Cross Border trade just got easier in the Pacific Alliance. GBG has invested in a total cross border verification platform.

Next the big trading blocks will agree reduction in tariffs, these markets have more potential to accelerate global GDP and recovery than any. Or should we just shut our borders, I think not. 

John

When reviewing digital marketing practices (or, actually, marketing practices in general), you will often hear the following exchange:

Employee: “This is a great idea and will really help our productivity/ROI/marketing plan/etc”
Boss: “Well, if this is a great idea, why don’t we do this already?!”
 
The employee’s answer is usually one (or a combination) of the “Three T’s”; time, technology, training.
 
Time is an ever-present worry for marketers - there’s just so much to do and only so many hours in the day. In fact, a recent study showed that in general marketers have less than 1 hour per day to be able to concentrate on email marketing.
 
Technology, be it email platforms, HTML editors, or image programs (and more) can let people down when it can’t do what they want it to, or has bugs or technical issues which prevent us from achieving what we need - especially annoying as there isn’t much time to be able to do the emails in the first place!
 
Of course, the technology might be functioning exactly how it is supposed to, but if we haven’t been trained on how to use it, we will often struggle to complete our goals. Not understanding the intricacies of the system could be what is leading to the technical issues and causing us to spend a lot of time on emails.
 
Here at GB Group, we can help with all of these, by offering full training and support packages, and a variety of technology solutions (and of course giving you the option to let us take the time issue away by doing the whole thing for you too!); please do get in touch if you’d like to discuss.

Karen

Reminiscing with a friend about visiting HMV every Saturday in our teens, our conversation turned to how, recently, our only visit would be to browse the shelves and research new releases, to later purchase online or in a cheaper store.

This act of shopping around, comparing prices or just changing our mind isn’t uncommon.  I am sure in the case of HMV it’s not only me who is guilty of this.  Imagine what HMV’s tills would look like if in-store shoppers had to take their purchases to the tills to obtain the price and then not complete the purchase, abandoning their basket at the till? 

Online, it’s a whole lot easier and common for consumers to abandon their purchases.  For a start there's no uncomfortable face to face challenge.  The internet is a very big place, with lots of things to see and do on it. That’s why it’s even easier online to put items in your basket and then not get around to actually buying them.  In fact 74% of online consumers abandon their shopping cart.  In 2011 abandon basket sales totalled nearly £1billion.

And THAT is why, as an online retailer, you really cannot afford not to have an abandoned cart solution. Compared to the store shopping experience, online should be more personalised and tailored for the individual which generates more response and increased brand loyalty. An abandoned cart solution allows you to do just that, while recovering sales of between 4% and 6% of your online revenues.

At GB Group, we offer an innovative fully automated abandoned basket solution in partnership with market leaders, SaleCycle where we can manage the whole process for you.   Our expertise in Identity Engagement and SalesCycle’s technology will help you produce the perfect basket abandonment email and allow you to recover some of those lost purchases helping you to increase online sales.   

Karen

With the lack of face to face contact the world of the internet makes it naturally difficult for humans to build trustworthy relationships between people and or the businesses they deal with, and a lot of people seem to live in a constant state of alert with everything they do on the internet.

The other night as I managed to lock myself out of my online banking site yet again and was forced to go through yet another onerous unlock procedure, basically involving me retyping all my personal information they already knew about me including everything a phishing site would want, even my card details, it got me to wondering why this whole process needed to be so painful.

Probably because I have worked in the field of EIDV for so long and have seen and heard numerous horror stories over the years, I am always very circumspect about giving my personal information over the web especially when I get to thinking what someone else could do with this information. We often hear that the weak point in the process is the 2ft between me and the monitor, basically the keyboard, but how do we combat this without making the whole customer experience horrendous?

One area that we have been developing and investigating has been the use of image capture and validation and I think this could be the start of a new form of data entry. What has amazed me is how advanced the technology now is. Used well it has the potential to drive simple yet more secure registration and login processes both for businesses and consumers. Next month will see GB launch a document validation service within our ID3global service that can take an image of a passport/ ID card or UK driving licence, extract the text and also help validate the authenticity of the actual document. This can be done from any decent image source including camera phones. This will help with speeding up capture and entry of sensitive personal information for businesses while also removing the need to type as much sensitive information removing a major risk point for the consumer. For businesses it will also potentially remove the need to ask for paper copies of documents in the post which will offer big savings in operational costs.

I think this is potentially only the start for how image capture and recognition could be used for speeding up and smoothing out the process of registration and login. This month we saw a demonstration of a very innovative use of a mobile phone camera app combining with a QR code displayed on a web page to facilitate the whole login process.  Not only did this give the added security of a 2^nd factor device I also didn’t need to use the keyboard. Also very difficult to forget my logins!

So will this use of imaging technology actually kill the need for a keyboard? Of course not but I do think it has a big potential to help improve our online experiences and security. One to watch!

A quick look at just a sample of emails from retailers in my inbox reveals that free delivery features highly. It won't come as a surprise that according to the DMA Email Tracking Study 2012 this was the second most preferred piece of content/ offer that consumers like to see in their emails. 

The study also said that 69% of consumers have more than one email address. Think about this for a minute - what percentage of your database has email addresses? It's easy to plug this gap with email appending but consider that 35% of responders have an address they provide when a company insists and another for emails they want to receive how can you be sure you have the right address for an individual? 

Unfortunately there is no quick fix, but building consumers’ trust and engaging with them using the address you have is the only real way to obtain the right address. Emails must be timely, relevant and include content that consumers want - which, according to the DMA report, is free delivery, discounts and loyalty promotions - easy!
 
This is not necessarily an email strategy though; an approach which only includes these types of campaigns won’t engage consumers with your brand so they are more likely to dump you at first sign of a better offer from your competitors. This is where automated triggered campaigns can help. They not only gain consumers trust, they give a more personal experience, engaging them with your brand and improving loyalty. What’s more, once set up triggered campaigns are like the Marketing Assistant you never had. If you don't already have one, make this your new years’ resolution.

Karen

"Social gaming is playing an increasing role in the way that frauds collect and share data on individuals. There are currently no regulations in place to restrict how data captured by social gaming apps is shared by the developer, in fact, Facebook has no say in what data is captured at all. Frauds have seen this is an ideal opportunity to create illegitimate apps that, when downloaded, act as a Trojan to gain access to the users Facebook page and with it, loads of personal information. EU registrars and Facebook have no clue about the types of data being pulled through these apps and how fast and widely it's being distributed. To tackle the issue, there needs to be more control around the anonymity of the data being captured so it's blind to the developers and only reveals basic forms of identification, such as social geography. However, there is also a simple step that users can take to ensure they protect themselves from these hacks: Go into your smart phone settings and make sure that data sharing through social media apps is turned off."

John

"Carrying a smart phone around is the same as carrying £20,000 in your wallet. But while the later seems completely ridiculous, for an average Joe, carrying a smart phone is a regular part of life. Smart devices house information that, if stolen, can provide a gold mine to frauds. It gives them access to email accounts, social media, family information, billing details, geographical data and so much more. This Data can then be used for anything such as small thefts using the credit card information, or to profile the person for bigger, more detrimental types of fraud that could cost thousands. Don't discount the value of apps that render smart phones unusable when they're stolen. These simple programmes are the best defence for protecting your personal information from being used for illegal purposes".

John

"While consumers can take precautions to ensure their data is protected, the responsibility largely sits with the businesses that hold it. Businesses will often say that they have a low instance of fraud, however the truth is that they have a low reported level of fraud. If you think about the amount of times your email or Facebook page has been hacked and you’ve changed your password without alerting the service provider you'll start to see why they think fraud is so low. To combat this fraud, businesses need to adopt multiple factor authentication, however, they also need to find the right balance as over complicating the security process will only drive customers away."

John

"Despite the increase of stories about complex database infiltrations by groups like Anonymous, the type of fraud that is still the most prevalent is the simplest: account take overs. That’s because account takeover is about a whole lot more than just accessing the account in question, it’s about the data stored in the account and the access to other accounts and personal information that data might allow. If you think about the amount of personal information that’s stored within an email account, or on a Facebook profile, you start to realise how valuable accessing that account might be for a fraud. Usernames, passwords, interests, hobbies and family information is all readily available. Despite a wealth of media attention to make businesses and consumers more aware of this fraud it remains public enemy number one"

John

"According to a survey of fraud experts conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), organisations around the world lose an estimated 5% of their annual revenues to fraud. This daunting statistic has driven the ACFE to encourage organisations worldwide to participate in International Fraud Awareness Week during November 11-17, 2012 to help highlight this urgent problem. This is business as usual for us here at GBG. Whether it’s validating addresses to ensure deliveries are distributed to legitimate postal addresses, verifying an individual is who they say they are, conducting employment screening checks including CRB and driver licence checks – it’s never been so critical to have the right processes in place to tackle fraud. As 'Cyber' Monday fast approaches (26th November) this week presents an opportunity to focus on your anti-fraud strategy and proactively take steps to minimise the impact it has on your organisation."

John