So today is the day - have you got your mouse and your online credit card handy? Apparently every other Brit has.

James Roper - the big cheese over at IMRG - has been garnering masses of (print, broadcast and online) column inches about how, despite the downturn, online retail continues to grow at a pace that will leave other channels (i.e. bricks and mortar) green with envy.

Last week, Monday broke the record for online sales in the UK in a single day. But today will (we’re told) be even bigger.

It seems that online retail is expected to grow 20% this year, compared to 40% or so in previous years. Not bad given the flat to downright messy expectations in the High Street.

Happy shopping - I look forward to the figures!

Tags: e-commerce, ecommerce, imrg, James Roper, Mega Monday, onilne retail

So it seems that there are plenty of people out there who care about customer service. Please, someone tell the companies who are cutting back on this function as times get tough.

Thanks to e-Consultancy

I read an excellent report over on e-consultancy this week about Customer Engagement.

It seems that an ‘engaged customer’ is more likely to:

• recommend a company’s products or services
• convert more readily
• purchase readily
• stay loyal

Those would seem to be ‘good’ things to aim for, wouldn’t you think? Well, the panel agreed. Only 1% of the companies questioned felt that Customer Engagement was ‘not important’, while 87% described it as ‘important’ on ‘essential’.

At the same time, only 55% of companies surveyed said that they had a defined ‘customer engagement strategy’. More worringly, about half said ‘No’ when asked whether the worsening economic situation has encourage them to place more emphasis on customer engagement.

As Jim Sterne (Chairman of the Web Analytics Association) pithily puts it: “We know the house is burning, we just can’t be bothered to call the fire brigade.”

Tags: customer engagement, e-consultancy, Jim Sterne, Web Analytics Association

Bye Bye Voda?

Maybe I’m just becoming (an even grumpier) grumpy old man, but one of the things I’ve noticed as we’ve talked ourselves into recession is a steep decline in customer service.

Why is this? Some thoughts:

• as companies are becoming stressed about their future, they are giving less thought to ensuring their customers feel valued
• as staff feel their jobs are less secure, their discontent shows in the way they handle all types of customer interaction
• as I spend my money as a customer, I feel companies (and their staff) should be more grateful that I’m still spending

I don’t have any hard data to back this up, but I can relate something anecdotally.

Vodafone, my mobile service provider, have been a company I’ve unhesitatingly recommended to friends and family. I know of a few people who’ve switched to them on the basis of my enthusiastic endorsement of their customer service.

As well as my mobile phone account (with very healthy ARPU) I also bought a mobile broadband connection - which I’ve subsequently passed on to a colleague who is using it (and paying for it) in my place. We couldn’t do this formally as he is an ex-pat american, and has no credit history here. So far so good.

Except that last week Vodafone suspended my mobile phone. Why? Because the payment for the mobile broadband was overdue… by TWO DAYS. No warning, just frustration as a result of a very modest oversight.

I suspect their reaction would have been more in proportion had this happened a few months ago. But, with my contract just two months from renewal date, I feel the other networks beckoning.

I’ve seen this type of corporate response in various ways over the past few weeks (though not as dramatic) from larger companies.

Interestingly, the smaller businesses I deal with (personally and professionally) seem to be a very different story - and I believe this is an opportunity smaller businesses can seize - to show customers what great service really is, and win market share on the back of it.

Here’s hoping.

Tags: customer lifetime value, customer service, recession, vodafone

… or at least that was the overriding message, it seemed to me, at the excellent Entrepreneurs in London event where I spent the day yesterday.

Huge thanks to Fresh Business Thinking who kindly invited me to join them - and several hundred others - at the Methodist Central Hall opposite Westminster Abbey.

I struck by how so many entrepreneurs were prepared to stump up not just £400 but a full day of their most precious resource (time) to attend this event. I don’t know whether that signifies that all those ex-bankers are now in start-up mode or just that the entrepreneurial culture is as alive and kicking in this recession as ever it was.

Ben Way and equally entrepreneurial sister Hermione

And one of the key messages is that the businesses that start now - and are well enough thought out and run to survive the current economic conditions - will be brilliantly placed for the post-recession world. Which WILL come, just no-one knows when.

So, apparently, entrepreneurs will save the world. And some of them will produce ideas that help save the planet too - like Ben Way with his Go Green Plumbing company (and 26 others).

Tags: Ben Way, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs in london, fresh business thinking, hermione way, recession

I opened my copy of the Economist today and read yet another plea for Jerry Yang to step down as CEO of Yahoo!

I’ve rehearsed the arguments on this question before, but I’m more interested today in the subtext to this story: the extent to which Yahoo!’s reliance on display advertising is going to hurt them during the current economic difficulties.

It’s chastening to think how much of digital’s growth in revenue is purely from search - and yet that’s just the beginning of what the medium can deliver.

Search marketing words (both SEM and SEO) because it is by some distance the most effective way to introduce someone to what you are offering/saying… providing that they are already in the market for it. It’s all about steering someone toward your version of what they already know they want. Powerful, cost-effective and an essential weaon in the marketing arsenal. And almost totally transactional.

But what about the other side of the line?

For most businesses, it’s not just the first sale that matters - it’s the ongoing relationship that the first sale might lead to. This is very strongly the case with subscription-type businesses (e.g. utilities, mobile phones, satellite tv, magazines etc). It is also central to FMCG (or CPG as they call it in the US) marketing.

But it’s also the basis of what your local retail outlet hopes for. Or what your window cleaner relies on. In fact most businesses in the real world tend to prize the ongoing relationship past the first sale very highly.

So why has the digital economy been so hung up on the idea of paying Google (or their affiliate marketing partner) every time they want to conclude another transaction?

Of course, this is still very different from the display advertising model that Yahoo! and the like espouse. But it is, for me, crucial to digital marketing’s success in this recession - and to the rosier times that will sooner or later follow it.

If you haven’t already, start planning for it now! Google is NOT the only show in town.

Tags: affiliate marketing, aol, CPG, display advertising, FMCG, google, Jerry Yang, sem, seo, Yahoo!

JY in happier days (this January!)

Jerry Yang is taking time out from his Microsoft flip-flopping and Google adventures to visit London. He’s been speaking today at the IAB Engage conference here. Unsurprisingly he takes the view that the current recession is going to make ‘digital’ stronger.

Sandlines agrees whole-heartedly - and I’ve been saying this for some time now.

However, I can’t help but thing it will finish Yahoo! - or at least Yang’s stewardship of the once-mighty purple monster - once and for all.

What price the offer Microsoft made earlier this year? It was $35 a share. That looked rich in the spring, but now Yahoo is trading at a few cents over $10.

Tags: google, IAB, IAB Engage, Jerry Yang, Microsoft, recession, Yahoo!

Alistair Darling?

As 2007 drew to a close, the UK e-commerce community celebrated a 54% year-on-year growth for the all-important fourth quarter, capping another year’s heady growth.

My how the world has changed since then. Still in the grip of the credit-fuelled boom, we’d come to expect these kinds of figures.

So what now? A forecast from IMRG, which just hit my inbox, suggests that this year growth will slow to 15%. Hold on a second… double digit growth? In the midst of an economic crisis Captain Darling memorably described as “the worst they’ve been in 60 years“?

I’d call that not such a bad outcome.

I’ll be even more interested to watch what happens following the central bank’s decision to slash interest rates to 2/3rds of where they were last week.

What is clear though is that online continues to show growth - both in sales and in marketing expenditure - even during the most severe downtown the economy has demonstrated in my lifetime.

Tags: alistair darling, ecommerce, imrg, recession

Yell.Com: no to doordrops

No, not the end of Yellow Pages deliveries (yet), but I saw today that Yell have pulled out of a recently launched (August) venture to compete with asrecommended by publishing a consumer car insurance guide. The pilot went well, and 1.5 million copies a month were thudding onto doormats - and the plan was to grow that to 40 million.

My doormat is sighing with relief.

I think I hear the odd environment lobbyist cheering somewhat, too.

Can a magazine really be the right way forward to promote insurance…? A ’service’ that means, almost by definition, that 11/12 of the audience will find it irrelevant each month as they are not in the renewal cycle. What on earth were they planning to say each month?

To paraphrase the old adage, “I know that 92% of my ad budget is wasted, I just don’t know with 92%.”

Tags: direct mail, door drop, local, relevance, waste, yell, yellow pages

Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring

Back when I was 8 years old, I got into a lot of trouble at school by quoting Dad’s Army, calling out: “Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring” during a fire drill. Judging by this morning’s front page on Brand Republic, I might expect a more lenient response today: it seems to be a message that many want to hear.

Dear old BR’s done a voxpop in London - and it’s really interesting hearing people talk about who they trust and why: there’s quite a range.

• “Big companies like HSBC, Marks and Spencer, John Lewis…”
• “I trust Abbey National and NatWest because they haven’t asked the government for money yet”
• “Don’t trust the big companies: integrity lies with the small family businesses.”

I’m interested in how people’s perceptions have been filtered: of course NatWest is part of RBS, who have gone hand in cap to the government, but this gentleman had no idea of that, so his trust remained firm. Another man fervently declares his faith in HBOS, despite all that went on last month with them… hope over expectation?

These are going to be really interesting questions to watch unfold over the coming weeks and months, as the recession unfolds. But I’m once again greatly encouraged by the broadly positive expectation from the (wo)man in the street.

Tags: recession, trust

Things must be getting better - or at least, further to my post last week - the media are beginning to run out of black ink, so the heavy borders round the front pages are on the ebb at last.

Anyway, I saw this in the Times, under the heading “You’ve got to laugh”. I’ll quote directly:

How markets work