For online retailers, it’s no longer a simple case of bricks vs. clicks anymore. Spoilt for choice these days, consumers are far less loyal to brands and are more likely to try new products. With online retailers facing increasing competition, how can they build brand loyalty and retain customers in today’s marketplace?

The gaming and esports media company Ampverse just launched in Southeast Asia, represents leading talents that sit at the intersection of gaming and popular culture to create unique co-branded content solutions. The region is home to one of the most dynamic gaming ecosystems globally with a market that’s expected to grow 22% this year to $4.6Bn, reflecting one of the fastest-growing gaming regions in the world. In fact, according to forecasts, the number of Southeast Asian gamers is to rise to 400 million by 2021, with over 250 million of those players on mobile devices alone.

Microsoft announced the global debut of a retail solution that empowers consumers to make informed purchase decisions amidst the myriad of options available online and offline.

The solution, called Microsoft Synchronized Shopping, is one expression of Microsoft’s broader retail reimagined strategy aimed at simplifying the consumer journey by leveraging intelligent cloud technology.

When it comes to what makes a successful marketing campaign, today it is obviously the situation that determines the value, since the geographic location of the customer is decisive: consumers are used to having their taxi picking them up right where they are, they read online reviews for the best restaurants in their area before making reservations; and search by app for the nearest parking lot.

In our rapidly changing world, it takes a coordinated effort of the public and private sectors to identify new threats on the horizon and ensure both police and society are prepared to face them. At least, that has been the key message of INTERPOL World 2019, a global security and innovation conference which was taking place from July 2-4, 2019 in Singapore.

After more than two years in development, PUBLIQ’s new publishing platform is now live and fully operational. Anyone can open an account free of charge and start earning income from their creations within minutes. Content creators around the world can publish text, music or video and see payments automatically made into their accounts six times an hour, every ten minutes. These automatic payments continue to be made ad infinitum and individual users are never charged a fee for using the platform.

Top tech companies who are active in China are set to attend a one-day conference in Beijing, which focusses on the use of Neural Machine Technology (NMT) in the globalization process of Chinese companies. The conference will take place on September 11th and is organized by One Hour Translation (OHT), an online platform which provides translations in more than 100 languages and 3,000 language pairs.

Wi-Fi is the critical foundation of the Connected Home but also a common source of customer frustration. This is an issue that service providers need to tackle head on if they are to grow revenues, reduce churn and prepare themselves for enormous opportunities that lie ahead.

Zendesk. announced the launch of Gather, a powerful new product that enables companies to provide trusted and transparent support to customers through online community forums. Gather creates a space where customers can engage with each other and company experts to offer guidance and insight beyond what a single customer support agent might be able to handle.

The digitalization trend in marketing has made brand management more complex: it is faster, more transparent and less predictable and controllable due to the momentum of social networks. Digital transformation is lived reality by now, making agility and adaptability generally the top criteria for brand success.

Melissa, a leading provider of global contact data quality and identity verification solutions, announced Privacy Flag, a seamless new feature in its comprehensive Global Email Verification suite designed to verify email addresses and improve overall email deliverability.

Today, inbound marketing no longer means that the potential customer is calling immediately, rather that the prospective customer searches for information on the Internet first.

The key to a personalized and targeted customer approach is a good understanding of your customers. Sounds simple, but what exactly should you know about your customers?

Read on to find out our top 7 recommendations for better understanding your customers:

1. Who are my top customers? Top customers are the proportion of customers who regularly generate high sales. These can be identified by the so-called RFM analysis. To do this, ask the following questions:

• Recency: How long since their last purchase?
• Frequency: How often do they buy?
• Monetary: How much revenue was generated?

The top customers can then be determined from the intersection of these three groups.

2. Where are my customers located? The geographical location of customers can be important for marketers, as it can have a decisive influence on customers’ preferences if their purchases are geographically based – for example, which airport to book flights from, or which venue to attend a live event at. Geo-analysis uses spatial information such as postcodes for visualizations and selections. This enables new perspectives on market penetration, the identification of new market potential and the dispatch of regional offers and/or teams.

3. What do my customers buy? Which customer bought which product? This is a fairly important question. Not only does it inform you about your current customers, but it also allows you to identify customers with a similar profile who have not yet purchased this product. This enables the realization of untapped potential. Customer profiles can be defined based on demographic, psychographic, geographic or behavioral characteristics.

4. What turnover do my customers generate? Knowing which customer group generates what turnover is crucial for the distribution of your marketing budget. For example, customers can be identified in order to receive loyalty rewards or higher quality communications. Often referred to as Customer Lifetime Value (CLT), this metric represents the total revenue that a customer generates during a company's life cycle.

5. When and how often do my customers buy? When and how often customers buy is essential information, especially in retail, in order to optimize orders and inventory accordingly. In addition, this information can be used to identify the best possible time for advertising or campaign contact, and customers at risk of churn. The prerequisite for this is the transaction history of the customers. This can be mapped, for example, in a CRM system.

6. How many customers do I lose per year? Even though your number of customers may have remained constant over a longer period of time, it’s possible that some customers have churned, and this effect has been offset by new customers. In order to increase the customer base in the long term, however, it’s important to know how many customers churn each year, identify possible causes for this and take appropriate countermeasures. Precisely which customers have churned can be determined by the last transaction date using a CRM system.

7. How many new customers do I gain each year? Based on the number of new customers you can see which marketing communications have been particularly effective to date. This helps to plan your sales forecasts for the coming year and determine which marketing measures should be given more focus. New customers within one year can be recognized in the CRM system based on the creation date of the data master record.

By Apteco

According to a survey of the market research firm eMarketer, global spending for online advertising will reach nearly 427 billion US dollars in 2020. But how can advertisers use their media budget effectively and to the greatest success for their campaigns?