Paypal will be free to work with Amazon and Alibaba

The article " http://www.wired.com/2015/04/ebay-paypal-deal/" give me some ideas about payment methods online. Paypal and eBay worked together for more than ten years and the cooperation  at first proved to be successful. However, as the market grows and the whole marketing environment becomes sophisticated, such as the arise of Google Wallet and Apple pay, eBay and Paypal will split their business in the next following years.

I think the payment method is a very important part for online transactions give the fact that convenience  and safe is valued by many customers. Alipay of Alibaba now is very popular in China not only due to its easy to use, but also it acts as a bank( offers higher deposit interest rate than those in traditional banks). Alipay works in a very simple with smart phone, with scan of QR code on the screen, you can pay directly from you Alipay account. Safe and reliability play important roles in Alipay. 

DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Back to the Paypal and Amazon/Alibaba, the free work of Paypal and Amazon will be beneficial for both organizations. And Palpal and Ebay's split will also give the two companies more space to grow and develop other systems. Therefore, it might not be a bad idea for the two groups. I think payment is an important part of online market and good cooperation will definitely generate margins for companies.

The article I read is from "https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=25016902#editor/target=post;postID=3367066928431884996"

Nissan and Adobe digital marketing cooperation

I read an article about "Nissan Deploys Adobe Marketing Cloud Globally to Deliver Integrated Brand Image". I think the idea behind this newly developed platform is interesting. I would like to know how it works.

Nissan launched a platform with adobe to create a new digital marketing solution. Since Nissan has broad markets around the world, Nissan was trying to deploy special marketing tactics for different locations.  This new system creates a unified platform for the different regions of Nissan markets. Due to Nissan has a variety of platforms around the world, this action would let Nissan to create new customer experience and give customers around the world consistent brand image (for Nissan' three main brands). Therefore, the main purpose of the action is to create a platform that could fix the situation of inconsistent brand images of Nissan in different places.

Nissan and Adobe made the platform through these main digital channels, mobile, social and dealer networks. Adobe Marketing Cloud is in charge of the platform. Adobe Marketing Cloud helps companies to create personalized customer experience utilizing data and many channels such as web and Apps. In my perspective, it would be interesting to find out how this platform actually works to help Nissan achieve the goal of consistent brand image. The idea would be interesting.

This blog is based on the article from http://www.adobe.com/news-room/pressreleases/201504/04072015NissanDeploysAdobeMarketingCloud.html

Article about Data driven art of digital marketing

The article "Article about Data driven art of digital marketing" gives me some ideas. In this era, we are surrounded by abundance of data. Thanks to that, we can make the best of data to make informed decisions, and how to utilize the data is truly an art form.

It is clear that we have experienced an evolution. We no longer use a shared computer with our family members; rather, one person can have several devices. It means nowadays many companies have more user profiles than there are consumers. Thus, marketers should use a cross device targeting strategy so that advertisers can measure for cross device attribution.

Is this the end of the story? No! Marketers also need to change their attribution model if it can’t give credit for that mobile ad that drove a desktop conversion; otherwise, marketing campaigns will not perform well. Before that, just stick to the original strategy and keep mobile and desktop campaigns siloed to improve return on ad spend (ROAS).

ROAS is the most important metric. Since we need to make assumptions about attribution to get ROAS, people can also easily interpret ROAS as much as they want in their ways.

Dynamic creative can be applied to small and mid-size organizations.  Therefore, it is not the case that only big organizations with huge data can successfully manage to use dynamic creative to optimize their ad and give better marketing experience. The CTR metric sometimes are not accurate.

The original article can be found at http://marketingland.com/data-driven-art-digital-marketing-121667

Experience Marketing

When I read about digital marketing online. There was a article about experience marketing caught my attention. The article mainly talks about how to extend digital marketing to more tailored, personal oriented marketing campaign, which I think is a good concept.

Experience marketing could connect customers and business more intimate than traditional marketing, given that experience marketing could catch the personal preference towards brands, their behaviors. Experience marketing is more about to convey relevant information of a brand or service that customers actually values from their own perspective. Based on the huge amounts of data of customers now, it is critical, in my opinion, to discover each customs' behavior and then reach those customers through different personalized channels. 

Moreover, based on the name of "experience marketing". The job is to create an experience for targeted customers, to make personal campaign for those customers of interest. In my perspective, the unique experience for specific customers can make customers think that the products are designed and made tailored for them. 

I think "experience marketing" is a trend for marketing. Based on digital marketing, tailored advertisements on customers' computers and mobile devices could make it to the next step.

The original article I read is "http://www.adotas.com/2015/03/is-digital-marketing-outdated/".

Smart Phone Ads limitation and comparison

I read this article from New York Times that has some discussion about mobile ads on smartphone platforms. The article ”Smart Phone Ads and Their Drawbacks" is written by Randall Stross.

We are looking at hundreds of ads on browsers everywhere everyday. It seems impossible to avoid looking at these ads. Compared to desktop, laptop and tablet browsers, smart(mobile) phone ads have some drawbacks. One significant advantage of browsers ads other than smart phone ads is that marketers can track customers's reactions or feedbacks. In the digital marketing class, professor showed us the summary statistics website that how many customers click and follow up their ads in the email campaign. I think viewers' reactions to website ads from desktop browsers can be monitored in the same way. For example, how many customers click on the ad and then make the purchase or how many people open the link. However, when it comes to smartphone ads, this kind of track actions function is limited and things become challenging.

Other drawbacks of smartphones are that people are usually not willing to spend too much time on smartphone ads. Since the screen size is limited and people usually spend short amount of time on it, smartphones ads is hard to catch enough attention of phone users as desktop ads do. Other researchers said that context is most important point for smart phone ads. On the other hands, some smartphone platforms are doing a good job. I think the reason these platforms do well is that it does not create too much distraction for phone users. Pandora and Twitter are doing well because they can incorporate ads smoothly into the apps based on the article. And app location related service is also an advantage of smartphone apps.

The link for the article I read is http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/technology/smartphone-ads-and-their-drawbacks-digital-domain.html.

Netflix-House of Cards 3: New business model

The article "House of Cards has no advertising" gives me some idea about the new business model Netflix is adopting. Here is some of my thoughts on the new business model.

The House of Cards season 3 by Netflix released all episodes at the same time as it did before. Because of House of Cards, Netflix's subscribers, subscriptions fees and the stock prices all have all been increased in the past two years. 

Netflix was trying a new business model or was trying to create a new way of television viewing. Based on the huge success of House of Cards, which is the product of Netflix, Netflix's new way of television platform also lead to some discussion. Traditional television series released one episodes each week to catch customers' attention for the advertisement purpose. The more attention the show gains, the more advertising attentions customer will give to the airtime of the show. Traditional TV shows rely on this to generate revenues.

Netflix's new business model is a big step. No advertising (benefit) is associated with the high expectation show House of Cards. In my perspective, all it depends on is the quality of the TV series. On the other hand, the ultimate goal of Netflix is to attract subscribers, not only viewers for a particular TV program. Using this new business model, Netflix lost the opportunity to have control over the cost and charge of the TV program, that is to say, the traditional TV program can make changes to the charges based on the responses of viewers. Therefore, the future of Netflix is till not clear. 

The article I was reading can be found at http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2013/02/14/house-of-cards-has-no-advertising/

Amazon On Campus

Amazon opened its second on campus store in Purdue University early this month. I went to Purdue for undergraduate, so I found this news exciting and interesting.  Some of the following points are based on the article from http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q3/purdue,-amazon-to-offer-students-savings-on-textbooks,-provide-first-ever-on-campus-pickup-services.html.

Basically, the on campus store focused on textbooks and other study used things. The Purdue campus has its several bookstores for sure because of the large campus size and large number of students. They key is Amazon physical store provides low prices and convenient services for students. For example, one-day shipment, rent, buy, new, used textbooks are all available for students. And the Amazon store on campus also offers the same rate as the book sold on its Amazon website.

picture from http://purdue.amazon.com/

Another appealing reason for Purdue to support this store on campus is that not only Purdue gains a share from the the store, but also it helps the university to offer affordable education and keeps the education cost lost.  By statistics, the whole saving for students is 6 million each school year after the Amazon store presents on campus. Textbooks and study materials are also the third largest cost to a college students. Therefore, the low cost Amazon store on campus could help students save money on their education. 

I think this kind of store could extend to other campus as well. On the other hand, this kind of physical store could also open in community to sell low price products and also convenient one-day shipment and immediate return. I think the Amazon store on campus idea is brilliant. 

Email - Good way to promote

An article about "You've got mail and more is coming"by Suzanne Vranica gave me something unexpected. The article showed that email is the most influential online marketing channel in the last holiday selling season. 

Based on the article, 71% of customers's shopping behavior were influenced by email. 40% of customers took action to buy some products because of email promotion. This is a number greater than I was expected. We all experienced that huge volume of emails flow into our mailbox everyday, including many promotion emails. For me, I disregard most of those emails but for some items I would buy, I still want to check those email. 

One possible reason for email marketing to be on the top lists would be that email promotions cost less compared to printed promotion materials. Email promotions are also easy for marketers to make changes after posted. From my point of view, emails are what we have to check everyday, so that this platform has advantage compare to other ways of promotion. Marketers could reach customers with email in seconds.

The second and third largest promotional channels are websites and social media, respectively. Facebook is the most influential social platform for marketers and most of the promotions are organic, not paid.  

A nice, eye catching email targeting the right customers could really make some difference.

Alibaba: Influence on the global online market

I read an article online” Report: Alibaba & The Future of Global Marketing” which gives me some inspiration. Alibaba is a very influential name during 2014 in the online marketing business. It made its IPO in New York in the previous year, give the company new source of power to move on to the next stage. Alibaba is company consists of several sub companies covering the area of B2B, B2C, C2C. By far, the Alibaba group has the largest market share in the ecommerce market in China. The following table shows that Alibaba Group’s influence on the global market is also substantial.

Site ranking by traffic volume (source: Alexa, August 2014)

China is Alibaba’s main marketplace, but the company is showing a trend that it is expanding around the world. Number of visits to the Alibaba site is growing rapidly. One reason for that is the company is working with many multinational companies, such as Mercedes Benz. Another reason for the quick expansion is that the company is introducing many businesses that have no ecommerce experience to the new filed. Not only for customers, the company have changed the way they buy, the Alibaba group is also changing future businesses’ operation modes.

Demographic breakdown of Alibaba properties* users compared to general population

(source: comScore USA, August 2014)

The market in general also see some changes under Alibaba's effect. It offers many business the opportunities to get to new markets. It gives business the new operational modes to get ahead of other similar business. The platform Alibaba offers enables so many marketers to have the chance to expand globally.

Powerful Wechat in many ways

WeChat is a popular phone app in China now and Asian countries. It is developed by Tencent, a Chinese internet company.

An article by Josh Horwitz caught my attention "5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think". Based on Josh's article, I would like to express some of my own using experience with WeChat. 

WeChat now has the function of text chat, video chat and voice chat, paying online, moments share, find friends online and play in-build games. I am sure more functions would come soon. It is no longer an app that only for the use of chat, but an app that would ease life of people. Connivence is principle of the app and the main aim of development.

As far as I know, WeChat is developed from Tencent QQ, another popular chat software in China. Now Wechat is a software used by almost everyone with a smart phone in China. The new added function is the mobile pay function. It allows users to connect to the personal banking account and pay by scanning QR code and some other way. Another practical design of WeChat is that the app is very "group friendly". People can quickly set up a group and chat in a group and when a group people get close to each other, the WeChat radar can detect people close to each other.

The "moments"(micro blog) also is a nice and easy to use function. User can post message, pictures and little videos with simple "clicks". Everything can be updated on time and shared anywhere.

Hope surprising new functions will be added on WeChat soon.