NEWS, INSIGHTS AND TRENDS GATHERED FROM THE WORLD OF DIGITAL MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE

What footwear brands are doing to reduce online returns

Online shoe retailers’ often-average 1 of every 4 pairs of shoes is primarily due to poor fit. Buying shoes online is definitely tricky, and the old-saying couldn’t be truer that “one shoe-size doesn’t fit all”. Not only is each foot unique, but different brands and different styles for the same shoe size impacts the perfect fit.

A few important steps will help retailers to minimize returns including:

• High quality videos, images and product descriptions
• Detailed size guides and fitting tools
• Integrate virtual try-on and fittings apps on the web application / e-store
• Encourage product reviews

Brands are also investing in immersive tech to make the experience of online shoe buying easy for customers. Virtual try-on fitting apps with 3D product visualization is helping brands to adopt Augmented Reality (AR) for User engagement.

If left unchecked, e-commerce returns will impact profitability in a big way. No one solution will help. Omnichannel, descriptive content, immersive technology, excellent customer service and customer-friendly returns policy should be brought together in a cohesive plan to reduce returns and improve online conversions and profitability.

What works well for B2B content

Content marketing continues to be a key strategy for marketers to engage with prospects and to drive demand generation. High quality content supported with data and insights and one that boosts SEO increases content sharing. Both aspects – development and distribution play a key role in the success of an organization’s content strategy. These include length of article, number of backlinks, headline phrases and content type.

Here’s a sample of what worked well for B2B content marketing:

• The top B2B headline phrases were – “The Future Of” and “How to Use”, “Need To”, “How to create”, “Here’s how” and “You Need to Know”
• Best article types included – “Success” or “Guide” (in title), How-to, Infographic and Video. ‘Success’ articles had the highest number of shares. Although video is a resource-intensive content, it has also demonstrated ROI. ‘Listicles’ continue to be effective, with ‘five’ being the most popular number.
• While short articles (less than 1,000 words) seems to appear more, long-form content (2,000 to 3,000 words) performs better from an SEO, link-building and social sharing perspective

For more details, please read the source article here and here.

What B2B marketers are doing in 2019 for improved lead-generation

With driving revenue continuing to be the primary function of the marketing department, B2B and Tech marketers are looking for faster and more effective ways to deliver quality leads to the sales pipe. 68% of the tech marketers surveyed said that they would focus on videos to share testimonials, how-tos and live stream events in an engaging way. Over one-third (34.9%) of B2B Marketers said that ABM accounts for at least half of their marketing. With the number of Millennials increasing in the B2B world, marketers will look to Influencer Marketing to create awareness and engage with prospect organizations. Purchase Intent Targeting has shown to help conversions when buyer intent has been accurately measured.

To summarize, the top B2B marketing strategies for lead-gen are as follows:

• Video emerges as the lead-gen tactic of choice
• Focus on Account-based marketing (ABM) continues to grow
• Influencer marketing will get more attention
• Purchase intent tactics are on the rise

For more details, please read the source articles here and here.

What is shaping Indian ecommerce in 2019?

The ever-expanding space of e-commerce is being pegged by experts at $4.88 trillion by 2020 according to an article in Economic Times by Swati Bhargava.

We have picked three key trends from the article for your reference

• Marketers and Influencers are relying heavily on advanced attribution technology to measure ROI
• 85% of customer communications will be managed without humans by 2020
• Bigger budgets will be set aside for Influencer Marketing in 2019

Source: Economic Times. Read the original report here.

India’s evolving women’s ethnic wear market to grow to 
Rs 1,26,210 crore

The Indian ethnic wear market has continued to grow according to a report by India Retailing. While there has been a significant rise in ethnic clothing for both men and women, the market is dominated by women’s ethnic wear at 83%.

Here are the highlights from the report

• Ethnic wear market to grow to Rs 1,26,210 crore
• Ethnic wear is one of the biggest categories in women’s apparel with a substantial share of 71 percent
• Fusion wear is growing to be very popular
• E-commerce is a game-changer and Tier II and III cities are crucial for the success of a brand

Source: India Retailing. Read the original report here.

Homecare market is big, but customer acquisition will be a challenge

ET spoke to officials from more than a dozen hospitals, diagnostic chains and healthcare startups, who said they are recruiting highly skilled healthcare workers including nurses, lab technicians and pharmacists and starting services in new cities. Getting enough trained people, though, is proving to be a problem

Here are some takeaways from the report:

• 19% of India’s population will be above 60 by 2050
• Demand for lab technicians is expected to rise 16% and for pharmacists by 12% by 2020
• Dementia, cancer care and pulmonology are growing segments within homecare
• Busy lifestyles, prevalence of elderly and limited mobility is contributing to doorstep medicine delivery and blood tests

Source: Economic Times. Read the original report here.

Luxury watches are reaping the rewards of e-commerce

Not all luxury watch brands have been quick to adapt to direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but those who have, have been reaping the rewards in more ways than one.

Here are some highlights from the report:

• Over 40 percent of luxury watch brands are presently offering direct-to consumer 
e-commerce
• E-commerce is helping them to significantly grow their knowledge on consumers, grasp fast-changing behaviours, adapt services on a client-centric basis, and overall master the customer experience, from online to offline
• The two most leveraged features for e-commerce performance are pick-up in store and videos on product pages

Source: Luxury Society. Read the original report here.