Real Time Marketing
Making Sense of Online Marketing in Real Time
There are about 2.5 bn people online, less than one fifth of them shop online regularly but they account for nearly $1 Trillion of sales a year, that’s up by almost 21.9% compared to last year (2011). According to one estimate 70% of the retail sales are influenced online, and this is also applicable to people who don’t buy online. That’s a phenomenal raise, in spite of the weak economic outlook in many countries. US itself accounted for about $226 Bn of online sales followed by countries like china.
Needless to say consumers today are spending more time online. They are not just buying, but are also comparing prices and researching about products and brands. Marketers are not unaware of these facts, and are going all out to woo the customers. And while digital marketers, are trying to increase their effectiveness and reach with their data driven processes, techniques and tools; But many of them are still struggling and because they are unable to converting leads to sales or reduce the shopping cart abandons (Typical shopping cart abandons range from 65% to 80% –abandonment rate)
Real Time Analytics And Engagement For Real E- Commerce
In the era of global uncertainty and depressed world economy, one sector has seen some impressive growth trends – Its e-commerce!
Global e-commerce sales reached $1.1 trillion in 2012, up 21.9% from $893.33 billion in 2011. While North America continued to claim most of those sales. Forecasts indicate that in 2013, total e-commerce sales worldwide will grow 19.3% year over year to reach $1.3 trillion. China drives most of Asia-Pacific’s e-commerce growth, and is poised to surpass Japan to become the world’s second-largest e-commerce market after the United States this year. India’s E commerce on the other hand, was worth about $14 billion in 2012, and has close to 10 million online shoppers and this number is growing at an estimated 30 percent.
What Online Customer Wants?
Online shopping is the only phenomenon that has bucked the trend of recession and weak economic outlook in many countries. This phenomenon might have started in late 90’s, after a few and brief anxious moments, its been on a roll; because nearly a trillion dollars were spent by online shoppers just last year; Surprisingly that’s just about 30% of the potential – wonder what’s more to come. E-commerce has no doubt evolved tremendously over the last decade or so; it has transcended through most of the product, services and commodities categories, so much so that today there are more choices available to user than a traditional super market or hyper market.
While it is clear that the basic fundamentals of product variety and brand experience stay at the heart of buying and selling online, But its the evolution of the new era of customer experience that has increased the online shoppers funnel from just $ 50 Mn to $1Tn Dollars in the last 10 years. Online shoppers have no doubt adapted themselves over the years, and while a lot of things might have changed in the e-commerce context, but a lot of things that remain unsaid in every customer experience survey and research. Being an online shopper myself, I would like to put the context of customer experience in three stages viz:
Real Time Analytics – A Discoverer’s Opportunity
Most businesses today are Reactive – They react only after the customer has placed an order, after the stock price has fallen, after the customer discovered a bug , After Customer has complained, After customer has dropped out , stopped a payment
Most often, either it’s too late or one has too little options and space to manoeuvre or salvage the situation. This type of “Kick me now” syndrome and is witnessed commonly in most organizations.
How is analytics related to this?
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