Every year, I look forward to the Retail Dive Awards. This year, Corinne Ruff put together some great categories that sparked a lot of water cooler talk among the Pluris team. While all the categories are discussion-worthy (you can see them here), a few really stood out.

High conversion rates are the Holy Grail when it comes to measuring the success of digital marketing. The more visitors you convert into customers, the more profitable your business. 

The analytics you use to gain profitable insights into your customers and marketing efforts are fueled by the data that enters your organization. However, unless your business can guarantee the integrity of its information, you can’t be sure you’re making the right decisions based on it. In fact, it might steer you in the wrong direction entirely.

Recently, we spoke about the importance of Increasing Customer Lifetime Value. By optimizing offers for each targeted customer segment, you can improve the conversion rates for your best customers and increase their engagement and purchases.

There are many different strategies for measuring the value of your customers both individually and collectively. While collective measurements like Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) can offer you a holistic view of your entire customer base, it can often be misleading. ARPC can become significantly skewed by the presence of a few big-spenders.

A war is being waged against pop-up ads. According to Tech Crunch, a single type of ad blocking software, AdBlock Plus, has already been downloaded almost a billion times.

The best marketing plans are a combination of data, customer insight, lessons from the past and educated guesses about the future. But what if, instead of planning, we could enjoy the benefits of a preseason like NFL teams? So I raised the hypothetical with our CEO Mike Caccavale, who like most of the crew in our Boston office, is a big Patriots fan. Here are some of his ideas.

We talk about proactive and reactive behavior in many areas of life – driving, parenting, relationships (guys, buy the flowers before she asks). And as marketers, we see – and dish out – a lot of both. And to some degree, that will always be the case. But there are some areas for improvement in how we handle the balance.

On the way to a conversion or purchase, customers typically interact with multiple touchpoints that are pieces of the marketing puzzle. Customers may encounter a display ad, receive a mobile push notification for a sale at a local store, or research products on your website. All of these interactions play a different role in the customer’s decision-making process.