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E-commerce

Channel harmonizing – avoiding channel conflict at all costs!

Does channel conflict concern you? It should. Thanks to the innovations of our digital age, manufacturers have more choices than ever when…

E-commerce

Pricing strategies for e-commerce

Once upon a time, factoring retail pricing was as easy as choosing a fixed margin, adding it to your cost of production…

E-commerce

Using data to decode the 7 Ps of marketing

Last month, we promised you more e-commerce strategies for 2019. Before we dig into social media marketing, customer loyalty programs and return…

E-commerce

How manufacturers can compete with Amazon

For manufacturers, Amazon can be both a blessing and a curse. A report from Statista states that “Amazon is the leading e-retailer…

E-commerce

The elements of a successful e-commerce strategy

Now that 2019 is in full swing, what changes do you plan to make this year? Is this the year you update…

E-commerce

How subscription boxes are winning the D2C retail game

Millennials are known for their fondness of e-commerce, quick and free delivery, and extreme customization. While Millennials are in part to blame…

E-commerce

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From the Blog

Good, Better, Best: Evaluating e-Commerce Analytics Tools

Julie Chiappe May 6, 2021

Today’s business environment is constantly changing. Consumer preferences and demands are shifting—sometimes daily. Even more, during the last year, consumers have become...

Today’s business environment is constantly changing. Consumer preferences and demands are shifting—sometimes daily. Even more, during the last year, consumers have become less loyal to brands and even the ways they traditionally shop. This is not a time to guess at what’s right for your business. It’s a time to have access to robust data to monitor the competition, seize opportunities, ensure return on marketing spend—and drive better decision-making. This is the power of business intelligence (BI). According to recent research, though, while businesses are starting to spend big on BI, adoption rates lag below 30%. This means that key decision-makers don’t have the data at their fingertips to make better decisions for their brands—and bottom lines. The right e-commerce analytics tools give brands access to better insights faster, enabling them to be responsive, edge out the competition, and see where the market is going. In today’s exploding e-commerce market, which is predicted to grow nearly 200% between 2019 and 2022, brands can’t afford to think of BI as a “nice to have.” It’s an essential. But how do you choose which solution to invest in? Here’s our look at some of the e-commerce analytics tools and platforms on the market. Good: Pacvue What: an enterprise platform to manage ad campaigns at scale on Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, and other popular retail sites Pacvue offers targeted solutions built for brands, sellers, and marketing agencies and separate solutions for each retail site. Its software is intended to improve campaign performance with automation, competitive intelligence, and streamlined reporting so that brands can grow their digital sales. It enables visibility into retail and advertising data wherever and whenever users need it. Why Good? While powerful, Pacvue is only focused on ad campaign performance. Better: ClearCut What: a platform for e-commerce and data insights in a changing retail market The ClearCut Insights Platform gives brands and e-commerce professionals visibility in e-commerce sales data and category trends. Users can benchmark competitors. ClearCut also enables real-time insights into brand or product performance on Amazon, including tracking 1P and 3P daily sales, search rankings, MAP violations and more. Why Better? ClearCut provides a broader set of e-analytics capabilities for brands than Pacvue, but there are limitations. For instance, insight into sales is available only for Amazon, not other popular digital channels and e-tailers. Better: Edge by Ascential What: e-commerce solutions for global brands and retailers Edge by Ascential is a suite of solutions designed to improve e-commerce insights and performances. There are separate solution sets, including Market Share, Digital Shelf, Price + Promo, Retail Insight, and more. Consider them separate modules that can be purchased and integrated to enable visibility into different aspects of e-commerce. Professional consultative services can also be contracted through the company. Why Better? While Edge by Ascential provides a deep set of capabilities, unless you purchase all solutions, your broad visibility into your entire e-analytics portfolio is limited. Better: Profitero What: e-commerce platform With daily analytics and benchmark data, Profitero provides digital shelf analytics to detect opportunities to improve sales performance across a wide range of retailer websites. There are sales and market share estimates for products and competitors. In addition, Profitero enables the ability to monitor out-of-stocks, boost search rankings, and optimize campaigns. Users can also access Profitero’s consulting experts. Why Better? Profitero is certainly a powerful platform, but it’s intended for a broad range of brands, not purpose-built for CPG e-commerce. Best: Line Item What: Line Item is a performance analytics platform that gives consumer packaged goods (CPG) and e-commerce marketing managers insights into e-analytics and product attributes to drive revenue and profitability. Created for the CPG industry, it’s backed by a team with more than 30 years of experience in the CPG market. It’s a single tool to boost profitability and drive growth across your e-commerce portfolio with better business intelligence. Its deep insight into product attributes truly sets it apart. With Line Item, brand and e-commerce professionals can optimize SEO and digital market strategy across all retail sites and platforms. They can see, track, and analyze search results and performance, again across all sites and down to long-tail keywords and particular campaigns. They can understand what’s working for their brands and products, as well as what’s holding them back—from incomplete descriptions or inconsistent images to competitor activity and MAP violations. They can monitor competitor activity, out-of-stocks, price undercuts and delivery time across all sales platforms and digital channels with a single tool. They can also understand product attributes across entire categories. Why Best? It’s a single platform with comprehensive capabilities purpose-built for CPG e-commerce. In a competitive and ever-changing CPG e-commerce market, Line Item is your lifeline to more profitable e-commerce.

Five Business Intelligence Tools to Save Your Bottom Line

Julie Chiappe May 6, 2021

In the rollercoaster ride of the last year, CPG e-commerce has had its moment of digital reckoning: the way consumers shop will...

In the rollercoaster ride of the last year, CPG e-commerce has had its moment of digital reckoning: the way consumers shop will never be the same. Close on the heels of this realization is the recognition that better business intelligence is the foundation of success. CPG companies that are unable to move quickly and be nimble in the way they respond to consumer trends and market pressure will struggle. It’s that simple. Moving quickly and being nimble hinges on gathering and analyzing data. And not just any data: actionable, valuable data that drives better decision-making. This is the power of business intelligence—and Line Item unlocks it for CPG e-commerce. Line Item is a performance analytics platform that enables insight into e-analytics and product attributes to drive revenue and profitability. It’s packed with five essential business intelligence tools that can help CPG brands grow sales and boost profitability in a turbulent and competitive market. Let’s take an in-depth look at each of these business intelligence tools and why they matter.

Better search engine optimization strategy.

Consumer behavior and preferences are changing faster than ever before, sometimes even day to day. In such disruption, it’s not enough to “set it and forget it” with your SEO strategy. CPG companies need to be responsive to changes in the market and ensure that their brands and products are ranking in search results. Without this kind of SEO business intelligence, competitive edge is lost. Line Item is the answer to better SEO strategy. It analyzes whether or not your brands or products are ranking on page one, across search terms and platforms. This is important as the elephants like Amazon and Walmart.com aren’t only retail sites, they are also where (increasingly) shoppers are doing product research. With Line Item, you can understand which search terms are working as well as which your competitors are using. Line Item also ensures that your product titles, descriptions, and images are complete and consistent, closing the gaps that can cost you page rank and sales, ultimately affecting your bottom line.

Superior insight into pricing.

There’s a reason that pricing is one of the “four P’s” of marketing: it’s the lever that drives profitability. Price your products too low and you’re leaving money on the table. Price too high and competitors will win your sales. In a market where demand and preferences fluctuate so wildly, though, business intelligence on pricing becomes a complex challenge. This is where Line Item comes in. With it, you can verify item pricing, selling price, and list price across your portfolio and across platforms. You’ll have better business intelligence to price your products correctly and competitively to protect your profitability.

Third-party activity monitoring.

The CPG e-commerce market is many-layered and complex. Third-party sellers account for significant sales activity, but consumers aren’t often aware that they’re not purchasing from you directly. To protect your brand, you need better business intelligence to monitor online activity. Line Item gives you the visibility you need to monitor unauthorized selling activity on the web, or to determine whether third-party sellers are undercutting your price. This helps you protect your brand and the bottom line.

Deep dive into product attributes.

Do you know what’s really driving product or category value? Without powerful business intelligence, it can be impossible to truly tap into why consumers are choosing one product over another. This is where Line Item really stands out. Line Item can analyze all similar products in a category, item by item, to determine all relevant attributes. These could include brand, form (liquid, powder, or capsules, for example), package type and size, scent or flavor, natural or organic ingredients, and other attributes. Think whitening or foaming agents for toothpaste, sensitivity for personal care products, and more. This robust business intelligence can help inform product development, packaging, marketing and promotions, personalization and much more, across your portfolio and your brand. It gives you an advantage in meeting the market at the right moment with the right product.

Promotions analysis.

Are your promotions paying off? This may be a simple question, but it’s difficult to answer in this accelerated and disrupted market. If your promotions aren’t, you’re wasting marketing spend, and you need to know why. Line Item can tell you if your campaigns are working, which keywords your competitors are using, if long tail keywords are worth investing in and more. When your campaigns are driving your bottom line, you know they’re working—and Line Item makes it possible. CPG brands can’t afford to be working with yesterday’s tools. Better business intelligence is fundamental to a better bottom line. Line Item is your lifeline to more profitable e-commerce.

CPG e-Commerce without Business Intelligence

Julie Chiappe May 6, 2021

We’re more than a year now into a new era for CPG e-commerce. For years, CPG e-commerce has lagged behind retail e-commerce....

We’re more than a year now into a new era for CPG e-commerce. For years, CPG e-commerce has lagged behind retail e-commerce. Consumers who ordered clothes, shoes, and gadgets online without a second thought still relied on the Target, Costco or grocery run for CPG staples like personal care and consumables. Why? Old habits die hard. Now, everything has changed—and fast. E-commerce took a leap into the future during COVID-19. At first, it was about contact avoidance and social distancing, but now it’s becoming about convenience. We’re simply ordering more and, during the last year, circumstances have changed old habits. In this new e-commerce era, these shifting patterns are making demand harder to predict, and they are creating new challenges while also opening new opportunities. Businesses need better insights to make better decisions, or they are going to lose out. This is where Line Item is a game-changer. This performance analytics platform gives consumer packaged goods (CPG) and e-commerce marketing managers business intelligence on e-analytics and product attributes to drive revenue and profitability. With Line Item, CPG brands can revolutionize their ability to respond to the market and gain valuable insights into changing demand patterns to unlock growth. Without this kind of business intelligence, they risk being left out in the “new normal” of CPG e-commerce. Here’s a closer look at the risks of CPG e-commerce without business intelligence. Risk: Missing out on key trends Yes, the way consumers shop has changed, but understanding this at the meta level and the category level are two different things. It’s essential to understand what trends are shaping the category for your brands and products—and this is almost impossible without business intelligence. Line Item tracks hundreds of items in each product category, helping e-commerce managers monitor new products, brands, and competitors. Line Item also reveals which items are newly trending to enable new insights into the competition. Risk: Missing out on buying behavior Understanding how, when, and where consumers are buying is critical in a market driven by demand fluctuations. Brands that can gain visibility into how product attributes, pricing, and promotions perform can understand how to adjust their strategy to maximize marketing activity and grow their online sales. Built especially for CPG and e-commerce, Line Item makes this level of insight possible, providing deep e-analytics that reveal more about promotion strategy, third-party activity, and attribute-level data. Risk: Missing out on sales When demand can change daily, it can be difficult to balance inventory. Overstocking eats into the bottom line, but understocking does, too. No one wants to wait when they’re ready to buy. When your product is out of stock, consumers will buy something else. Line Item can provide insights that tell you if out-of-stocks are hurting revenue. This business intelligence can help CPG brands grow online sales. Risk: Missing out on personalized marketing Personalized marketing requires understanding consumer behavior and preferences. With better business intelligence across a product portfolio, brands can create unique offers, cross-promotional campaigns, and upsells. Line Item can enable superior insights, including integrating data with AMZ Brand Analytics, Retail Link, Partnersonline and more to provide better insight faster. Risk: Missing out on better decision-making Going forward, the most successful online brands will be those that have visibility into how product attributes, pricing, and promotions perform, so they can optimize their e-commerce strategies. They must understand what is driving value, especially in a market that can shift rapidly. Line Item enables a deep dive into each product, capturing all attributes to determine what is driving value for better decision-making. This insight can also help e-commerce marketers monitor competitor activity and see new market entrants. Ultimately, better business intelligence is a business imperative for CPG brands. Without BI, brands risk missing out on trends, competitors, opportunities and more—and this affects the bottom line. Line Item empowers you with a single platform for better insight into what’s driving sales or what’s working against you. It’s your lifeline to more profitable CPG e-commerce.

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