Here is a collection of ecommerce and retail industry articles I found interesting and some correlating Bluesky posts from the week.
Trust is Currency: Capturing Every Sale in a Downturn
Overall consumer confidence may be fading but that doesn’t mean brands can’t take steps to build value and establish trust. By staying laser-focused on the customer and delivering exceptional experiences, brands can force shoppers to think twice before purchasing from other stores. Here are three simple ways brands can protect themselves from a downturn.
The Retail (Blue)Sky is Falling — Week of April 14
The Retail (Blue)Sky is Falling — Week of April 7
The Retail (Blue)Sky is Falling — Week of March 31
The Retail (Blue)Sky is Falling — Week of March 24
The Retail (Blue)Sky is Falling — Week of March 17
How to Combine Email and Social Media Marketing Efforts to Maximize ROI
Brands are expected to spend $247 billion on social media marketing in 2024 to fight for consumers’ attention. With people spending more than two hours a day on social media, brands would be foolish not to spend their ad dollars on social platforms, right?
According to recent data, brands may have it all wrong. For every dollar businesses spend on social media, they get $5 back. Even though this is considered a good return on investment (ROI), other marketing channels, such as email, perform seven times better.
Email marketing has a ROI of 3600 percent worldwide and 7200 percent in the U.S. This means that businesses get $36 for every dollar they spend on email marketing, or $72 if they are based in the U.S.
The Power of Back-in-Stock Email Marketing
For e-commerce brands, it’s not the year of the dragon, it’s the year of the back-in-stock message. Automated back-in-stock message sends have been on a multiyear rise. In 2023, brands sent 4x as many as the year before, generating 3x the number of orders than the year before.
Back-in-stock messages perform exceptionally well compared to their email marketing counterparts. Their 60 percent open rate is higher than any other marketing email. The 19 percent click rate far outpaces the next best automation email, product abandonment, which has a 6.2 percent click rate. And when it comes to conversion rate, it’s not even close: back-in-stock messages see a conversion rate of 5.8 percent, more than double that of welcome messages, the second-best automated email.
Why do back-in-stock messages perform so well?
My Reading & Podcast List
Here is my list of recent reads and podcasts I am currently enjoying. Maybe they’ll give you something new to look into and enjoy.
Read more to find what I’ve been digging into lately, including:
Building a Story Brand
The Power of Geography
The Greatest Beer Run Ever. A Crazy Adventure In a Crazy War
The Escape Artist. The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
Devil in the White City. Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America