Strategies for Turning business intelligence into Long-Term Dollars

About the Guest 

Yael Zlatin is a senior director of strategic accounts and eCommerce. She builds omnichannel strategies for businesses of all sizes to be able to scale profitably utilizing digital marketing, on-page sales funnels, as well as customized branding. She has a strong entrepreneurial background selling her first retail business profitably right out of college. Since then, Yael has founded and sold multiple e-commerce companies, consulted and mentored small to enterprise businesses, and has 10+ years of demonstrated success in leading and motivating internal and virtual teams developing strategic and tactical aptitudes with a focus on analytics and KPIs.

Connect with Yael Zlatin

Key Takeaways 

• Supply chain disruption and the unique challenges it has presented advertisers and E-commerce in general as the holiday season fast approaches.
• CPI (customers per impression) is a metric by which advertising rates are set — and which has increased some 200% due to a variety of marketplace challenges, such as the introduction of Apple iOS’s new opt-in policy for advertisers.
• Business intelligence is king in a fluid, competitive market where ad dollars are at a premium. 
• Remember: Your expensive CPI investment isn’t just for today; the data is yours to harvest and parse for months to come.
• Yael shares strategies for retailers and e-commerce companies trying to figure out how to leverage ad dollars to cull valuable data, offset supply chain delays and offload overstocked pre-Covid inventory.
• A few resources to consider while studying up the latest in sales and marketing strategy.

Quote

“I don’t think there’s enough talk in the industry about — so what if they didn’t buy the first time? You still have those people. Make sure you personalize your product. Push them to the right place with the right product and they’re yours!”

Highlights From the Episode

How are supply challenges impacting commerce and the advertising business?

Supply chain disruption has been on the horizon as a looming holiday challenge for some time now. How do you advertise when many products are going to be out of stock or back-ordered this holiday season? With a recent opt-in feature, iOS firewalls are also raising the barrier to reach customers. The cost per impression (CPI) has increased 200%, making customers ever more pricey to reach. In combination with supply chain issues, corporate marketers are looking for strategies to cope with these unusual, fluid circumstances.

What are Yael’s strategies for dealing with current marketing challenges?

To get a step ahead, Yael recommends thinking out of the box. When it comes to supply chain issues, advertisers need to be harnessing the power of data, targeting digital dollars to the best sources of market feedback — especially data that can be retained.

Are there any special structures around gathering business intelligence?

Smart marketers have a little Pixel onsite to harvest data, as well as some sort of a first-party collection or email signup available as well. The plan is: You’re buying data and even though it’s going to cost you a little, you can use these clients and really “squeeze that lemon” for some months into the future (until rates ease down).

What about b2b use cases and the impacts of Q1 kickoffs?

There are uses for whatever data you capture and the other side of that equation, going back to the E-com retail realm, is the number of clicks coming into the site. With a little bit of business intelligence, it’s very possible to reduce stock purchased pre-Covid. 

Are there behavioral changes as a result of pandemic and supply chain disruption?

Customers are anticipating the next-best option. So retailers and e-commerce businesses need to ensure that the next-best options are readily available, and close to that call-to-action button. And if you have someone managing your feed — the dynamic flow of products in your store as well as customer behavior — you can use your business intelligence to push them in the right direction.

Is there help available for businesses that need strategy support and tools?

Yael is a fan of Glue, which extracts, transforms, and loads valuable data into targets. This sort of business intelligence offers a window into ways to create revenue despite a competitive market. Underlying shortages can’t be remedied, but there are ways to leverage both ad budget and the data harvested. As a result of that investment, you can reduce stock, target timing for future ad investments, and transform low-value stock into revenue.

What about the subscription angle?

The reality is that everyone who clicks on your site is a potential subscriber. It’s up to retailers to provide the right content and leverage those views to reach customers who will come back again and again.

Is there a book, blog, newsletter, website, or video that you would recommend to our listeners?

• E-marketing blogs and newsletters in general.
• Checking out the competition always makes for fruitful reading!
• Info at the E-commerce platform Shopify.

Shout-Outs

• Sara Blakely, Founder & CEO of Spanx