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Written by Rob Marvin  Article from PC MAG Data breaches are a terrifying reality for every company that does business on the internet—which is all of them.  No matter what endpoint protection, encryption, and security you put in place, there's always a chance your sensitive customer information might be part of the next trove of data to leak online.  There are all sorts of things not to do when your poor server is the one that's breached, but one way or another, it's going to cost you.  According to the latest Cost of a Data Breach study by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, in the US, the average incident could cost a company upwards of $7.9 million.  The 13th annual report found that the global average cost of a data breach is up 6.4 percent over the previous year to $3.86 million, and the average cost for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information also increased by 4.8 percent year over year to $148 per record.

Written by Anthony St. Clair  Article from Outpost  No matter how they happen, mistakes are a fact of business. Sooner or later, you will have to send a solid apology email. Perhaps you, a colleague, or a subordinate messed up, and the situation requires a written, professional apology.  There can be late orders, damaged products, billing problems improper behavior, service outages to a site or app, data breaches, product recall, a canceled event, or a request your company can’t accommodate.  Effectively apologizing via email can be the best option. Email keeps everything in writing, and everyone gets a date-stamped, time-stamped record of the correspondence. Since it doesn’t depend on setting up a meeting or someone answering the phone, email can also be quick.

Written by Alison Doyle  Article from the balance careers  Are you in danger of losing your job to automation? According to a study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, nearly one in three U.S. workers will see some of their tasks or entire jobs taken over by robots and other artificial intelligence by 2030.  Employers are expected to rely increasingly on computers to do jobs that humans currently do.  This is because computers are generally less expensive than human employees. They can also help reduce human error, and even perform work beyond human abilities.  While the idea of losing one’s job is scary, the study emphasizes that most human jobs will change rather than disappear completely. About half of all employees’ tasks could become automated using today’s technology.

Written by Patricia Orsini  Article from eMarketer Loyalty programs have a serious retention problem. Consumers are quick to sign up, but quick to forget about a loyalty program once they get their initial discount. Members, overloaded with points, miles and free shipping offers, are not necessarily consolidating purchases with one brand in order to accrue rewards.  A January 2018 survey from Bond Brand Loyalty found that across most industries, less than half of loyalty program members in Europe, Latin America and North America are satisfied with their programs.  The companies most likely to offer loyalty programs—retailers, airlines, hotels, quick-serve restaurants, among other sectors—are simultaneously facing increased competition from digital upstarts that are better able to gain an understanding of consumers’ expectations and needs, and deliver on them. A loyalty program can provide the first-party data needed to begin to understand those customers, but ...

Written by Krista Garcia  Article from eMarketer  As an industry, retail is one of the most vulnerable to cybercrime. Ecommerce transactions can provide a wealth of fodder for fraudsters, including personal information and credit card details. According to a Q2 2018 ThreatMatrix report, ecommerce companies using its digital identity network experienced 91 million attacks, which is business as usual as the figure was consistent with the same period last year. The types of cybercrime, however, are changing. An attack rate of 24.2% means nearly one in four new accounts created on ecommerce sites in Q2 2018 were fraudulent, a 130% increase year over year. Account login fraud using stolen credentials was the second-most common attack (10.2%) while using stolen payment credentials made up 3.0% of total attacks.

Written by Todd Hockenberry Article from ThomasNet The mindset that leads to annoying your prospects instead of helping them stems from a selfish place. If you think about the product or service first, then the logical next step is to figure out who might need this product or service, and then attack them. Anyone who does this is not thinking about the buyers or their specific issues and goals, and is certainly not thinking about helping them first. Salespeople are still able to control the sales process, but only if they start from a position of helping. Yes, salespeople still hold a lot of cards, but they fold right away if they lead with annoying prospecting tactics. Many buyers do not know how to solve critical problems that your solution may be able to address. When dealing with more complex sales, buyers need a guide, an expert — someone with business smarts, not sales tricks — to help them navigate the competing visions for the future within their company. Buyers nee...

Written by Janelle Nanos  Article from The Boston Globe Most of us now live at the slightly queasy intersection of consumerism and surveillance.  The dozens of apps on our phones, most of them free, aren’t just serving up information and entertainment. Many are able to ascertain our whereabouts based on the phone’s GPS and can then sell that geolocation data to digital marketers.  Unlike traditional print or television ads, location-based marketing has the benefit of knowing where we are, whom we’re with, and whether their ads are working.  Geotargeted mobile marketing is one of the fastest growing forms of advertising — and one of the most controversial. It has arisen in part because, as more of us use streaming and on-demand viewing services, we’re watching far fewer television ads. And because so many of us carry our smartphones at all times, digital marketers have seized the opportunity to gather and sell data on where we are, what we do — and what we m...

Author: Krista Garcia For the full article, go to eMarketer Even with recent reports of fraud and fake followers, influencer marketing continues to be big business. According to measurement firm Points North Group, influencer ad spending by brands in the US and Canada totaled $211 million in Q2 2018. Nearly three-quarters ($150 million) was devoted to Instagram. A February 2018 survey by influencer marketing agency Activate found that 88.9% of influencers worldwide said they were using Instagram for influencer marketing campaigns more than they did a year ago. Despite Instagram's growing prominence in influencer marketing, an April 2018 CPC Strategy study showed Facebook was the leading platform where US internet users heard about new products, events or services from people they follow. Nearly 70% cited the ubiquitous social network, while Instagram (11.3%) and YouTube (9.5%) ranked a distant second and third. This survey was comprised of all age ranges, though, and many in...

Written by Anne Stych Article from bizwomen It’s only October, but Christmas decorations are already in stores — and a lot of people find that annoying.   According to a new Coinstar Holiday Survey, more than a third - 36 percent - of people surveyed say it's irritating that retailers put up holiday decorations and merchandise as early as September or October, although CBS reported some studies show that people who put up their Christmas decorations early are healthier and happier than those who don’t.  For those who are out of sorts it may be because the decorations remind them they have a lot of shopping to do. And for one in five people, just thinking about holiday shopping stresses them out.

Written by Joel Libava Article from the Small Business Administration Purchasing a franchise involves many steps — and a lot of time and effort. But, if you’re organized, and you’ve taken the time to learn all you can about franchising, you’ll be able to speed up the process. Purchasing Steps: 1. The Search Typically, you’ll visit several different franchise opportunity websites until you narrow it down to a few franchises that look interesting. Here are three things you should be looking for in a franchise. 2. Contacting A Franchisor This step is a big one, because it involves formally requesting information about a specific franchise. Expect to get a phone call from a franchise salesperson. 3. Research This step involves reading the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) and calling franchisees so you can request earnings information, as well as conducting other basic market research. If you’re still interested, you may be invited to visit franchise he...

Written by Jen King Article from eMarketer r A survey from adtech company OpenX conducted last month by The Harris Poll found that more than eight in 10 shoppers say they will spend at least as much as they did last year. Fully 26% of respondents said they plan to spend more; 18% plan to reel in spending. Millennials (those ages 18 to 34) and parents were particularly ready to open their wallets. On average, parents estimated they’ll spend upwards of $1,000 on gifts, compared with millennials’ planned $860 spend. Underpinning shoppers' willingness to spend is a sense of financial stability. More than half of respondents (55%) believe the economy is better now than it was a year ago, and three-fourths are confident that economic improvement will continue. Interestingly, millennials were a bit less sanguine about the economy, with slightly less than half (48%) saying things are better now compared with last year. But like shoppers in general, they are optimisti...

Written by Dan Lewis  Article from Now I Know  More than 200 years ago, a New York City man named William Colgate made a living making and selling soap and candles.  Today, his name makes up half of that of a multi-billion dollar consumer goods corporation known as Colgate-Palmolive.  They, basically, make three types of stuff: soaps (one being Palmolive itself) toothpaste and other oral care products (under the Colgate brand) and, perhaps surprisingly, pet food.  In 1976, Colgate-Palmolive, via a series of mergers whose history isn’t worth going into, added the Hill’s Science Diet product line (and related ones) to their offerings. They decided not to re-brand the pet food under the Colgate brand because that would be, well, stupid. Who wants to feed their dog toothpaste-flavored kibble? Could you imagine pet food being included among these products?

Written by Jen King Article from eMarketer Contacting customer service is a frustrating experience for many consumers, especially if it gets them nowhere. According to a June 2018 survey from cloud-based solutions provider LogMeIn, nearly a quarter (23.6%) of internet users in North America—who have contacted a brand for support in the past six months—say their problem was never solved. Those who did manage to get it resolved said it took way too long (33.7%). Others (38.5%) hated the fact that they had to repeat themselves over and over to other customer service agents as their query was escalated.

Written by: Tim Berry See the complete article at Bplans Strategy is what you’re not doing. My favorite metaphor is the sculptor with a block of marble—the art is what he chips off the block, not what he leaves in. Michelangelo started with a big chunk of marble and chipped pieces off of it until it was his David. At the real-world level—my favorite—strategy is like driving and sex: we all think we’re pretty good at it. But simplifying, doing today what will seem obvious tomorrow, is genius. I say the best strategies seem obvious as soon as you understand them. Furthermore, it seems to me that if they don’t seem obvious after the fact, they didn’t work... Think of it as the heart of the business, like the heart of the artichoke. It’s a group of core concepts that can’t be separated: problem, solution, market, and identity. Don’t pull them apart. It’s the interrelationship between them that drives your business. Each affects the other three.