Welcome to the first in an ongoing, weekly effort to bring you a quick look (QT stands for Quick Take) at the most important and useful items that we see. It’s designed to be highly skimmable and worthy of the pace and distractions we all have to deal with. As always, your feedback and commentary are invaluable. Hope you find value in this new addition to our offerings.
– Mike Giambattista, CEO
LOYALTY
Loyalty Programs, Employee Perks Programs Help Two Convenience Chains Grow
Notable: Duchess Convenience Stores has enrolled all 1300 retail employees at its 120 stations in Ohio and West Virginia in an “employee” tier of its Crown Card Rewards program, providing them with free products and rewards every day, even when they’re not working.
Spirit Airlines’ New Loyalty Program Is a Long-Term Earnings Tailwind
Notable: In conjunction with a debt offering, Spirit revealed in late August that it received $49.4 million of cash from its co-branded credit card agreements last year. It expects to more than double that figure to over $100 million by 2024, thanks to the program enhancements revealed last week, along with improved terms from credit card partner Bank of America.
ADVERTISING
U.S. Ad Spending Lags GDP Heading In, Coming Out Of 2020 Recession
Notable: While the U.S. GDP fell 5% during the first quarter, which included the beginning of the U.S. shutdown related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ad industry declined only 3%.
DATA PRIVACY
The ‘Ethical Debt’ of Facial Recognition
Notable: With all apologies to Jeff Goldblum, there’s no need to be hunted by intelligent dinosaurs to realize that we often do things because “we can rather than that we should.”
Emerging AI And Machine Learning Trends To Watch In 2021
Notable: Gartner recommends the creation of external AI ethics boards to prevent AI dangers that could jeopardize a company’s brand, draw regulatory actions or “lead to boycotts or destroy business value.”
Those ‘accept cookies’ banners on websites undermine your privacy—but they can be fixed
Notable: Cookie banners create a false perception of privacy at the user’s expense. Let users track what they’ve consented to by making a record of it with consent receipts. These receipts would give each user and website a record of what the user has already agreed to, limiting the need for ongoing and ultimately meaningless accept cookies pop-ups.
CORPORATE NEWS
Epsilon is Being Transformed by Publicis Groupe
Notable: Today, Epsilon is already embedded in more than half of Publicis Groupe’s top 30 accounts, including Kraft Heinz and McDonald’s. The former data platform of the Groupe was successfully integrated into Epsilon’s tech stack within 90 days. The newly-formed product suite, Epsilon PeopleCloud, is currently delivering data-driven outcomes for both Epsilon and the Groupe’s historical clients.
Zillant Partners With SAP For Pricing Optimization
Notable: The Zillant Global B2B Benchmark Report says that distributors have been known to miss out on around 100 to 300 basis points for incremental margin because of poor pricing, the release says.
CX
Customer Experience Report Reveals Accelerated Digital Transformation
Notable: Eighty-three percent of global marketers said that their spending on digital marketing and CX tools increased over the last 12 months, and 82% agree that they’ve experienced positive ROI from these technology investments. Among organizations’ CX improvements, customers are responding overwhelmingly well to a personal touch: 96% of marketing teams saw improvements with customer engagement after implementing personalization.
Tips From a Local Customer Success Team
Notable: You can’t improve customer focus without understanding what it is the customer needs.
PEOPLE NEWS
Calvin Klein taps Starbucks VP Linh Peters for chief marketer position
Notable: She joins Calvin Klein from Starbucks, where she was vice president, loyalty, partnerships and licensed stores product and marketing, overseeing the brand’s loyalty program and digital consumer engagement strategies and marketing.
PERSONALIZATION
Cart Abandonment And Personalization Drive High Email Benchmarks
Notable: Brands that personalize their one-time sends see an 81% increase in click rates, a 133% rise in conversion rates and a 142% boost in revenue per email, compared to those that send static emails, the study shows.
Gartner Identifies Personalization Tactics to Navigate the Recessionary Environment
Notable: “Marketers must obsess less over personalizing across the widest range of data sets, and instead leverage their immediately available first-party data sources,” said Evan Bakker, research principal in the Gartner Marketing practice. “This will allow marketers to improve the customer experience across sites, apps and email in order to capitalize on an expanding digital audience.”
By tailoring advertising only to specific consumer needs, brands are making ads less useful and missing out on sales.
Notable: Hyper-relevancy is now prevalent in digital advertising, but may be backfiring for many brands according to a new study by the Intent Lab, a research collaboration between Performics and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, in partnership with Microsoft Advertising.
AI
Uber faces GDPR lawsuit over ‘robo-firing’ algorithm
Notable: The union also allege that Uber never gave the drivers access to any of the purported evidence against them, nor did it allow them to challenge or even appeal the terminations. Under the UK’s Data Protection Act and Article 22 of GDPR, individuals have the right to certain protections from any automated decisions which create negative effects that are not carried out with meaningful human intervention.
HOSPITALITY
Hyatt Introduces Digital Platform, Hyatt Together, to Inspire Wellbeing at Home or While Traveling
Notable: Hyatt Together was piloted in May 2020 as a way for Hyatt to stay close to its corporate customers – a virtual “Hyatt hug” of sorts – featuring Hyatt colleagues from around the world sharing their passions, across culinary, physical fitness and mindfulness themes and more, from doing a Pilates routine inspired by Hyatt Regency Amsterdam to brewing the local favorite dalgona coffee served at Grand Hyatt Macau.
TECHNOLOGY
New research from Forrester, Applause shows curbside is here to stay
Notable: Roughly one-third of consumers expect to continue to leverage curbside pickup, online grocery shopping, contactless payments and same-day delivery, per Forrester’s survey of 1,093 adults in the United States.
66% of Sellers Would Rather Clean the Bathroom Than Update Their CRM System
Notable: 66% of sellers would rather stand in line at the DMV, get stuck in traffic, do jury duty, clean the bathroom, make a trip to the dentist, or even be nagged by their significant other than update their CRM system. (Yikes.)
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