Professor Wind founded the Wharton Think Tank. He has authored or co-authored and edited 30 books and has received four major marketing awards. Professor Wind sits on the advisory board of the Lauder Institute. He co-founded the Reichmann University, the first private non-profit university Israel, and he is working closely with Amelia, an enterprise conversational AI company. His most recent book, Transformation in Times of Crisis, has been a big hit, and it was terrific to have him with us to connect the key principles highlighted in the book with the evolution of and opportunities afforded by generative and conversational AI.

What is a Culture of Experimentation?

A culture of experimentation is an environment that encourages people to come up with new ideas and test them out, where failure is not only tolerated but celebrated. When team members take risks in this kind of culture, they are rewarded for these efforts – even when they fail. Professor Wind shared his “great belief” that the “only way to learn and grow and succeed is by continuously experimenting”. Without a culture of experimentation, companies are unable to grow and address new challenges.

Why is Experimentation Important in Innovation?

Experimentation isn’t just important when it comes to innovation – it’s the foundation on which innovation is built. By developing new ideas, testing them, failing, and starting over again, your company can rapidly explore potential new avenues and evaluate which will be most effective. History has shown us that countless inventions have come about through R&D efforts were people were seeking to solve entirely different problems, and your business can benefit in ways you can’t predict from experimentation. Professor Wind noted that a culture of experimentation offers companies a competitive advantage, and isn’t that what a successful digital strategy is all about?

How Can Companies Foster a Culture of Experimentation?

Creating a strong culture of any kind involves buy-in from leadership, consistent reinforcement, and ongoing commitment. There are several actions you can take to help your company foster a culture of experimentation.

• Set the tone. A forward-thinking CEO can set the tone for the entire company by encouraging people to explore new ideas, measure their results, and learn from their failures as much as from their successes.
• Engage your team. Companies innovate best when all employees are empowered to experiment and are made aware of the changing landscape. Companies can draw on the experience and inspiration of their entire team, heightening the likelihood of developing new and exciting solutions.
• Make experimentation easy. Give your team the tools and the time to try new things and test different ideas. If your employees have access to what they need to experiment and the go ahead to do it, they will be empowered to innovate.
• Build a framework. By setting standards for how experiments will be run and how they will be evaluated, and developing ethical guidelines for your employees to follow, you ensure that you’ll recognize success when it happens and be able to capitalize on it.
• Celebrate and reward all efforts. By showcasing all emerging proposals and experiments, not just the successful ones, companies demonstrate to their employees that failure is a part of every innovative endeavor.

What is the Role of AI in Experimentation and Innovation?

Generative AI is based on large language models that analyze and draw from enormous datasets. These algorithms, when fed specific directions or questions, can produce responses and recommendations instantly based on what they’ve learned from those datasets. While the information provided requires validation against other available data and the systems need to be regulated – AI is only as intelligent and accurate as the datasets it pulls from – Professor Wind hailed generative AI as a new and exciting opportunity for innovation and testing. He suggested that companies examine their current experiments and investigate what augmentation is possible through the incorporation of generative AI solutions.

“The number of ideas and the number of experiments you can design exponentially go up,” he said, “because of the help of generative AI and conversational AI. …[Y]ou are able to identify new opportunities for questions, or maybe the new problems, the new questions, or [the] new areas” for explosive growth, all because of generative AI.

How Can AI Support New Marketing Approaches?

Digital marketing is in a time of transition, and companies must shift their focus to be “customer-centered”, Professor Wind shared, with an orientation to stakeholders instead of only to shareholders. He advised that the “company’s responsibility is not only for maximizing shareholder value but also addressing the needs of customers, employees, [and] society in general.” AI can help companies to do both.

Generative and conversational AI offer us, Professor Wind said, the ability to “analyze data [with] that much greater detail and accuracy… [and] to customize [and] personalize the message.” Marketers should  pivot from a focus on customer segments to an approach tailored to the person being targeted. Professor Wind shared that the industry has begun to describe this as a “pilot look”, where the generative AI serves as the user’s co-pilot and “enriches the set of tools that every one of us have”, allowing us to be more efficient and create more effective messages. The future of digital marketing is personal, and AI can get your business that much closer to your customers. 

Want to Learn More? Contact NetElixir.

Are you an AI-first CEO? Download our checklist, Illuminating the Path to Marketing Excellence, for eight recommendations that will jumpstart your company’s AI adoption.

Our NetElixir AI and experimentation experts are ready to help your company explore new avenues for digital marketing, and we can help you develop tools and frameworks that will set your team on the right path to experimentation. 

Leverage our proprietary AI-powered digital marketing platform, LXRInsights. We meticulously engineered our AI-powered digital marketing platform for one reason: to help e-commerce brands significantly boost paid media revenue at the same spend by precisely targeting, engaging, and winning high-value customers. Start today.

Additional Resources:

• How To Optimize SEO For Future AI-Driven Search Engines
• A NetElixir and ChatGPT Conversation: How Generative AI Is Disrupting Search
• Search Marketing Redefined

The post Creating A Culture Of Experimentation appeared first on NetElixir.

By understanding the real data around the latest eCommerce trends and online shopping behavior, we can better navigate through this challenging year. As marketers and retailers, we have to follow where, when, and how our customers are shopping and searching online and be there for them at every turn. During this holiday season, customers are looking for an easy and seamless online shopping experience, promotions, and ways to connect more with each other. By providing a helping hand, brands can better support their customers. 

Customers’ Online Shopping Behaviors

Consumer preferences are changing at a rapid pace, based on Bain & Co.’s Elements of Value Pyramid. Customers are prioritizing safety and wellness when they shop.

“Safety has become and continues to be one of the primary drivers [of shopping behavior],” Bose says. “We have seen very specific emotional drivers play a very important role [in the buying process]. For example: reducing anxiety, as well as wellness.” 

Hope and nostalgia have also played an important role throughout the months of the coronavirus pandemic. Bose suggests that hope and safety should be retailers’ main focus, especially during the holiday season, as consumers continue to navigate new shopping situations. Consumers will remember brands that they felt safe with.

As new shopping trends and motivations continually emerge, it is hard to pin down exactly what will be the new normal. However, based on the data collected by NetElixir’s Retail Intelligence Lab so far, we see that 1 out of 8 new-to-online shoppers (i.e., those who made their first regular online purchase during the coronavirus pandemic) continue to make 50% of their purchases exclusively online for the Food and Grocery retail industry. NetElixir first marked this trend around mid-April, as lockdowns eased and people could choose to shop more freely in brick-and-mortar stores. 

Having successfully crossed the first barrier to online shopping, customers are becoming increasingly more comfortable navigating eCommerce sites. Customers are even open to exploring new brands, creating ample opportunities throughout this holiday season.

How ECommerce Trends are Evolving

Current eCommerce trends point to a sustained explosion of online sales. NetElixir’s Retail Intelligence Lab has tracked the YoY changes in online sales across seven categories for now nineteen two-week periods, starting from February 9th, detailed below:

The Food and Grocery retail category is starting to pick up momentum again, after a slight dip throughout the end of summer. Bose forecasts that Food will see a 100%+ YoY growth during the holiday season as more people prepare home-cooked meals instead of eating out. Apparel has also declined YoY from its peak in the first two weeks of September, presumably bolstered by back-to-school sales.  Home Furnishing, Tools and Hardware, and Home Décor continue to see strong YoY increases. Overall, NetElixir forecasts that the remainder of the holiday season will see online sales grow at 30% YoY across retail categories.

Prime Day 2020 helped to jumpstart an early holiday shopping season, but the online spike it generated subsided quickly. Online sales for the Food and Grocery retail industry did, however, see sustained growth, trending upwards from October 18th on, as pictured below:

While this may not be attributed solely and directly to Prime Day, as Food’s spike started a few days after the Prime Day event concluded, monitoring the residual effect of online sales events is important to monitor where else consumers shop.

Likewise, current events influence consumer’s shopping habits. Election Week in the United States did have an impact on eCommerce trends and online sales. The Gifting, Home Decor, and Tools and Hardware retail categories experienced a marginal decrease of less than 10% in eCommerce sales during Election Week compared to the week prior. Apparel, Home Furnishing, Pet Supplies, and Food and Grocery all experience substantial growth during Election Week compared to the week prior. Conversion rates across all retail categories, however, were 5% lower during Election Week than the week prior. 

“There are events of this magnitude – and Election Week was definitely an event which had a pretty massive impact and importance – which has a direct correlation with the eCommerce trends,” Bose summarizes. 

Google Ad investment will increase across businesses, as CPCs themselves are also increasing across all retail categories. As the holidays draws nearer, marketers are advertising more aggressively and earlier to avoid last-minute shipping delays.

Your 2020 Holiday ECommerce Sales Calendar

For the past 13 years, NetElixir has released an eCommerce calendar to help retailers mark important dates they should consider in their marketing strategy. Some key insights from this year’s calendar includes:

• Weeks of November 22nd and November 29th: will account for the two biggest online shopping weeks of 2020;
• Week of December 6th: most retailers will set a cut-off date for guaranteed holiday shipping (delivery by 12/24);
• Week of December 13th: BOPIS commerce will surge and most retailers will lower their digital marketing spend;
• Week of December 20th: while usually a busy week for last-minute deals and buys, it is forecasted to be the quietest week of the 2020 holiday shopping season.

Download your 2020 Holiday ECommerce Sales Calendar now at https://stage.netelixir.com//holidays/. 

Overall, NetElixir forecasts a 30% YoY aggregate growth for eCommerce sales throughout the rest of the holiday season. We forecast 45% growth in November and 20% growth in December YoY, as consumers try to get the bulk of their holiday shopping done early.

Q&A with the Vice President of Marketing at GovX

GovX is an online-only retailer, who caters exclusively to people who are currently serving or who have served in the United States Armed Forces and law enforcement, including firefighters, first responders, and other government service agencies. GovX works with over 400 brands to provide a military discount to GovX’s members. 

While Veterans Day is normally a kickoff for larger holiday events that wrap up the year for GovX, this year has obviously been different. Pelander explains that the company has been digging into holiday planning for the past month to capitalize on the early shopping season.

“This whole year has been uncertain,” Pelander says. “I think, partly, what has helped the planning for the holidays now has been more due to this year’s worth of adjustments, changes in strategy, all leading up to this point.”

GovX shifted their December budget into November and late October for aggressive paid search and social advertising to capture early shoppers sooner rather than later. New customer acquisition has still been the focus of GovX’s strategy in first generating awareness of GovX’s mission amongst veterans and first responders, and then encouraging those members to shop through the site.

“A big focus for us this year has been on new customer growth, so not just getting a new member for the sake of a new member, but we want them to make their first purchase with us within the first 30 days of their membership,” Pelander explains.

By partnering with NetElixir, GovX has been able to shift their budget and spending to target and engage new members more effectively. We have helped them expand into YouTube marketing, as GovX has focused on pressing forward to make the most of the eCommerce boom that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated.

How has GovX Pivoted their Marketing Strategy?

Pelander explains that through strong conversion rates, the company has been able to drive up more ad spend because consumers are converting more quickly during the pandemic months than before. As long as the conversion rates continue to hold strong, GovX will continue to advertise aggressively to maximize new memberships and sales. What’s important, Pelander notes, is pushing the right promotion at the right time and to the right person. GovX’s members continue to buy for themselves even in the midst of the holidays, as they will buy from a brand they like at the right price.

GovX’s holiday messaging kicked in right around Prime Day so as not to specifically compete with the sales event, but to coincide with the flow of online traffic the event created. This holiday season started in mid-October for the brand, as they offer week-long sales that typically lasted only a day in prior years, such as extending the Veterans Day sale and Cyber 5 promotions.

What has helped GovX maintain growth throughout these past few months is their agility and drive to keep being aggressive in a time when they could reap those benefits and other companies have hesitated. Their new customer focus has become GovX’s mindset to set the tone for the first 30 days that can propel new members to become loyal customers. Pelander says the scale of data from 2020 is so immense that fully analyzing the eCommerce trends and online shopping patterns that have emerged for the company over the course of the year will help create new strategies moving forward.

“It’s been a great year for learning,” Pelander concludes.

For a Deep Dive into Other ECommerce Trends

If you have any questions about the data provided or the eCommerce sales calendar, please contact us at university@netelixir.com.

Read more:

• Get Results with Progressive Web Apps
• October 2020 Retail ECommerce YoY Insights
• Strategic Views on Peak 2020 with UPS

The post Real-Time Data on Holiday ECommerce Trends appeared first on NetElixir.

NetElixir’s Founder and CEO Udayan Bose will be joined by GovX’s Vice President of Marketing Aaron Pelander to discuss new customer acquisition, the latest eCommerce trends, and fine-tuning the end of the year marketing strategy. 

GovX is the ultimate eCommerce designation for active duty, reserve, and retired members of the U.S. Armed Forces and related government agencies to provide them with extra online savings in return for their brave service to their country. Learn about GovX’s commitment to helping veterans and first responders get the best online deals, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, from our live Q&A with Aaron Pelander.

Pelander has led the marketing team at GovX for the past six years, where he communicates the value of GovX to those who can benefit from it. He works closely with all areas and channels of the GovX business to ensure that the member experience is world-class and rewarding. 

Pelander previously joined NetElixir’s webinar on June 18th, Lessons from Mid-Sized Retailers, where he spoke on his consumers completing purchases more quickly and buying more ‘want’ products rather than strictly essential products. At the onset of the pandemic, Pelander noted that GovX never pulled back on their spending, which helped the brand win more new customers. Join our live Q&A with Pelander on Wednesday to learn how GovX continued to evolve and fine-tune their marketing strategy to engage their new customers and how Q3 compared to his earlier expectations discussed in June.

Real-Time ECommerce Trends

NetElixir’s live webinar presentation will give you latest insights into the following:

• Letting the data dictate direction, as the path to a successful recovery starts with a successful holiday season
• A special insight share that will measure the impact that Election Day had online sales
• Real-time analysis of daily online sales metrics across seven retail categories (Women’s Apparel, Home Decor, Tools & Hardware, Food & Gourmet, Gifting, Pet Supply, and Home Furnishings)
• The continued impact that the coronavirus has had on online shopper behavior, conversion rates, and eCommerce sales
• Significant trends identified across retail categories

Register now for this live webinar.

Understanding the latest trends in how your customers are shopping and searching online will help you meet them at all stages of the purchase journey.

Updated Holiday Forecast for November and December

Receive a complimentary 2020 Holiday ECommerce Sales Calendar with the anticipated biggest online shopping days, shipping cutoff dates, and an analysis of gifting days vs me buy days. Learn the expected Y/Y changes day to day compared to the 2019 holiday shopping season and how the Cyber 5 weekend may turn into Cyber 10. NetElixir forecasts that the aggregate eCommerce sales for November and December 2020 will increase by 30% Y/Y, compared to 2019.

For a more in-depth analysis, join our live webinar next week, on Wednesday, November 11th at 2 PM ET. Register here: https://stage.netelixir.com//webinar/. 

Browse Our Past Webinars:

• Case Study with Cole Parmer: Harness the Power of Customer Data to Make B2B Search Marketing Work
• Pre-Holiday Consumer Trends and Retail Data Insights 
• A Different Holiday: Opportunities and Challenges in a COVID World

The post Live Webinar this Veterans Day appeared first on NetElixir.

Innovation is the key to driving success forward. How can we achieve something new if we don’t try a new solution, a new approach, or have a new perspective? Innovation creates opportunities for something new and without innovation, we become stagnant.

Sheena Iyengar, the keynote speaker from NetElixir’s Connecting the Dots virtual summit in August, spoke on the principles and methodology of innovation. Currently an S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia University, Sheena Iyengar is a two-time TED mainstage speaker, 2011 Thinkers50 recipient, and a leading expert on choice and the art of choosing.  

To get us thinking about innovation, Iyengar began her presentation with an anecdote on the creation of the Statue of Liberty.

 Lady Liberty, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, is an amalgamation of various elements Bartholdi came across in his travels. He was fascinated by the Nubian statues that guarded Egyptian tombs – giving Lady Liberty her size; Jules Joseph Lefebvre’s painting of La Verite – note his subject is the truth, not liberty, but the woman is in a pose similar to Lady Liberty’s; the resurfacing in France of Roman coins that feature the face of the goddess Libertas – these coins inspired Bartholdi to depict liberty as the subject; and Bartholdi used his own mother – his mother’s face became the statue’s face.

Professor Iyengar deconstructed the elements of the Statue of Liberty to track the train of innovating thought Bartholdi had in creating the statue; however, Lady Liberty is more than the sum of her parts. She is an evolution of inspiration and innovation, coming together in pieces to be the masterpiece we know today.

Think Bigger is about how we come up with some of the greatest ideas of all time. It is about exposing the principles of innovation, in that creators steal pieces from all over to combine them together to create something new – to create a whole that is far greater than the sum of its pieces. 

“Innovation is new combinations of old ideas.” -Joseph Schumpeter

The Process of Innovating to Think Bigger

Think Bigger is not randomly lightning on the next big idea. Think Bigger is about deliberately going beyond the box of one’s specific job or industry to see what else is out there and bringing those elements together in a new perspective and combination to tackle the problem at hand. Innovations are made up of past successful and useful pieces. 

The core technique to think bigger is through a process Professor Iyengar coined as choice mapping. Choice mapping consists of the following three steps:

1. Breaking down the problem
2. Prioritizing past success(es)
3. Searching in and out of domain

One of the most important aspects of innovating is spending the time to break down the problem. By spending the energy to simplify one big problem into multiple subproblems, one can more easily look for solutions to those subproblems and then work their way up to tackling the bigger problem. Phrase your problem into a positive question so that you are excited to solve it. 

While we can learn from failures, we learn more from successes. One can fail in multiple ways, but success often takes one form. Analyzing the route to that success can reveal multiple, useful pieces that can be applied to problems down the road. Innovation does rely on trial and error in order to gain expertise through repetition and continued exposure. 

Searching in and out of domain is key to innovation, as just drawing from past success in one field will lead to copycats and no real difference. Drawing on prior successes across industries and domains – and across successes big and small – will lead to creative inspiration for the best solution moving forward.

Choice mapping is not brainstorming. Brainstorming, as Professor Iyengar explains, is just throwing up ideas, hoping one will stick. Brainstorming is usually down in groups, as well, which leads more to group thought than productive ideas from individuals. Choice mapping is about deliberate thought, about consciously thinking about the problem, about analyzing pieces and materials to use for new choices, and about creating something useful. Our brains are already wired to connect things, so choice mapping is a more transparent and cautious way to deliberately combine different elements to create something inspirational and novel.

“Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority.” -Henri Poincaré

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