Top 10 Takeaways from NEMOA’s Spring Summit

NEMOA, the National Etailing and Mailing Organization of America, brought together hundreds of e-commerce and direct marketing professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds for its annual Spring Summit in Boston last week. Media Horizons was pleased attend the conference as a gold sponsor.

A plethora of ideas were shared and discussed by many thought leaders.

Here are our Top 10 Takeaways from the Spring Summit:

1. Content enables a 1:1 to become a 1:many. Brands and marketers should always make time to make great content to connect with customers, educate their audience, and entertain their industry.
2. Transparency in data is key. Consumers are growing leery of being “followed around”. Marketers can take the “creepy factor” out of retargeting with a personalized message. It will establish trust with a prospective customer.
3. “Is the intent of search rooted in a moment of need?” While it’s not true that attention spans are getting shorter, people have less tolerance for time wasters. 87% of smartphone owners will now turn to search first in their moment of need. If you can determine when and how to reach a customer in their moment of need, you’ll likely see higher conversion.
4. Keep your website optimized and in tip top shape. 53% of site visits were abandoned immediately if a website took longer than three seconds to load. Mobile page speed is especially important for Google SEO these days too so having your website load quickly will help with organic search engine optimization as well.
5. Consumers pay equal attention on all screens… false! It depends on if they are “leaning forward or leaning back” with their purchase intent. Consumers are more likely to be “leaning forward” while using mobile devices and laptops. Brands must embrace the difference between the two behaviors and tailor marketing strategy and messaging
6. Personalization is well worth the investment. 82% of consumers would be more likely to do business with online retailers if they offered personalized experiences. In Direct Mail specifically, 1:1 targeting increased response by 30-50% in the case of one advertiser. On the flip side, bad personalization will hurt; 44% of customers leave a company due to bad personalization. Establishing timely, relevant messaging will keep your customers more engaged.
7. The future is Mobile. Mobile represented 70% of the $60 billion digital ad spend market in 2017; as digital ad spend is set to rise to $90 billion by 2020, marketers need to be increasingly focused on mobile.
8. But be sure to perfect it. Employ what one speaker called “the Mom test”. If Mom can’t successfully and easily use it, then you need to refocus your efforts on making mobile simple and uncomplicated.
9. If you’re not willing to cannibalize yourself, someone else will do it for you. If Blockbuster had pioneered digital video rental, which at its onset would likely have hurt brick-and-mortar, they might be where Netflix is today.
10. Traditional catalogers are fully embracing changing consumer behavior. Leading catalogers plan to add video to their websites (in one case, one video for every product listed) as well as test addressable TV.

The NEMOA summits are an excellent opportunity to learn as well as network, and hats off to NEMOA for another great conference. We look forward to their Fall Summit in mid-September!