3 Bright Ideas in 30 Minutes

Video Transcript

Today's Presenters include Eric Best, Founder & CEO, Anthony Guarino, Director of Shopping Programs, Dan Myers, Director of Marketplace Services and Paul Connors, Product Manager

This webinar will cover the following agenda items: 2012 Holiday Selling Season, Mercent Overview, Mercent’s Three Targeted Solutions
Google Shopping & Google Retail Promotions, Repricing on Amazon, Access More Channels, Getting Started and Q&A

eCommerce by the Numbers

• 17% anticipated increase in consumer online spending this holiday season
• In 2011, Mercent clients’ Product Listing Ads peaked at 38% of total AdWords sales
• 45 % of worldwide unit volume on Amazon comes from3rd party merchants (at ~60% YOY growth)
• 700% revenue growth experienced by some Mercent clients when repricing on Amazon

Our Mission

Mercent ensures the world’s leading retailers are visible, competitive and profitable wherever consumers shop.

• Mercent Retail™ SaaS Platform facilitates profitable growth for retailers
• Measuring, managing and optimizing digital campaigns for maximum performance.
• Serving more than 500 national retail brands

Thrive with Mercent

Mercent Retail™ delivers an integrated solution to help retailers market and sell through leading eCommerce channels.

Mercent Offers Targeted Solutions

• Quick execution - immediate results
• Opportunity to solve for very specific business challenges without a major technology commitment
• Positions you to expand into the full Mercent Retail™ product family

Google Shopping &Google Retail Promotions

Google Shopping Opportunity

• Google Shopping completed transition to 100% paid on October 17, 2012
• Retailers are flocking to mobile search and Product Listing Ads (PLA) for the holiday season 
• Product Listing Ads deliver higher conversion rates

Google Shopping Performance Trends

Succeed on Google Shopping

• Success requires close coordination of feed management and AdWords campaign management
• Product Data Quality is a major driver of Quality Score
• Structure AdWords campaigns to allow for granular product bidding on best performers (brand, category, product)
• Continue to push aggressively on campaign growth into holiday as Google continues to test new ad layouts

Mercent Preparation Creates Opportunity

The Mercent Retail™ platform offers full PLA management

• Manage campaigns and data feed content in a single, comprehensive UI
• Send incremental updates more quickly using the Google Content API for Shopping
• View and manage your PLA performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, and Ad level
• Leverage the knowledge and experience with a market leader and active Google partner
• Additional support for Google Retail Promotions

Mercent Google Shopping ProgramGet started in 3 easy steps

1. Add Mercent tags to your site
2. Send Mercent a basic product catalog feed
3. Link your Google and Mercent accounts

Google Retail Promotions Shopping Results

Google Retail Promotions Product Promotion Page

Promote Products More EffectivelyGet started in 3 easy steps

1. Complete the "deals" worksheet
2. Send to Mercent
3. Track results

Repricing on Amazon

Reprice More SKUs Faster with Mercent

Mercent Delivers Speed, Scale and Accuracy

• Price optimization solution reprices more SKUs per hour
• Automated, rules-based & 100% flexible
• Transparent reporting & logging

Simple Mercent Retail™ interface provides complete campaign control through flexible, custom rules.

Repricing Delivers (case study)

Reprice Faster with Mercent Get started in 3 easy steps

1. Link accounts
2. Deliver product catalog file with required fields
3. Create and activate repricing rules

Channel the Holiday Spirit

Access New Channels

Mercent’s single-integration solution enables retailers to market and sell through leading channels. Throughout the year, Mercent’s core value proposition is to make our clients visible, competitive, and profitable wherever consumers shop. We do this through a single integration of our merchants’ data into the Mercent Retail platform. We then use this data to reach out to the best marketplace and shopping channels. As we approach the end of the year, there are some quick steps we can take to make sure you’re gaining maximum visibility to Holiday Shoppers.

Single Integration - Merchant to Mercent

So let’s look a little deeper at the related data flows to understand where you can take some quick steps to improve your Holiday results.

Looking at the left side of the screen, we see the integration that Mercent sets up with each of our merchants based on the initial access they have requested to online channels. We also set up the necessary order transaction processing if the merchant plans to connect to marketplace channels like Amazon, eBay, or Sears and the necessary tracking if the merchant would like to take advantage of a shopping channel like Google. 

Multiple Distribution - Mercent to Channels

And then, looking at the right side of the screen, we set up the product data integration to the initial marketplace or shopping channels the merchant would like to access.

For marketplace channels like Amazon and eBay, we also set up the necessary order transaction processing. For shopping channels like Google and , we set up the necessary tracking for order attribution.

Leverage Channel Opportunities

The keys to what we can quickly pursue for the Holidays are the collection of data in Mercent Retail (based on the merchant-to-Mercent integration) and whether we have the necessary order processing or tracking in place. So let’s take a Venn-diagram-type look at what you can do quickly based on what you already have in place. As always, the gears in the middle represent the population of data in Mercent Retail.

And since we’re talking about the Holiday Season… lets use ornaments to represent the other data sets we are concerned with in relation to the data in Mercent retail are the collections of data necessary to successfully connect to one of the leading online channels.

FBA provides additional seasonal capacity for top selling items – light it up for the holiday – and shut it down post holiday

Amazon lending – access to incremental inventory and capacity to handle

So let’s say our merchant in this example was initially set up to get onto the Amazon.com Marketplace and Amazon Product Ads.

So we know that the data in Mercent Retail provides us with the data elements necessary for performance on Amazon. We also know that we have and order processing loop in place between the merchant and Mercent in order to handled Amazon Marketplace transactions. And, lastly, we know that we have established tracking for the merchant to support Amazon Product Ads. 

As the Holidays approach, it’s worth taking a look at the other online retail channels that are completely contained within those boundaries. You speak with the Mercent Performance Team about taking a look to get your products listed for the Holidays on eBay.

And that analysis lets you know that you have most, but not quite all of the data you need in Mercent Retail to successfully list products that will perform on eBay. It’s a great idea to make the necessary changes to your merchant-to-Mercent integration in order to support the eBay channel. But those changes are not something you’ll have in place for the Holidays.

Make a note to follow up on getting those changes into place first thing in 2013.

Shopping advertising channels – are a mixed bag, and there are real opportunities to capture sales nextag, pricegrabber, shopzilla offer a network approach

And if the data requirements are the same for another leading comparison shopping engine, like Shopping.com…so long as you can get the necessary agreement into place between yourself and the channel, there’s no reason you shouldn’t fire up your listings on these channels for the Holiday Shopping Season.

Explore Your Channel Opportunities

1. Consider Amazon FBA as part of your “inventory cloud”
2. Add eBay as an incremental full-price, fixed-price sales opportunity
3. Access Sears with a standard Mercent integration 
4. Leverage the leading Shopping channels for “networked visibility”

Mercent Targeted Solutions - Q & A

What are the benefits of Google Retail Promotions?

• Allows you to message promotions at a product level via a separate data feed
• Target promotions to individual ads

Does the repricing tool have SKU limits?

• No limit to SKU count

Is there a limit to the speed of the repricing tool?

• No limit to processing speed

Does Mercent provide actual seller names in the competitive reporting?

• Yes. We provide any seller that is eligible for buy box inclusion
• We provide a broad array of competitive data points in the reports we produce

Compared to Google Shopping, how important are other shopping engines to my overall online marketing strategy?

• Traditional CSEs have evolved into “Advertising Networks” that allow you to list on channels across the web
• Offers scalability and opportunity outside of the major shopping networks
• Take advantage of Amazon Product Ads, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber and NexTag
• The “other” top 5 – 10 selling channels offer an opportunity to create material incremental revenue

Call Mercent today - Go live next week

hello@mercent.com or 206.832.3975

Thank you for your time!