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DTC brands are outspending traditional retailers

07
Jun '19

Pic: CommerceNext

Comparing 2018 to 2019, e-commerce marketing budgets are on the rise across all retail business models, but digital-first DTC brands are increasing budgets at a higher rate, says a CommerceNext survey. New generation digital-first DTC brands are investing more in acquisition marketing, technologies like AI-driven personalisation and customer data platforms.

The survey ‘How Leading Retailers and Direct-to-Consumer Brands are Investing in Digital’, sponsored by Oracle Customer Experience Cloud, was conducted to provide a benchmark by which digital retailers can compare their investment levels and product priorities to those of their peers. It surveyed 100 top marketing decision-makers at leading brands in two major camps: the traditional retailers and multi-brand merchants that began as brick-and-mortar retail outlets and now also sell online, and the digital-first DTC brands who are transforming the entire ecommerce industry.

The research tells us that both traditional and DTC brands point to acquisition marketing, personalisation and gaining a unified view of the customer as key priorities—and challenges. But the survey also delineates the differences in how these two camps invest in tools and roll out initiatives around these priorities.

The report says that most marketers are not satisfied with their efforts to create a single view of the customer and personalise the customer experience. In 2019, the top innovation investment priority for all ecommerce marketers, regardless of business model, is in customer data platforms. Digital-first DTC brands are approaching marketing spending differently than traditional retailers with brick-and-mortar locations. For example, DTC brands are passing over the use of promotions in favour of other channels such as programmatic TV to attract new customers. (PC)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India