Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 91
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.
🇦🇪 UEA: TAMM → Consider it done
Often people in Western Europe think they are “so digitized” but actually in other parts of the world, that’s where the real innovation takes place. One of those places is the United Arab Emirates.
Take a look at this: TAMM, —a sovereign-cloud, AI-infused, real-time government superapp. 950+ services. No lines. No forms. Just predictive AI handling everything from parking tickets to booking appointments and paying your bills.
Really cool, I love these developments, great digigization projects that actually help people and constantly improve. From reading, TAMM seems also a great place to work for.
The app, now in a 3.0 version, caters to 2.5 million Abu Dhabi citizens, residents and businesses, who made more than 10 million transactions in the past year, ranging from paying traffic fines to getting a marriage license. With TAMM’s AI assistant, finding answers to even the most complex government processes has become effortless – as simple as sending a text message.
The TAMM Factory, as the headquarters of the app is called, has the feel of a tech startup in a loft space, with large open meeting areas and big screens updating with fresh user satisfaction data.
Alhammadi said that the agile approach is purposeful and adds to the satisfaction of TAMM employees.
“That aspect of the work makes it exciting because it’s not a routine job, it’s dynamic,” he said. “It feels like a startup. Every time there’s a launch, everyone’s staying up late at night and we’re testing to make sure we have the best quality of services and features before they go online.”
Details: https://news.microsoft.com/source/emea/features/tamm-app-abu-dhabi-government-services/
https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2025/05/08/microsoft-president-brad-smith-uae-ai/
👩⚕️The Top 7 Skills Needed to Become an AI Agent Architect
I think this is a very good article from
on AI agents and something to dive deeper in. This article is just a start. Would be great of there would be a course on this topic on Coursera or Udemy to develop the skills mentioned in this article.Go beyond just chatbots and read about the foundation of AI agents.
You just need to understand what makes an agent behave like an agent — and why most people get it wrong.
These 7 skills are the foundation. They’re what I use when I build agents that run real-world processes, generate real documents, and serve real clients. They’re what I shared with Gav’s team. And they’re what I’d share with yours.
Because the truth is this:
Most people are building bots with fancy coats.
A real agent makes decisions, adapts, remembers, reflects, and knows when to ask for help.
🔍SEO: AI overviews and the shift from publishers to Google
Zippy is one of my favorite SEO thought leaders and yeah, he did it again. A banger post on AI overviews. Basically it proves and explains that the shift to AI overviews is not good for publishers and especially smaller and medium sized organisations.
So do read and adapt your strategy if needed. I can imagine for example this requires more niche expert content, more or different “branding”, more direct contact with customers and a WOM strategy. Get your mind chopper and fly above AI overviews to understand how a customer journey can and will go with AI overviews.
But maybe, just maybe, if Google hadn’t been so greedy and hadn’t tried to keep so much for itself, it might not be in this position in the first place.
Details: https://zyppy.com/list/ai-overviews-to-google-ads/
📹Landingpages and videos, what does the data says
Ok, I can make a long story on this but when I just copy paste the image, you get the message. It depends of course the goal of a page and your objectives, but a video on a landingpage might decrease conversion. Yeah, that’s right, decrease. This is not coming from a random person, but from Unbounce, one of the leading landing page services online. Do dive into the details as it is not as easy and straightforward as the image says.
📰Winning the mentions is getting more mainstream
Now on my newsletter, I mentioned many times user behavior will change, and now larger much larger publishers, also start writing on it, like fortune.com.
“Credibility is being built outside your site now,” so companies must curate “brand storytelling,” Wetzler said.
Brand storytelling echoes the brands voice, in digestible content for an LLM, like articles, blogs, or on-site customer reviews.
The All-in Boys also clicked on this topic
Details: https://fortune.com/2025/05/10/search-engine-optimization-seo-marketing-llm-chatgpt-apple-google-online-shopping-brand-visibility/
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/BQc1n
🇮🇳 Indian billboard embeds a washing machine
That’s creativity, embedding a washing machine in a billboard. That’s how they do it in India.
🇺🇸 🇨🇳 Amazon Haul vs Chinese platforms
I think I shared this post earlier, from
in China. Its a really good post and somehow the algorithm showed it to me again today. It’s really good for everyone who likes strategy, platforms, marketplaces, China, and product management.It’s what I all like and if you do also, I recommend to read it.
Like Temu, Amazon also uses a price comparison system. If it finds that the price of a product is higher than other platforms, it may ask a merchant for a price reduction or suspend sales. Since June 2023, Temu has been excluded from this price comparison mechanism due to its hefty price fluctuations. Including Temu in the tool would put unreasonable pressure on merchants selling on Amazon
The low-price store would have a separate entrance in the app and independent search results display but use the same technological framework and a slightly different back end.
The browsing interface and presentation of low-price stores would differ from those of the main site or app.
📧 International e-mail benchmark 2025 is out
Yes! E-mail marketing. When I started working, I started to work as an e-mail marketer. Still I love e-mail and seems I am not the only one because in many parts of the world e-mail is still very profitable. The GDMA presents the International Email Benchmark 2025. It’s an interactive dashboard and can be found here:
https://globaldma.com/international-email-benchmark/
🇨🇳 Pop Mart : Hoe Europe went crazy for Chinese toys
Remember Pop Mart? I wrote about that brand earlier, in one of my first newsletters, even made a video of the brand. Now we see also Pop Mart coming to Europe and being succesful. As the South China Morning Post says:
It’s a really big sign and a shift,” Ma said. “In the future, Chinese brands will start to dominate markets not only with technological advances, but also by wrapping all those advances into a softer, more emotional package to convince people and compete with Western brands.”
Details: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3310651/how-europe-went-crazy-chinese-blind-box-toys-and-why-it-matters
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/bDNUn
🇨🇳 Jack Ma in his own words
Let’s end with a quotes from Jack Ma. I have it from the book: Never Give Up: Jack Ma in his own words.
Details: https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/Jack-Ma/dp/1504797655
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"Its a really good post and somehow the algorithm showed it to me again today."
It wasn't the algorithm, it was me. ;-)
I reshared that December 2024 report because Amazon Haul is launching in the UK to it miht be of interest for those in Europe now, as last year Amazon Haul was only active in the US.
Thanks for sharing it in your newsletter.
- Ed