🔊 Marketing lessons from consumer brands

In a year dedicated to online shopping, brands raising their e-commerce game has been a trend, but for Cuisinart, a full-service culinary resource used by professionals and the private sector, their top priority in building a new e-commerce site was future-proofing the new site for continuous growth. “The new website is heavily data-driven, with over a dozen complex integrations,” said Cuisinart Director of Marketing Mary M. Rodgers.

Using their long-time digital agency partner Whereoware, Cuisinart was able to reorganize in six months. To accomplish their goal of future-proofing the website for continuous growth, Cuisinart selected Episerver’s Digital Experience Platform’s commerce solution because of its flexibility and the ability to service Cuisinart’s expanding distribution channels.

With the Episerver platform in place, Cuisinart and Whereoware selected nearly a dozen vendors to complete the new e-commerce experience: Salesforce marketing cloud was used for the shopping cart; Acoustic for the marketing automation platform; Registrar for product registration; Numerator and Sellisfy for retail services; and Bazaarvoice for customer reviews.

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Change has come to define the past year, and it will probably define the next one, too. Some marketers are exhausted from pivoting from one surprising development to the next. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Operating with agility can help you succeed today, stay ready for anything, and even save both time and money. Join this webinar to learn more.

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Pinterest reported strong revenue growth of 58% year-over-year to $443 million in the third-quarter, and global monthly active users (MAUs) increased by 37% YoY to 442 million. The company also seems to have gained from the Facebook Ads boycott. “[W]e continue to benefit from marketers who are prioritizing positivity and brand safety,” said Pinterest CFO Todd Morgenfeld, on the earnings call. “Advertisers tell us that Pinterest is brand safe relative to other consumer internet platforms. And we’ve benefited from this in Q3.”

Why we care. The impact of the brand safety boycott on Facebook’s bottom line appears to be negligible, but it’s all relative. Minor losses to Facebook can represent substantial gains for Pinterest. Facebook also saw its North American user base fall by two million from the previous quarter to 196 million, while Pinterest’s US users increased by 2 million to 98. Pinterest said it saw higher advertising demand than it had expected in the third quarter with investments in conversion optimization or OCPM ads, shopping, ads, and auto bidding helping diversify its advertiser base.

Amidst all the change we’re experiencing in the world today, marketers may wonder what their role should be at the intersection of principles, profit and purpose. And can we as marketers contribute to our best collective future? The answer is yes, says MJ DePalma, Microsoft Advertising’s Head of Multicultural & Inclusive Marketing. Microsoft Advertising calls it Marketing with Purpose.

Marketing with Purpose is about building a brand that’s welcomed into people’s lives by earning their trust and upholding their values. It starts with respecting their right to privacy, being transparent and designing equitable experiences.

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Barnes & Noble has long had an e-commerce website where books could be ordered for mail delivery as well as for pick-up in store. With the pandemic came a huge shift in customer behavior, said Josh Zelman, Senior Director, Customer Experience, away from brick and mortar to shopping online but retrieving in store.

“At the onset of the pandemic, mail delivery was affected,” said Zelman. “There was an increase in overall dot com traffic and order volume, and that had a ripple effect on our delivery ability. We had complications from distribution centers as well, trying to navigate new social distancing measures while simultaneously starting to see volumes that were nearing typical holiday-like volume. That all became complicated to handle.”

On its introduction in 2018, BOPIS accounted for about 23% of orders, dropping to 20% in 2019. With the pandemic, Barnes & Noble saw BOPIS sales increase by almost 230% (compared with January and February this year), and is projecting a 109% growth YOY in November and December — and that’s without a COVID resurgence.

In emails, the brand’s main communications channel, the Dynamic Store Locator module powered by Movable Ink, which leverages geo-location data, now shows not only store location and opening hours, but showcases whether the store is currently open for business and whether BOPIS and curbside pick-up are offered.

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