In today's world, brands need to stand out and do something different. So, a new concept has come up. It is the concept of placing your brand in a subscription box.  Subscription box is a box that is received by subscribers periodically and contains products and samples. They can be used for customized market research and provides information about products and packaging. According to Euromonitor International, using subscription boxes will help to retain customers. Using this subscription box can reduce your marketing expenditure and help a company to reach a national audience, increase social traffic and sales. To know more about subscription box and its benefits, read the article linked by Aihui Ong (Founder and CEO of lovewithfood.com) at:  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245753

According to Chris Golec (founder and CEO of Demandbase), innovations in marketing technology are solving many critical issues of B2B marketers. These innovations are taking place in advertising, personalization, conversion and measurement which are helping marketers in driving and engaging present and potential customers. Future of B2B is maintaining continuous and long term relationships with customers. Three areas where innovation in B2B taking place:

• Accounting Based Marketing (ABM): It provides a vital strategy for companies that want to create sustainable growth and profitability within their most important client accounts. ABM focuses explicitly on individual client accounts and their needs. More importantly, it is a collaborative approach that engages sales, marketing, delivery, and key executives toward achieving the client’s business goals.

• “Always-on” advertising & subscription model: B2B organizations need to advertise on a regular basis and for attracting right companies, you need to have the right content on your website.

• Best of breed vs. Single vendor: Best of breed is better because it provides best solutions for each problem.

Read more at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/30/the-future-of-b2b-marketing/

According to Lauren Jung (Co-Founder of Theshelf.com), customers believe influencers over Facebook, twitter post for getting information about new trends, innovations and advice for buying products. Influencers are individuals who have the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of their (real or perceived) authority, knowledge, position, or relationship. In consumer spending, members of a peer group or reference group act as influencers.

Here are some tips to make influencer marketing effective are:

•         For making influence marketing successful align with influencer who have the power to influence the buyer’s decision or inbound interest.
•         Tailor your strategy based on the influencer.
•         Try to maintain a relationship.
•         Encourage content creation from brand evangelists.

 Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245757

In this competitive world, where technology and social platforms are most used mediums to engage customers, companies usually pursue digital marketing strategies that engage by leading conversations. Rather, they should engage customers by providing them an opportunity to lead the way.

According to Robert Hegeman, digital creative director at Siegel+Gale, a global branding firm, engagement goes beyond simply responding to and talking with consumers.

Peter Gasca, Founder, Naked Cask, in his article at entrepreneur.com, has given four simple tips to engage customers and hence, improve digital marketing strategies. They are:

• Focus on mobile first
• Stop annoying your customers
• Make engagement painfully easy and obvious
• Stick to a website experience

To understand them in detail, please visit the following link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245487

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” 

-Peter F. Drucker

So, to create wealth, it’s important that we constantly innovate. And innovation is not the responsibility of few. It’s important that we understand the need to create a culture of innovation i.e. we should foster this sense of internal drive among all the members of the organization and then only, can we together move forward towards success.

Ken Lin, Founder and CEO, Credit Karma, in his article at Inc.com, has shared from his experience, six strategies to instill a culture of innovation in the company. They are:

• Give people a sense of ownerships
• Change constantly
• Hire upwards
• Know when to move quickly
• Make everyone a guardian of the product
• Protect the culture

To learn more, please visit the following link:

http://www.inc.com/ken-lin/6-strategies-for-building-a-culture-of-innovation.html

Lots of experiments are going on in using predictive analytics in health care. But, only few succeed. The need is to learn from what has been done and work further.

Jennifer Bresnick, in her article on HealthITAnalytics.com, has summarized some of the ways healthcare organizations have already found success by turning big data into a strategic asset that can help providers react quickly and effectively to the ongoing challenges of quality care delivery. They are:

• Hospital quality and patient safety in the ICU
• Precision medicine, personalized care, and genomics
• Population health management, risk stratification and prevention
• Reducing preventable hospital readmissions

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://healthitanalytics.com/news/four-use-cases-for-healthcare-predictive-analytics-big-data

The hype around the word “big data” is ever increasing. It promises to bring a big revolution in marketing. But, in all this hype, myths also arise, which need to be cleared.

Joerg Niessing,INSEAD Affiliate Professor of Marketing, and James Walker, Partner Demand Analytics, Strategy&, in their article at knowledge.insead.edu, talk about eight commonly heard myths on big data. Some of them are:

• It’s big
• The more granular the data, the better
• Big Data is good data
• Big Data is a magic 8-ball

These myths need to be discarded before putting into use “the real Big Data”. To know more, please visit the following link:

http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-eight-most-common-big-data-myths-3878

Managing large volumes of heterogeneous data and using it effectively has always been a problem question in the legal domain. The solution to this big question has now been obtained with the advent of big data. Legal Informatics, a field which has emerged from big data, ties together work in the representation of legal knowledge with the performance gains derived through distributed processing.

Many questions arise in the minds of lawyers such as:

• How does the Judge rule on certain types of cases can be studied by date and time?
• Does the judge dismiss cases for a consistent pattern of reasoning?
• How do holidays affect decisions?
• Do they sentence harder at different times of the day?

These questions can now be easily answered with the help of Legal Informatics.

But, like all things have two sides, use of big data analytics in legal domain also has its repercussions like routine tasks will now be easily undertaken by analytics, judges will come under increased pressure, etc.

To know more, read the following article by Robert Plant, Associate Professor at the School of Business Administration, University of Miami, at The Wall Street Journal.

http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2015/04/24/what-big-data-means-for-the-legal-system/

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is a type of e-commerce conducted through mobile devices such as mobile phones and other mobile devices with a wireless connection - including smart phones (iPhones, Google Android), tablets (iPad, Amazon Kindle) and notebooks. M-Commerce also brings new opportunities for selling online, and mobile marketing can be used to extend online reach. Four things a company must consider while developing m-commerce marketing strategy are:

·         Reach: Tap into the uniqueness of mobile-first consumers.

·         Curate: Trigger impulse purchases through well-crafted offers.

·         Entertain: Make shopping fun and easy, not just cheap.

·         Lock in: Capture the loyalty of mobile shoppers early.

Read more at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/consumer_and_retail/learning_from_south_koreas_mobile-retailing_boom

According to Burton White (Vice President of the Industry Supply Chains at Chainalytics), for retailers and e-commerce firms, developing an effective and efficient supply chain strategy is challenging. To make last-mile delivery as their core supply chain strategy, they have to provide right inventory at the right time at the right place in the right form.
Some tips to be considered while developing a supply chain strategy are:

• Never lose sight of what actually matters to the customer
• Explore innovative approaches, like to bundle product shipments.
• Explore non-traditional distribution capabilities.
• Optimize transportation solutions to meet last-mile demands.
• Consider the inventory’s form, function and placement within your supply chain.
• Focus on returns management efficiency.

Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/last-mile

E-mails are an indispensible part of our lives. With the growth of mobile internet reach, people now have instant reach to their emails. For marketers to reach these people instantly, the easiest means is via emails. So, planning an email marketing campaign has become as much important as planning any social media campaign.

Pierre DeBois,Founder and Chief Digital Marketing Strategist, Zimana, in his article at cmswire.com has given 5 key strategies to plan a successful email marketing campaign launch. They are:

• Assume customers will view an email in a mobile device
• Plan for a personal touch
• Create an engaging subject line
• Send email at the right time
• Consider metrics within context of site or app objectives

To understand them in detail, please visit the following link:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/digital-marketing/how-to-plan-an-email-marketing-launch-029036.php

The Journeyman is a person with multiple skills. They are "highly skilled" labor in any field of manufacturing. Apprenticeship training is used to train journeyman which combines on-the-job training with academic instruction for those entering the workforce.  It is also known as dual-training program.

The advantage to this type of training is that the manufacturer will make an investment in a program that pays the workers while they are in job training. Some ways to eliminate the shortage of skilled labor are:

• Make a contract with workers who want training.
• Offer job security and long term employment.
• Provide apprentice training with job security.

To know more about apprenticeship training and ways to eliminate the shortage of skilled labor follow:  http://www.industryweek.com/recruiting-retention/kind-training-we-need-manufacturing

A data lake is a storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its native format until it is needed. According to Gartner, the advantage of Data lakes is: helps in addressing the old and new problem by providing the relevant set of data for analyzing the situation. Disadvantages are:

• Lack of data quality.
• Security and access control.
• Data Lake requires proper infrastructure.

But using purpose built cloud systems security, access control and scalability problem can be solved, but data quality is not good.
 To know more about Data Lake and its advantage and disadvantages, read an article Data Lakes: Emerging Pros and Cons by Joe Panettieri. Link: http://www.information-management.com/news/Big-Data-Lakes-Cloud-Computing-Analytics-10026889-1.html

“Customers don’t want just a personalized experience, they want a full package”

According to 2015 Customer Experience Trends Report and infographic released by InMoment, customers do appreciate the personalized touches that brands create for them, they are much more interested in providing value back to the company.

Lori Alcala, in her article on cmswire.com, summarizes top customer experience trends revealed in the report. They are:

• Shorter Surveys, More Listening
• More Reliable Online Reviews
• Stronger Relationships

She has also added an interesting excerpt from the report in her article. To see that and increase your knowledge spectrum about customer experience, please visit the following link:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/want-to-know-the-top-cx-trends-infographic-029002.php

According to Dan Kennedy’s book, “No B.S. Direct Marketing",  business is a bucket into which we owners pour ideas, energy and money in hopes of stirring up profits and the failure to follow- up customers is a big hole in that bucket .

Therefore, a business should always look forward to follow up -both existing and lost- customers in order to serve them better, retain them and also, build long lasting relations. William Ballard, Freelance Writer and Author, in his article on entrepreneur.com gives 4 steps that should be followed to follow up customers when the answer is “no” in first stance. They are:

Step 1.Redeem yourself by re-stating or re-selling your existing offer.

Step 2.Give a firm or humorous “2^nd Notice” message to create scarcity.

Step 3.The “third and final notice.”

Step 4.The final step is to present another offer.

To know more, visit the following link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244094

According to Kevan Lee (Content Crafter, Buffer), testing phase in a social media marketing is an important phase, which include "What to test" and "how to test." Some questions you should ask yourself while testing are:

• Which one thing you will be testing?
• What metric will be my best measurement of success?
• Do I have enough data to assume this result will be true and repeatable for everyone?

In this article, the author writes about some tips for improving social media marketing test. They are: testing one variable at a time, look at the right data, compare consistently and check for statistical significance. 

To know more about the test used for various social media marketing sites, read on: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245478

For any business, demand forecasting is an important function. Demand Forecasting is the activity of estimating the quantity of a product or service that consumers will purchase in near future. It helps you to order inventory and arrange staff for fulfilling customers need.

According to Peter Daisyme (Co-founder of Hostt), some ways to make demand forecasting more accurate are:

• Use the right set of data for making decisions.
• Consider the variables like the seasonal trend, random trend, economic conditions, etc.
• Know your customers and business.
• Each year, you should refine your demand forecasting technique.
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244823

For long term survival of an organization, they need regular and loyal customers. According to Brian Horn (Author and Co-Founder of Authority Alchemy), for building long term relationships with your customers, an organization needs to build trust. Following are the ways to build relationship and brand loyalty: • Offering returning customers a discount on services.
• Giving rewards for references.
• Offering updates.
• Really caring about your customers.
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245439

According to a survey, for hiring a customer service worker, an employer approximately spend $8800 on hiring and training and 70% of customer service worker leave a job within 1year. Some steps for employee retention are: • Provide training to workers and motivate them.
• Evaluate the performance of the employees and give feedback.
• Implement the customer service training software.
• Give employee work from home choice, this will reduce cost per employee up to $2000.
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245524

Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you; they insist that their friends do business with you.
   - Chip Bell

Customer Loyalty should be a priority for every business. To retain loyal customers and thus, contribute to growth of the business, every marketer must take certain steps. John Rampton, in his article on entrepreneur.com shares 25 tips for earning customer loyalty. Some of them are:

• Share your values
• Be transparent
• Create a sense of community
• Use social proof
• Anticipate problems

To know more, visit the following link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245365