Nine fascinating internet marketing statistics we saw this week

Welcome to Econsultancy's weekly round up of useful and interesting statistics from the world of digital and ecommerce.

This week it includes mobile commerce, digital marketing technology, Amazon's customer experience, iOS 8, retargeting and Hootsuite's latest funding round.

For more of the same download Econsultancy's Internet Statistics Compendium...

Mobile commerce traffic up by 120%

Monetate’s latest Ecommerce Quarterly for Q2 2014 shows that mobile commerce traffic has increased by 120% in the last year, overtaking tablet traffic for the first time.

But while mobile devices are now responsible for 16% of all ecommerce traffic, they continue to drive less than 4% of revenue. 

Moreover, a mobile customer’s visit to an ecommerce website has a 50% higher bounce rate, a 30% lower add-to-cart rate, and is 10% more likely to abandon cart.

The report is based on data from more than 7bn online shopping experiences.

Digital marketing tech can be a competitive advantage

Econsultancy's new report on Leading a Digital Marketing Evolution shows that digital marketing tech can be a competitive advantage, but only if implemented correctly.

The report identified three distinct groups of companies based on how they are affected by pressures directly related to digital. The groups are leaders, mainstream and followers.

The data shows that leading companies are far less likely to be confounded by data and far more likely to have tied their various applications into a cohesive, useful structure.

Nearly 40% of leaders agree that their digital marketing technologies empower everything they do. 

Amazon tops UK digital CX study

Once again, Amazon has come top in a customer experience survey from eDigitalResearch.

The eChannel Retail Benchmark looks at digital customer experience from first impressions to making a purchase - including websites, mobile sites and apps.

Amazon topped the benchmark study thanks to its core multichannel functionality, especially across the search and purchase sections of the customer journey. Consumers particularly liked the accurate and fast predictive text on keyword search, customer reviews on product pages and the one-click purchase functionality.

Department store Debenhams came a close second thanks to its recent site redesign. 

Apple's iOS 8 off to a slower start than iOS 7

The roll out of Apple's new operating system hasn't been a great success thus far, and unsurprisingly users appear unwilling to make the switch from iOS 7.

Data from Somo shows that five days post-launch iOS 8 penetration had hit 36%. In comparison iOS 7 had reached 58% in the same period.

Does creativity drive profits?

A new report from Adobe shows that that creativity is increasingly becoming a crucial factor to a company’s success.

The survey of senior managers from more than 300 large global companies found that 58% of firms that foster creativity had 2013 revenues exceeding their 2012 revenues by 10% or more. In contrast, only 20% of less creative companies performed similarly.

Creative companies are more likely to report a commanding market leadership position with a higher market share than competitors. Of those reporting market share leadership, creative companies outnumber their less creative counterparts by a factor of 1.5%.

People intend to buy cars online

British consumers’ intent to buy motor-related products, computer equipment and ebooks online has tripled since 2011, according to a new study by Nielsen.

Purchase intent is difficult to measure accurately, but it seems shoppers are becoming more accepting of ecommerce.

The proportion of Britons who intend to use the internet to buy cars, motorcycles or related accessories ‘in the next six months’ has jumped more than three times since 2011, from just 5% to 17% in 2014. 

Similarly, the intent to go online to purchase computer hardware (to 28%) and software (to 30%) as well as ebooks (to 33%) has tripled. 

Be careful with app data

More than one in three consumers (35%) who have used a mobile app on their smartphone/tablet have deleted an app because they think their data is being overused.

The survey also found that only a quarter of people trust companies to protect the data gathered through mobile apps.

The survey was conducted by Osborne Clarke and Mubaloo.

Advertisers concerned with retargeting transparency

A poll of 230 enterprise level marketers (50% spending more than $250,000 a month) has found that one in four advertisers are concerned with transparency when retargeting.

These concerns include include viewability (38%), click fraud (37%), and 'black box' campaign optimisation (34%).

The survey by Marin Software found that 88% of respondents use retargeting, with display (81%), search (77%) and social (48%) the top channels.

51% of respondents indicated retargeting makes up less than 10% of their monthly marketing budget. 

Hootsuite closes $60m funding round

And finally, some news from the Hootsuite, which has announced a $60m funding round that brings its total financing to $250m.

As a result the Vancouver-based startup is valued at around $1bn.

Lookalike audiences: the next big thing in marketing?

Now that Twitter has rolled out functionality which is a lot like Facebook's Lookalike Audiences, it's time to take a closer look at what lookalike audiences are, how to use them and why you would.

Previously I've written about Facebook Custom Audiences, which create an advertising audience out of an email list. And I've also included 'lookalike audiences' as one of the key features that makes Facebook such a compelling place to advertise.  

So far, though, I have avoided going into too much detail about lookalikes as they were somewhat unique to Facebook and required specialist knowledge.

But with Twitter's recent announcement that they, too, will support lookalike audiences, it's time to cover them in greater detail.  

That is, there is now some agreement among the social media powerhouses that lookalike audiences are an effective strategy for reaching people on social media who may be interested in your product or service - so they are certainly worth learning more about.

Like with any new marketing strategy, though, they are not without controversy - and you will see why very quickly.

And though there are sensible reservations about using them, first read an overview of lookalike audiences through which you can learn a bit more about how they work and whether they might be useful for you.

What are lookalike audiences

For those who were previously unaware of lookalike audiences, here's a quick definition:

A lookalike audience is an algorithmically-assembled group of social network members who resemble, in some way, another group of members.

Things to note:

• The original, 'seed' group is a user list provided by you.  This is not interest or behavior targeting.

• The seed group are identified by email address, phone number, website cookie, or device ID.

• You don't need to provide any other information about your seed group - just their identifier.

• You are not told by the social network who in your seed group has an account on the platform, but you are told how many do.

• The social network runs the algorithm and decides who of their members 'looks like' your seed group using what they know about your seed group members.

• You do not know why the lookalike group matches your original group.  The algorithm is proprietary and secret.

• You are not given access to the names on the list, but you can advertise to them as a group (which is the point).

• Once created, they become an advertising audience like any other demographic, only they are unique to you because you created them.

A caveat

As you read these notes, alarms bells may be going off.  

Building a lookalike audience requires that you upload your most valuable asset (your customer or user list) to a social network.  In return, you may, possibly, reach more like them. Yes, it sounds a bit crazy.  And no, you shouldn't do such a thing lightly.

But for the length of this post, please put your suspicions and data privacy questions aside so that you can learn about how they work - and why they may, indeed, be the next big thing in digital marketing.

How to use them

There are plenty of step-by-step guides to building lookalikes on Facebook - including one from Facebook.  And because the other guides are done so well, I won't repeat step-by-step instructions here.  

There are, however, a few best practices to follow when creating them:

• The seed group must have at least 100 members.
• Quite often, though, the emails (or other IDs) that you have do not match members on the network. So you will probably have to upload more than 100 to be sure you can build a seed audience.
• You can optimize for greater similarity or for reach.  It's sensible to create multiple lookalike audiences each with different levels of similarity.
• Note that it takes time for Facebook to run the algorithm to create your audience - but that time has been vastly reduced from overnight to typically < 1 hour.
• Make sure the members of your seed audience are as similar as possible. If you know age, product interests, location be sure to pre-segment your audience using those factors.

Now, when you use your final audience, you can only target an ad to one country at a time (but you can of course create multiple campaigns to hit multiple countries.) You can also filter your lookalike audience further using Facebook's interest, education, age, etc. ad filters.

Now this is a crucial point which you shouldn't miss.  Lookalikes offer you a way of assembling a social media population who is likely to use your product or service - and then segmenting them further so that your ads are more relevant for them.  

It's an incredibly powerful combination of targeting and segmenting that, really, has never been available before.

 

Why to use them

Now that you understand what lookalike audiences are and how they are implemented, I bet you already have some idea about why - and where - you might use them.

In case you don't, however, one reason is that there is something about your intended target audience which is not captured well in social media - say a 2nd language or level of disposable income. Luckily, though, you have an email list of people with those attributes.  You can then upload them, create a lookalike audience and now you can do what the social network - and possibly your competitors - cannot.

A lookalike audience, then, offers you some hope to reach those valuable consumers so you can offer much more relevant ads and, hopefully, get a much higher quality response for your ad spend.

And I'm sure there are many other reasons to use them - but like with any new, previously unavailable marketing medium you should think creatively about how you can benefit from it and then run thorough tests.

Back to data privacy

I can't tell you whether using your list for lookalikes violates standard terms & conditions and data privacy laws, but what I do know is that marketers are always looking for ways to improve performance.  And should lookalike audiences outperform interest, demographic, and location targeting, you can be sure that it will be adopted in your industry.

It may require a change in t's and c's - or even a total review of your customer acquisition strategy - but if you do performance marketing it will likely be worth the effort.

So...

Hopefully this brief guide has been sufficient to pique your interest in lookalike audiences so that you can think about how you might use them for your own industry.  I'd love to hear what other people think of their potential - or their danger - in the comments.

12 bewilderingly bright ecommerce sites for your instant attention

Finally an excuse to wear your sunglasses around the office.

One of the easiest ways for a website to immediately grab the attention of a visitor is to turn the colour up. Way up.

If you’re of a particularly bold inclination, I for one am hugely attracted to bright solid colours or anything neon, you’ll appreciate it when a site breaks out of the usual whites, greys and blacks of typical ecommerce design.

It separates you from the crowd. It’s a statement of independence. It’s a statement of rebellion. Sure not everyone will dig your new hypercoloured threads, but just remember that the squares can keep their greys… You’ve gone Technicolor. 

#Beer

Hard to miss collaboration between Engage and Revolutions, which also has a neat little spin the bottle touch.

Lancome

Pink. So much pink. It’s glorious, and the site itself is a scrolling, interactive winner.

Handy Hat

There’s so much going on here, but all of it is completely charming and filled with wonder.

Fitbit

Fitbit has a brilliant scrolling, subtly-animated lead-in to its ecommerce site which reveals equally colourful product pages.

Oilily

This is a fantastic scrolling website showcasing the history of the Dutch fashion brand.

Urban Originals

Incredibly large bright images completely dominate the homepage and make for an arresting welcome.

Design By Humans

It’s very easy to constantly highlight Threadless and its fantastic looking ecommerce store, so let’s give another t-shirt brand a go. Welcome to the blog Design By Humans!

Von Dutch

Step out of Von Dutch’s way, or else prepare to be smacked in the face with orange.

India Circus

The homepage is gorgeous but frankly every product page here is a feast of colour.

Crayola

Bit of a no-brainer this one.

Lois Jeans

Scores for both brightness and overlarge background video.

Happy Socks

Boldness! Flat design! Socks!

For more on web design from the blog, check out these 16 examples of flat ecommerce design and 20 beautifully persuasive ecommerce designs.

20 gorgeous examples of websites with video backgrounds

Everything about having a background video seems to go against the basic rules of web usability.

It means the page might take longer to load, or the user might become distracted, and surely nobody thinks autoplay music is a good idea.

That may all be true, or it may not, I haven’t been able to find any stats to support either side of the argument.

What’s certainly true is that these moving images captivate the user and ensure the website stands out from the standard cookie-cutter formats we’re used to seeing.

I've rounded up 20 of these spectacular websites, many of which are also good examples of the trend towards using scrolling as a design feature.

If you have any thoughts on whether a background video is a good idea, let me know in the comments.

Small Luxury Hotels of the World

A niche website, and I’m not really sure what the lanterns have to do with luxury hotels. But it looks great.

JL Sawyer

This site is to promote A Bloom of Ruins by author JL Sawyer. The movement is very subtle but it works well with the overall aesthetic in my opinion.

GoPro

This is actually a YouTube video, and it took ages to load on my computer, but it’s still worth checking out.

Marmoset Music

Harvey Vice

Nike Air Jordan

Mood Furniture

Uniqlock

I'm not sure what this Uniqlo website does, but it's brilliant.

Lois Jeans

Airbnb

 

APTCB2

D.FY

 

Bellroy

Provence

Woodland Ad Agency

Adopt Cymru 

Negrar

Wayne McGregor Random Dance

This dance studio has a particularly frantic background video, but it creates a very powerful impression.

Futuretainment

Dadaab Stories

 

What can we learn about marketing automation from the movie Airplane!

A common misconception about Marketing Automation is that you just hit autopilot and then sit back and watch the conversions roll in.

Anyone that’s seen the movie Airplane! will know that just hitting the autopilot button isn’t always a good idea!

Marketing automation is no different to any other internal process, service or action within your company. Its success is dependent on the competence of the people involved in the implementation.

If marketing automation is applied correctly, an organisation can expect to have engaged customers and a growth in revenue.

Therefore, it comes as little surprise to read that marketing automation has seen the fastest growth of any CRM-related segment in the last five years.

You’re all different…. “I’m not”

Despite the one man amongst the masses during Brian’s window top speech in The Life of Brian, everyone is individual and different. This is something that must be remembered when applying Marketing Automation.

Personalising content based on consumer profiles is a strategy that you should be adhering to with your marketing automation workflows.

For example, if an online retail company has a customer who in the past six months has purchased Britney Spears’s Greatest Hits CD (oh, the irony), a Miley Cyrus DVD and the book Despicable Me 3 by Katie Price, then they should not be targeted with content about the re-mastered version of The Stone Roses’ debut album or the release of the Director’s Cut of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

The message needs to be tailored to the profile.  

Broader segmentation is of course perfectly acceptable and it is encouraged to use it alongside individual messaging. You can group customers in many ways that will be different from business to business.

A popular technique is to look at how far down the sales funnel a customer is which will dictate what communication they receive and when they receive it.

The diagram below created from Kentico shows a classic example of how marketing automation can work prior to a sale. 

The speed of progressing a lead through this process is increased as a result of the speed at which a company can deliver messages by using Marketing Automation. Companies that invest in marketing automation solutions see 70% faster sales cycle times (Source: Bulldog Solutions). 

What do points make? ….Prizes!

Brucey knew what he was on about, points mean prizes, although I am unsure if he has much knowledge of lead scoring. 

You will have noticed that in the diagram above lead scoring plays a pivotal role. Lead Scoring is a system that helps you classify website visitors according to how likely they are to become customers using a points/scoring system effectively creating a league table consisting of leads and customers.

Points are allocated to certain tasks e.g. visiting the website = 10 points, subscribing to the newsletter = 30 points, purchasing a product = 1000 points. 

When a person reaches a certain score then specific marketing material can be targeted at them such as discount codes or invitations to special events.

However, there are likely to be people that you will not want to target event though they have reached a certain point threshold. For example, if someone buys a car by going straight into the showroom and taking advantage of a seasonal offer (that they were unaware of) and then subsequently visits the website and acquires lead scoring points, they do not need to be targeted with the seasonal offer.

It is easy to ensure that does not happen by simply applying a Condition Field such as “If site visitor has bought a new car in the last two months then do not email”. 

Lead scoring is a highly effective way of nurturing leads and subsequently maximising customer lifetime values.

Without marketing automation it would be very difficult to maintain meaningful nurturing for every potential lead and customer contact.

Marketing automation enables customer-segmented communication tracks to provide content and messaging based on prospect behaviour, interest levels, and demographics. Manual processes could never scale to meet the demands of such sophisticated and targeted lead nurturing. 

Surely Airplane! didn’t have it completely wrong?

That’s right, they didn’t, and don’t call me Shirley. They needed to react quickly and have ready-made response to a certain scenario. Unfortunately, Otto the autopilot did not have the skills or expertise to land the plane.

This is similar to Marketing automation. Anyone can run it but you can’t just rely on the technology. The quality of the content is imperative. 

While automation can improve multi-touch customer interactions, marketers must be smart about every step to avoid making costly mistakes that result in lost customers, lost opportunities, and lost revenue. 

Marketers must always remember that an overarching marketing strategy should direct the implementation of Marketing Automation platforms. The technology itself doesn’t engage and convert prospects – it’s the marketing plan in place that makes it all happen.

Relevant messages have a short life shelf life. If you set up marketing automation content and don’t revisit it regularly to judge whether it is still appropriate then your communications can quickly be regarded as spam.  

So, luckily for us marketers, we are not out of work just yet!

Six wonderful examples of marketing creative for your entertainment

In November Econsultancy is hosting the Festival of Marketing, a two-day celebration of the modern marketing industry, featuring speakers from brands including LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more.

One of the themes of the event is Brand & Creative, so to give some inspiration on this topic I’ve collated some of the most eye-catching examples of creativity in marketing that I’ve seen recently.

So sit back and peruse these wonderful marketing campaigns, then buy yourself a ticket to the Festival of Marketing...

IKEA

It’s very easy to make fun of the hysteria that surrounds Apple product launches. 

Samsung has posted several ads online making fun of people that queue for days just to buy a phone with one or two new features, however in doing so it breaks one of the key rules of advertising that states you should never talk about the competition.

It has also done it so many times that the joke is wearing very thin.

However this latest ad from IKEA Singapore comes with none of the baggage of Samsung’s efforts and expertly satirises Apples over-the-top marketing campaigns.

Marvel Super Heroes

Marvel Comics are so hot right now, and this publicity stunt to promote a new video game makes great use of one of its most iconic characters.

The full advert includes a convoluted adventure story involving Ironman, Thor and other superheroes, but the showpiece is a giant hologram of The Hulk which appears to raise Tower Bridge.

It’s a very cool stunt, even if we all know that Hulk isn’t actually that big.

Dyson

Dyson has successfully been making vacuum cleaners sexy for several decades, but it has surpassed all previous efforts with this immersive HTML5 website.

But then one can’t rely on a plain old print ad when marketing a robot vacuum cleaner that plugs into the Internet of Things.

Check it out by clicking on this screenshot:

Canon

Europe is home to a number of historic cultural events that seem incredibly brutal by today’s standards.

The bull run at Pamplona is one obvious example, while the annual game of Calcico Storico in Florence is another.

The latter is the subject of a 90-second ad for Canon, which uses the event as a way of emphasising the use of its cameras to tell stories.

For the uninitiated, Calcico Storico is a violent version of football that involves four teams from Florence, each of which consists of 27 men.

It takes place in June on the sand-covered piazza in front of the Santa Croce church, with the winning team taking home a prize cow.

This ad forms part of Canon’s ‘Come and See’ campaign, which also involves a website that reveals the camera techniques used in the video.

Save the Bees

Art exhibitions to advertise charitable campaigns are not a new idea, but they’re still an effective way of generating both funds and PR attention.

London beekeepers Barnes & Webb launched a Save the Bees campaign recently with an exhibition of bee-themed images from well-known artists.

It forms part of a series of educational initiatives aimed at raising awareness of the plight of honeybees, which have suffered a sharp population decline due to pesticides and reduction in biodiversity.

This is my particular favourite, created by Sam Droege.

LEGO bus stop

It is apparently the Year of the Bus, but then I didn’t need to tell you that, right?

To celebrate this momentous occasion Transport for London partnered with Hamley’s to create a bus stop on Regents Street that is made entirely of LEGO.

Constructed out of more than 100,000 bricks, it functioned as a normal bus stop for a month over June and July.

It’s an ingenious way of encouraging people to fall in love with LEGO all over again, while allowing Hamleys and TfL to bask in its reflected glory.

For more about LEGO, read our post examining its outstanding social strategy.

This is no ordinary Bus Stop! It's a #LEGOBusStop! If you're in London's Regent St, then come and check it out! pic.twitter.com/Yv5dM8CaPe

— LEGO (@LEGO_Group) June 20, 2014

And as a final bonus, here’s some fantastic out-of-home artistry that advertised Brixton Design Week.

This swirling design appeared overnight on the pavement outside Brixton Tube station.

I’m slightly biased as I used to live in Brixton, but I think it’s a wonderfully creative way of promoting the event.

Our Festival of Marketing event in November is a two day celebration of the modern marketing industry, featuring speakers from brands including LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more.

Five lessons for effective blogger outreach

Earned media is becoming an ever important aspect of the modern marketing mix with recent research showing blogs as one of the most trusted digital sources guiding consumer decisions.

Given that 92% of global consumers value word of mouth recommendations over all forms of advertising, it’s clear that marketers and advertisers have a lot to learn before they can reliably win consumer trust. 

Earned media is becoming an ever important aspect of the modern marketing mix with recent research showing blogs as one of the most trusted digital sources guiding consumer decisions.

Given that 92% of consumers value word of mouth recommendations over all forms of advertising, it’s clear that marketers and advertisers have a lot to learn before they can reliably win consumer trust. 

Having worked with bloggers for over five years, we’ve been vocal advocates of blogger outreach as a valuable and often indispensable tactic for marketing activation. 

But the game has evolved fast. ASA warnings, algorithm changes at Google and high-profile controversies have all come to interrupt and redefine the blogger-brand relationship. 

With so many changes having taken place in the last year, we set out to uncover the thoughts, hopes, motivations and experiences of more than 250 UK-based bloggers in the UK’s largest ever blogger outreach study. The findings were certainly telling.   

1. Most bloggers want to work with you

A simple Google search for ‘blogger outreach’ returns more than 1.8m organic search results.  With these kinds of numbers, you’d be forgiven for thinking bloggers and online publishers must be sick to death of being approached by brands and agencies.  

Yet to the contrary, 46% of bloggers enjoy being contacted by brands and agencies ‘a lot’, with a negligible 1% stating that they ‘hate’ being contacted by agencies.  

The blogger-brand relationship is increasingly becoming a symbiotic one.

 

2. It’s a career choice, especially with younger bloggers

More than half of the bloggers surveyed currently regard blogging as a hobby. However,  73% of those currently blogging as a hobby between the ages of 16 and 24 want to make blogging a full-time job. 

Perhaps more importantly, 100% of bloggers in this age group who had been blogging for just 6-12 months wished to make blogging a full-time career, despite their lack of experience.

How might this impact the blogger-brand relationship?

 

3. Editorial control is still very important to older, more experienced bloggers 

As blogging as a publishing form has moved on from its early hobbyist roots, bloggers have emerged as highly trust sources of information on the web. 

But as any experienced blogger will tell you, it takes time and a keen sense of editorial control to gain and keep audience trust. Older, more experienced bloggers are far more likely to want to retain full editorial control when working with brands than younger, less experienced bloggers.  

By extension, bloggers who publish an average of 20 or more pieces of content per month are also, unsurprisingly, far more likely to want to retain editorial freedom when working with brands compared to those who post 2-4 times a month (just 6% request editorial control) or just once or twice a month (9% of whom demand full editorial control).  

What can we take from this? Know the preferences of who you’re pitching to, and get your pitch right from the off. 

4. Money doesn’t always talk 

The issue of brands and agencies paying publishers in return for online coverage has a long and thorny history. Google has made it vehemently clear that undisclosed advertorials are strictly against its Webmaster Guidelines, but this hasn’t stopped a number of household brands from buying undisclosed advertorials with bloggers. 

Where does this practice leave bloggers?  

It would appear that the distinction between being offered monetary payment or a free product review remains unclear for many, with the data showing hugely mixed understandings of what constitutes payment. 

More than half (55%) of bloggers surveyed said the question of whether or not they would expect payment was dependent on the agency, company or blogging activity in question. 

Perhaps contrary to popular assumption, only 26% of bloggers stated that they would always expect to be paid in return for blogging. 

5. Personalisation, transparency and relevance make all the difference 

With over 65% of bloggers surveyed reporting that they are contacted several times a week, brands and agencies must be prepared to personalise their approach to cut through the noise. 

The two most important aspects of gaining trust and rapport with bloggers come down to the agency being clear in their expectations from bloggers, and bloggers knowing precisely what they can expect in return for their efforts. 

When it comes to making that all important first step, 52% of bloggers prefer to be contacted by email over any other form of communication, meaning the all-important outreach email is one of the most important ingredients in your outreach proposition.

The future of blogger outreach 

The good news for marketers and PRs is that bloggers and publishers want to work with brands they respect, admire and can feel a part of. 

With trust in the traditional media slipping, the challenge for earned media teams is to harness the inherent creativity of bloggers to create experiences consumers can relate to and believe in. 

Blogger outreach is one of a select few unsung strategies perfectly suited to make that difference.