Four Marketing Tips To Prepare For The End Of The Year Peak

This fall, merchants are already looking to the end of the year celebrations, wondering how to best benefit from the millions of new consumers who have adopted online commerce.

According to the latest observations, the peak in Christmas shopping will be earlier than usual this year.

In other words, traders have a concise time frame to prepare to take full advantage of the recovery and forge business relationships that will last beyond New Year’s Eve.

With more creative marketing campaigns, promotions, and ideas, merchants must bend backward to deliver a “frictionless” online experience to reward legitimate customers while blocking attempted fraud.

Faced with the resurgence of fraudulent activities linked to the pandemic – which penalizes brands and buyers – fraud prevention should be a top priority for traders.

These will meet the very high demand and allow customers to enjoy a perfectly fluid digital experience.

It remains to be seen how to reconcile these two objectives without losing sight of the prosperity of their trade.

Here are four fundamental measures that can help them in this direction …

Reduce The Number Of Missed Opportunities Through New Marketing Approaches

The pandemic has prompted many individuals to shop online for the first time. The step being taken, these new consumers constitute the target of choice of promotions imagined to retain them with new brands.

However, these consumers remain novices, and when it comes to checkout, their brief history of online purchases leads some traditional fraud prevention solutions to identify them – often wrongly – as fraudsters.

Indeed, studies show that new customers are five and seven times more likely than repeat customers to have their purchase rejected due to a lack of data.

The consequences are also felt in the long term: up to 40% of refused customers will never visit the site of the merchant concerned.

But even if the rejection is not total, the verification steps added by most fraud prevention solutions create an unacceptable level of friction that can ultimately compromise sales and cause the customer to abandon their cart along the way.

This situation is called NUMO for “New User Missed Opportunity,” that is to say, “missed opportunity with a new customer.” When a new customer is rejected, the brand loses a sale and the value—the lifetime of that customer.

These missed opportunities punctuate carefully planned marketing and investment campaigns to entice new customers to visit a merchant site.

To mitigate this risk, merchants need a fraud prevention solution that goes beyond their limited data and brings together information based on a history of behavioral data generated across the merchant ecosystem.

This approach creates a virtuous circle of trust that allows merchants to approve legitimate customers, even when it is their first transaction. The process must take place in real-time, without affecting the sacrosanct customer experience …

Outsmart Fraud By Monitoring And Protecting Customer Data

Once the relationship is established with a client, it is essential to maintain it by selecting a high level of trust.

Thus, a survey conducted in 2020 by PayPal reveals that the trust that a consumer places in a merchant are the main reason for their choice.

Customers are increasingly aware of the risks of cyber attacks and rely on merchants to permanently protect their data (PII), including the information used to pay for their purchases.

Infected data can irrevocably damage a brand and destroy the trust that has been built, resulting in long-term loss of customers that will be very difficult to recover.

Unfortunately, the events last year led to a sharp rise in theft activities accounts ( ATO – Account Take Over ) of around 55%.

In the case of this form of online identity theft, the fraudster manages to gain illicit access to a third party’s account in a given system.

Our studies show that after accessing an account, the attacker acts quickly: 40% of fraudulent transactions occur within 24 hours of compromising the performance.

That’s why it’s up to merchants to ensure that their customers are protected at all times, not just when they check out their shopping cart.

It is essential to apply an “intelligence” that goes beyond the simple framework of payment analysis.

By understanding a customer’s ordinary behavior – login activity and browsing habits, for example – and enriching this knowledge through machine learning (ML), it becomes possible to detect attacks quickly and maintain trust. Client.

By integrating a global network, traders can also be made aware of the different types of account theft attempts to thwart them better.

Ultra-Flexible Delivery Options To Adapt To A New Mode Of Consumption

Throughout the pandemic, deliveries have emerged as an increasingly decisive differentiating argument.

Buyers demand safe and convenient options, such as same-day delivery, the ability to purchase an item online with in-store pickup ( BOPIS – Buy Online Pick-up In-Store or more generically click & collect), or abduction “on the sidewalk,” which minimizes the level of risk incurred while being adapted to the post-pandemic lifestyle, where many people have not yet found their way to the office and do not frequent shopping centers.

According to PayPal, 2% of consumers have increased the use of in-store pickup during peak season 2020, which is expected to continue.

Merchants now have the infrastructure to offer ultra-flexible delivery options and highly reliable fulfillment services that deliver packages on time – whether recipients are staying at home or spending time in. family.

Yet such situations are only possible if the transaction process is fully automated, without the tedious manual controls that slow it down and risk lengthening delivery times or forcing customers to cancel their orders.

Automatic fraud prevention also allows traders to adapt more effectively to the end of the year peak; to relieve the seasonal staff of manual controls, they have to opt for an automatic system adjusted accordingly.

Rely On Purchasing Behavioral Data To Reduce The Number Of Abusive Returns

The last part of the customer journey – returning goods – is also the previous step on which merchants need to focus.

Returns are a vital part of service delivery. Customers want to quickly return a product that isn’t right for them – especially during the holiday season when more purchases than usual.

PayPal figures for the year 2020 indicate that 63% of consumers have returned – or plan to return – at least one item purchased during this period and that they use multiple channels: online purchase with return in-store ( BORIS – Buy Online Return In-Store ), authorized drop-off points, postal services, and other “curbside” delivery options.

However, merchants do not appreciate that their generous and flexible return policies are exploited by malicious people who seek to take advantage of the disconnect between purchase and return channels; thus, nearly one in ten returns is abusive.

Here again, advanced behavioral data, enriched by machine learning, can help marketers sort the wheat from the chaff between genuine customers and those who abuse their policies.

Without this data, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify and neutralize a consumer abusing a return opportunity for the first time without risking angering a potentially interesting new customer.

The more extensive the fraud prevention network, the more likely merchants will spot these fraudulent customers. It will be able to cross-check data transparently to spot repeat offenders.

The Best Time To Retain Customers And Maximize Growth

The 2021 peak season is just around the corner. We expect customers to continue to enjoy the speed and flexibility of online ordering and delivery, a solution they have grown to appreciate over the past eighteen years. Month.

However, we know that fraudsters will be present more than ever.

By focusing on customer experience and fraud prevention and following the four steps outlined above, merchants have a solid case to stay ahead of the game, earn customer trust, and earn revenue. Which they will enjoy well after the end of the year holidays .

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