amazon-holiday-2019:-record-new-prime-memberships-as-one-day-shipping-gets-baked-in
Amazon began heavily promoting free one-day delivery for Prime members earlier this year.

Amazon said it attracted a record number of new Prime customers and trials this holiday season. More than 5 million people signed up new Prime memberships or free trials in a single week this holiday season, the company announced in a holiday recap Thursday. Fast shipping options likely helped spur that growth.

Why we care

Amazon has invested hundreds of millions (if not over a billion) in Prime Free one-day and same-day delivery. Analysts expect Amazon’s free one-day shipping investments to pay off. Prime members tend to become loyal Amazon shoppers, spending more annually than non-members.

In August, RBC analyst Mark Mahaney estimated that free one-day shipping would spur Prime membership growth and Prime purchases overall, projecting an eventual annual revenue bump of $24 billion. A Piper Jaffray survey this month found that 55% of U.S. Prime members said they will use Amazon more when numerous items are included within one-day shipping.

Customarily light on specifics, Amazon said holiday orders with one- and same-day delivery nearly quadrupled compared to the same period last year. The company also noted Thursday that more than 100 million items sold by independent third-party sellers were shipped via Prime Free one-day delivery in the U.S. during the holidays.

More on the news

  • Amazon has also been building out a network of delivery hubs where packages can be delivered to secure lockers, piggybacking on existing retailer locations. Deliveries to those pickup points increased by more than 60% compared to a year ago, the company said.
  • Amazon, Walmart, Costco and Target led the way in making Super Saturday (December 21 this year) the best U.S. retail day ever, Customer Growth Partners told CNN.
  • Department stores, which have been hit hard as Amazon’s grown, saw overall sales decline 1.8 percent and online sales growth of 6.9 percent, Mastercard reported. That compares to overall online sales growth of 18.8% this season, a record, according to Mastercard.


About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.



5-ways-to-beat-holiday-stress-with-the-google-assistant

Five more gifts to buy, three projects to wrap up before the holiday break and one big family dinner to host. Anyone else have an end-of-the-year list like this? Here’s how the Google Assistant is helping me get through it all:

1. Stay organized with notes and lists

If you’re like me, inspiration strikes when you’re busy, like while cooking, commuting or playing with the kids. Starting to roll out today, you can use your Assistant to create and manage your notes and lists in Google Keep, Any.do, AnyList, or Bring! across Assistant-enabled phones and smart speakers. Lists are also available on Smart Displays. 

To get started, simply connect the Assistant with the app you use to create notes or lists. Select the “Services” tab in your Google Assistant settings and then choose your preferred provider name from the “Notes and Lists” section. Once connected, new notes and lists created from supported Assistant surfaces will appear in your chosen provider. You can also ask the Assistant for your historical notes and lists that were created before you connected the Assistant with your chosen provider, but these will not be visible in the provider’s app.

Here are a few things to try, starting with “Hey Google…”:

  • “Create a holiday gift list.”

  • “Add Chromebook to my holiday gift list.”

  • “Add cranberries to my grocery list.”

  • “Take a note.”

  • “Show me my notes.”

2. Assign reminders to your housemates and family members 

Assignable reminders help families and housemates collaborate and stay organized all year around. You can create reminders for your partner or roommate to pick up eggnog from the store, order gift wrapping paper or mail your holiday cards. To assign a reminder, ask your Assistant, “Hey Google, remind Nick to pick up Mom from the airport tonight.”  

3. Find and share photos using just your voice

It’s now easier than ever to find and share your favorite holiday memories, simply by using your voice. On your Android phone, just say, “Hey Google, look up photos from this weekend,” tap your favorite pictures and then say, “Hey Google, share these photos with Lizzie.” Your Assistant helps you search through your photos, pick your favorites, and send them to your friends or family. 

4. Listen to podcasts by topic

Heading to a potluck and tasked with bringing an entree? Turn to your Assistant for some cooking inspiration. When you ask the Assistant for podcasts about a certain topic—“Hey Google, find a podcast about holiday cooking”—it’ll suggest relevant episodes for you. Or if you’re looking to get a head start on productivity and self improvement, just ask, “Hey Google, show me podcasts about New Year’s resolutions.” The feature is available now in English on all Assistant-enabled devices globally. 

5. Enjoy a pick-me-up while running errands 

And, while you’re getting your last minute holiday shopping done, the Assistant can help you get a sweet treat or or a pick-me-up from Dunkin’. If you have the Dunkin’ App installed on your Android phone, just say “Hey Google, order a latte from Dunkin,” to quickly start your order.

I hope these features will make your holiday season just a little bit easier, so you can focus on spending time with family.


how-to-make-a-holiday-shopping-campaign-for-low-budget-accounts

As an advertiser, it always feels like the holiday season is abnormally long. It starts in August when I’m initiating conversations with our clients about the upcoming holidays and what it means for them. The majority of my clients are small businesses with small budgets, making this an important time of year. Not only do we have to be careful with our spend, but the revenue that is generated during this season is crucial. A lot of the accounts I work with will feel a strain in their business if they don’t earn enough during the holidays to help them make it through the slower months.

The unique constraints that small businesses face with advertising carry over to the holiday season, which is why planning your calendar, knowing what you’re measuring and being intentional with your budget are so important.

Calendar 

One of the challenges of running a small account during the holiday season is planning out exactly which campaigns you will run when. There are three main ways I approach the calendar.

Use historical data

First, use all the data you have access to in order to identify what worked last year and what didn’t. We have a client that is in the hospitality space and has been with us for three holiday seasons. We have a lot of data about what has worked in the past, and we use it to identify the platforms we want to use as well as similar campaigns that we want to run every year. If you don’t have data from last season, use what you do have to make an informed guess.

A caveat here is to ensure you aren’t looking only at last-click data or return on ad spend at the campaign level. Looking at purchase path and assisted revenue is important when identifying what you deem successful. If a specific campaign plays an important role at the beginning of the purchase path, cutting it is going to affect overall revenue.

Another important item to keep in mind is any major changes in your audience or offerings over the course of the year. Ask yourself if you can really make the assumption that what worked last year will likely work again if there have been major platform or audience changes. This also applies if a new competitor is in your space.

Trim it down

Chances are, you don’t have the budget to do everything that you want to do. It is the reality with small accounts, there isn’t enough money to go around. The last thing you want is to end up with a low performing holiday campaign because budget was spread too thin.

There are three things to keep in mind when trimming your campaigns down – budget, capacity and creative.

First, score your ideal campaigns according to priority. For us, high priority campaigns are those that have played the biggest role in affecting the overall bottom line – a combination of direct and assisted revenue. Look at costs from the season last year, take into account rises in cost-per-click (CPC) and the typical length of the season for the business. Some of our clients only run holiday ads from Nov. 11 through Dec. 10, and others run from mid-October through December. You additionally want to take into account any extra budget you may need for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, assuming you participate. Assign your campaigns their ideal budget alongside their priority and look critically at what does and does not fit.

Second, look at the business’s overall capacity. We have clients who are two-person businesses, and although demand exists we know that once they hit capacity, they physically cannot create or sell any more stock. Take this into account when allocating out what you will and will not run. Is there a point where this will happen for you during the season? 

Finally, there is a chance that some of your top-performing and ideal campaigns will require new creative for this year, or even midway through the season. Some creative can be reused year-over-year, but you generally want something new to avoid ad exhaustion, as small businesses can have small audiences. If a high scoring campaign that you really want to run needs new creative, chances are something else will have to go, especially if creating that asset costs additional budget.

Chart it out 

Once you have a plan ironed out, create yourself and your team a GANNT chart with details about execution. We have clients that add our digital marketing component into their larger GANNT charts and while it is excellent to see where digital fits in the overall picture, we find it extraordinarily helpful to maintain our own copy.

This is also important as with smaller clients, they will typically have one point of contact, one team member who is going to be helping with their whole holiday campaign. I’ll hop in for strategy discussions, but the implementation and actual running of the campaign is up to a single person. That can leave a lot of room for error, and an individualized GANNT chart combined with Asana tasks detailing starts/stops/finishes helps us run smoothly throughout the season.

To recap: 

  • Use historical data to figure out what campaigns you want to run 
  • Look at overall contribution to revenue, not just last click ad spend
  • Trim it down according to budget, capacity or creative 
  • Chart and task it out

Analytics 

When evaluating the success of your campaign, we stick with the metrics that were used the year prior in order to evaluate year-over-year growth, which is our biggest KPI within the holiday season. While we will look at return on ad spend (ROAS), increases in overall revenue generated is our primary goal. There is an exception to this, we will use ROAS as a success metric if a client sells out of inventory each season. If we helped them sell out faster while spending less on ads, then that is a success.

One note about analytics is that it is so important to tag and name your campaigns properly. Use UTM tags that align with not only the platform and type of ad, but the holiday season. You’re doing future you a big favor by tagging your campaigns and naming them in a way that allows for easy future comparisons.

To recap: 

  • Stick with similar metrics year-over-year
  • Look at overall growth/revenue increase instead of campaign level ROAS metrics 
  • Tag and name your campaigns properly to save future you a headache and allow for easier reporting

Budget

Budgets are a hot topic these days. From stories about Google Ads not respecting their own twice a day budget rule to increasing CPCs across the board, there’s always something to be thinking about.

Audience

One of the best ways to ensure that you don’t spend all your budget is focusing on smaller audiences that you hypothesize will drive revenue. If you have a limited budget for the season, focus spend on proven remarketing and email lists. This is especially important during the sale periods, where customers who know you and have previously engaged with your business are more likely to purchase. This is a great way to approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

You can also use lookalike audiences of people who have purchased in past years to narrow down your targeting for top of funnel campaigns.

Know your best performing days

If you have historical data from last season, use it to determine the start time of your holiday sprint. If you’re seasonal, when did traffic return last year? When did purchases rise? Are there certain days of the week or hours of the day that are more profitable? To maximize your budget, look at all of this information and determine when to start your holiday campaigns, whether or not to advertise seven days a week, and where you should be using bid adjustments to maximize revenue.

An example of a seasonal client analytics is below. The holiday traffic came to their site this year earlier than we anticipated. We were going to run ads beginning Nov. 12 but looking at the rise in organic traffic in early October, we decided to run an early bird campaign and have seen a jump in year-over-year revenue as a result of paying attention to the early spike.

Use a script to help you manage

The final budget tip for the season is to avoid that pesky overspending in Google Ads by using a budget script. This piece of advice comes from Duane Brown of Take Some Risk, who recommends this script to limit overspending. The one caveat is that you do have to remember to re-activate what gets paused the next day, either through another script or a rule.

Using a script to ensure your daily budgets don’t get out of control is a helpful way to maximize results throughout the season and prevent Google Ads from taking away your budgetary control.

To recap: 

  • Limit big sale days to your most qualified audiences 
  • Know what days and times you should be loading your budget for 
  • Pay attention to seasonal traffic and adjust accordingly 
  • Use a script to prevent overages

Season recap

One of the best things that you can do for your future self is to make notes as you go. What worked, what didn’t, what UTM tags you used, your GANNT charts, and why you made the choices you did.

We always think we will remember what we did with our calendars, how we managed success and what budgets we used and why, but instead of starting over every season, keep notes so that when you’re planning your 2020 campaigns you have something to refer back to.

More about retail for the winter holidays


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Amalia Fowler is the director of marketing services at Snaptech Marketing. She manages a team of strategists who develop holistic digital marketing strategies for clients. Passionate about testing, marketing psychology and digital strategy, Amalia speaks frequently at industry conferences and events. Outside of marketing, she’s a coffee, paddleboarding and Vancouver enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter @amaliaefowler for all things marketing related.



moving-holiday-email-campaigns-over-the-finish-line

I have a great career because I get to play in different sandboxes. This week, for example, I got to meet with a client in financial services, one that has little to do with the holiday retail onslaught that’s beginning to descend on us from every marketing channel.

As I presented on industry trends, I said, “We’re in the fourth quarter, and that means retailers are going to flood inboxes. Take that into consideration when doing your email campaigns. Everybody’s going to be overwhelmed by the sale of the minute.”

How different it is, I reflected later, to be working for a client that doesn’t do holiday email marketing and for marketers who don’t know the feeling you get in mid-December when it’s fourth down and 20 yards from the goal line with the clock running out. 

After all the years I put in working on retail email, I can tell you what it’s like: You’re just trying to find the energy to get that touchdown. And daydreaming how nice it would be to have someone ring your bell hard enough that Coach pulls you out of the game so someone else can finish. 

Many marketers find this time of year invigorating. And it is – at the start. But, after a few weeks, I would struggle to get motivated enough to head into the office and work on holiday email 24/7.

My goal here is to help you find that motivation and gear up to survive the slog. 

1. Find your motivation from within

If you’re the only person at your company working on email, the best source for inspiration can come from beyond your department. Ask for a meeting with your company founders, if they’re still around, and find out what motivated them to stick with the company in its early days.

Don’t ask why they started the company (you’ve probably heard that story a million times). Interview them with questions nobody has asked yet. What was the weather like when they started the company? How scared were they? What makes them get up and go to work every day?

Take inspiration from their motivation to power yourself. Try to get as excited as they were when they founded the company.

2. Gear up for the big game

If you’re part of a team, take your team out for drinks. Sports teams meet before the big game to learn strategy, hear inspiring speeches and get each other fired up. There’s no better way for marketers to do that than through a group dinner or drinks.

Talk with your team about their lives and what motivates them. Help your team members create bonds. Talk about work and ask what excites everybody. Draw inspiration from that excitement. Waylay any fear or concerns by reinforcing team spirit.

The best holiday season I spent – either as a consultant or on the front lines of email – was being part of a connected team that had a goal in mind.  

3. Put your personal touch on something

Don’t be just a cog in the wheel of your organization’s deployment of campaigns to make a buck. Be the wheel, the one that drives the gears that move your program forward. Try to find one campaign a week to put your mark on.

How can you do this? 

Look for a trigger where you can change the text to reflect the season. Or consider an automation that you’ve always wanted to do. The goal is to choose a campaign that can give you a good sense of impact thanks to high seasonal traffic.

4. Schedule a mid-season pick-me-up …. now

I stress this whenever I’m coaching marketers. Always start a big project by taking a moment for yourself and your team to be sure you’re all starting at the right place. That’s when you take your team out for drinks or dinner or some other team event.

Halfway through the season, do it again. Schedule a group meeting now, because if you don’t, you’ll forget. You might have to reschedule it to accommodate business needs, but at least you have it on the calendar and it’s something to look forward to in the middle of the madness.

Motivation at the midpoint of the holiday season is as important as motivation at the beginning. You can’t wilt when you’re on second down and inches from the goal.  

Wrapping up

I’m not going to tell you what kind of new trigger program to try. If you don’t have it in place by now, you’re too late. This isn’t the time to strategize. It’s execution time. 

Now is the time to buckle up and be ready. The only way I know to do this successfully is to stick together as a team and dig deep.

If the going gets tough, just remember what somebody smarter than I once said: “It’s just an email. We aren’t saving babies or curing cancer.”

More about retail for the winter holidays


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Ryan Phelan is co-founder of Origin Email and brings nearly two decades of worldwide online marketing and email experience. Ryan is a respected thought leader and nationally distinguished speaker with a history of experience from Adestra, Acxiom, BlueHornet, Sears Holdings, Responsys and infoUSA. In 2013 he was named one of the top 30 strategists in online marketing and is the Chairman Emeritus of the EEC Advisory Board. Ryan also works with start-up companies as an advisor, board member and investor.



shorter-holiday-season-won’t-dampen-e-commerce-sales-with-revenue-expected-to-surpass-$143-billion

With a head start on this year’s shorter-than-usual holiday season, e-commerce sales should remain robust, according to Adobe’s predictions. The company expects online holiday revenue to reach $143.8 billion this year, a 14.1% increase over last year.

That growth estimate is below the 16.5% year-over-year increase in e-commerce sales that Adobe reported last year, when the shopping season was as long as possible.

“Holiday 2019 is the shortest possible, with only 22 days between Cyber Monday and Christmas,” reports Adobe, “This leaves almost $1 billion in revenue behind. However, retailers are able to make that up by starting sales earlier this year. Thanksgiving will grow at 20%.”

Adobe says that every day during November and December will see more than $1 billion in online holiday sales. The report is based on aggregate data from more than one trillion visits to U.S.-based retail websites.

What to expect Cyber Week. The 20% lift in e-commerce sales expected on Thanksgiving will account for $7 million more than was generated last Thanksgiving. Adobe also expects Cyber Monday to see record-breaking sales this year, climbing to $9.4 billion for the day — an 18.9% increase over last year.

2019 Cyber Week e-commerce sales

This year’s Cyber Week — Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday — will prove its worth as the biggest online shopping week of the year with sales projected to reach nearly $30 billion ($28.9), accounting for 20% of the holiday season’s total online sales.

Mobile shopping is growing with help from social. Adobe expects mobile shopping to account for nearly 50% of the overall retail holiday growth in the U.S.: “Americans will spend $14 billion more this holiday season on their phone compared to last year.”

Christmas Day sales will also see more purchases happening on phones than on desktops — the first time ever mobile devices will own more sales than desktops for the day.

Social isn’t translating to sales the same way email and search are, according to Adobe, but it is driving more e-commerce visits. Adobe says the share of smartphone visits on e-commerce sites stemming from social has more than tripled during the last three years.

Why we should care. This year’s shortened holiday season (there are six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas) means marketers will likely need to start their campaigns earlier than usual to reach their holiday goals. Fortunately, according to Adobe’s predictions, the shortened holiday isn’t going to have much impact on how much revenue is up for grabs.

To compete with the big retailers who have already started their online holiday deals — places like Walmart and Best Buy — marketers will need to keep in mind the holiday calendar, and the anticipated heavy shopping days, when implementing their holiday campaigns.



About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.



42%-of-shoppers-will-buy-most-(or-all)-of-their-holiday-gifts-on-amazon,-survey-finds

About 42% of holiday shoppers will buy most or all their gift purchases on Amazon this year, according to a global survey of 4,500 shoppers in the U.S., U.K. and several other countries. During holiday shopping, 32% of consumers will start on Amazon, followed by Google (18%) according to the survey.

That stands in contrast to the rest of the year “when Google is the first stop whether they have a product in mind or not, although Amazon is a close second.” The Episerver survey was fielded earlier this year.

Nearly half won’t buy on Amazon. While those stats may sound daunting for Amazon’s competitors (not named Google), the “half-full” narrative is that 47% of people “will buy few or none” of their gifts on Amazon. Episerver also argues that it is very possible to compete with Amazon and offers a number of specific recommendations in its “Holiday Online Shopping Trends 2019” report.

The company further explains that not all shopping categories are equal in terms of consumer patterns and preferences. In apparel, for example, shoppers are more likely to first visit a brand or retailer website (43%) than both Google (29%) and Amazon (30%). Episerver also says that consumers tend to visit stores to shop for apparel (and furniture) before buying online.

(Don’t miss our digital commerce marketing concentration at SMX West.)

Social media traffic to e-commerce sites has doubled. Episerver adds that social media will play “a larger role than ever in influencing product purchases this holiday season,” pointing out that social media traffic to e-commerce websites has doubled in the first half of 2019 vs. 2018. This stands in marked contrast to recent survey data from Deloitte, which argues that social media will play a diminished role this year in holiday shopping.

Specifically, Episerver argues influencer marketing will have a tangible impact retail sales, finding that 52% of shoppers have clicked on influencer posts. Only 23% percent of survey respondents said they don’t follow influencers. However, I suspect these numbers vary dramatically by age cohort and may not be representative of the population at large: 67% of all consumers don’t follow social media influencers.

How to compete with Amazon. Episerver offers a number of general and specific recommendations about how to effectively compete with Amazon:

  • Content and service are key differentiators: “Make sure your customer service team is dialed-in to serve and content teams are pumping out useful holiday guides for their websites.”
  • Use paid search, which has the “highest conversion rate of all” and place ads on Amazon’s site.
  • Use social media/influencer marketing. The company also emphasizes organic content and SEO.
  • Invest in mobile and implement a number of technical “quick fixes.”

The report also says the top three communication channels consumers are most receptive to are email, social media and “a brand/retailer’s mobile app,” which I assume means notifications, in that order.

Why we should care. The report emphasizes being “customer-centric,” which extends to the holistic customer experience. Amazon offers massive inventory, speed and convenience. That’s very challenging to compete with.

However, Episerver recommends investing in technical upgrades to remove transaction friction and increase speed. More broadly, retailers should “humanize” shopping experiences with content and service. “Amazon prides itself on customer obsession but when it comes to product education, inspirational content, how-to guides and fanatical customer service, they come up short.”



About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes about the connections between digital and offline commerce. He previously held leadership roles at LSA, The Kelsey Group and TechTV. Follow him Twitter or find him on LinkedIn.



holiday-shopping-to-‘peak’-early,-be-more-mobile-and-less-social-—-survey

The onslaught of holiday shopping surveys has begun. And consultancy Deloitte is out of the gate early with its 2019 holiday retail survey.

Keep in mind that consumer surveys are aspirational and don’t always align with real-world behavior. Still, they reflect consumer intent and are worth paying attention to as a directional indicator of important trends.

Experiences will consume roughly a third of budgets. Retailers can expect consumers to spend roughly $1,500 this holiday season, according to the Deloitte survey of 4,400 U.S. adults, conducted in September. Yet, more than a third of that spend will be devoted to “experiences”: entertaining at home, traveling and eating at restaurants.

More online spending, but offline still dominates. As in the past, the share of consumer spending devoted to e-commerce will grow — up two points to 59% of holiday shopping this year. In-store spending will be flat at 36% of the total, according to the survey.

However, contradicting the broader implications of this finding, e-commerce spending in the U.S. in Q4 2018 was just 10.1% of total retail sales, according to U.S. government data. E-commerce will not be 59% of total Q4 retail sales.

Early shopping. Deloitte also found that holiday shopping is “expected to peak” in early to mid-December, driven largely by early deals and the Black Friday-Cyber Monday shopping week. The firm also said that, “Cyber Monday has eclipsed Black Friday in terms of importance across all generational cohorts, though Gen Z and millennials rely most on Cyber Monday deals.”

Another interesting data point is that consumers prefer free shipping to fast shipping. And most consumers are willing to wait between three and seven days for packages to arrive. Those who preferred fast shipping want their packages in less than two days. Amazon has trained consumers to expect this and now we’re moving to one-day shipping scenarios.

70% will shop on their phones. Consumers also anticipate buying more on their smartphones this year, with 70% saying they plan to shop and buy on mobile devices. Mobile retail traffic has eclipsed the desktop for the past couple of years, with mobile commerce sales growing significantly. However, the majority of e-commerce transactions still take place on PCs.

As in the past, Deloitte reports that consumers will be using multiple resources to help them with their shopping research and buying. The firm found, interestingly, that social media will not have as much influence over consumer spending this year as in the past. This sentiment may be a general statement of consumer disapproval of social media rather than any predictor of actual behavior.

Social ‘not a major driver of product research.’ Deloitte says, “Social and print media are not major drivers of product research and are wielding much less of an influence on consumers this holiday season. And the value of the in-store experience remains solid, especially for products that consumers want to see and touch before purchase. Fully half intend to find their inspiration in the store.”

Why we should care. Again, it should be stressed that what people report in surveys often doesn’t turn out to be what they do in practice. For example, marketers should not read the above chart and pull their social media spending. As in years past, it’s going to take a thoughtful, multi-channel approach to win.

However, as the survey recommends, retailers should front-load their promotions to catch early shoppers. They should also focus on mobile as an entry point for consumers but recognize transactions will still happen on PC and offline. And, as always, they should remove as much friction as possible from the checkout process.



About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes about the connections between digital and offline commerce. He previously held leadership roles at LSA, The Kelsey Group and TechTV. Follow him Twitter or find him on LinkedIn.