eCommerce has continued its meteoric rise into a serious engine of business. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, eCommerce sales rose once again last year, this time by 15 percent, and now account for more than 14.3 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. Now, as a result, retailers around the U.S. and around the world are experimenting with and embracing new strategies for getting customers in the door and spending money. Some are working to bring new and innovative tech like augmented reality and cashier-less payment technology to their stores. Others are embracing omnichannel initiatives and looking to introduce new technology to emerging digital channels, including new features like visual search. But increasingly, many retailers are turning their attention back toward a retail strategy that seemed to fall out of favor more than a decade ago — showrooming. Showrooming, or the practice of consumers examining merchandise in a traditional brick-and-mortar retail store, then buying it online, often at a lower price, was considered something to avoid at all costs. The fear was it would become something that could threaten brick-and-mortar retail’s very existence. But now, a growing group of merchants is looking to use the practice to their advantage — and with good reason. More than 50 percent of consumers in both the U.S. and U.K. showroom shop, won over by the convenience and low prices. So how can you use this growing trend to your advantage? The answer lies in your product information.

Using product information to create a showrooming success

Succeeding with showrooming requires that you have your product information up to par — there’s just no two ways about it. When consumers showroom shop, they’re often going to get a firsthand look at a product that they might not feel comfortable buying online without seeing in person. This is especially common with products like electronics, clothing, and household items. This way, they’re able to get face-time with the product, then find it online for a price that suits them later on. Companies can appeal to showroom shoppers and make this a viable revenue stream — if they have the right ingredients in place. However, this requires high-quality product information coupled with equally high-quality digital assets — images, videos, and other forms of media that harken back to the in-store experience and serve as a reminder for customers looking up your products online. Without this high-quality information, consumers who return home to search using specific terms they remember from their trip to a brick-and-home won’t be able to find your products. If you want to succeed with showrooming efforts, search engines need to be able to find your products with ease. After all, if customers can’t find your products, it won’t matter your they are the best ones out there, at the best possible price. Of course, simply being able to find your products isn’t enough. Your product information also needs to be accurate, consistent, complete and compelling. If showroom shoppers don’t trust your product information or don’t like the experience you provide, you’ll quickly be finding your customers will make their purchases elsewhere.

PIM handles webrooming too

Showrooming isn’t the only trend retailers need to worry about. Its cousin, webrooming, is also a growing phenomenon among modern shoppers — and perhaps even more popular than showrooming itself. According to Chain Store Age, nearly three-quarters enjoy webrooming when shopping, often for many of the same products they showroom shop for. So what is webrooming, you ask? It’s the name given to the practice of online browsing and buying in-store. Fortunately, product information can also help here. Even B2B businesses are embracing webrooming. Home furnishings manufacturer Tarkett, for example, offers a webrooming capability via its website. While customers cannot order directly via the webrooming app, the app does send users to a distributor’s website, where they can make a purchase. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C seller, the same things that win over showroom shopping customers — accurate, correct, consistent, and easy-to-find product information and a top-notch customer experience, coupled with high-quality digital assets that not only show the product but also put it in context in a room and help you create a look. When it comes to webrooming, customer experience and consistency are more important than ever before. Companies investing in these experiences will need to provide a customer journey that walks your customers right from their online searches to the register with their product in hand.

Turn your showroom efforts into a success with PIM

Make your showrooming efforts shine with PIM! Learn how Akeneo can help give your team the product information and workflow tools to make any showroom a success. Learn how PIM and PXM can help you make sure all your new sales efforts reach their full potential by reading our blog on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success or get in touch today!

Let’s say you need help getting Akeneo PIM installed, implemented and up and running, or adding integrations and extensions to your Akeneo PIM instance — where do you turn? Or perhaps you could use a little assistance from a crack team of Akeneo experts to, explain new features and functionalities like a pro, or develop your business — what’s the solution? For many Akeneo PIM users, the answers to these questions, and to many other Akeneo PIM installation and integration challenges is Trilix GmbH. The German software development company offers expert insights in a host of Akeneo PIM areas, including installation, implementation, and integrations, especially those between Akeneo PIM and Magento 2. Implementation experts Here at Akeneo, we know that implementing a PIM solution is an exciting time in a company — but it can also be a stressful and busy one. Software integrations of any kind bring along a host of challenges, from time management to employee training to technical issues, and everything in between. That’s why we’ve worked to build a community chock full of partners that are ready to help you get Akeneo PIM up-and-running at your organization with the snap of a finger, and that includes Trilix. The experts at Trilix are ready to help you with the full implementation process, including bundle development, solution architecture, back-end, and front-end development, code assurance, and more. Trillix offers complete integration support and is prepared to help you with every stage of your installation and implementation process, including preparation, discovery, planning, design, launch, and support. What’s more, the company’s strong history of market understanding, high-performance eCommerce stores, and experience with Akeneo mean you can rest assured that your implementation process will go off without a hitch. Magento marvels While Trilix can easily and efficiently get your PIM system up and running, it also believes that sometimes, simply installing and implementing a PIM solution alone isn’t enough. To truly experience the full potential of Akeneo, you’ll likely need to extend your PIM’s capabilities by connecting with your eCommerce platform — and Trilix can help with that too. The company has built itself on a foundation of integrating solutions, with a specific focus on innovation and quality that has helped them develop impactful and inspired integrations for a range of solutions — including Akeneo PIM and eCommerce platform giant Magento. With Trilix’s PIM2Magento REST API Integration, your team can make sharing information a cinch. The extension works to push data from Akeneo PIM to Magento, minimizing dependencies between the two applications, offers a simplified workflow for importing product information into Magento 2, provides synchronization between product data in Akeneo and Magento, and helps improve the accuracy and consistency of product information. That way, you can easily import high-quality, accurate, consistent, and compelling product information to your Magento website and other channels, ensuring your customers are presented with an exciting and captivating experience across every touchpoint. Inspired integrations Trilix’s integration intelligence doesn’t stop with PIM2Magento, however. The company also provides the popular Events API Bundle, designed to offer a smooth and simple way to create integrations that respond to activities in Akeneo PIM. With the Events API, creating, deleting, or updating a category, attribute, family, product, or product model triggers a mechanism that automatically sends those events to various Request URLs as HTTP posts, making it easier to build and develop integrations that respond to specific activities. What’s more, by pairing the Events API Bundle with the web-based service IFTTT (If This Then That), your team can receive email notifications for all Akeneo events or integrate Akeneo event notifications into other applications such as Trello, helping your team work more quickly and efficiently. Trilix also has more integrations on the way. Coming soon to the Akeneo Marketplace is an extension designed to help companies better import product information that’s trapped in a spreadsheet — the Google Sheets Integration. By helping your team automatically pull data from Akeneo in real-time via the REST API, eliminating the need to export data from Akeneo manually, and ease reporting, monitoring and analysis processes in Google sheets, this extension offers powerful real-time collaboration tools that help your team more easily and efficiently visualize, process, and communicate data. With Trilix, your team can be sure that all parts of your PIM journey, from implementation to integration and everything in between, can be done easily and efficiently. Want to discover the potential and capabilities of Akeneo’s open source PIM community? Check out the Akeneo Marketplace for more information on these and other extensions! Have questions about implementations, integrations, or anything else? Check out Trilix’s website for more information on their offerings, or contact Akeneo. 

That’s right, it’s not only aspiring fashionistas, budding bodybuilders, and other consumers who try to find the perfect image to reel in the “likes” and launch them to fame and fortune on Instagram. Increasingly, B2B and B2C sellers are going social and taking to platforms like Instagram. That’s because nearly 3.5 billion people around the world (or 45% of the population), count themselves as active social media users, and Instagram is increasingly the platform of choice. Already, the platform boasts more than 1 billion users and counting, meaning that there’s no shortage of potential customers to reach with the perfect photo. What’s more, these social media scrollers are typically open to being influenced by something they see on the app. According to one survey, 72% of Instagram users report making purchase decisions based on something that they saw while browsing the app, making this platform a place for more than just pretty advertising. Finding success on Instagram, however, isn’t as simple as snapping a selfie and watching the sales roll in. Selling via any social channel, particularly Instagram, poses additional challenges for companies, from added channel complexity to specific channel requirements, and much more. So how do you make sure this information is up to par and ready to turn scrollers into buyers?

Don’t waste a second

Time is of the essence on Instagram and other social media sites. New posts are added every second, and consumer tastes change nearly as quickly, meaning your team needs to be able to move quickly and capitalize on emerging trends or opportunities to have success on Instagram. What’s more, when Instagram users click on a branded post, they’re taken to a product description page where they will see information like product images, descriptions, and prices, along with a link to your website. Customers expect to find the answers to their questions within moments — but if your team is wasting time with time-consuming and tedious processes, you won’t be able to provide the kind of information your customers expect and demand. Tackle these tedious tasks with Akeneo’s PXM solution. Akeneo offers features designed to help you add accurate measurements, compelling product descriptions, emotionally resonant images, and other assets to your product information quickly and easily, making sure that you make the most of every second.

Get it right the first time 

Just as quickly changing timelines and trends necessitate speed, they also require accuracy. Consumers, particularly social shoppers, won’t spend time searching for information or data about your product. If they can’t find the info they want quickly, they’ll abandon the purchase or patronize another merchant who tells them what they want to know. The same can be said if they don’t trust the information or if the information is wrong — and even customers who are convinced to make a purchase will return the product and likely won’t shop with you again afterward. This means that product information must be airtight — accurate, consistent, and easy to find. Use PIM features like automation, catalog completeness, and more to ensure that no incorrect or inconsistent product information gets anywhere near your customers.

Put it all into perspective

Even if your information is accurate and easy to find, it won’t much matter if you aren’t speaking directly to Instagram users when selling on the platform. Context is king when it comes to social selling. Just because something works on your eCommerce store doesn’t mean it will work on other digital platforms, including Instagram. That’s also true of other social media platforms. It’s all about high-quality images and long captions on Instagram, not so on other platforms. As a result, it’s crucial to tailor content to fit the guidelines and unique elements for each social media network, otherwise, you won’t properly connect with your customers. With Akeneo features like export profiles, which ensure marketers export only the data they need, and route it to the desired channel and locale, along with Akeneo’s diverse and dynamic ecosystem of partners and connectors make it easy to send product information in context to all of your sales channels.

Get emotional

Instagram is such a powerful engine for sales in large part because of the emotion it can generate among customers. When shoppers see an item on Instagram that catches their eye, they’re often acting on an emotional impulse. But those powerful emotional impulses don’t appear out of thin air — you need to cultivate an emotional response from social media shoppers by providing them with the compelling and emotionally resonant customer experiences that will convert them from followers to customers. Offering that customer experience starts and ends by providing product experiences built on a foundation of high-quality, compelling product descriptions, dynamic digital product assets like photos and videos, and more. By utilizing robust PXM solutions to tackle tedious, time-consuming work, your marketing team will have more time to create these assets and foster emotional customers between you and your customers on Instagram.

Make your brand instafamous with PIM

Instagram holds no shortage of opportunities for brands of every shape and size — especially fashion, tech, and sportswear brands, which already experience plenty of popularity on the site. But no matter what kind of business you run, interacting with customers via social media platforms like Instagram can allow you to expose yourself to new customers and market your products without spending a dime, and help you open a whole new sales channel. But in order to take advantage of these opportunities, your product information needs to be up to par. Use PIM features and tools like automated business rules engines, validation workflows, export profiles, and more to more efficiently and successfully sell your products via social media networks like Instagram. Get instafamous by boosting the quality of your product experience!!  Learn how PIM and PXM can help your company turn social media into a serious driver of sales and revenue by reading our blog on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success or get in touch today!

Now, that same disruption is coming to B2B businesses. B2B sellers have embraced marketplaces in recent years, and are projected to spend a whopping total of more than $6 billion via these digital platforms in 2019 alone, and most estimates expect this figure to rise in the coming years. But while these platforms are already well understood by consumers and early-adopting businesses, many B2B sellers remain in the dark when it comes to marketplace commerce. And it’s crucial that those who aren’t already selling on marketplace platforms do so soon, because as more millennials and other digital natives enter the workforce and rise to positions of B2B buying responsibility, they increasingly want and expect this process to be as simple, convenient, and enjoyable as the B2C buying process. So how do you start selling on B2B marketplaces, and how do you find success? Read on to find out.

Why are B2B businesses flocking to marketplaces? 

The biggest reason for the increase in B2B sales via marketplaces is also the simplest — companies are going to marketplaces because that’s where their customers are.  As we mentioned earlier, B2B buyers, especially younger workers or digital natives, increasingly want a buying experience that is similar to the B2C customer experience. That means they value convenience, speed, and an enjoyable experience over other factors that were in the past more important, such as price. Marketplaces give B2B buyers all of this, offering a wide selection of manufacturers, products, and prices along with an easy-to-use and consistent buying experience. Any seller, whether offering products to consumers or other businesses, wants to be where their buyers are, which makes the influx of B2B sellers to marketplace platforms quite understandable. But that’s not the only reason that B2B manufacturers and distributors are embracing marketplace commerce. Selling on marketplaces is also often much cheaper and faster than creating and developing a stand-alone eCommerce store. B2B sellers who are looking to embrace omnichannel commerce but don’t want to invest time, money, and other resources in building their own offering only to see it struggle to catch on see marketplaces as an attractive alternative.

What marketplace should my B2B business sell on?

When B2B businesses make the decision to start selling via these marketplace platforms, they have another decision to make: Which platform, exactly, should they sell on? Unfortunately, as is the case with so many other questions, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. As of 2019, the biggest platforms in the space include some well-known names from the consumer marketplace industry, including Asian giants Alibaba, and the B2B division of American titan Amazon, known simply as Amazon business. Other, B2B-specific platforms have also flourished in recent years, including eWorldTrade, Wholesale Central, and Joor. It’s crucial to consider more than just the size and customer base of each specific marketplace, of course. Make sure you take into account the niche the platform serves, the geographic markets it will deliver to, and the marketplace platforms most often used by other companies in the industry. That last factor can be particularly important as, increasingly, industry-specific marketplaces have found success as more B2B buyers have embraced omnichannel commerce. GoDirectTrade, for example, has become a go-to shop for aviation parts, while the Hanes Closeout Marketplace, offered by the well-known consumer brand of the same name, has found success by operating as a liquidation marketplace for other clothing brands, such as Champion, Bali, and Maidenform.

How do I turn a new marketplace channel into a success?

When it comes to online marketplaces, one of the most important things you can do to find success is to make sure your product information is perfect. As we mentioned above, B2B buyers may want a convenient and enjoyable experience, but they also expect accuracy and consistency when it comes to product data. If they can’t find the data they need, or if they don’t trust it’s accurate, they won’t buy from your company, and will likely patronize a competitor. Accurate product data isn’t enough, however, because, with dozens, if not hundreds of similar or identical items each being listed on the same marketplace, yours needs to stand out. You can achieve this by forging an emotional connection with your buyer via compelling product information. It’s also important to put all this information into context, as each platform has its own rules/regulations— and if you don’t comply, you could be shut out. So, use PIM to take control of product information and turn your marketplace endeavor into a success. Take Control Of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Shopping With PIM! Learn how PIM can help your team conquer expansions with relative ease by reading our blogs on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success and Expanding To New Locales today!

This year, however, there’s also a new carol you may hear, particularly if you encounter carolers with a passion for omnichannel commerce and digital transformation. Or should we call it a new version of an old classic? No matter what you call it, the season’s latest and greatest holiday song making its way around the offices of Akeneo and its partners and customers around the world is all about one thing: Product Information Management (PIM). Now, we’re happy to share these 12 Days of PIM-Mas with product information enthusiasts around the world. Just like in the classic Christmas Carol, there’s a gift ready to go for each of the 12 days. But, rather than poultry in fruit trees and golden rings, we’ve got some gifts that should help get you in the holiday spirit by solving your biggest product information problems and challenges. So, what gifts has our product information “Ziggy Claus” brought for all the good boys and girls around the PIM world? Let’s find out…

1. A single source of truth for product information

First and foremost in Ziggy Claus’ bags of gifts this year is a truly valuable gift for brands and merchants the world over: product information accuracy.  A robust PIM system gives you a single source of truth for product information. This single source of truth can then be used to enrich all of your product catalogs on all channels for each locale with the accurate, compelling product information that forms the building blocks for a captivating product experience. With this product experience acting as your foundation, you can create enticing and exciting omnichannel experiences not just around the holiday season, but 365 days of the year.

2. Easier cross-border expansion

Once you’ve crossed a single source of truth for product information off your wishlist, you’ll unlock a host of new potential and possibilities. That includes easier and more efficient cross border expansion! Cross-border commerce requires that you speak your new customers’ language. This goes beyond simple translation and also includes making other changes to product catalogs. That means adapting your product assortment, digital assets, product descriptions, units of measurement, and even packaging to meet the norms and regulatory requirements of your new market. It may sound like a daunting process, but a gift of PIM from Ziggy Claus can help you deal with all of the changes needed to succeed internationally. Akeneo PIM’s localization features, along with its well-stocked marketplace of connectors and integrations, can help you handle cross-border commerce easily and efficiently.

3. Optimized omnichannel commerce

Selling in new markets isn’t the only expansion that Ziggy Claus and his PIM presents are here to help with, however. Opening up new sales channels is also made far easier with Akeneo PIM. Each channel has its own unique properties, rules, and best practices, and your product information needs to be put in context for the specificities of your new channel. When selling on social media networks like Pinterest and Instagram, for example, you’ll need to adapt all of the elements of your product information, including digital assets and product descriptions differently than when selling via desktop eCommerce sites or mobile apps. Even individual social media networks or marketplace platforms can have their own unique requirements, making it even more important that you adapt product information when selling on multiple channels. No matter whether you’re selling to consumers or other businesses, you can’t have a good customer experience without a good product experience. Take control of your omnichannel product experience with Ziggy Claus’ gift of omnichannel optimization.

4.  Dynamic digital experiences

Successfully expanding to emerging digital channels requires compelling and dynamic digital experiences. Offering these in an omnichannel world requires forging an emotional connection with your customers across all channels and touchpoints. This is especially important around the holiday season. Emotion can weigh even heavier on customers’ buying decisions during this festive time, so it’s crucial that your team puts your assets in the proper context to create relevant and timely experiences for customers. However, it’s also important to adapt your digital assets all year round — after all, no one wants to watch a video of a snowy mountainside in the middle of the summer. This all likely sounds like a daunting process, but Ziggy Claus may not be able to help with. But that’s where you’re wrong! With a timely gift of Akeneo PIM from Ziggy Claus, our digital asset management capabilities can help you manage all of your digital assets. Take control of your digital product experience by managing assets independently from products, allowing you to automate actions to edit them, saving precious time and resources when enriching products.

5. Team Efficiency

Now that your product information is correct, consistent, complete, and ready for expansion to new markets and emerging channels, it’s time to pick up the pace. That means accelerating time-to-market by freeing up your marketing team from menial, tedious tasks, and gives them more time to focus on creating the optimized omnichannel experiences we discussed earlier. Fortunately, Ziggy Claus’ PIM present has just the thing — automation and a Business Rules Engine. Akeneo PIM’s business rules engine allows users to create smart product attributes that will be automatically completed according to a rule. It can also help you create content for attributes, and automatically classify products. That way, you can move faster and ensure the quality and accuracy of your product information.

6. Work smarter

Now that your team is more efficient through automation, what else can they do to work smarter? Fortunately, Ziggy Claus and his magical PIM have that one taken care of. With Akeneo, your PIM is now more than a container, it can also deliver product data. Akeneo’s Product Data Intelligence solution, Franklin Insights, is designed to automatically match input product attributes with your catalog product attributes, suggest new data you can include, and validate existing attribute values you have. Once you’ve subscribed to a product identifier, your product data will be continuously updated to ensure the highest data quality. This way, you can make sure you have the most up-to-date, accurate, and compelling product information possible

7. Enhance your product experience

Managing product information is, of course, an essential ingredient for omnichannel and international success — but companies with the most compelling omnichannel experiences go even further. When it comes to fashion and apparel, home furnishings, and other high-level products, for example, form often matters as much as function. Customers in these and other industries expect and demand to be able to easily find and research products from unique brands, designers, collections, colors, and more, using features like shop the look. B2B brands, meanwhile, also need to manage information about suppliers and brands that can support your existing product information, and can also seek to offer product configurators and other tools to help buyers envision how a product will look once installed. Ziggy Claus has just the solution. Akeneo’s Reference Entities feature can help you organize your product catalog around pieces of common information shared among products, including everything brands and designers to materials, colors and more. Your team can use these reference entities to easily and efficiently link information to relevant products in your PIM system to create content-rich product pages. You can also link enriched information to your product, including colors, ingredients, materials, and care instructions for a faster, easier enrichment process.

8. Access to Ziggy Claus’ workshop

Need a little help making sure your omnichannel platforms sing like Christmas carolers? No problem, Ziggy Claus has just the thing. Akeneo’s open-source product information management solution allows you to connect your PIM instance to fit your every need. Akeneo’s inspired integrations and dynamic and exciting ecosystem, meanwhile helps you connect top the top eCommerce platforms and extensions to make sure all your sales channels are holiday season ready.  Plus, you can get access to Akeneo’s diverse and active community of PIM enthusiasts and evangelists. Get help with product information management challenges from more than 3,000 active members and keep your project moving, or pitch-in with advice or insight to other community partners. Because what would the holiday season be if you didn’t share it with others?

9. Reduced returns (accurate product information)

No one wants to wake up on Christmas morning to find the wrong present sitting under the tree — and thanks to Ziggy Claus, they won’t have to. When your product information is unclear or inaccurate, customers don’t get what they feel they paid for, and will rush to return products. While some returns can be chalked up to buyer behavior, according to many analysts, the vast majority of returns — nearly two-thirds, in fact — are the result of bad and inaccurate product descriptions or assets, which leave shoppers with the wrong impression or idea of what they purchased. The answer to reducing returns lies in Akeneo PIM’s ability to ensure only high-quality data is available and reduce returns by up to 40 percent!

10. Accelerated time-to-market

Speaking of spending the holiday season with those close to you, we all know that “teamwork makes the dream work” when it comes to holiday shopping success. Ziggy Claus has the trick to make your dreams soar to new heights this year! Make sure your workflow is as smooth as silk this holiday season while accelerating time-to-market, and eliminating errors and inconsistencies with PIM. With better governance over processes and a more streamlined flow, organizations using a PIM report significantly faster time-to-market — like the case of Australian retail giant Myer, which saw time-to-market accelerate by 400% after adopting Akeneo PIM. What’s more, with Akeneo’s Teamwork Assistant, Ziggy Claus help fosters collaboration across your teams of elves by tracking product data completeness to ensure no incomplete makes it to your sales channel. But that’s not all — by helping you audit your enrichment processes and notifying your marketing team when a product is missing attributes, needs translation, is ready to be exported in your eCommerce or is added to the PIM.

11. Increased conversions

By combining his offerings of better cross-border and omnichannel operations, reduced returns, accelerated, workflows, and more, Ziggy Claus can offer the give your company the greatest gift of all: increased sales and conversions. By providing higher-quality and more comprehensive product experiences that include impactful emotional information, you’ll convert customers at a higher rate. What’s more, when this data is put into context for the channel — by adapting and adjusting digital assets media and product descriptions to meet the specific needs of each channel — it can boost your conversion rates even further. And, thanks to those reduced returns, your revenues can grow as high as Ziggy Claus’ reindeer fly! Add it all up, and a dedicated PIM solution can help your team increase conversions by as much as 40 percent!

12. Sleep easy

Thanks to Ziggy Claus, you can settle in for your long winter’s nap confident in the knowledge that you have the answer to an issue with any of your PIM presents: Akeneo’s dedicated and dashing user support team! Each Akeneo Enterprise Edition license comes with an SLA-backed support agreement, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, and Project Success Assistance. No matter what issue you have, how it happens, or when it happens, Akeneo will be there to help with everything from implementation to workflow to export. With Ziggy Claus and his happy helpers at Akeneo at your side, you can make sure you don’t get left out in the cold this holiday season! Perfect your product information and build dynamic product experiences this holiday season all year long with Ziggy Claus’ greatest gift to B2B and B2C merchants and manufacturers big and small: Akeneo PIM! Get in touch today to get started on your PIM project!

That’s because instead of slashing prices and scrambling for customers, the company is launching a campaign called “#BlackForGood”, donating its profits to environmental charities. “This campaign is intended to be a positive and encouraging call to action for those who agree that Black Friday could be better,” according to the movement’s founder, Ning Li. In recent years, Black Friday has evolved into a worldwide sensation, even as some companies, like Typology, fight back against the rising tide of consumerism. Just a few years ago, Black Friday was a purely American phenomenon. But now, in storefronts from New York City to Paris, and everywhere in between, companies are looking to make their mark on the holiday season by appealing to discount shoppers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday — or by appealing to shoppers who just can’t take one more Black Friday promotion.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday go global

The Black Friday shopping frenzy has now truly gone global. This year, shoppers everywhere from Latvia to Brazil are flocking to their local malls and fighting over discounted handbags, clothing, and consumer electronics. Along the way, Black Friday has metastasized from a single day into a week-long festival of consumerism. Stores now start “Grey Thursday” sales on Thanksgiving night, and shoppers can also look forward to spin-off events like Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Fair-trade Tuesday. Then there are the other special discount events, from Amazon’s Prime Day to Overstock.com’s Overstocktober, and local copycats like Mexico’s Buen Fin and the UAE’s White Friday events. This year, Macy’s, eBay, Target, and Walmart even staged a “Black Friday in July” summer sales event. These events, and dozens of others like them, prove that there is definite consumer appetite for seasonal promotions, not just around the winter holidays, but at almost any time of the year.

Swimming against the tides

Amid the near-universal sea of sales, how is any one brand supposed to stand out? One alternative Black Friday strategy is simply to refuse to participate. That’s why we find Typology’s approach so interesting. As everyone else rushes to slash prices, companies that swim against the current, and think a little differently or a little more creatively, have a real chance to grab shoppers’ attention. Similarly, since 2015, outdoor retailer REI has won endless column-inches with its #OptOutside campaign, with its 12,000 employees receiving a paid day off, and customers being urged to get out and enjoy some fresh air instead of trudging through a crowded mall. Other, slightly less committed companies make a point of closing their doors or limiting their hours on Thanksgiving Day, and brag about giving their employees a chance to spend some time with their families. That’s what makes REI’s decision to opt-out of Black Friday altogether impressive, eye-catching, and certainly on-brand —but hard for most companies to replicate. (Try telling your shareholders you’ve decided not to open on the busiest day of the year!) That’s why Typology’s #BlackForGood campaign is so smart: instead of simply turning its back on Black Friday consumerism, it’s hoping to harness it for good.

The history behind bucking Black Friday trends

Typology and REI may be relatively unique in the discount-dominated holiday shopping market, but they’re far from the first retailers to buck the trend of discounts and promotions around the end of the year. American consumers have seen #BlackForGood-style events before. In 2016, for example, Patagonia saw a fivefold uptick in Black Friday sales after pledging to donate 100% of daily takings to environmental causes. More recently, online fashion retailer Everlane has pledged to remove 1lb of plastic from the ocean for every product it sells, while Cuyana is matching every item it sells with a donation to victims of domestic violence. For companies outside the United States, though, such campaigns are as new as Black Friday itself. That’s why it’s so exciting to see companies like Typology seeking new, socially conscious approaches instead of simply emulating American box stores, slashing prices, and hoping for the best. By bucking even a relatively recent trend, they’re making their mark on the space and standing out from the competition.

The future of Black Friday

It’s clear that shoppers, both in America and around the world, are hungry for creative, socially conscious approaches to Black Friday. According to one global survey, for example, 81% of consumers want companies to help the environment, and almost half would switch from market-leading brands to support smaller, eco-friendly companies. And while four-fifths of shoppers remain motivated by discounts and special offers, two-thirds say they’ll forgo those savings and pay extra to support sustainable brands. That makes eco-friendly, socially responsible promotions like Typology’s #BlackForGood campaign a smart branding exercise. Increasingly, products are seen as embodiments of brands, and while consumers always want to get a great deal, they also want to support brands that share their values. At Akeneo, we’re seeing that trend play out across all the markets we serve, in Europe, the United States, and worldwide. Companies are starting to understand that it’s important to be mindful about how they manage products, and to take a more careful and internationally informed approach to commerce. We’re seeing more and more clients warm to initiatives such as fair-trade sourcing, carbon footprint reduction, and recycling or second-hand purchasing programs. The #BlackForGood campaign is a sign of how effective it can be to commit to such strategies, and take mindful marketing and product management to the next level. As Black Friday spreads around the world, it’s creating big opportunities for brands that are bold enough to stand apart from the pack, and broadcast their values instead of simply slashing prices. If your company is brave enough to stand apart from the pack, take risks, and find creative, value-driven sales strategies, you too could find that this year’s Black Friday will be a holiday to remember. Take Control Of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Shopping With PIM! Learn how PIM can help your team conquer expansions with relative ease by reading our blogs on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success and Expanding To New Locales today!

As more millennials and digital natives grow into positions of  B2B buying responsibility, the procurement process has taken on more and more attributes of B2C selling, including an emphasis on eCommerce and other emerging channels. Researchers expect B2B eCommerce to reach nearly $2 trillion in revenue in the U.S. alone and account for nearly 20 percent of all B2B sales by 2023. Now, this digital transformation is forcing teams to embrace new digitally-enhanced selling motions for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers – and a new view of product content. Smart sellers are increasingly investing time and money in improving their user experience, and with good reason — Forrester has found that 79% of B2B buyers say they value information that’s tailored to fit their industry, role, or department. The way to meet this high bar for product content to your potential buyers is with high-quality, accurate, and consistent product information. Without this, your efforts to tackle these new buying realities will almost certainly fall short, as customers abandon purchases from your site and move on to other manufacturers or distributors. Make sure your team is ready to succeed in this brave new B2B world with this new webinar from Akeneo and featured guest Allen Bonde, Vice President & Research Director at Forrester, taking place on December 11, 2019. We’ll examine the state of omnichannel commerce in the B2B space, review Forrester’s new B2B marketplace research, and see how consumer-style experiences are shaping the future of B2B relationships. We’ll also explore the ways we see PIM breaking out of its operational roots to play a broader role in experience delivery. Watch now to learn:

• Why digital channels like marketplaces are gaining traction with buyers and sellers
• How B2C sets the standard for B2B when it comes to choice, convenience, and overall customer experience
• How sellers need to rethink their marketing approaches for omnichannel commerce
• What it means to embrace an “adaptive PIM” mindset

WATCH NOW

FeaturedCustomers, a leading customer success content marketing platform for B2B business software & services, evaluated the entire Product Information Management Software space for their report. After reviewing almost 800 customer testimonials and case studies, selected just 18 companies that met their criteria. This includes Akeneo, which was named a winner of the Market Leader Award in the PIM category! The Market Leader designation was awarded based on a review of almost 800 customer testimonials and case studies, with Akeneo, the most used PIM platform in the world, receiving an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. The full report, along with Akeneo’s profile, which includes detailed product scorecards and numerous testimonials from satisfied Akeneo customers, is available for you to download here. Thanks to FeaturedCustomers for including us in the report! Get the best in product information management with Akeneo! See how product information and data lie at the heart of B2B eCommerce success by downloading our newest eBook, PIM — Unlocking Rapid Omnichannel Growth, or contact us today.

It’s no secret that the holiday season can be a particularly busy, and therefore profitable, time of the year for many businesses, particularly retailers selling holiday gifts and wares to consumers around the globe. But with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it can also be a stressful time for these businesses, as they struggle to keep up with the increased demands and work that needs to be done to turn this hectic season into a success. One of the biggest challenges during this busy time of year is setting yourself apart from the competition. The main draw for consumers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday remains price. But, if every company is slashing prices, how can you differentiate yourself? The key is providing a compelling product experience, and that requires you get your product catalog in order and make sure your product information is primed for success. But making these seasonal changes in your product catalog isn’t as simple as flipping the calendar to the next month. Updating and expanding a product catalog is a labor-intensive, heavy-duty process, one that involves adding new products from manufacturers and suppliers, onboarding new photos and other digital assets, and updating hundreds or thousands of SKUs on multiple sales channels. That’s a lot to take care of, especially once you consider that the holiday season lasts just about two months at most. Those two months, of course, are crucial to the success of many businesses, so we’ve designed this guide to help you and your team prepare for the holiday rush and ensure this is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

Automate seasonal promotions 

On Black Friday, Cyber Monday and throughout the holiday shopping season, companies constantly offer special promotions and alternate product assortments to bring in new customers. These seasonal offerings, however, require them to make changes to their product catalogs — a time-consuming and demanding process in any season. But this challenge becomes even more fraught during the short time period of the holiday season, which can lead to an increase in inaccurate or inconsistent product information reaching customers, particularly if you’re using poorly suited tools or generalized solutions like Excel spreadsheets. This, in turn, can lead to a decrease in conversion rates or an increase in returns, both bad news for retailers this, or any, time of year. Akeneo’s Product Information Management solution can help you solve these problems with a host of features designed to help you easily and efficiently make changes to your product catalog. Automation and a business rules engine can help you move more quickly, while bulk editing, category modeling, and collaboration and workflow capabilities can help you manage the product information enrichment processes and reduce inaccuracies in product information.

Move even faster than Santa Claus

On Christmas Eve, Santa needs to move pretty quickly to get gifts all around the world — and just like Father Christmas, brands and retailers need to move quickly during the holiday season. As we mentioned above, long catalog or product information enrichment processes mean less time during the holiday season to market promotions and lost sales as a result. But while speed is crucial, companies can’t afford to make errors out of haste, or they’ll watch their customers move on to another retailer who can help them find out the information they need to feel comfortable making a purchase. As with seasonal catalog shifts, automation features can help you add, onboard, and enrich new products quickly, without increasing the risk of errors or inconsistencies. Akeneo PIM can also help you more efficiently distribute your newly enriched product information to a wide range of channels thanks to our diverse ecosystem and community, including premium connectors that tightly integrate with ecommerce platforms, print solutions, and more.

Get happy for the holidays

The holiday season is all about emotion, and that’s especially true when it comes to product information. Customers are far more likely to make purchases, and become repeat customers, if you can forge an emotional connection between them and your brand. This is particularly true during the holiday season, when consumers are particularly open to appeals to a sense of nostalgia or emotions. According to a report from Adweek, 70% of users who feel a connection to a brand spend twice as much as those who don’t, and 81 percent of those respondents also promote their favorite brands to family and friends. By taking time-consuming/tedious tasks off your employees’ plates, they can devote more time to crafting promotional content, descriptions, and other assets to help motivate holiday buyers and help your team dominate the holiday shopping season. This will lead not only to increased conversions but increased customer loyalty and even new customers thanks to a rise in referrals and recommendations.

Take Control Of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Shopping With PIM

Make sure your team is ready to make the holiday season the most wonderful time of the year with PIM! Akeneo PIM is the solution to help you prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday or any other seasonal event. It makes seasonal collections and contextual sales a breeze, and helps you more easily and quickly respond to quickly changing customer demands! Take Control Of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Shopping With PIM! Learn how PIM can help your team conquer expansions with relative ease by reading our blogs on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success and Expanding To New Locales today!