Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 76
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.
🐛Deliverability problem last newsletter!
Good morning my friends!
Last week appearantly something went wrong in the deliverability of the newsletter. (Thanks
for notifying me). So if you missed last weeks newsletter, here it is below, linked again, and it has the following (great) topics:😲WTF: Doom running in a PDF
🌎Deceptive Design Patterns across the globe extensive book (free)
🇨🇳 Just saying, great UX we can learn something from it
🤖OpenAI has some national policy ideas
🇫🇷 RATP app sucks big time
🇯🇵 Japan: app chat concept get a call to read your text
🎣B2B Leadgen —> combine powers
🇫🇷 Galeries Lafayette: Yard wine cave and experience center
⚠️ChatGPT operators they are here mind the impact
Check it all via the link below and thanks for reading, liking and subscribing 😊
Ok, let’s move on to this weeks newsletter:
🧠Unravel: A-brands vs House Brands
I am a big fan of the company “Unravelresearch”. They do neuromarketing for brands (among other things) and regularly they have really nice lunch updates with lots of best practices and use cases. Often on how to create effective banners or ad creatives. This week it’s on A-brands vs “house brands”, and I think it is interesting to watc or check the slide decks. Probably there will be differences in cultures and countries they don’t really dive into that.
I auto-subbed the video to English (It’s in Dutch) but most of the slide decks are in English.
➡️Slide deck as in the video via my dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yutwoyy5b85qixwl2ttlc/webinar-huismerk-vs-a-merk-sheets.pdf?rlkey=z5ud5y26z0yi4qbbz5z4x11y5&st=mxmcacdl&dl=0
➡️Key insights slide deck also via my dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/isx3r4og0lf14oo410jkg/webinar-a-merk-vs-huismerk-key-insights.pdf?rlkey=zhr5c9a4pmmjck8siqtuionbn&st=4v72elap&dl=0
Unravel’s homepage: https://www.unravelresearch.com/
🇩🇪 Marketplace watch in Germany: BEVH research
Lets’ take a look at Germany where the BEVH did some research which is positive for marketplace. The page is only in German (really, why BEVH?), so I translated and higlighted the highlights. I would suggest to take parts of it with a bit of caution as the German economy is really in big problems and I do not see it change to the positive side very soon.
Marketplaces are driving sales growth in German e-commerce: This growth stems from marketplaces, which grew by 4.7 percent, while online pure players continued to suffer a decline of 3.6 percent and omnichannel retailers a decline of 2.0 percent. For this year, the bevh expects an increase of 2.5 percent
E-commerce is back in the positive, despite the ongoing weak consumer sentiment in Germany. We expect sustained and, in the medium term, stronger growth for our industry. However, new crises, uncertainties—such as those surrounding the Bundestag elections—and further geopolitical tensions could pose a risk to this growth.
Details: https://bevh.org/detail/e-commerce-zurueck-auf-wachstumskurs
🇹🇭 A message can make a difference
Now this is nice, a simple message on a menu, lured me into a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. And yes, it was worth my time and money 🤣.
⭐This is the way: well written 👍👍
🌏App screenshots from Asia
I share a couple of screenshots of apps I used during traveling. I like to try apps or sites when I am abroad and to learn from features or UX used.






See a screenshot of “Grab” (truly a great app) . See some “retail media” embedded. The 12.12 Lazada promotion that is connected to the driver indicator. Smart and nice. Couldn’t click on it but it reminded me of the 12.12 promotion.
AirAsia’s superapp has lots of improvements opportunities, in my opinion. One of them is the extremely large survey. So long, I did not even finish it -and I am a survey tester and user always-. I recommend AirAsia: ask more often at relevant times only one question.
My AirAsia flight was delayed and you see then, that even though Airlines and Airports have lots of integrations and data, sometimes it simply does not work. The AirAsia app has a (not so good) working AI chatbot that I asked on the delay. The sign at the airport says “delayed” but the app says “rescheduled” so something totally different.
One of the annoying things at airports is the WiFi, often only available after very annoying captive portals or registrations and (almost) always slow. So it is essential to have an offline boardingpass but the AirAsia app does not provide that, I could not access my e-boarding pass although I generated it before. Strange. Also the error messages are very unclear.
What is very nice is the “self service handbook” in the AirAsia app. I have many ideas to make that even better.
Unfortunately, I do no longer have the login but the “Sam’s club” app in China has some onboarding/ shopping gamification strategy. Interesting! I can think of various commercial/valuable hooks for users of the app. Check the screenshot.
🇨🇳 Taobao offline stores: A new era for China’s retail?
Taobao, one of my favorite online platforms goes offline. No, they do not stop… more and more sellers on Taobao, open up physical stores. A trend that might come to the West as well, I can imagine. I already spotted some online brands in pop up malls in Bikini mall in Berlin once, but this seems a little different a bit larger scale. Still a nice trend, brands that move from mono channel to omnichannel.
Taobao-based designer brands are opening offline stores to enhance customer engagement, reduce costs, and build long-term brand loyalty in China.
The founders of these Taobao-based brands view their offline presence as a key growth strategy for long-term brand building. By offering in-store try-ons, they hope to reduce costs associated with returns and exchanges.
https://jingdaily.com/posts/taobao-offline-stores-a-new-era-for-china-retail
🇳🇱 Coolblue: a product journey e-mail example (and a real story)
Just want to give kudos to Coolblue. As I wrote earlier, and even earlier Coolblue focuses on “product journeys” instead of customer journeys. I bought a new laptop and this is how creating a “good feeling” works. See this email I got after purchase with lots of tips how to get started with my laptop.
Also good to know: I bought this laptop, turns out it had a tiny failure sometimes my screen got “messed up”, I had to switch of to get it to work again. I went back to Coolblue 6 weeks later, told them about the issue. Turns out, if you return it within 30 days you get a new laptop as a service (so no need to wait for a repair service). But I was about 2 weeks after those 30 days. The service guy in the store told me he would fix it for me, so I could also just return my laptop and get a new one directly, even though I officially was not entitled to. Just like that! And that makes a difference. My next laptop will also be bought at Coolblue!