each currency you want to offer your international customers. And because the typical software vendor does not process even close to the transaction volume that ecommerce providers do, the payment rates and fees for software companies will be much greater than if they found a reseller to act as MoR on their behalf.

Taxes

Your work doesn’t end once you sign all the contracts for offering payment methods and currencies to your global customers. So even if you are the MoR, you still have a lot of work to do before you can succeed globally. This is the part that many businesses don’t think about. The sales tax laws have been changing very rapidly around the world, and this is one the biggest challenges for digital goods companies. In the U.S., each state makes its own tax laws. Then each county. Then each city. Knowing what sales tax to apply to each transaction is very challenging.

That’s just the challenge of collection. Once you calculate and collect, how do you remit? You need to file for each jurisdiction and there are lots of opportunities to make mistakes. Now multiply that for different states where you have a tax nexus, economic or otherwise. And what do you do when you’re selling to German and Japanese customers? Or Aussies? Now what about Brexit? Gotta keep up!

Reconciliation

Acting as your own merchant of record also places a huge burden on your Finance department. For example, if you’re a software company and you get your gateway and merchant account for U.S. dollar transactions with VISA and MasterCard with one acquirer, you’ll need to reconcile your receivables at one rate with that acquirer and at a different rate with the acquirer you use to process Discover transactions.

What happens is that along with receiving your money into your merchant account, you get a long list of transactions. Then you have to reconcile the payments with the transactions. This presents an opportunity to really mess up your ledger, because you have to reconcile your payment from the acquirer according to every rate based on the type of credit card your customers use.

Ecommerce providers who act as resellers on your behalf will do all the reconciling for you as a MoR. All you have to do is wait for the cash in your accounts. Without that expertise, you have to spend lots of time and resources trying to see what you pay per transaction.

MoR is Key to Customer Experience

So why does any of this matter? Well, if you want to expand your business globally, and you want to provide those global customers with superior customer experiences (these are both excellent goals, btw), executing on MoR is key. The challenge is that most businesses simply don’t have the expertise to do that. And even if they had that expertise, they don’t necessarily have the development, business operations or financial resources to bring that expertise to life.

That’s where ecommerce providers and resellers come in. Resellers assume the entire burden of opening up merchant accounts, installing payment gateways, signing contracts for all the payment methods and currencies you need to accommodate global customers. They also assume responsibility for managing tax collection and remittance, maintaining data security, and reconciling your financials, leaving you to develop better products and a better business.

Without this infrastructure in place (and it takes a long time to get it in place when you’re on your own), your chances of growing global revenues are slim. More likely, you’ll be offering the wrong customer experience, many valid transactions will be declined by the card issuers, your conversion rates will go down, and your transaction fees will go up.

Keystone

What’s important to you? Is it to have cost certainty? To expand globally quickly in a compliant way? Or is it important for you to devote resources to doing it yourself?

If your goal is to expand into other markets, doing it as your own merchant of record means diverting resources from your product innovation and customer acquisition efforts.

Looking to acquire global customers and grow you global revenue streams? Reach out to cleverbridge today!

The post The Difficulty of Being a Merchant of Record appeared first on cleverbridge.

The team at cleverbridge developed the Five Fundamentals of World Class Customer Support. These five simple actions allow representatives to provide efficient and polite support that leave customers overwhelmingly satisfied. The Five Fundamentals also free customer support representatives from formally scripted interactions, which customers will spot from a mile away. As long as each of these Five Fundamentals is kept in mind, the representative can be assured their call will go over well.

Shirin Caiola, head Quality Analyst for cleverbridge Customer Support, points out that the Five Fundamentals not only improve quality for customers in one part of the world, but they translate beyond borders, ensuring that, “[we] can guarantee that we’re providing World Class service to our customers, whether we’re speaking to a British customer calling in Cologne or a Canadian customer calling us in Chicago.” We reviewed the Five Fundamentals, along with some comments from the cleverbridge Customer Support Team below.

First Fundamental of World Class Customer Support

Be courteous and professional

This First Fundamental may seem like a no-brainer. Then again, think of your past interactions with customer service. It is certainly possible that one or more of your experiences was neither courteous nor professional. So the First Fundamental is to show courtesy to your customer and to be professional. The best way to show this is no mystery — say please and thank you.

Even the best support professional is no mind reader. Your support team cannot assist customers without their cooperation. Saying please when requesting relevant information shows respect to your customers, and saying thank you upon receipt of their information invites them into the process of resolving their difficulty. Your representatives can establish a base line of communication supporting a polite and courteous tone.

Second Fundamental of World Class Customer Support

Use the customer’s name

Dale Carnegie‘s famous admonition to, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language,” remains as true today as when it was first published. This is why the Second Fundamental is so important. Caiola says, “[using the customer’s name] is a great way to build rapport with the customer throughout the call.” When added to the courtesy and professionalism displayed in the First Fundamental, using a customer’s name helps to build understanding between the representative and the caller on a personal level.

Using the customer’s name is also an excellent call control tactic. When a customer hears you use their name, it can grab their attention away from the frustration they might be experiencing. Unfortunately, most customers have had such negative customer service experiences, they often meet a customer support representative ready to speak to a robot or girded for an epic fight. When a live human representative uses a customer’s name, it helps them disengage from the fight they were expecting to have, and can often help to turn a contentious call into a successful one.

“The greeting should set the tone for the entire call and have the same impact as a firm handshake.” — Shirin Caiola

Third Fundamental of World Class Customer Support

Have an energized tone

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Because of this reason, the greeting should set the tone for the entire call and have the same impact as a firm handshake.” says Caiola. If your representatives show an energized tone and start strong with a confident greeting, it is easier to get the customer’s relevant information and keep an upbeat tone no matter the disposition of your caller. Your representatives’ energized tone can be the difference between a good call and a World Class call.

Of course, the inverse is true as well. We have all been in a room where one person’s bad attitude can destroy the group’s otherwise positive energy. This can happen on a customer service phone call as well. The last thing a customer service representative should do is suck the life out of a caller, or compound an already negative tone with low energy or zero enthusiasm. Keeping an energized tone can actually be infectious, inspiring an upbeat attitude in your caller as well.

Fourth Fundamental of World Class Customer Support

Restate the problem

Once the customer has described their problem to the representative, he or she should find a way to restate the problem back to the customer. Caiola emphasized this Fundamental builds rapport with customers by, “demonstrating active listening. The customer knows we understand the issue and are committed to resolving it.”

Representatives can ensure customers feel heard especially by using phrases like, “I heard you say you were looking for…, is that right?” or “I want to be sure I understand your challenge correctly…” and then detailing the issue the customer described. Besides building rapport with the customer, the other benefit of this fundamental is that the representative can ensure they truly understand what they need to do before moving further. If there is a misunderstanding, restating the problem allows the customer to clarify their inquiry before precious time is wasted tracking down the wrong task. Going back to the First Fundamental, representatives should remember to say ‘thank you’ after the customer has confirmed the nature of the challenge.

Fifth Fundamental of World Class Customer Support

Explain what you have done and any next steps

Shirin noted that, “By following this step, we are insuring the customer understands the resolution process for their request and what has been done so far.”

Once you have completed the task at hand, be sure to review what has been done. This way, if a customer has forgotten anything, you will have a chance to resolve it in the same call, keeping your contact to order ratio low. Reviewing the next steps for the customer helps them feel like they accomplished something, and they know how to move forward.

Do not skip this step. Even if there are no further actions that the customer must take, there’s nothing a customer likes to hear more than, “You don’t need to do anything else; it’s all taken care of.” Of course, this will also help to keep your contact rates down, as customers will not need to call back and check what they need to do next.

The Fifth Fundamental also helps your representatives control the call. By recapitulating what has been done, and explaining what, if any, steps remain for the customer, they are signaling that the call is concluding. The customer has a chance to ask questions and will not feel like they were rushed off the phone. If the customer is satisfied, they may take the pacing cue to end the call. In either case, the representative can easily pivot to meet the customer’s expectation.

Keystone

The Five Fundamentals of World Class Customer Support are more than guidelines for your support team. When employed consistently, their positive effects on customer satisfaction can be easily tracked. By using the Five Fundamentals, the cleverbridge support team regularly garners customer satisfaction ratings above 90 percent. In addition to increasing customer satisfaction and reducing costs, providing World Class Customer Support increases customer lifetime value by extending the lifetime of a customer’s relationship with your business.

Want to learn more? Download our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials today.

The post Five Fundamentals of World Class Customer Support appeared first on cleverbridge.

Source: GIPHY

It’s hard to believe that there was any news besides Prince this month. Here on the blog we covered ten tips for customer lifecycle campaigns, news of the booming AgTech sector, as well as how brands work to bring customers with them as they shift to subscription billing.

These are the other stories from around the web that you missed this month.

AgTech and APIs

The Rise of API-based SaaS | ChartMogul

The B2B market often suffers from inflexibility. APIs are changing that. This piece from ChartMogul notes, “Just as the world is waking up to the importance of design and user experience in enterprise products – arguably years after the consumer market saw the same evolution – there is a new breed of B2B solution, which ditches the visual user experience altogether – the API-based SaaS.”

Farmers Reap New Tools From Their Own Hightech Tinkering | WSJ

Farmers aren’t waiting around for developers; they’re applying their own knowledge and experimentation to develop new and better AgTech solutions. While some of their innovations are crafted purely for personal use, others are hoping to bring their innovations to market. “Some farmers-turned-techies aim to reap profits on their innovations. Dirt Tech, a startup run by two farmers and two software engineers, is developing a range of mobile applications that help map soil fertility across farmers’ fields, or mark rocks to avoid damage to machinery or allow for yanking them out.”

Capitalizing Data

Data’s Identity in Today’s Economy | MIT Technology Review

As we have pointed out, companies must have a strategy for monetizing data. Commenting on a recent study, Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, points out that data can even be considered a form of capital. Because data is less tangible than a building, a factory or a vehicle, many companies miss this point. “It’s a blind spot. But this is something that is more and more important to the world economy. It’s not visible, but it’s still something that smart managers have to keep an eye on.”

Subscription Billing in the News

Customer Loyalty 3.0 Is Never About Transactions. It’s About Getting to Know Your Customers | Entrepreneur

Just converting a user to a paying customer falls woefully short in today’s customer-centric environment. Entrepreneur has a message for companies stuck in the past: “loyalty is not transactional — period.” Loyalty a byproduct of strong, long-term customer relationships.

“While the notion of relationships may seem simple, it’s not. Many of the biggest brands have failed to do this despite having multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. Customers are all driven by different parameters, which means that you need to do a lot of listening and keeping track of the likes, dislikes and drivers of your customers’ behavior.”

Amazon Has Built a Subscription Launchpad with Prime | TechCrunch

Amazon’s move this month to offer stand-alone subscriptions to their video streaming service revealed an important approach to building a subscriber base. With millions already subscribed to their Amazon Prime service, they can pilot new services to see how customers use them and whether they might be valuable enough to sell separately. For a company that has struggled to turn a profit, this strategy could be a sign of how Amazon is bucking that trend.

“Amazon wants to turn the company into a subscription business, one subscription at a time.” — TechCruch

“Amazon has built a subscription launchpad with Prime. The company can try out new services and see if they work. From day one, these new services will have millions of subscribers … Slowly but surely, Amazon could turn its razor-thin margins on ecommerce products into substantial subscription revenue.”

Indian Ecommerce

Amazon May Violate India’s New Rules on Foreign Ecommerce | New York Times

Speaking of Amazon, “Late last month, the Indian government issued additional rules governing foreign ownership of ecommerce companies operating in the country. The government added regulations related to pricing and the sourcing of sales on sites that Amazon and several rivals appear to violate. What is more, the new policy was effective immediately, giving Amazon and others no time to comply.”

Indian Digital Payments Company TranServ Gets $15M to Launch New Financial Products | TechCrunch

Startup investment is up in India, and TransServ is benefiting. TransServ is using that investment to establish a digital payment system that fits the Indian customer.

“Several factors are fueling demand for digital payments in India, including the rapid growth of its ecommerce industry and the increasing accessibility of smartphones. The country’s credit card penetration rate is still very low, however, which means companies need to help consumers find alternative ways of making online payments.”

Learn more about subscription billing and your business on our Subscriptions Resources Page

The post April Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.

Why the Push to Re-Platform?

Each company has its own unique needs and requirements when it comes to ecommerce management, but here are the three most common reasons for re-platforming:

Losing customers and revenue

Your bespoke platform might have been a top performer in years past, but some systems simply cannot keep up with the short attention spans of today’s modern shopper. According to Kissmetrics, 40 percent of online shoppers will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. And a report by the Aberdeen Group found that a delay of just one second in a site’s loading time can result in a seven percent loss of conversions. For a company making $100,000 per day, that means a total loss of $2.5 million in annual revenue.

The rise of mobile and social commerce

According to a report by Business Insider, retail sales driven by social media and referral traffic are rising at a faster pace than all other online channels. The report found that the top retailers in the U.S. earned $3.3 billion from social commerce in 2014, which represents a 26 percent increase over the previous year. In 2015, sales driven by social media reached $14 billion in the U.S. and $30 billion worldwide, according to an eMarketer report. With this trend looking unlikely to slow down any time soon, ecommerce sites are scrambling to keep up.

Omnichannel retail

These days, any interruption in a customer’s experience of your brand can cost you in-store and online sales. In order to compete for the attention and loyalty of the modern shopper, it is absolutely imperative that you provide a seamless brand experience across all channels and platforms — from mobile apps to desktop to in-store.

Five Key Ecommerce Re-Platforming Tips

Re-platforming can be a costly, time-consuming process for both your ecommerce management and IT teams. Here are a few tips on how to get started:

Evaluate your existing site and go from there

In order to understand what you want from your new platform, it’s important that you and your team fully understand what’s missing from the existing one. So before you spend a dime on re-platforming, the first thing you should do is order a thorough review of your site. Go through your site from top to bottom, paying special attention to pain points visible in your analytics. Approaching your site through the eyes of a customer, examine everything from page loading times on both mobile and desktop to your payment process and cart functionality. Whether you do this in-house or hire a consultant, this step will give you a clear picture of your exact needs and requirements going forward.

Keep infrastructure in mind

Even if you upgrade your ecommerce platform to the latest greatest thing in omnichannel retail management, it will all be worthless if you don’t have solid infrastructure in place for hosting and maintenance. Whether you choose an on-premises, cloud, or hybrid cloud/dedicated hosting solution, make sure it’s compatible with your desired platform and that you have the right IT professionals in place to maintain it. If your platform and infrastructure are not properly aligned and maintained, you could end up overinvesting in capacity you don’t need or underinvesting, resulting in an expensively overhauled system that’s just as slow and clunky as the one it’s supposed to replace.

Stay future-minded

One common pitfall when it comes to re-platforming is getting stuck in a restrictive system that doesn’t allow for easy growth and adaptability down the road. After all, the rapidly changing, unpredictable nature of the online marketplace is the whole reason for your re-platforming project in the first place. No one knows exactly what the future holds, so it’s in your company’s best interest to look for open platforms that allow for as much flexibility, customization and control as possible. Otherwise, before you know it, you might find yourself in this exact same position all over again.

Set project goals

An enterprise level re-platforming project is a long, complex process with a lot of moving parts, so it helps to be realistic about your timeline. Set milestones for each phase of implementation. This will help align your in-house team’s goals with the requirements of your solution providers, so everything can move ahead smoothly. Being realistic about your timeline also means adjusting expectations. After implementation, you are likely to run into a few kinks and performance hiccups here and there as you settle into your new system. Full realization of your re-platforming ROI takes time.

Test

Again, problems and glitches are bound to arise in the weeks and months immediately following your re-platforming project. Also, customers who are already familiar with your brand could be thrown off by your new platform at first. This is why many companies see a temporary dip in sales right after making the big switch. This is natural, but you can avoid making it worse by catching as many problems as possible before your new system goes live. So test and test and test again.

Keystone

Changes in technology and customer behavior are pushing digital vendors to update their ecommerce platforms. But re-platforming needs to be approached carefully. Always remember to know your site well and to assess the type of upgrades you need from there. Think of the infrastructure you will need to support your upgrades, and be sure you have room to grow. Be specific and realistic about the milestones on your re-platforming journey. Finally, test and re-test your changes to be sure customers are satisfied and your revenue is growing.

Download our complimentary white paper, Five Mistakes to Avoid with Ecommerce Integrations, today.

Travis Foegler is a Marketing Specialist for Zobrist Consulting Group, Inc., a full service web agency focused on delivering enterprise and mid-market ecommerce websites. 

The post Five Key Tips on Ecommerce Re-Platforming appeared first on cleverbridge.

To learn more about increasing revenue and reducing risk in the global marketplace, download our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials today.

EMV Chip Card Implementation

Feud Heats Up Over Chip Cards, FBI Warning | Computerworld

As we noted earlier in the month, new EMV Chip Cards are now in consumers hands, with implications for brick-and-mortar and online merchants alike. The security feature devised in Europe is meant to reduce the risk of fraudulent card transactions. The EMV cards generate a unique code associated with each transaction and are designed to work with a PIN. Whether or not to require consumers to use a PIN with their new cards has been causing some friction between banks and retailers, as detailed in this article from Computerworld.

The crux of the disagreement centers on how retailers and card issuers balance security and convenience. “The banks and card companies have come out against PINs in the U.S., saying that other technologies, such as encryption and tokenization, along with using a microchip-embedded card with signatures, would be more effective in fighting fraud than PINs. Retailers favor PINs, arguing that PINs will reduce fraud not only for lost and stolen chip cards, but also for online and telephone transactions.”

The difference between the two industries came to the fore over their disagreement with an FBI advisory statement about how to use the cards. Their original message contained several references to PINs, angering card issuers. The FBI quickly revised their statement.

Singles Day

What It’s Like To Watch Alibaba’s Singles Day Spectacle | Fortune Magazine

As American and other Western retailers dive headlong into the Black Friday and Cyber Monday kickoff to the holiday shopping season, we are weeks behind China and their instant holiday, Singles Day. The big player behind making Singles Day into an ecommerce phenomenon is Alibaba, headed by their eccentric and intriguing chairman, Jack Ma. While not every CEO may wish to emulate his style, Ma’s uncanny ability to raise revenue makes him a global role model.

When he wasn’t being interviewed by the President of the United States of America at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, Ma could be found at Alibaba’s extravagant Singles Day Gala. Fortune Magazine sent reporter Scott Cendrowski to experience the day, which he describes as feeling, “similar to China’s campy Spring festival program, which commands higher ratings than the Super Bowl, but with a more commercial feel.”  The night included performances by none other than Adam Lambert, game show style contests between Chinese celebrities dressed in red or black, and a New Years Eve style countdown to midnight: the start of Singles Day.

Over the next few hours, it became clear that Alibaba won too, smashing previous sales and analyst predictions. As Cendrowski notes, “A communications person from Alibaba’s Alipay affiliate explains that in the first minute of selling, the payment system handled 85,900 transactions per second. Alipay was hoping to break Mastercard’s previous record of 60,000 transactions a second. Singles Day is shaping up to be the record day Alibaba hoped.”

By the end of Singles Day, Alibaba boasted $14.32 billion in sales in one day. The scale of business is a bit mind numbing. Econsultancy shares these 10 eye-watering stats, including the fact that “71% of Alibaba’s Singles Day sales came from mobile devices.”

If done right, there is no reason why Singles Day need remain solely a Chinese affair. eMarketer interviewed  Melissa O’Malley, director of global merchant and cross-border trade initiatives at PayPal, to explore opportunities and best practices for cross-border ecommerce with China. She admits that, “When I started at PayPal 18 months ago, nobody had heard of Singles’ Day.” The rapid rise of the holiday and its ecommerce trappings may inspire companies to try to get into the game, but O’Malley cautions reminds retailers how peculiar online marketing is in China. “Understanding the dynamics of the Chinese social media landscape is very important. It is so different from what Western retailers are used to doing. It’s just night and day. There’s no YouTube. You can’t just buy everything on Pinterest.”

Global Compliance

Life After Death (of Safe Harbor) – EU Data Protection in the Wake of Schrems | Cyber Law Monitor

Any business with operations, customers or data within the European Union or European Economic Area is grappling with the fallout from the European Court of Justice’s recent ruling that effectively ended the US-EU Safe Harbor agreement. In short, Safe Harbor was a framework agreement that allowed US companies to comply with customer data protection laws in the EU. Owing to recent government surveillance scandals in the US, the ECJ ruled in the Schrems case that Safe Harbor was not sufficient to protect EU citizens’ data. This change may expose companies to major compliance risks with hefty penalties.

The post above from Cyber Law Monitor examines temporary recommendations from the European Commission, which “offers alternative methods for compliance with EU data protection laws, while also highlighting the efforts the Commission is taking to develop a renewed and sound framework for personal data transfer to the U.S.”

Moving froward, no business has a clear idea yet of how the future of trans-border data will work. BNA shares this interview with expert James H. Koenig, who was a panelist on a recent Bloomberg Law webinar on the demise of the Safe Harbor Program. He recommended a keep calm and carry on approach.

“Despite the uncertainty, all companies are doing something on a risk basis in light of the ECJ’s decision. Some are moving ahead to devise a global solution without awaiting or depending on the promised Safe Harbor 2.0. Others are taking interim measures. The appropriate approach varies, depending on the type of company and the sensitivity of the data at issue.”

Keeping up with constantly changing rules and regulations can be a drain on a company’s resources, but the risks of non-compliance are high. UK authorities recently slapped publisher Trinity Mirror with a fine totaling over £70,000 for a VAT payment that was sent only one day late.

This decision could be a sign that regulators are taking a closer look at businesses, and expert Meera Rajah says, “It is really important that businesses recognize and understand the potential impact of either late submission or late payment…To avoid such a mishap, it is imperative that you understand the solutions available and keep on top of your VAT returns.”

To learn more about increasing revenue and reducing risk in the global marketplace, download our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials today.

The post November Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.

In the age of subscriptions and the emerging IoT sphere, your customer data is becoming more varied and complex. You are no longer simply maintaining a sales ledger. Customers are sharing preferences, areas of interest, and vast quantities of data generated from the use of your company’s services. Even moderately sized businesses can find the amount and complexity of their customer data driving them to seek outsourced solutions. The largest companies can afford to go the extra mile in-house.

This fascinating infographic comes by way of Hostwinds and was produced in the wake of the 2013 PRISM NSA data collection scandal and examines how major players in the game of big data are keeping it secure. These observations are still relevant today, especially for any business that deals in data. They looked at Google, Facebook and the NSA and the scale of their data center operations. Hostwinds also explores Bonhoff’s Pionen Data Center, located in Stockholm, Sweden — or rather, under Stockholm, Sweden.

Got your data security handled but want to be sure you’re ready to go global? Download our study of Eight Critical Capabilities for Global Ecommerce.

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy — Is Your Data Secure? [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

“Deloitte forecasts an 8.5 to 9 percent increase in non-store sales in the online and mail order channels during the 2015 holiday season.” — Deloitte

With some of the biggest holidays right around the corner, now is the perfect time to start thinking about how you are going to maximize your holiday promotions.

We suggest utilizing the tremendous power of your affiliates. Your affiliates can serve as a huge additional source of holiday revenue.

So what’s the best way to help your affiliate business thrive during the holiday frenzy? We talked to cleverbridge Marketing Services Manager Jessie Adamczyk to get some advice. Adamczyk oversees a successful global affiliate platform, working with thousands of affiliates. She gave us four simple steps to maximize affiliate holiday promotions.

1. Think Further Ahead

“Don’t email your affiliates five days before you want to run a promotion,” says Adamczyk. “If you want your campaign to be successful, you need to prepare in advance.”

It sounds so easy, but everyone knows how busy things can get. It is essential to be organized and equipped. Have your annual promotional calendar planned out so you can contact affiliates at least one month before. Better yet, send affiliates your annual calendar along with individual reminders as each holiday approaches.

2. Keep a Global Perspective

When you sell digital products you have a huge advantage. You can sell anywhere in the world, especially if you’ve got a great ecommerce partner. It’s easy to do some research on the major shopping holidays in other regions. Use that information to plan some unique holiday campaigns that will appeal to your international customers.

“From the Day of the Dead to Boxing Day, you should pay attention to opportunities outside your time zone.” Adamczyk says. “For example, Christmas Advent is huge in Europe. You can plan a different promotion each day leading up to Christmas. Back-to-school time is also a peak time for software sales in many regions.”

3. Get Creative With Your Calendar

Start planning your annual calendar now. Include all of the obvious holidays from all of the areas you serve. But don’t overlook more obscure special days that you can use to your marketing advantage. “I’ve seen great success when clients target random holidays, the ones that aren’t so obvious,” Adamczyk says. “Mother’s Day, Independence Day, even St. Patrick’s Day can be real money makers when you take advantage of your affiliate network.”

4. Know How to Communicate With Your Affiliates

“Treat your affiliates like partners, not an afterthought,” Adamczyk says. “Take some time to get to know your affiliates, and have a plan to communicate with them appropriately.”

Affiliates routinely receive more than 200 emails per day. Adamczyk suggests creating an email newsletter to communicate general news with all affiliates, and then follow up with a personal email or phone call to your individual affiliates directly.

“Start by focusing your efforts on high-volume affiliates,” Adamczyk says. “The time you take to cultivate relationships with affiliates is never wasted.”

Make it as easy as possible for affiliates to promote your products. Provide them with marketing materials that they can use if they want to. But also be open to their ideas for success. Every affiliate works differently. Some like coupon codes, others prefer graphics and banners. “The more flexible you are, the better your results will be.”

Keystone

Take advantage of your affiliate network to really cash in on holiday promotions. If you follow the common sense steps above, you’ll have a full calendar of lucrative holiday opportunities.

Learn more about holiday ecommerce (and more) by downloading our six guides on ecommerce essentials.

The post Four Simple Steps to Maximize Affiliate Holiday Promotions appeared first on cleverbridge.

For the September Ecommerce Digest, we’re going to dig into localization, Klarna’s debut in the U.S., the role of shopping carts in subscription commerce, omnichannel shopping challenges, and the impact of chip-and-PIN cards on ecommerce fraud prevention.

Global Ecommerce and Localization

Website Localization Must-Haves For Global Ecommerce | Forrester Research

In this blog post from Forrester Research, Lily Varon writes about what you need to succeed in global ecommerce. This is a topic that is dear to us, and we are happy to see a report detailing global expansion issues like domain names, global gateways, global user interfaces, language elements on a web page, multilingual SEO, customer support best practices, and localized currencies and payment methods.

Alternative Payment Methods

Klarna Launches in the U.S. | Re/code
Speaking of localization … payments! Klarna is a popular payment provider for online Swedish shoppers. Klarna is a compelling payment option because it assumes all the risks of fraud instead of the merchant. If you are looking to gain customers in Sweden, one of the best things you can do is add Klarna to your checkout process. But now Klarna is looking to expand its operations into the U.S. Which merchants will start offering this type of payment for customers outside of Sweden? Will it make a significant impact on conversion rates? It will be interesting to see if Klarna’s attempt at global expansion will disrupt the ecommerce market.

Shopping Carts and Subscription Commerce

Why the Shopping Basket Is the Next Big Thing in Digital Commerce | Demandware
This blog post from Demandware advocates that merchants should “persist that basket,” that is, they should not neglect the great power of the online shopping cart to drive sales and retarget bouncing visitors. We do not disagree that the cart is a crucial element of ecommerce success. But just as conversion rates are less relevant in today’s subscription dominated market, so is a narrow focus on shopping carts. The real question is, “How are you messaging customers before and after they create a cart?” Today’s subscription dominated market demands attention to the entire customer lifecycle — not just the cart.

Content Marketing

Primer by Google Is Here to Make You a Better Marketer | NewsCred
Looking to learn more about marketing automation or creating relevant search ads? This interview with Hope Friedland, Content Lead at Primer, showcases a new educational app from Google. It is a handy library of content that helps people learn the ins and outs of digital marketing. It is designed to be consumed by mobile device users on the go, and it is highly interactive. Aside from the educational content, this app also serves as a source of inspiration to marketers thinking about alternative ways of educating their audiences and communicating brand value.

Omnichannel Shopping

MasterCard Busts Myths of the Omnichannel Consumer | PYMNTS
We love the image offered in this post of today’s digital shopper as “a patient, skilled, value-seeking missile.” Based on MasterCard’s The Retail CMO’s Guide to the Omnishopper, PYMNTS explains that customers research their purchases piecemeal: over time, in both physical and online spaces. Even in the digital world, they search across different devices and through different channels. The main point here is to consider where your customers are viewing your messages, and to make sure those messages are consistent.

Fraud Prevention

How Chip-and-PIN Credit Cards Protect Consumers From Fraud | NPR
This interview with security expert Brian Krebs discusses the  impact of this switch and notes the difference in the European and American cultures of using credit cards at physical stores. Many countries adopted chip-and-PIN credit cards a while back, and the U.S. is slowly catching up on this important security improvement. However, as we explained a year and a half ago, blocking one avenue of fraud is sure to send the fraudsters looking for another way to steal your customers’ personal information and money. Krebs notes that it is not just online shopping carts that are affected by a new surge in fraud activity: New account fraud and account takeovers are going to occur too.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The post September Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.

It shows Internet usage and ecommerce around the globe, including how much money and time the average Internet user spends online, along with the number of Internet users across the top 25 countries.

Mobile Retail

Mobile increasingly dominates the digital world, and as cheaper handsets and more affordable data connections reach more people, growth in mobile retail is inevitable.

What’s more, with mobile-oriented services like WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger achieving the top social media ranking spots in some of the world’s biggest economies, it’s clear that much of our digital behavior is now converging around mobile devices.

Ecommerce Sales

The increase of ecommerce sales in Asia-Pacific is tied to a growing base of digital buyers, and as more new buyers come online, sales will rise. However, nearly 70 percent of Internet users in both Western Europe and North America will purchase items on digital devices, versus just over 50 percent in Asia-Pacific.

Buyer penetration in Asia-Pacific translates to the largest number of consumers, but the region is far more fragmented than North America and Western Europe. China alone will make up more than half of all the region’s ecommerce sales this year, and by 2018, its share will top 70 percent.

Social Media

We expect to see social media penetration reach one-third of the world’s population—likely by the end of 2015—with new users in developing nations accounting for almost all of this growth.

Sarah Tramm is the Search Marketing Executive at Search Laboratory.

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy—Global Ecommerce Retail and Social Media in 2015 [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

For our Ecommerce Digest series, we’re showcasing content that centers around using keyword research for optimizing search results, planning editorial calendars as part of an effective content strategy, considerations for taking your ecommerce global, and understanding why it is that the sales and development teams sometimes appear to be on different wavelengths.

Keywords and SEO, PPC

How to Estimate the Total Volume and Value of Keywords in a Given Market or Niche | Moz

Banishing overly simplified research techniques like relying on (often inaccurate) AdWords keyword search volume data alone, Rand Fishkin offers a practical lesson in targeting keywords for SEO and PPC. He shows how to properly research keywords, and he then explains how to take that research and use it to conduct sample tests for long and short tail versions of your keywords.

The overall lesson here is that advertisers should not just target the highest volume keywords. Finding theright keyword to target, it turns out, involves a delicate balance between search volumes, competition levels, potential ROI and the ease of creating content around that keyword.

Content Marketing

6 Tips for Planning an Editorial Calendar | Marketeer

Examining the content marketing landscape several years ago, I wrote that, “An effective content marketing strategy … can help every company in their quest to not only acquire and retain customers, but to showcase leadership and authenticity.” This analysis holds up even today as more companies across all industries attempt to win customers by wooing them with engaging content.

But inefficiencies in developing and distributing content are costly for businesses, especially B2B companies, with their dependence on a variety of content types for all stages of a very long sales cycle. Following the steps in this post will help you develop effective content more efficiently.

Global Ecommerce

Making The Case To Go Global | Forrester
Entering new markets is no easy feat, and produces worrisome questions like, “How do I expand sales globally without it costing too much?” Or, “Will a channel that worked well for me in one region perform just as well in another?” Assuming that the way to sell to customers in foreign lands is identical to the way you do it at home is foolish, as is assuming that one’s sales performance in a new market will be just as strong as in your mature one.

Forrester research director Zia Wigder helps us out with those questions as we figure out the right way to develop business in a new market, or if we should even try at all. Investigate not only the market opportunity, but your organization’s ability to withstand the vicissitudes of launching in a new place.

Software Development

What Is Code? | Bloomberg

If you’re selling and marketing software, but don’t really understand why you and your developers seem to be on different wavelengths, this post is for you. It is a blog post that ostensibly sets out to answer the question, “What is code?” for people who don’t code, but it is actually so much more, both in terms of content and design.

Centered around an entertaining account of a fictional meeting between a VP of Sales and a Scrum Master about budgeting for a development project, this post explores the complexity of getting a coding project ready for market. This is a lengthy article that contains some bits about the technical aspects of coding that you might want to skip, but there is also some great information about why software development projects are often delayed and over-budget.

Ecommerce Tips

How to Grow Your Ecommerce Business: Experts Reveal Secrets | FEInternational

Enjoy these 33 pieces of expertise for growing your ecommerce business (including one from yours truly). These diverse range of opinions come from some of the most respected names in ecommerce, and offer advice about removing friction from the checkout process, finding the right channel for acquiring new customers, offering excellent customer service, and creating a unique and consistent brand.

Vote for your favorite one!

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