Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 65
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans. Welcome back! I summarized some great links again, I stumbled upon this week.
💳Part 2: Antoine Le Nel of Revolut on growing fast
Last week I uploaded a snippet of an interview with Antoine Le Nel from Revolut. Now I listened to the complete pod, and there is so much interesting stuff in there, gives a broader look at things beyond your own bias. I have put more clips of the pod together now in this longer video. But go listen to the complete pod. Meet Antoine Le Nel (just hear that French accent🥖) and Harry Stebbings -think posh English-🫖 vibes).
🤖Perplexity tests AI shopping
Perplexity, if you do not yet use it, give it a try, it works really well, I use it quite a lot, especially if I want to dig into something, as it gives always reliable sources. Perplexity that I think, has a high trust factor, now moves into shopping and payments. This fits in a trend that AI agents, more and more, will go shop for you. This can hav an impact on strategy, UX for many companies. What is the added value for pure players? What is the added value for meta search engines? Interesting times.
Details on perplexity’s shopping feature:
https://www.adweek.com/commerce/perplexity-ai-powered-shopping/
https://www.testingcatalog.com/perplexity-tests-an-internal-payment-system-pplx/
And I wrote earlier on this topic in for example this newsletter, and this one.
🇻🇳 Surprise: Vietnam takes a different approach
I wrote earlier on for example Indonesia who is “protecting” small shops by blocking Temu and promoting local Tokopedia. It seems Vietnam takes a different approach. Vietnam is teaching brick and mortar vendors how to do e-commerce, with mixed success so far. Maybe the solution is empowering to a multi or omnichannel business. Make a mix, not purely e-commerce.
In response, authorities in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have imposed higher import tariffs on e-commerce purchases. In Thailand and Vietnam, small businesses have called for similar measures.
But Vietnam has taken a different approach: Authorities are encouraging vendors to embrace e-commerce, with the government backing efforts by industry players including Vecom, TikTok Shop, and Shopee, to train merchants. The e-commerce association has trained about 450 sellers at nine markets since May, on how to set up on e-commerce platforms, manage online orders, and do livestream sales, where viewers can purchase products in real time as a host presents them.
Livestreams are also not that useful, as customers in northern Vietnam can’t understand his accent, the 35-year-old said. In addition, shipping costs on TikTok Shop are high because he could not control the logistics.
Nice to read experiences on different approaches and so much to do in the world in terms of teaching (international) e-commerce and omnichannel commerce.
https://restofworld.org/2024/vietnam-traditional-markets-e-commerce/
🔍Google becomes e-commerce hub: adapt your strategy’s in time
Google more and more becomes an e-commerce hub and takes over your category pages or even product detail pages.
In this example that’s live in some countries, Google has structured the search results for "Diwali gifts" with various e-commerce-focused elements.
This setup blurs the line between search and shopping, transforming Google's role from search provider to a fully-fledged e-commerce platform that could compete with dedicated marketplaces.
So if your goal is to have your products sold directly on google make sure your structured data is perfect. If you don’t want it or if you don’t want to be fully dependend on Google take steps now for your future strategy.
🔍SEO in 2025: How to Prepare for the Future of Search
Now we are at it, this is a nice presentation, I found on the future of search, I think a valuable document for everyone in branding, search, content marketing etc. It includes some lookerstudio reports.
https://speakerdeck.com/ipullrank/seo-in-2025-how-to-prepare-for-the-future-of-search?slide=2
🍺Germany: innovation is more than just the David Hasselhoff museum
A quick note on a recent FT article about Germany. I’ll skip the political angle, highlight the points about e-commerce and innovation. I've often read and heard that German leadership, both in corporate business and politics, is strong when it comes to maintaining stability and the status quo. But when it comes to adapting quickly or driving innovation, they struggle. This approach contrasts sharply with the faster-paced changes happening in other parts of the world.
Germany’s reluctance to embrace change is a missed opportunity on a global scale. I hope it changes as it is great to work with Germans.
Article FT: https://www.ft.com/content/4c0f90ac-1068-46ec-bb6a-b27f21af6210
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/khTs9
🏎️The performance marketers formula handbook (or page)
Annirduha, has made a performance marketing google sheets with metrics/formula’s. I won’t copy paste the complete sheet here, but just the metrics that I think are less common, but important (especially in the corporate world, often ignored). On click for zoom:
Request the complete sheet here (although a bit annoying he made it view only), but still kudo’s for creating the overview!
https://aniruddha-mishra.kit.com/pm-formulae-handbook?
Thank you for reading,