The NRF Big Show always has strong international representation, and Syndigo’s global team was busy interacting with visitors from Europe, Latin America, and Canada as well as the US. In the booth and on the main stage, global retailers highlighted the complexities and opportunities in today’s marketplace. It was interesting to note the variety of retail segments as well—Home Improvement, Grocery, Beauty, Pharmacy, and more were all present with big ideas.

One prevailing theme continues to be the intersection of technology and product content as a driver of commerce. This “Content Driven Commerce” influences the shopper’s journey as they shop and engage with brands across retail, media and entertainment channels. Several international customers mentioned the growth in sales across borders due to digital media and connected retailers that are integrating their in-store and online presence. This fast-changing landscape presents challenges and new capabilities in generating relevant content for the shopper where and when they want to receive it.

A more diverse consumer base is also changing how retailers take products to market, and the ability to serve a broad shopper base is a key advantage. In their NRF session, Ulta Beauty highlighted how different brands that have a wide range of consumer needs can serve shoppers on the lookout for what is new and different. In a similar vein, Ikea was another retailer that discussed the need for Unified Commerce, highlighting the need to eliminate barriers between physical and online stores in a way that offers their own unique view to customers.

A few other key themes and topics stood out to our team at the NRF Big Show.

The Growing Role of Technology Ecosystems

Retailers are looking for greater integration of their systems for efficiency, and they are turning more and more to their technology vendors to be able to proactively integrate (and even interoperate) more effectively. Today’s connected cloud solutions mean that retailers can operate across technology environments with data and related workflows—and they are looking to work with partners that can facilitate the flow of their data across applications and even cloud environments.

AI Takes Center Stage

Not surprisingly, AI was everywhere. From robots that manage shelf placements and beauty apps that can show you your optimal hairstyle, nearly every vendor had an approach to using the latest technologies. And retailers of all sizes and types were interested in AI strategy. From delivering personalized recommendations and pricing, to optimized supply chains and automated tasks, AI is destined to be a driver of efficiency, customer satisfaction, and growth. And the quality of data feeding these AI systems is crucial for success.

Data-Driven Decisions

There has always been a mountain of data available to retailers; however, leveraging it has not always been easy or efficient. That is changing with today’s cloud-native capabilities, and retailers are embracing it more and more. From understanding customer behavior and preferences to analyzing market trends and optimizing pricing, data will drive informed decision-making at all levels. Advanced analytics and data visualization tools are critical for gaining actionable insights from this flood of information.

Physical Presence for Online Brands

How the tables have turned! A driving concern for many on-premise brands and retailers in recent years has been how to deliver the in-store experience, online. However, the opposite has come to take place as well, as many online-first retailers are recognizing the value of physical experiences. Pop-up stores, brand activations, and experiential events are becoming increasingly popular as ways to connect with customers on a deeper level and build brand loyalty.

Unified Commerce

The days of separate online and offline channels are over. As consumers have grown comfortable living in a mobile world that intersects physical locations and virtual experiences, retailers also are prioritizing a seamless experience across channels, blurring the lines between physical and digital with initiatives like buy-online-pick-up-in-store, personalized digital signage in stores, and data-driven inventory management across channels. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in-store first, or mobile-native…you need to reach shoppers everywhere.

Sustainability Matters

This is a topic that will continue to inform shopper decisions. Consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable practices from the brands they support. Retailers have responded with eco-friendly packaging, ethical sourcing of materials, and initiatives to reduce their environmental footprint. Transparency and accountability for how products and their components are sourced—as required by programs such as the new EU Digital Product Passport—are becoming increasingly popular not just as a way to meet regulatory requirements but also to get a competitive edge. Sustainability is now mainstream—no longer just a niche concern, but rather an integral part of a company’s business model.

Let’s Get Started!

Based on what we’re seeing now, 2024 is going to be a more profitable year for retailers, brands, and manufacturers. Don’t miss out on the latest technologies and creative content opportunities to catapult your business into a record year of success. We look forward to making this journey together!

The post NRF 2024: New Ways to Accelerate Deeper Shopper Connections appeared first on Syndigo.

In the world of business solutions, there are always many options. As a result, oftentimes, once you find a supplier that can deliver the basics, you may not be interested in looking at other options. Decision fatigue is real and understandable:

However, perhaps it is time to consider that there have been recent industry changes in the product data management space that may be cause for some concern. We have seen a trend in brands and retailers coming to Syndigo as they re-evaluate their provider options for content syndication, Product Experience Management (PXM) solutions, and even end-to-end PIM capabilities.

One of the big reasons for this migration is the changes impacting the industry — several reputable service providers in this space have gone through multiple rounds of downsizing and that could make customers feel uncertain about the providers’ commitment to their long-term strategy.

These changes are impacting service levels too. Syndigo has recently onboarded several new clients who highlighted the long wait times and lack of responsiveness of other PXM providers as their reason for switching to Syndigo. Online employee review sites echo these service-level concerns as well.

So, whether it is because you are seeing it directly in your service levels or are concerned about the uncertainty of the market, maybe it’s time to (re)consider your provider.

Syndigo is your go-to for PXM

Maybe you’re in the market for a solution to your product information needs. Maybe you’re looking for a solution to manage your product information to provide a golden record of information. Or maybe you’re looking to syndicate your product information to your commercial channels – anything from a handful to hundreds of outlets. Or maybe you’re looking for more insights into how your products are performing in the digital marketplace but have no idea how to achieve that. Or maybe you’re just looking.

Have you checked out Syndigo lately?

Syndigo’s vision is based on the knowledge that your needs, and the needs of each of our customers, fall at the intersection of these solutions. Syndigo’s portfolio of solutions is anchored by MDM, PIM, Syndication, Enhanced Content, and Analytics. Each product is highly competitive in the market and recognized by analysts as required to compete or best of breed. We offer dozens of integrations with enterprise systems and maintain the largest integrated distribution network for product content. Best of all, our solutions are composable in that you can build the solution that you want instead of paying for everything that you might not use. And even better, because we’re natively integrated across products you are avoiding paying the “integration tax” that you would otherwise be subject to.

We recognize that you need a place to create your source of truth, enrich it, curate it for channel partners, reliably distribute it, and gather insights for optimization. Unlike our competitors who started at the crossroads and are struggling to expand in multiple directions simultaneously, we have and continue to refine purpose-built user experiences to support the various personas and use cases for creating, governing, enriching, syndicating, and optimizing data.

Why Syndigo is different from the competition

For over five decades, Syndigo has focused on empowering our clients to deliver outstanding commercial results. By providing unparalleled value and an unmatched vision of excellence, we have built a network of more than 50,000 global users across more than 12,000 global brands and manufacturers, connecting with more than 1,750 global recipient connections.

It all starts with an unmatched focus on R&D. Our product and technology organization is substantial, featuring over 350 software developers with an annual R&D budget that exceeds 20% of revenues – well above industry averages. So, where others are downsizing, Syndigo is investing- in technology, in talent, and in training.

A wise person once said, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” At Syndigo, our product vision is centered around the idea that our customers operate in an extremely competitive environment that requires them to be able to make quick changes or big changes or even big changes quickly!

Because you don’t know the future, you can’t be tied to a solution that is inflexible. So, we’ve incorporated an application and software development kit (SDK) strategy that lets our customers be free to pursue the best course of action in managing their data. In conjunction with our cloud-native platform, there are no limits to how quickly you can adapt to your changing needs.

But it’s not just the product – it’s also our commercial and services organizations. In the last 12 months, we’ve enabled over 165 new recipients, built up a network of over 70+ partners, and feature over 400 customer-facing professionals. So, when you call for support, you’re not shouting into a vacuum, you’re talking to a dedicated professional who is eager to help fix your problems.

In a market where we have seen competitors cut headcount by as much as 32% in the last 12 months, we have increased our headcount by 47% since 2021. Rest assured that we will continue that growth and investment in our product, our teams, and our services into the future.

The result is the best solution in the marketplace for your needs, today. Whether you want a simple way to manage and send your product information to one online platform, or if you need to manage thousands of SKUs across many retailing partners, Syndigo has the expertise, the tools, and the team to get it done for you.

A transition so seamless you may not even notice it

We get it: Change is hard, and changing from one supplier to another is a decision process no one wants to go through. That’s why, based on the feedback and suggestions from industry leaders, Syndigo has put together our Safety program. At the heart of the Safety program is a desire to help ease the transition from one supplier to another. The typical fears of switching, like long transition times, or re-starting from “square one”, or expenses related to moving again—are all eliminated with the Syndigo Safety Series.

• Are you worried about your existing contracts? Syndigo is so confident that you’ll be much happier with us, that we’re willing to match your current price and buy out your contract in exchange for a 3-year term with us.
• Is it business continuity you’re concerned about? Our customers that we have signed from our competitors will tell you that the transition to Syndigo is seamless and that you will not have any interruptions in your productivity.
• Are you worried if Syndigo is indeed a better Marketing PIM for your needs? Read what a customer who switched over to us has to say. Patrick Larson, Digital Retail Content Specialist at NOW Foods said, “The biggest thing we saw when looking at Syndigo versus our previous provider was we an increase in efficiency through both Core Content and the Analytical Suite offerings on the content side. We saw the potential to save not five hours, not 10 hours, but actually hundreds of hours over the course of a year.”

And even though you may not notice the transition, you will definitely notice the difference in results, because your gains in efficiency and productivity will be easy to see.

Give us an opportunity to talk to you, and we guarantee you will be smiling by the end of the call. Make the right choice and join the hundreds of other customers who have made the switch from Salsify and are now part of the thousands of other happy customers.

The post Making the right choice for PXM in a changing market appeared first on Syndigo.

In an evolving digital marketplace, forward-thinking organizations are increasingly looking at PIM to create more effective product marketing strategies. Brand manufacturers are foremost among those who are seeking out PIM to help their commercial teams. While many brands are diligently broadcasting their product details through data syndication, this approach only scratches the surface.

Today’s informed consumers want more. They’re looking beyond basic facts and seeking context, depth, and a connection to the products they buy. It’s not merely about knowing what the product is, but understanding why it matters to them.

Brands must recognize this need and respond by embracing a holistic data management system. That’s where Syndigo’s Product Information Management (PIM) shines. PIM doesn’t just distribute data; it enriches, contextualizes, and tailors it, crafting a compelling product narrative.

Tough Decisions on the Horizon

Not long ago, the world experienced a massive shift in commerce due to COVID. It changed how we shop and reshaped the retail market in ways no one saw coming. Now, even though we don’t expect another event as seismic, the retail world is still filled with uncertainty. This means companies need to think hard about where they spend their money, especially when it comes to their marketing stack.

However, amidst all these changes and potential challenges, one thing is becoming clear: the importance of Product Information Management (PIM) as a critical enabler of commerce. As shopping habits change and consumers become even more discerning, PIM is proving to be invaluable for marketers. Brands are beginning to see that to keep up and stay relevant, they need the data management capabilities of PIM platforms, which help them present product information in ways that resonate with today’s consumers.

As brands shift to using PIM, they become better suited to meet the demands of modern shoppers. And four key trends highlight the need for brands to use a robust Product Information Management system.

4 Emerging PIM for Brands Trends

• Consumers Want Greater Personalization

Today’s consumers seek personalization. Customers no longer want a generic shopping experience — they’re looking for brands to understand and cater to their unique preferences. The vast influx of products and services available online has shifted the power dynamic, empowering consumers to demand more from their shopping encounters.

According to McKinsey, “Personalization marketing has real advantages for companies: it can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, lift revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and increase marketing ROI by 10 to 30 percent.” These statistics underscore the immense potential and tangible benefits that personalized marketing offers.

It has become evident that simple transactions are evolving into personalized interactions. PIM systems are at the forefront of this shift, offering brands the ability to meticulously categorize and tailor product data. When customers engage with a brand, the experience should reflect their preferences, past interactions, and even potential future needs. Leveraging PIM, brands can create a tailored environment, making each user feel like the shopping experience was uniquely crafted for them, displaying products, product features, recommendations, and narratives that align with their personal journey.

• Continued Increase in Social Media Shopping

Social platforms have transitioned from mere communication channels to full-blown commercial hubs. With features like Instagram’s ‘Shop Now’ and Pinterest’s shoppable pins, the line between socializing and shopping is blurring. For brands, this opens up a vast landscape of potential customers. In fact, 59% of brands say they’ve made more sales through social media in 2023 than the previous year.

But to effectively tap into this market, product information needs to be concise, engaging, and accurate. PIM ensures that product details are consistent, up-to-date, and integrated seamlessly with multiple channels, ensuring consumers get a frictionless shopping journey right from their social feeds.

• Growth in AI/ML Capabilities

As the technological landscape evolves, AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) are no longer futuristic concepts but essential tools. AI/ML can analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and offer insights that were previously impossible or took extensive time to determine.

For brands, AI/ML can help pinpoint what customers truly desire, predict market trends, and streamline operations. Recognizing these capabilities, forward-thinking brands are now actively pursuing PIM systems that are compatible with AI/ML. Why? Because they realize that if they don’t harness the power of AI-enabled PIM, their competitors surely will, potentially drawing customers away.

Brands that fail to adapt may find themselves playing catch-up. By integrating PIM that is ready to leverage the capabilities of AI/ML, brands are not only setting themselves up for present-day success but also future-proofing their operations for the evolving digital landscape.

• Greater Demand for Product Data Analytics

Now, more than ever, data drives decisions. However, raw data is of little use without the tools and expertise to interpret it. Brands are increasingly recognizing the value of deep dives into product analytics.

PIM systems equipped with analytical tools provide insights into product performance, customer behaviors, and market trends. Such in-depth analysis offers brands a roadmap, highlighting successful strategies and pinpointing areas of improvement. It’s not just about managing product information but optimizing it, ensuring every piece of data serves a strategic purpose and enhances the customer experience.

These trends demonstrate the increasing value that PIM can bring to brands. But brands can take it a step further to create more profitable product marketing strategies.

PIM: An Expandable Tool

Think of PIM as the base layer of a building — it’s where everything starts. PIM provides brands with the ability to organize and distribute product data efficiently, ensuring that the information reaches consumers in a clear and consistent manner.

But there’s more to managing data than just product details, and PIM’s capabilities can expand with your needs. Imagine adding more floors to our building, each one specialized for a different purpose — data syndication, digital shelf analytics (DSA), enhanced content, and more. Also, by using a multi-domain MDM solution alongside PIM, brands can manage a wider range of data domains. This not only centralizes and streamlines data processes but also offers richer insights into various business aspects.

In essence, while PIM serves as a rock-solid foundation, expanding with additional capabilities allows brands to tap into deeper intelligence and gain a more holistic view of their operations.

Making Smarter Decisions with PIM

In the fast-paced world of digital commerce, having the right tools is crucial. PIM is like the brain behind all product data, making sure everything is organized and shared effectively. But the landscape is always changing, and brands need to stay ahead. From the desire of shoppers for more personal touches to the rise of shopping on social media, the trends show the future is digital and data-driven.

By deploying a robust and expandable PIM platform, brands can dive deeper into data and make smarter, more informed decisions.

The post How Brand Manufacturers Have Benefited From PIM appeared first on Syndigo.

SUCCESS STORY

Empowering Beauty Through Innovation

In the uber-competitive realm of skincare and beauty, trends can be fleeting; here today and gone tomorrow. However, if you follow the experts’ guides for skincare regimens, you must be familiar with the K-Beauty Glass Skin routine started by Peach & Lily.

This October, Peach & Lily celebrated the five-year anniversary of the launch of their award-winning Glass Skin Refining Serum, which sparked the #GlassSkin social movement, garnering over 3B views on TikTok to date. Since launching in 2018, the brand has become synonymous with powerful, efficacious results and gentle formulas that can be used by even the most sensitive skin.

Let’s dig into Peach & Lily’s unique, consumer-first marketing approach that has catapulted the brand to a top prestige skincare brand at Ulta Beauty in just 5 years.

Putting Consumers First

“As simple as it sounds, our strategy has always been to keep our consumers at the center of everything we do” says Jade Simmons, VP of Marketing at Peach & Lily.

Peach & Lily prides itself on being a consumer-centric organization. They believe in keeping consumers at the forefront of every strategy. In a world filled with distractions and trends, Peach & Lily emphasizes the importance of staying focused on what truly matters – consumers’ needs and preferences.

“Clearly understanding consumers’ needs ensures that we’re not only connecting with them at the right moments, but that we’re actually meeting them with content that adds value to their experience” says Jade.

Peach & Lily recently conducted a comprehensive consumer survey, which shed light on their consumers’ sentiments and path to purchase; providing valuable insight into their needs throughout their skincare journey.

Empowering through Education

Beyond first-to-market product innovation, Peach & Lily aims to empower their consumers through rich education. From offering free skin consultations with a licensed esthetician, to in-person educational classes at local Ulta Beauty stores, the goal is to place the right information in consumers’ hands, so they can make informed skincare decisions.

“It’s our goal to empower our community on every step of their skin journey, no matter where they are, so they can fully achieve those goals. And I think when you keep that as the focus, the shopping experience and the subsequent consumer loyalty are really byproducts.” Jade Simmons

As Peach & Lily remains dedicated to its consumer-first approach, the collaboration with Syndigo adds the finishing touches to the way they elevate their brand.

Jade has applauded Syndigo’s role in blending consumer-centric principles with ongoing education and innovation. By reshaping Product Detail Pages into comprehensive educational resources, consumers now have a single destination to explore more than just ingredient lists. They can delve into product consistency, discover usage tips for their daily routines, and even view unretouched Before and After images. This partnership takes consumer engagement to the next level.

Peach & Lily recognizes the importance of presenting essential information to consumers in a well-organized and engaging manner, aiding them in making informed decisions. Syndigo empowers this effort by allowing the integration of videos, gifs, interactive hotspots, and comparison charts within a comprehensive landing page format. This not only equips consumers with the information they seek but also keeps them engaged and curious to explore further.

Simultaneously, Syndigo’s reports offer valuable feedback and insights through transparent engagement data, enabling Peach & Lily to continually optimize their content. With an intuitive self-serve platform, the process is made seamless and efficient.

As the partnership grows stronger, Peach & Lily is not just transforming the shopping experience – they are redefining the way to approach beauty and consumer engagement. The empowerment of consumers and the future of the beauty industry come together through the transformative influence of data-driven insights, continuous education, and boundless innovation.

The post Empowering Beauty Through Innovation appeared first on Syndigo.

SUCCESS STORY

NOW Earns an Immediate Win in Product Content Performance

When you make and sell products for health-conscious consumers, every detail matters. That’s why NOW, a leading provider of natural foods, supplements and vitamins, keeps a focus on putting the most comprehensive, quality product information possible.

Previously, the CPG brand relied on a data management and delivery solution that was inadequate for NOW’s ambitious and competitive plans for its product content. But upon partnering with Syndigo, it has been able to unleash the full potential of its product data and assets, achieving remarkable results:

• Successfully transferred six years of product content to a new user-friendly data management system
• Easily found optimized connections to its most important retail recipients and quickly began sending them custom product content
• Saved hundreds of hours per year spent on manual data management, uploading and delivery tasks

NOW offers the most comprehensive selection in the natural products industry, with over 1,400 items in dietary supplements, sports nutrition, clean health & beauty formulas, essential oils, organic and non-GMO foods, pet health and more.

Adapting to a New E-Commerce Reality, One Retailer At a Time

NOW operates in highly saturated and competitive verticals across a long list of retailers and e-commerce stores. In order to make its products stand out, it needs to take full advantage of their unique features and fully express what they can offer to shoppers, which means tailoring information, positioning and creative for a digital environment.

Customizing product content for e-commerce was just the start for NOW. As e-commerce has evolved and matured, leaders at the brand determined a need to shift their product content strategy for a new reality, adjusting their messaging and content not just for online commerce but even customizing it for each particular endpoint.

“When I began the role, our main goal was to maintain content and just make sure that our content was distributed across all retailers,” said Larson. “Now we’re moving into how do we optimize that content for the e-commerce space and even more specifically, per retailer, how do we improve that content?”

NOW recognized that as the portion of total sales on e-commerce has grown, various online retail stores and marketplaces have started adjusting and optimizing their sites to differentiate themselves from competition and create a distinct, familiar customer experience that matches their brand.

Thanks to Syndigo’s world’s-largest network of over 1750 data recipients, NOW can easily deliver product content for its entire catalog to all of its most important retail partners from a single interface. Data arrives to each retailer customized and transformed for its specific data requirements and preferences so it gets published quickly and tailored to get results in that environment.

“We’re now in a much better position to be connected with retailers than we were before,” Larson shared. “It allows us to ensure that the content we’re sending out is reaching those retailers and it’s in the exact form what they want. You have all your retailers and these clear, concise attributes and you’re already working with them in the background. Say someone like Amazon or Walmart; Syndigo is working with them in the background to make sure you know exactly what they want, and you’re providing that to us as well—’this is what Amazon needs or this is what Walmart needs.’”

Larson found the two-sided nature of Syndigo’s retail network to be especially empowering. With Syndigo, data Syndication isn’t a one-way street—retailers and recipients can also send feedback back to manufacturers like NOW with receipt confirmations, error notifications, feedback and suggestions that empower the brand to make updates that improve the user experience and grow sales at that retailer.

“It’s just been amazing to not only enter our information incorrectly, we also then get feedback from those retailers if something is done incorrectly,” he explained. “It has provided this extra benefit to us that we didn’t even see coming where we now have a secondary check on our data. So now we can depend on Syndigo as another as another set of eyes to our data to make sure that we are sending the correct thing to these retailers.”

Supplementing with Syndigo: A Healthy Balance of Efficiency and Power

Like many of its products, NOW’s marketing team is potent but light on fluff. That makes it especially important to minimize manual tasks and ensure the team is getting the most impact for its efforts.

NOW competes with many large brands with lots of resources, so it needs every edge it can get. Transitioning to Syndigo has unlocked tremendous time savings and amplified the contributions of the marketing team, empowering NOW to do more with less. Larson compared the experience shifting to with Syndigo to with upgrading from a complex, manual and code-intensive operating system to one that just ‘works.’

“The best way I can explain it is our previous provider was more like a Linux system where you have all these tools, but you have to create the code, you have to manipulate the software to do exactly what you wanted to do…and you’re not exactly sure if what you’ve done is correct, or if the retailer is going to receive the content in the way you meant it to be received,” he explained. “When we’re looking at Linux on the other side, Syndigo is more like a Mac OS system. You have all your retailers and these clear, concise attributes and you’re already working with them in the background.”

Syndigo’s easy to use, intuitive technology has delivered so much efficiency, it has practically added a new member to the team! NOW was able to quickly transfer six years of accumulated product information, imagery, and other data from its previous solution into a new user-friendly interface that saves the brand precious time.

“The biggest thing we saw when looking at Syndigo versus our previous provider was we an increase in efficiency through both Core Content and the Analytical Suite offerings on the content side,” Larson shared. “We saw the potential to save not five hours, not 10 hours, but actually hundreds of hours over the course of a year.”

 

Founded by Elwood Richard in 1968, NOW has grown from a small, family operation, to a highly respected manufacturer of natural health products. Today, NOW manufactures and distributes over 1,500 dietary supplements, natural foods, sports nutrition, and personal care products. NOW’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facility has been GMP certified since 2000, and its quality testing labs are among the best in the industry. The company has over 1500 employees and its products are sold in more than 60 countries. The company remains family owned and committed to its original mission: to provide value in products and services that empower people to lead healthier lives.

Learn more at NOWfoods.com.

The post NOW Earns an Immediate Win in Product Content Performance appeared first on Syndigo.

Before we dive deep into the solution, let’s get a clearer picture of the eCommerce funnel. It consists of these stages: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Conversion, and Loyalty. At each stage, there are unique challenges in retaining shoppers.

The good news? Digital Shelf Analytics holds the key to understanding, anticipating, and countering these challenges.

Share of Search/Shelf: Addressing Awareness

At the top of the funnel is the Awareness stage. This is where potential customers become aware of your brand or products. Share of Search and Share of Shelf Report can be a game-changer here. They help measure your brand’s visibility in search results compared to competitors, ensure you are aware how discoverable your product is, and provide insights on how to attract more traffic to your sites. By tracking Share of Search/Shelf, you can assess how well your brand is recognized.

For example, if you notice a drop in your rankings, it could indicate that consumers are becoming less aware of your brand. But, since you are already armed with timely data-driven feedback, you can adjust your marketing strategies to regain visibility and keep potential customers engaged from the start.

Content Health: Engaging Interest and Consideration

Moving down the funnel, we encounter the Interest and Consideration stages. These stages are all about encouraging potential buyers to stay on the page while providing valuable information. Content Health can help here, it assesses the quality and relevance of your content.

By analyzing Content Health data, you can identify areas where your content may be falling short. Maybe certain product descriptions need improvement, or you could add more variety to level up the visual content. With this information, you can optimize your content strategy to better engage shoppers and guide them through the funnel.

Out-of-Stock and Pricing Report: Navigating Conversion

Conversion, the critical stage where shoppers become buyers, can be tricky. Many factors influence conversion, but two significant ones are stock status and pricing. This is where Out of Stock Report and Pricing Report come into play.

These Analytics tools provide real-time information on the availability or your products and pricing trends. For instance, if a customer sees “low stock”, “out of stock” or find a seller with more competitive pricing they may abandon their cart.

Out-of-Stock Report can help you stay on top of that by providing insights into inventory trends across multiple sellers. It gives a comprehensive view of the products in your product list (or your competitors’) and their in-stock and out-of-stock status. With this report, you can easily track the availability of products and ensure they are not losing potential sales due to stock shortages.

Pricing Report, on the other hand, helps you identify the optimal price points for your products and adjust the pricing strategy accordingly. By providing valuable insights into changes in product pricing across different retailer sites, Pricing Report allows you to gain a deeper understanding of customers and how they react to price changes and fluctuations, so you can target customers with more precise pricing.

Rating and Reviews: Building Loyalty

The final stage of the eCommerce funnel is Loyalty. Once a customer converts, your goal is to keep them coming back. Ratings and Reviews Report can play a pivotal role in this stage.

Customers trust peer reviews, and Analytics can help you track and analyze the sentiment and trends within your customer reviews so you can adjust and adapt proactively. Positive reviews can be leveraged to build trust and encourage repeat purchases, while negative reviews can provide insights into areas for improvement.

Integration and Synergy

While each of these Analytics tools can be powerful on its own, they truly shine when integrated and used synergistically. For example, insights from Share of Shelf may inform your Content Health strategy, which in turn can impact your stock status and pricing decisions. The holistic approach of Digital Shelf Analytics ensures that you’re addressing audience degradation comprehensively.

In conclusion, audience degradation is a challenge faced by eCommerce participants at every stage of the funnel. However, with the power of Analytics, you can turn the tide. By understanding customer behavior, optimizing content, monitoring stock and pricing, and leveraging reviews, you can retain shoppers and drive sustainable growth.

The post Putting an End to Audience Degradation: Retain Shoppers at Every Stage of the Funnel with the Power of Analytics appeared first on Syndigo.

Businesses are constantly innovating in their attempts to deliver a better customer experience. But at the heart of this journey is the desire to understand the customer better.  

Master Data Management (MDM) applications are the best tools currently in the market to manage and govern customer data. Multidomain MDMs can manage data from multiple domains (product, customer, retailer, store, etc.) with a single installation and provide insights into not just individual domains, but the interaction amongst those domains and, in the process deliver a true and operational 360-degree view of the customer. 

For comparison, Customer Data Platform (CDP) applications are a fairly new entrant in this market. Gartner defines CDPs as “marketing-managed tools designed for the creation, segmentation and activation of customer profiles.”¹ CDP applications specialize in collecting large amounts of customer data from a variety of sources and feed them into existing marketing technology (martech). 

A CDP is not a tool that can help you run a marketing campaign, but rather a unified view of the customers that you can then feed into a marketing automation tool. Marketing organizations are lured by the latest new shiny object in the market, but can CDPs replace MDM applications? 

Here are four critical areas that marketers should pay attention to as they consider CDPs for their organization: 

1. Governance 

What a CDP does really well is gather a lot of data from a lot of sources and correlate it. But without systems in place to control how this data is added to the system, rules to determine what to do with inevitable bad data, and specific conditions that tell the system how all of this data should be modified, the data is useless. Data is always dirty – governance helps to fix and maintain that data by ensuring that overall data quality remains strong. Governance should be at the heart of any data management system that claims to give you reliable analytics.  

2. A golden record of information 

CDPs are a marketing-specific tool. They pull information from and send information to other marketing applications. But they are not yet capable of integrations beyond that. In contrast, MDM solutions stand capable of creating and maintaining a “single source of truth,” or golden record, and eventually integrating with a wide variety of other powerful enterprise applications like ERPs to ensure that all systems have the same version of the data. This golden record is more reliable as a source of customer information not just for marketing campaigns but for other analytical purposes, even as a source of information for CDPs. 

3. Complexity of customer data 

Customer data without context is a case of quantity over quality. If the goal is to understand your customers to communicate with them better, it helps to have a proper understanding of when, where, and how your customers interact with each other and other parts of your business. For instance, if you know which of your B2C customers are related to each other, which of your B2B customers might also be suppliers to your business or which of your B2B customers are owned by other B2B customers, that’s information that provides context and operational intelligence. This kind of hierarchical management of customer data cannot be done by CDPs the way it can be done by MDMs. 

4. Cross-domain relationships 

Looking beyond customer data, the entirety of your enterprise data is even more complex, with all the domains interacting with each other. Your stores receive products from different warehouses, your warehouses store products from various product lines, and most importantly, your customers buy different products. While a CDP can give you a perspective on the segmentations of your customer data in isolation, only a multi-domain MDM system can store all the domains in one location. With a view of the cross-domain relationships available via MDM, your ability to look at multiple factors that interrelate to affect your business allows for an understanding on how these segmentations are interrelated. For instance, this dimensional view could allow you to learn about the relationships between the customer and the products they have purchased, products that can be sold to a customer or a segment, or the types of stores a customer visits so you can plan in-store promotions and with better targeting. 

Start with the Outcome 

Ultimately, the decision to go with a CDP should be driven with an eye on the desired outcome. If the goal is to merely look at customer data in isolation to run marketing programs, CDPs will suffice. 

MDM platforms are more technologically mature and natively designed with data quality as a bedrock principle, and the more important output from an MDM is the context you can derive from your data. When you need a holistic view of the entire business and perform deeper analysis on the interaction of all domains of your data, MDM is your answer. 

The post CDP vs MDM: Contrasting managing and contextualizing data appeared first on Syndigo.

SUCCESS STORY

Crafting Excellence: Klein Tools Elevates the Online Shopping Experience with Content & Syndication

Klein Tools designs and produces exceptional products for electrical and utility applications that meet and often exceed the rigorous demands of the professionals who rely on them everyday.

Since 1857, Klein Tools has embodied the spirit of American craftsmanship. Now operated by fifth and sixth-generation family members, the US manufacturer remains the top choice amongst trade professionals.

But in today’s rapidly changing business landscape, staying ahead requires not only maintaining high product standards but also efficiently navigating the intricacies of modern marketing and distribution.

To address this challenge, Klein Tools formed a strategic partnership with Syndigo. For over a decade, the brand has leveraged the Syndigo platform to:

• Bring new products to market faster
• Optimize the online product experience across all channels and retailers
• Improve operational efficiencies, trimming up to 10% off time spent managing and syndicating product data

With nearly 3,000 active SKUs and 10-15 new products released monthly, Klein Tools relies on Syndigo to quickly launch new products and seamlessly syndicate product content across all its retail distribution channels.

Using Enhanced Content to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

With a complex product catalog and new products launching all the time, having clean, well-organized product data and information—and a way to disseminate that information across all the channels Klein Tools’ sells products in—is critical to ensuring customers understand features and benefits.

“New product launches are extremely labor and time intensive,” said Taniel Khamo, Associate Director of Online Marketing. “Beyond creating the product, you also have to bring that product to market. And that job is made infinitely easier with Syndigo.”

Once a product has been created, Khamo and team spend months working upstream with internal partners to capture important product details, including specifications and dimensions, pictures, videos, and more. Content review is often not finalized until weeks or even days before launch.

“Syndigo, coupled with well-defined standards and processes, has given us an efficient way to gather and maintain product data and information that is clean, standardized, complete, accurate, and optimized for SEO,” said Khamo. “We have a single source of truth conveying what the product is and the benefits, and we know the information will drive confidence in consumers when they land on our product pages.”

That is especially important when launching more complex products like Klein Tools’ new ModBox, a mobile working station consisting of a modular system with easily customizable components that can be attached vertically or horizontally.

Using Syndigo to effectively organize and distribute intricate product information allows Klein Tools to drive more synergy and coherence around its products in the marketplace. 

Accelerating Time to Market

When it takes so long to craft high-quality content for new products, the ability to quickly and seamlessly syndicate that content across multiple distribution channels is key to getting to market faster.

“Like most manufacturers, our go-to-market strategy has gotten more complex and volatile in recent years,” said Khamo. “As a result, we need to manage workflows more efficiently. Syndigo has been a great partner in helping us streamline the go-to-market process and save valuable time. Klein Tools has leveraged Syndigo to save up to 10% in time spent each week with the ability to manage and syndicate to multiple distributors in one place.”

Rather than creating, maintaining, and customizing feeds for each distributor selling Klein Tools, Khamo uses Syndigo as a one-stop-shop for syndication.

“We syndicate directly to Syndigo, and from there, we effortlessly publish content to various retailers,” he shared. “For example, we can maintain one set of product images for ModBox and have it flow to multiple channels. The partnership has helped us bring products to market faster and manage large volumes of content with less resources.”

Measure Twice, Syndicate Once: Assessing the Online Experience

Selling in multiple channels in a digital-first world can make it more challenging to measure success. To assess the online shopper experience, Klein Tools measures standard KPIs focused on the company’s bottom line.

“To gauge the success of product launches, we track overall sales and revenue, rate of returns, organic and paid traffic, and conversion rates,” said Khamo.

Many areas of the business from product managers to engineers contribute to a successful product launch. The marketing team depends on these resources for things like application shots for drill bits or product feature usage images, for example.

“To quantify their impact, we complete a five to eight week analysis of overall sales conversions, create a summary, and share it back to the team in a visual and consumable way,” adds Khamo. “That shows everyone involved that their time and resources were well spent, and drives internal buy-in and allocation of investment and resources to build product content for future launches.”

Klein Tools’ partnership with Syndigo serves as a prime example of blending traditional craftsmanship with modern efficiency. By harnessing Syndigo’s product information management and syndication capabilities, Klein Tools has successfully expedited product launches, optimized the online shopping experience, and maximized resource utilization. 

As Klein Tools continues its legacy, its collaboration with Syndigo underscores the brand’s commitment to adapting to modern demands while maintaining its unwavering dedication to quality and innovation. 

Family-owned and operated since 1857, Klein Tools has provided professional tradespeople with tools and solutions that enable the highest levels of performance and safety. We are driven to be the world’s most innovative and customer-centric, trade-focused tool company. For over 160 years, we at Klein Tools have worked hard to earn the trust and gain credibility with our customers by achieving world-class quality and on-time delivery standards. Learn more and browse Klein’s unmatched catalog of quality tools at www.kleintools.com.

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The post Crafting Excellence: Klein Tools Elevates the Online Shopping Experience with Content & Syndication appeared first on Syndigo.

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