According to authors, the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) creates several opportunities for retailers to improve their customer services , insights and business processes. AI makes it possible to generate insights on a scale like never before, it does this by combining customer data  across all platforms( from social media to CRM) like past purchases, search habits, click behavior, age, gender, season of the year and various other variables and self learning algorithms. By crawling the web and aggregating various forms of customer data, AI gives retailers the opportunity to engage with customers on a more personal level. Through chat applications such as Facebook and Messenger and by using chat bots on websites, the potential customers can communicate with the retailers using speech or text, that will assess and answer customer queries, thereby assisting in the selection process and helping in the execution of simple tasks. Read more at https://aitrends.com/retail/robots-ai-retail-8-things-must-know/

Customers who have made purchases with a business once, make up a significant chunk of customer database. The second purchase is a key milestone in the customer journey. Now, using data, certain areas should be focused on first time customers that can help to push these customers into their second purchase. They are:

• A varied basket – with items from multiple departments – doubles the chances that a customer will make a second purchase.

• By offering discounts.

• Returns predict a higher customer lifetime value.

Optimizing these above factors can attract many customers on a long term basis. Read more at http://www.optimove.com/blog/ecomm-using-data-push-customers-second-purchase

Digital marketing is becoming a popular trend nowadays. It not only provide us in depth knowledge of our customer needs, but also real time info graphics. So here are six easy way to understand how to capitalize digital marketing from blogger to marketers. 1. Identifying audience will allow you to target your marketing strategy directly to the people who are willing to commit to a purchase, sign up or contact you directly.

2. Understand the most important platform where can you find your customer in the social section. 

3. Convert a new customer to a loyal one by providing lots of offers and facilities for his/her first visit to your website

 4. Create a quality content and make it more relevant to your customer. It will eventually increase your SEO.

5. To facilitate a powerful presence in social sector or digital media you need a well-trained PR team 

6. The best thing about digital marketing is that you can take advantage of numerous online tools to get incredibly accurate data about the effects of your campaign. So always analyze.

To read, follow: https://tech.co/6-ways-improve-digital-marketing-strategy-2016-05

Email is one of the oldest tools which is still relied upon by the marketers. There is lot of information on optimizing email marketing but not all are true. To make email marketing as effective as possible it is first necessary to separate out the information which one can believe from ones to discard. Myth 1: Consumers are drowning in emails from trusted brands. Myth 1: Consumers are drowning in emails from trusted brands. 60% receive less than 6 mails per day. Myth2: Best time to mail is at 3 pm on Thursday. Only 21% of purchases happen within 2 days of sending mail. Myth 3: You should stop sending to inactive users after 6 months. They are still alive. Myth 4: Consumers mark email as spam. One out of 2000 does this. Myth 5: More the emails sent by brands, ignorance from customer’s side increases. Number of consumers checking the mail increases, increasing revenue. Myth 6: Short subject lines give better results. Over 70 characters increase clicks. Myth 7: Because of subject lines, email lands up in spam folder. According to 540bn emails sent till date, ‘spam’ keywords have little effects on ending up in spam folder. Read more at: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-myths-infographic

Relying on very basic customer information such as demographics to influence marketing campaigns and limited internal sources and fragmented marketing systems limits sending personalized mails to customers. For companies having multiple marketing agencies and technology partners demographics cannot alone give a complete view of audiences as it leaves other important information. Customer relationship management programs relies on basic data which excludes customer nuances and encourages the mentality that marketers own and drive customer conversation which is no longer true. Due to CRM programs customers put little effort in knowing their customers. On the other hand using resources which contains a vast array of information about the customers enables a better interaction between customers and the brand. Customer Managed Relationship is the better option over CRM these days. To achieve a personal connection with customers, marketers should follow three key rules, namely communication, consistency and trust. Witty comments, 24/7 service or multichannel experience, sending similar number of mails in similar language and color schemes in all channels, personal messages, giving consumers what they expect might do the trick.

Engaging with different channels to get a better understanding of customers and targeting customers specifically using CMR is important. Brands should use CMR based marketing strategy to consider customers purchase behavior and social engagement. Further brands can create rich, useful content to guide customers into repeat purchases. Customers now want to tell brands how to engage with them using necessary technology instead of brands driving into a conversation with customers. Thus all marketers have to listen and adapt.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/crm-dead-now-0947236#!bibims

Today,banks are using analytics to control frauds in electronic payments. Private banks such as HDFC Bank have implemented analytics software. The thing is that the out-of-the way transaction would decline if one fails to respond to a phone call or message immediately after the transaction. There are two kinds of fraud detection in payments- One is during the transaction, and the other is using analytics to identify suspicious transactions based on past behaviour. Banks are now specializing in the analytics part. According to an official of an analytics software company that provides banks with software to detect frauds, the software can be used to personalize services, like ATMs, for customers depending on their preferences. Read more at:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Banks-use-analytics-to-check-fraud-in-online-payments/articleshow/38347410.cms

Email still remains one of the best communication methods for buyers and consumers. Marketers should use the benefits of email marketing given the ease with which emails are delivered in the inbox. Certain variables which should be considered before sending an email, like send times to subject lines. The following are the six essential steps foe email creation:

1. Segment Your Audience: The marketer should have a clear idea about the target audience before deciding on a send time and the content of the email.

2. Create Your Content: The content of the email should depend on the interest and need of the target customer.A compelling subject line  and call to action is must.

3. Build Your Email: After creating the content the email template should be created. Images and call to action buttons to break up text should be included if possible.

4. Conduct Deliverability Tests: It’s important to conduct an email deliverability test to avoid the possibility of the email not getting delivered to the customers inbox.

5. Choose Your Send Time: Send times are not fixed, and they often  varies from one customer to another. As a general rule of thumb, emails should be sent during business hours in the morning or in the early afternoon, right after lunch.

6. Track and Analyze: Open rates, click-through rates, and email bounces should be tracked to see what content is resonating with the audience, which subject lines work best, and which areas could use improvement.

To know more, go to: http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/email-campaign

A clear marketing plan and prior knowledge about your customer and the sales process is necessary before using any Customer Relationship Management(CRM). CRM is affordable and simple for organizing your primary market structure. Without having proper details about the customer's past and present status it is quite difficult to serve and approach them. A customer relationship management allows accessing such information about one's customers and enhances sales for future business. Advancement in technology keeps access to customers always high whether we have open source package or home grown CRM.  Defining  your business customers through information is rampant in the internet and then organizing and referencing it lets us achieve our sales goal irrespective of which particular CRM plan we use. Read more at: http://journalstar.com/business/local/small-talk-establish-marketing-plan-before-choosing-crm-service/article_e330e485-9637-5758-9ee5-d9657514867e.html

To boost manufacturing and entrepreneurship in the country, Flipkart (Indian e-commerce company)  announced its tie up with Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) promotion bodies. Strong data analytics that forms the base of e-marketplaces will help the sellers to improve their products easily and attract more customers. According to the Executive Director of NCDPD (National Center for Design and Product Development), analytics and market intelligence provided by Flipkart will assist NCDPD in improving their products and R&D and also enable the craftsmen to create better saleable products. The objective of this tie-up is to continue helping entrepreneurs to create products according to buyer requirements and grow significantly by expanding their business so that they may become manufacturers not only at a local but also at a national level. Read more at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-06-18/news/50678912_1_data-analytics-flipkart-market-data.

In India, banking industry plays an important role in ensuring the sustainable growth through more credit flows and reaching out to more people by financial inclusion. Thus, the retail banking systems has to handle several issues like customer identity, managing credit risk, fraud detection and prevention, customer relationship maintaining etc. Data analytics helps in this way by ensuring organizations in achieving their growth objectives. It also enables them to manage and automate large volumes of day-to-day decisions. Data analytics draws inferences from large amount of data and use these inferences within banking processes transparently. Data analytics (DA) has an effective use in the following stages of customer lifecycle- Customer targeting -DA helps to develop right offer to right customer by understanding their behavior. Customer Acquisition- DA benefits banks by acquiring profitable customers at low cost and also helps to understand the affordability status of customers. Customer Management- DA helps banks to ensure responsible lending and to undertake effective risk management measures which in turn provide better customer services. Collection- Banks can use DA to reduce delinquency, manage cost of collections, and reduce wasted time by knowing the right value of the customers according to their worth retaining for the future. Read more at:http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/perspective/287791/indian-banks-improve-customer-lifecycle-analytics?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-indian-banks-can-improve-the-customer-lifecycle-by-using-data-analytics

Nowadays, social media customer care represents a tremendous growing opportunity for businesses to foster strong customer relationships. According to Bianca Buckridee (presently the vice president of social media operations) JP Morgan's twitter page enables customers to see the individual with whom they are talking which in turn restores some of the intimacy and comfort that is lost in a phone conversation.   Katy Phillips, a senior analyst for American Airlines, identifies social space as an important factor which has helped them build customer loyalty and brand reputation and will continue to create some "wow'' moments for customers. In spite of such boons of social media customer care, not many businesses have exploited it. Evolve24-a Maritz Research company, found in 2011 that approximately 70% of customer service complaints made on Twitter were unanswered. The panelists at the recent Wharton Social Media Best Practices Conference believe that the percentage has not changed significantly. Read more at: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/ignored-side-social-media-customer-service/

The sheer proliferation of new online devices and digital consumer channels is pushing leading-edge companies to rethink how they connect and engage their customers. Connection between business and customers in digital channels is known as customer journey. An integrated portfolio of technologies including self-service mobile apps, customer communities and open product development can reshape today's customer journey. To know more about the change in customer journey, go through the article by Dion Hinchcliffe, expert in information technology, business strategy and next-generation enterprises.

http://www.zdnet.com/the-new-digital-customer-journey-cross-channel-mobile-social-self-service-and-engaged-7000015570/

An article by Nick Razey, Co-founder and CEO of Next Generation Data, talks about the value in the IT chain that will migrate to the cloud providers leaving data centers to earn meagre commodity margins. A good data center service also needs well trained staff and embedded policies and procedures.  These parameters directly affect both the quality of the product and its price. For customers, the cost of transition from one data center to another is so high that they will not move their IT overnight if a new, better and cheaper option comes along. Instead they will wait for a natural break such as a technology refresh (and/or the end of a contract) before moving. As a result there are already hundreds (maybe thousands) of cloud service providers and more are emerging every day. Ironically it may be that cloud services are the next commodity and cloud providers will see their margins competed away while data centers remain relatively unaffected by the new IT world.

To know more visit http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2014/may/07/could-we-have-data-centres-commodity/ 

An article by Brennan Girdler, Associate writer and editor of Chic Marketing, talks about the worst mistake a company can make is - assuming it can handle content marketing. Businesses need to set out on social media with the expectation to reach new customers. Without realizing this goal, a dull business page will likely fall into obscurity and the employee responsible for updating it will stop trying. Social media is a healthy way to communicate with consumers, professionals, and other businesses. While setting out to become big-hitters on a platform, businesses often run the risk of saying the wrong thing. If you're unsure how to approach Facebook, blogging, or website content, find someone who does. Don't bet on the long shot and suffer the consequences.

To know more visithttp://socialmediatoday.com/brennangirdler/2425231/worst-mistake-ever-businesses 

David Waterman, expert in search engine optimization, talks about how marketers can take advantage of social media to spy on their customers and target audience to gather better insights. He also discussed about the five different steps to be followed for enhancing the process.

To know more about the steps follow http://marketingland.com/social-media-perfect-tool-spying-customers-76595

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., founder of Predictive Analytics World and Text Analytics World and Executive Editor of the Predictive Analytics Times, talks about how businesses can incorporate predictive analytics to upgrade their process.  A predictive model will help to know which new customers are likely to return and which are probably one-timers. He also mentioned about various benefits of retaining new customers. Moreover, by adopting this model, the first time customer can become a loyal customer.

For more information follow  http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/customer_retention.php