Competitive promotion tracker Market Track has acquired InfoScout, which captures sales information by scanning store receipts from a consumer panel. The combined firm will be able to connect marketing programs with sales results. John Wannamaker would be so happy. Market Track itself was purchased in April by Vista Equity Partners, whose other martech holdings include Marketo, Lithium, and Xactly.
Well, here’s a blast from the past: Marquis was one of many PC-based MCIF (Marketing Customer Information File) systems launched in the mid-1990s.
Grocery is one of the few retail sectors that remained largely untouched by online competition. Amazon may change that with its Whole Foods acquisition, but in the meantime we have meal kit subscriptions. NPD Group finds adoption is still low – 5% of U.S. households – but will rise as prices come down and more young people enter the market. Subscriptions are a key competitive weapon in the battle for share of customer, since let companies make sales without going through search engines or advertising.
Just over half of consumers (54%) like to receive personalized messages because they show the consumers are known to the brand, plus they can be time savers. The rest (46%) find it at best unimportant, at worst creepy. Relevance far outstrips personalization when it comes to driving email opens (54% vs. 19%). Takeaway: treat each customer the way they prefer.