This piece originally appeared as a Forbes post. It is now common to tout the importance of collecting zero-party data. This information, which consumers knowingly and proactively provide brands in exchange for value, powers privacy-safe marketing strategies and is generally more accurate than probabilistic, often cobbled-together third-party datasets. But how do brands and retailers that ...

This piece originally appeared as a Retail Touchpoints post. Marketing is often first on the chopping block during a recession, and with GDP contracting two quarters in a row, retail marketers are working hard to determine how to make each dollar go further. Many organizations will cut marketing spend in a bid to preserve margins. ...

This piece originally appeared as a TotalRetail post. Deal-based marketing has often been associated with competing for customers based on the lowest possible price point. Traditionally brands that needed to sell products or tickets in a hurry partnered with deals sites to move these items at a large discount. However, this model doesn't maximize the ...

This piece originally appeared as a TotalRetail post. When we think about big revenue-generating opportunities on the calendar, we typically focus on November and December, particularly Black Friday. But sales on Black Friday last year — both in-store and online — dropped below pre-pandemic levels. Heading in the opposite direction is May, which is quickly becoming one of ...

This piece originally appeared as a TotalRetail post. Privacy changes have forced marketers to consider how they can consensually obtain consumer data, inspiring debate over whether zero-party data exists and how it differs from first-party data. While first-party data refers to information brands collect directly from consumers, zero-party data, as defined by Forrester, refers to information ...

This piece originally appeared as a TotalRetail post. Much of the conversation about how marketers can collect, harness and effectively use zero-party data focuses on brands, which struggle to gather it, or information consumers proactively provide, because businesses rarely maintain direct relationships with customers at scale. Retailers face an entirely different challenge: an abundance of ...

The original version of this piece appeared as a Multichannel Merchant post. Holiday shoppers opening their wallets online this year looks promising, but how many of them will become loyal customers when the frenzy ends? Black Friday’s ecommerce sales blew past the modest early projections for retailers, edging out in-store sales in year-over-year growth for the season’s ...

The original version of this piece appeared as a Chain Store Age post. Rising inflation and fears of a recession present a challenging environment for retailers in the first quarter of 2023. At the same time, they are grappling with a surplus of unsold inventory and a deluge of returns. Retailers looking to make a ...

In a time when every other business article starts with “economic uncertainty,” it’s hard to feel confident about the future of retail. Whether or not the “uncertainty” actually results in a down economy, there is no doubt that consumer spending is volatile and trending downward as consumers worry about the future. And, this likely is ...

Over the last fifteen years, personalized marketing has been built on stalking consumers. Third-party cookies, third-party lists, and third-party data were the norm—even though we marketers knew this unverified information was imperfect and intrusive.  Today, the landscape of data collection for personalization in marketing is shifting quickly. Thanks to increasing regulatory scrutiny and a long-overdue ...