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Increase conversion rates through an amazing e-commerce user experience with Vue Storefront

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Today, e-commerce sites are dealing with a range of issues when it comes to development, maintenance, migrations, and of course, attempting to meet the ever-changing demands and needs of their consumers. Many of these sites are working off of outdated tech stacks such as Java or PHP, resulting in slow site loading times, negatively impacting the user experience and overall performance. The flexible tech stack you need to provide seamless UX and exceed your consumers‘ expectations? Meet Vue Storefront.

Vue Storefront is the first on the market and the initiator of the whole movement for providing front-end experiences that are independent from back end and CMS in the new headless space. Based on Vue.js, Vue Storefront connects with different third party services, providing an API integration between the back-end and front-end, and when integrating with other CMS systems, allows business users to gather and manage the experience on their own content management site. Vue Storefront’s architecture uses best practices and the best field-tested tools for a lightning-fast performance, with native integrations and shortcuts that significantly shorten time-to-market. Vue Storefront is agnostic to any e-commerce platform or other headless CMS system, which allows users to migrate between different platforms if need be.

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MarTech Interview with Jim Dicso, CEO at SundaySky 

In order to ensure that video marketing efforts are optimized with measurable ROI processes, marketers need to keep a few things in mind; Jim Dicso, CEO at SundaySky has some tips:

Welcome to this MarTech Series chat Jim, can you tell us more about SundaySky and your role as CEO? 

SundaySky helps companies of all sizes deliver video-powered experiences (VX) that deepen engagement, inspiring customers to take actions that are both valuable to them and impactful for the brand.

Customer engagement has always interested me. I spent the majority of my career in sales and sales leadership roles, specifically in the software industry. Previously I was EVP of sales and services for a SaaS provider of real-time online customer engagement solutions. I joined SundaySky a decade ago as president and chief revenue officer and handled all market-facing activity. Then, in 2017, our co-founder and CEO, Shmulik Weller, moved into the role of chief product officer and I was named CEO.

How are you seeing marketing and sales teams today use video more proactively to create better prospects and customer engagement? Can you highlight examples of some successful campaigns in both B2B and B2C?

We have case studies covering a wide variety of applications across the customer journey both in B2B and B2C.

In B2C, SelectBlinds uses VX via paid media to acquire new customers, as well as in emails following initial trials to drive sales. The content of the videos focus on guiding consumers on how to measure and self-install window treatments, which are common friction points on the path to purchase. The results of these certain campaigns can speak for themselves: the holistic lifecycle-focused programs earned a 37% lift in email conversions and a 20% above-average order value increase.

eTrade delivers VX through email and portal placement during critical moments in customer journeys including onboarding new account holders with details on how to easily leverage their trading platform. The company’s initiatives have led to increased funding rates and a lift in average annualized revenue for the business.

Another household name, Bank of America, delivers compelling individualized VX through email, portal and chatbot, providing Preferred Rewards members with the status of their accrued benefits and additional ones available through greater product use. This strategy during moments of uncertainty has led to deeper customer relationships, as well as a sizable increase in product usage per customer.

Video is being used in B2B with great success, too. For example, Okta, an identity provider for the internet, uses VX to engage new customers (i.e. IT admins) and increase their understanding of its platform in order to increase usage and future revenue. Additionally, Terradatum, a market analytics platform that helps real estate brokers and agents, uses VX for agents and agencies to market their listings while marketing themselves.

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Use the best content to sell your products and brands with eStoreMedia

Today, every brand needs to be an e-commerce All Star. The problem? Many brands don’t know how to play the game. From solving distribution problems, through optimizing content and in store search, monitoring pricing and promotions, to creating a ratings and reviews strategy, a long list of complex processes must be executed by brand teams just to keep their heads above water in the e-commerce world. Companies are struggling to fill the ever-present gaps in content, distribution, search, and ratings.

Looking to win on the digital shelf? Look no further than eStoreMedia.

eStoreMedia provides a suite of automated, e-commerce tools that helps CPG brands optimize growth in online sales. The eStoreMedia suite is made up of two core products: eStoreContent and eStoreCheck. eStoreContent takes the product content from a brand’s database and delivers it to the product pages on each of the brand’s online retail channels via a syndication process. This streamlines complex content management processes; it expedites content implementation and maximizes content effectiveness by ensuring the best content is always deployed. Rich and relevant content improves conversion, which in turn is favoured by the e-retailer’s algorithm, making the product more findable, and sales accelerate accordingly.

eStoreCheck provides enhanced predictive analytics that measure a brand’s overall performance on the digital shelf including the performance and compliance of rich content as well as keywords in titles, descriptions and bullet points. It also checks other elements in store such as product availability, price and promotion, and overall category performance benchmarked against competitors, and buy box win/loss analysis. When eStoreCheck identifies a gap (a risk or opportunity), it creates a prioritized action list, enabling e-commerce teams to seize more sales opportunities. With both e-commerce analytics and e-content management, eStoreMedia’s comprehensive solution provides quick, automated content deployment across multiple online marketplaces and sites, and ensures that companies win over the shopper with the best content to sell their products and brands.

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How to better negotiate convertible loans—an entrepreneur’s perspective

An entrepreneur, an investor, and a lawyer participate in an interview series… What sounds like the setup for a joke is serious business: In a new series, we present three different perspectives on convertible loans, term sheets, and shareholders’ agreements so that you can gain new insights to negotiate with more confidence. We start the series with the entrepreneur’s perspective on convertible loans: PXL Vision founders Michael Born and Karim Nemr share their experiences with this financing method.

In the first part of a new series, we look at convertible loans. Convertible loans are a financing method that is becoming increasingly popular in Switzerland: Startups receive a loan that will be converted into equity (common stock or equity shares) at the next qualified financing round. Investors who provide convertible loans can receive interest payments and a discount on the stock price they pay compared to the price incoming investors have to pay in the financing round. Convertible loans often come with a cap—a maximum valuation at which the loan can be turned into equity.

This financing method has the advantage that the loans can usually be executed quickly and without too much administrative effort. The startup may postpone the valuation discussion until it has reached additional milestones with the help of the loan.

To learn more about an entrepreneur’s perspective on convertible loans, we asked not one but two experts: Michael Born and Karim Nemr, two PXL Vision founders, share their thoughts on this specific financing method for startups. Michael and Karim are both serial entrepreneurs: The two founded software company Dacuda, which Magic Leap acquired in 2017. After the successful exit, Michael, Karim, and fellow Dacuda team members founded PXL Vision, a Venture Leaders Mobile 2021 that provides fully automated digital identity verification.

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Tech Behind AR Startup Adloid

2016-founded Gurugram-based Adloid has been powering retailers, including the likes of Tata Motors, Asian Paints and Tanishq, with augmented reality(AR) and deep technology to provide better customer experiences. According to Founder and CEO Kanav Singla, the 55-employee strong Adloid team has helped retailers, in the automobile, home décor, eyewear, jewelry and cosmetics industries, helping them reduce returns by 18 percent. The startup enables companies to augment trails and product catalogues, offering a close-to-real-life shopping experience. The AR technology is tailor-made for every client, allowing access through all devices– smartphones, tables and desktops.

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Top Reason Consumers Distrust A Brand? Asking For Too Much Information

As consumers spend more time online, the level of trust people have in brands has become closely linked to how brands use their personal data.

When it comes to communications that are mutually beneficial, Jebbit’s fifth bi-annual Consumer Data Trust Index found that interactive experiences such as product matches and personality quizzes take the cake, increasing consumer trust by 38.4 percent.

The report asked adult consumers in the US to rate, on a scale of one to 10, their level of trust in brands to use their personal data in exchange for relevant promotions, goods and services.

Over half (62 percent) of consumers said they prefer personalized products and experiences but a brand’s approach can make or break how that experience is received. For example, 54 percent of consumers said their trust in a brand decreases when receiving emails based on data they haven’t knowingly shared.

Interactive experiences are nearly tied with personalized emails (38.9 percent) based on knowingly shared data and are the least likely to decrease trust by far, according to the report. Such experiences provide both transparency about how consumer data is used and immediately deliver value on that data through personalized recommendations, notes Jebbit.

Creating a data collection strategy is critical, as 35 percent of consumers told Jebbit that a brand asking for too much personal information was their top reason to distrust a brand—the number one reason for the third time in a row. Jebbit clients have seen increases of over 30 percent in customer lifetime value by collecting as few as three points from each of their customers.

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Vacation Vibes Filter Across Men’s and Women’s Fashion

Vacation Vibes Filter Across Men’s and Women’s Fashion. In addition to occasion wear, beach-ready fashion was abundant in Resort 2022 and Spring/Summer 2022 men’s collections, with several brands putting a “psychedelic, funky twist” on typical beach attire, according to data-driven fashion trend forecasting firm Heuritech.

The destinations designers were dressing for, however, are varied with some channeling the breezy, bohemian vibe of Tulum with linen and crochet and others embracing the retro coolness of Hawaii with printed shirts and vibrant colors. Meanwhile, the heap of pastels for men and women signals a sunnier and more optimistic outlook for fashion overall.

The universally beloved themed gives retailer a lot to work with. Here, Heuritech provides a rundown of most promising vacation-inspired fashion trends to know for 2022.

Crochet

From Casablanca’s yellow scalloped-edge sets to bra tops by Ambush, designers are exploring the DIY look and feel of crochet.

“Knitwear has been a huge trend in fashion for over a year, and crochet has taken the lead as the go-to trendy knit textile as of late, with big brands and independent designers alike integrating the textile in their collections,” Heuritech reported.

Linen

No fabric sums up “vacation mode” as well as linen. “It is not only desirable for its practicality in the heat but also for its growing reputation as a sustainable material,” Heuritech stated.

Though linen is prevalent in current summer collections, its popularity is expected to grow as the sustainability movement continues to gain momentum. Key women’s items will be beachy tops and dresses, though labels like Lemaire are also showcasing the natural fabric as an option for workwear. Heuritech said retailers can expect this trend to reach additional segments soon, including mainstream dressers.

Linen’s look for men is slightly different. Compared to its “strong beachy connotations” for women’s wear, Heuritech described men’s linen as minimalistic safari. The fabric takes on desert undertones in garments such as Hed Mayner’s tunic tops and Yohji Yamaoto’s relaxed epaulette-embellished blazer.

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Linc Integrates CX Automation Solution with SAP Store

Linc’s CX Automation platform has been added to the SAP Store, providing retailers and companies using SAP solutions with end-to-end solutions for resolving 85 percent of all customer service inquiries without the need to escalate to a human agent.

Linc’s patented no-dialogue tree technology allows customers to engage in two-way conversations across all communication channels throughout the entire customer journey with seamless hand-off to people in the contact center, at a store, or in an advocate network. Linc is fully integrated with SAP Commerce Cloud to provide a first-line responder to customers.

The key benefits of utilizing the Linc solution for SAP companies include the following:

  • Support for a wide range of service intents and questions;
  • Real-time assistance to customers’; critical buying questions on topics ranging from product information to promo use;
  • Extensive integration with leading e-commerce platforms, shipping carriers, and customer support platforms.

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Bringing Sustainability To The Fashion World

When we think of the world of fashion, sustainability is one of the last words we’d associate with it.

However, Queen of Raw wants to change that. Queen of Raw has built a software platform to help organisations discover, buy, and sell material that would otherwise go to landfill, or be burned. Given that around $120 billion of material is wasted annually, there’s a huge potential for savings.

Listen to this podcast as Stephanie Benedetto and Phil Derasmo, Queen of Raw’s CEO and COO/CTO respectively (and the company co-founders) to come on the podcast to tell me how they’re cleaning up fashion’s supply chain.

SAP Works with Hanko to Develop Passwordless Logon for SAP Universal ID

Enterprises face an explosion of cyberattacks and data breaches, many of them enabled by weak passwords. Once attackers compromise an employee’s account, they can gain access to sensitive corporate data as well as the internal network.

Data breaches can cost companies millions of dollars in direct and indirect costs. According to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020, the average cost of a data breach was $3.86 million last year. Calculation of the cost includes value of lost data, remediation and response effort, ransom payments, regulatory fines, lawsuits, lost customers, and brand damage.

At the same time, imposing robust security restrictions on employees to avoid account compromise could create barriers to usability and productivity.

To address these dual risks, SAP decided to team with German startup Hanko to add biometrics-based passwordless security protection to its recently launched SAP Universal ID, which provides SAP users with a unified account that enables access to all SAP products and services in one place.

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Klarna Buys Online Commerce Startup Hero

Klarna Bank AB, one of Europe’s most valuable financial startups, said it struck a deal to buy e-commerce technology firm Hero Towers Ltd., a move that will expand its foothold in online shopping.

London-based Hero connects online shoppers with retail workers via text messages, videos and online chat rooms. It helps retailers who sell major brands such as Nike and Adidas to compete with Amazon.com Inc. by offering better customer service, according to Hero’s founder, Adam Levene.

Klarna will pay about $160 million, according to people familiar with the deal.

Klarna specializes in buy-now-pay-later services, an increasingly popular type of cash advance that lets merchants offer a way for customers to pay for goods and services in installments without paying interest. Klarna makes money by charging the merchants a fee. It competes with traditional credit-card companies.

CENSIA Raises $21m in Series A Funding to Bring Bias-free Intelligence to Human Capital Management

Censia, a leading provider of Talent Intelligence technology, today announced it has raised $21M in Series A funding in a round led by Marbruck Investments. Marbruck joins existing investors Streamlined Ventures, Merus Capital, The CXO Fund, and CerraCap bringing the company’s total funding to over $30 million.

With this funding, Censia will expand go-to-market efforts, scale their API-first offering, and continue product innovations for talent acquisition and workforce planning powering HR technologies of the future with AI.

Censia was built on the belief that unconscious bias in talent decisions is affecting billions of highly capable people around the world from getting opportunities they deserve, contributing to the talent shortage, and impacting organizations’ bottom line.

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ViewAR secures Strategic Investment for Expansion

ViewAR, a leading global provider of augmented reality (AR) software. The creator of new AR ecosystems, is pleased to announce a strategic investment from Lansdowne Investment Company Cyprus Ltd (“LICC”) and Breeze Invest GmbH (“Breeze Invest”).

The multi-million Euro capital investment from LICC and Breeze Invest will allow ViewAR to increase its head count, accelerate the development of its award-winning technology, and further enhance its ability to address key markets and industry segments globally.

LICC is an investment vehicle managed by Lansdowne Partners Austria GmbH (“LPA”), which is an Austrian Alternative Investment Fund Manager with a strong focus on investing in and fostering European innovation. LPA is part of the Lansdowne Partners group of companies.

Breeze Invest, based in Vienna and Liechtenstein, is a private equity company focusing on investments in medium-sized industrial companies in the DACH region and neighboring CEE countries.

Founded in Vienna in 2010, ViewAR has created the only AR solution of its kind, providing a complete infrastructure to create, manage, test and publish augmented reality applications. The ViewAR System lets developers and inexperienced creators use cutting-edge AR technologies to create immersive AR experiences across a broad range of domains. The ViewAR All-in-One system covers the solutions for indoor navigation and guidance; Industry 4.0 & IoT; remote assistance and product visualization. ViewAR has won several awards for its technology, including the highest award in the field of AR: Auggie Award from Augmented World Expo.

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