The tagline from the Forrester event listing page says it all, “Design and deliver breakaway customer experiences”. This is exactly what I was educated about at the Forrester event in New York City the past few days. Starting on Monday with a pre-conference workshop, and then the main conference Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m happy to report that non-stop learning occurred during all three days! Here is my first day recap, with the next two days to be posted soon.

Businesses should always be looking for ways to improve their customer service. The better your customer service, the more likely a customer will choose your company over others as they’ll be confident that any issues that arise will be taken care of promptly and personally.

There always seems to be some new and upcoming trend that rocks the commerce world. It’s hailed as the most promising trend for businesses and, in many cases, it really isn’t. But, out of all the innovative technology thrown at users, occasionally there’s a real diamond. The 80’s got a computer and the early 2000’s saw growth in mobile trends. The diamond right now? Chatbots. Chatbots are still in their infancy stage compared to other digital technology being used, but they are a digital trend that businesses from ecommerce to retail should get to know and use!

From mobile phones dominating the start of all searches online, to the involvement of voice search, social apps and conversational commerce in consumers’ decisions to purchase, the recent shift in how consumers are purchasing has had a huge impact on retailers that are not prepared for the change. For both B2B and B2C retailers, there are challenges brought about by the technology that consumers are using daily. Here are just a few new thoughts and concepts to keep in mind, to help you stay ahead of the e-retail game.

Ecommerce sales are leading the way for many businesses, thanks to their customer’s preference of online ordering anytime/anywhere, reduced company costs, and streamlined, error free processing. Last year retail ecommerce sales reached $1.9 trillion.

Mobile devices have become an indispensable aspect of daily life. You can’t go anywhere now without seeing at least one or two other people scrolling on their phone, either searching for answers to a question, reviewing a product, or just keeping themselves busy in a lengthy line. These moments are called micro-moments and are explained by Google: “Micro-moments occur when people reflexively turn to a device—increasingly a smartphone—to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something.”

We are currently living in the age of personalization. All trends in 2017 point to customer personalization becoming the norm and businesses need to take note. Personalization is by no means a cakewalk, even for the most savvy marketer. It takes many hours of researching, collecting data, planning and creating in order to optimize the customer experience.

Welcome back! In my last post I went over the first half of my presentation at Personifest on how to build a 360° view of your members. Today I will continue with information from the second half of my presentation on personalization.

This blog post is the first of a two part series and will provide an overview of my presentation. This post focuses on the first topic – building a 360° View of Your Members.

Throughout the last few years, technology has seen significant changes. These changes have affected the way we speak, listen, and converse with audiences and will continue to do so into the future.

It is important to realize that the myth of quick is not something that just occurs in our general life and tempts us with quick fixes for problems like weight loss, finding love or making money; this myth is also a frequent visitor in the business world.

I was recently lucky enough to attend the Gilbane Digital Conference Content, and was asked to speak on the Content Experts Panel. The conference was a great place for in-depth discussions with experts who are passionate about digital content, speaking from a multitude of different channels and perspectives.

Sitecore 8.2 is causing a buzz in the tech world. Tech Aspect raved about the new Sitecore 8.2 stating, “if you thought 8.1 was ‘awesome,’ prepare to be amazed with 8.2’s exciting experience marketing capabilities.”

Earlier this year, Google launched their new AMP project, also known as Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is an open source project created by Google that sets out to create instant access for all mobile users. When you visit the Accelerated Mobile Pages project site, they dive straight into their ultimate purpose of the project:

2016 has been deemed the year of conversational commerce and it’s time for companies to get on board with this new trend. According to Chris Messina, the person who coined the term, conversational commerce, “pertains to utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context.”

Marketing is in a state of change and it’s now transitioning into a consumer focused form called context marketing.

I can’t believe we’re less than four weeks away from the Sitecore Symposium. As a first time Sitecore Digital Strategy MVP, I am excited about a fun filled week in New Orleans with members of the Sitecore Community. I was fortunate that my first trip to New Orleans was last fall for the Sitecore User Group Conference for North America, which was an AMAZING experience.

Shop.org’s main statement on their website says it all: “Shop.org is a community that’s truly by the member, for the member. This is THE place to connect with retailers and industry pros who know and love the world of digital retail.”

The content you deliver today can only be relevant if it takes into account the context of how your customers (potential volunteers/donors/board members) interacted with your brand (organization) last week, yesterday, or right now - on any channel.

We’ve talked about how companies can grow from using Digital Marketing to the next stage called Experience Marketing and finally maturing to the Brand Experience as a way of gaining and establishing lifelong customers.