Alex Baar | International Digital Marketing | E-commerce

Below the presentation, I gave at the Dutch Export event 2013. The topic was international online marketing and the differences between countries and how to setup an international digital online strategy. Thank you Fenedex for organising this very interesting day! Dutch Version: Presentatie nationaal export_event_internationale_online_strategie from Alex Baar English version:

We all know the stories about Zappo's.com or Dutch Coolblue.com and their extreme focus at customer service. The stories are often very inspiring and motivating (for marketers and customer service professionals). After reading these stories, I often get very much motivated to use these experiences in my daily job. But not all companies can differentiate with such extreme customer service. W hat if the holy grail of service for many companies is not customer delight, but customer relief?  It's always good to see things from a different perspective.  Besides that, to have a great customer experience (and conversion) in your digital channels you have to understand customer service!  So I decided to buy a book about customer experience. " The effortless experience "  by Nick Toman and Rick Delisi. I've read it and below a short summary of my findings combined with my personal opinion and the relation with digital. First the book starts with asking the question:...

This week, I visited the event " CRM in 1 Day " in the Netherlands. If you want to excel with your online or multichannel shop, a good CRM strategy is a critical factor. A lot of things were obvious, but I will share some insights and my opinion below. The presentation of the keynote speaker is available at slideshare. Social CRM: where's the money? from Clo Willaerts The keynote speaker referred to a  TED talk   from Pattie Maes. It's from a few years ago. When I watched the video, I already noticed that it is only a small step before parts of the examples given become reality. Offline and online integrate. When buying a book in a bookstore, see the reviews at your phone immediately. Project and share information everywhere. Albert-Heijn supermarkets in Holland now started a test, with scanning and paying products with your cellphone. Next step is of course to add marketing, reviews and personal advice. Just like in the  TED talk . It is importa...

I have collected a few recent examples from online communication after some online purchases. Examples are mostly in Dutch. But I will explain the pro's and con's in English. Still I think (and I wrote about it here as well) that companies can improve their (online) communication so much more. Good communication and service goes beyond a "we recommend you" e-mail. Think about all customer touchpoints, about your vision and mission and create contact moments that in the end will give you a positive ROI and customer experience that will be shared online massively. Especially (But not limited to) the travel industry can start much more effective campaigns by better segmentation and not placing every cross and upsell possibility in these one or two confirmation mails. Be there with the right content at the right time. Not everybody will book a hotel right away if they purchased a flight ticket for 5 months away! Value for the customer, value from the customer. Ma...