First-Party Data: The Need is Real for Brands

| Pam Erlichman

Brands now have little choice but to build marketing and advertising initiatives around first-party data that consumers freely opt to share. But there are rules – and I’m not referring to GDPR, CCPA, CPRA or any other privacy law. The rules center on establishing trust.

Using Micro Influencers to Target Gen Z in 2022

| Austin Rotter

If the pandemic has taught ecommerce brands and retailers anything, it’s that being flexible in creating new avenues to engage with consumers, especially hard-to-reach demos like Gen Z, is mission critical for survival. For any brands targeting Gen Z shoppers, micro influencers will have to play an extremely important role.

Gen Z kids on their phones can you believe it?

Gen Z Shopping Habits May Kill Off Unprepared Brands

| Mark Hook

For the past decade, brands have scrambled to serve millennials, the first internet-obsessed generation that forced them to rethink ecommerce selling strategies. Now, they are reinventing as Gen Z gears up to enter the workforce and fast becomes a formidable force in the economy. Is your ecommerce platform ready?

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Leveraging Tech to Navigate the Great Holiday Shortage

| Gareth Smith

To minimize the impact of the great holiday shortage of 2021, retailers need to leverage innovative technologies and their insights to help navigate supply chain disruptions and reduce the risk of driving customers away now and into 2022. Here are some critical ways technology can help mitigate the pain of out of stocks.

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Inventory Management Gets Trickier As Forces Collide

| Mike O'Brien

Given massive, lingering supply chain roadblocks, carrier capacity limits and labor shortages, inventory management has gotten trickier for retailers, especially as the critical Q4 approaches. This special report from Multichannel Merchant looks at ways retailers are rethinking their inventory approach to buffer against shocks.

digital transformation

The Post Digital Transformation Age: Standing Out From Sameness

| Rajesh Midha

Advancements most brands have made during the pandemic brought the digital transformation era to a close. Now, we are swiftly entering the post-digital transformation age. Brands will need to do much more than simply provide interactions and interfaces if they are to lock in customer loyalty.

ecommerce technology

Is Automated Ecommerce Technology Sabotaging Your Business?

| Elaine Kwon

As brands increasingly focus on digital sales, they emphasize streamlining operations and automating logistics through ecommerce technology to effectively manage inventory systems, ad campaigns, etc. But software alone is not enough to guarantee positive outcomes, and when mismanaged, it can even do more harm than good.

How to Snap Out of Amazon “Stockholm Syndrome”

| Jan-Christopher Nugent

Stockholm Syndrome is what happens when stressed-out captives sometimes end up copying and relating to their captors. In a similar fashion, are we seeing something like an “Amazon Stockholm Syndrome” for retailers and consumer product brands? Is Amazon, by dint of its major influence, forcing others to copy them?

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Pattern Raises $225M, Sees Acceleration as Path to Success

| Mike O'Brien

Pattern, which helps brands expand and grow revenue on marketplaces and other channels, has raised $225 million, bringing its total valuation to over $2 billion as it sees its role as a market accelerator as a more logical path to success than the growing ranks of Amazon brand aggregators.

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The Cookie Apocalypse: Get Ready with Chat Marketing

| Mike Yan

While the so-called cookie apocalypse, i.e. Google banning the use of third-party cookies, is now pushed off until sometime in 2023, digital marketers still need to adjust their strategy to a model that delivers actionable insights, targeted outreach and revenue opportunities while ensuring compliance and customer privacy.