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My Podcast With Skava: What Can We Learn From Canadian Commerce?

December 7, 2018 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Back in August of 2018, at the Etail East conference in Boston, I met some of the team at Skava Commerce, a modular platform designed to keep up with evolving Ecommerce business needs.

I was chatting with Ryan Valdez at the end of Day 2 of the conference, and he mentioned that Skava had a podcast, and he asked if I’d like to come on the show. So a couple of months later, I met with his team, and we did just that.

The podcast discussed Canadian Ecommerce, trends in the industry, and Digital Transformation.

Here it is in its entirety:

What Can We Learn From Canadian Commerce (Podcast)

WBR Whitepaper: The New Rules of Holiday Readiness

October 14, 2018 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

If you work in Retail, Holiday Readiness is not just any event, it’s the event. It’s the retail version of the Indy 500, a marquee event that overshadows the rest of the year (or all the other races). It usually makes or breaks a year for a retailer, and without knowing it, it’s also the most exciting, yet stressful time for even consumers and shoppers alike. All the research, discounts, searches, add to carts, and waiting to pull the trigger on the best deals you’ve waited months – or the whole year – for.

Amplify that by 100 when you work in retail. You have at least 6+ months of planning and strategy, while analyzing previous years and current trends, watching your competition like a hawk, and then the daily, precise execution that takes place through November and December. All in the hopes and prayers your customers will love your deals and offers, and buy, buy, buy!

I was asked to take part in a Worldwide Business Research feature on Holiday Readiness, in conjunction with Etail East and ShipStation. This go-to Whitepaper, The New Rules of Holiday Readiness, can help retailers gather insights, strategies, and expectations for the upcoming holiday season. In total, 167 retailers took part in the Whitepaper, which also includes a valuable 2018 Holiday Readiness Checklist.

Click below to see the entire Whitepaper.

The New Rules of Holiday Readiness

AdAge Feature: The Promise and Power of Local Marketing

October 8, 2018 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Location-based Marketing has never been this important. That statement would have been true in 2010, 2015, and today in 2018. The power of your mobile device, the constant improvement in GPS location services (especially as it relates to retail locations), geo-targeted Digital Marketing campaigns that are gaining more prominence and are getting more efficient, and the fact that consumers seem to be more open than ever to receive notifications via mobile or email if they are near one of their favourtie stores, and the offer is tempting enough. Add in the proliferation of social networks that know your location, and voice search, and this is a fun time to be a marketer trying to drive traffic to physical locations.

However, Marketers are also entering a new age in the integration of enterprise strategies with local tactics and channels, making local marketing and personalization even more complex.

For those that don’t read AdAge, you should start. It is one of the best news sources for anything Digital, and the ever evolving advertising, branding, and marketing industry definitely needs a reliable go-to. So I was thrilled when AdAge and the DAC Group asked me to give my thoughts in their 2nd Annual study on The Promise and Power of Local Marketing: rapidly evolving technology and an experience-driven economy are making local more vital than ever.

It’s always exciting when you read and love a news publication, and then one day, they ask you to be quoted for an an article, blog post or study.

Click below to see the entire feature.

The Promise and Power of Local Marketing

The Parallels Between Leading and Hiking Alone – My Trip to Sedona

March 11, 2018 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

“For each of us there is a special place in this world…A place where beauty, adventure and majesty capture the soul…Discover your place and discover your soul.” Author Unknown.

In early March, I took a trip to Sedona. Now this was not just any trip. I had Sedona on my list of places to visit. You know, that list you make and then visit every other place on it. Not me. Not anymore. My lists are my bond. If I put it on there, I will do it. Sedona, which is 2 hours north of Phoenix in the state of Arizona, was a place that I’ve been drawn to for a few years now. In January, I got an email from WestJet saying if I booked in the next 24 hours, I would get to use $225 WestJet dollars. I booked within minutes of opening the email. Oh, and did I mention I was going to visit Sedona all alone? Yes, all alone.

So I booked this trip on a whim (didn’t ask my wife, but she was there when I booked it). And now I had to plan it. (Usually, my wife does this stuff). So January and most of February happened, and I hadn’t planned a thing. With 7 days left before takeoff, I finally got to it. I booked my hotel (the Matterhorn Inn) and got a car rental from the Phoenix Airport (GMC Terrain from Avis). And then I planned my days, which involved tons of hiking. I researched which trails to go on, and how to get there, and where to park. My wife told me of a Reiki session I should do. I hold no clue what that was. But I booked it. Let me rewind for a second.

Reconnecting The Heart, Mind, and Spirit

The reason I was going on this trip was to connect again – with spirituality, my heart, and well, my life again. I had lost myself a bit in the last couple of years. My son Luca has certainly helped me regain much of that and fill my heart. Luca was turning 7 months around the time of this trip. He is my heart. He is my life. But you can always improve in life, right? This was by no means a mid-life crisis. I turned 36 a few weeks before this trip. And I still feel young. This trip was more about soul searching and opening myself up to new experiences, and trying to find some spirituality. I am Catholic. I believe in God. But at times, like anyone, I question things. Why did this happen? Why did this not happen? How can I get over this? How can I fulfill my full potential? What is my life purpose? Where is God when I or others get hurt? What is my meaning? I was not expecting my Sedona trip to solve all this, but I was open to it, whatever it was.

[Read more…]

Innovation: The Great Divide

February 27, 2016 by Johnny Russo 1 Comment

Has any term been overused in the last 15 years more than innovation? Some companies live and breathe by this: Google. Apple. Facebook. Starbucks. Uber. Tesla. See a trend. Five of the six companies you just read are tech companies. Yes, even Tesla. Why can’t we innovate quick enough in other industries like retail, travel, and manufacturing? That is the great divide.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said something that rings true: “There can be no great innovation without great risk.”

**A Little Different is Not Innovation**

If we do the same things slightly different, we are not innovating, we are improving. Innovation involves something bigger. Something greater. And innovation does not need to be defined as strictly a technological endeavour, although granted, there usually is a technology play. But a company can be innovative in numerous ways: allow employees access to any social media site while at work; introduce a flexible schedule for all employees; build a company gym with state of the art equipment to promote health; build a daycare on the main floor of the company. Innovation comes in many different forms, but let’s be clear: innovation at its core involves a completely different way of thinking or doing. While the outcome may be unclear – not everything passes or results in profits – the road to get there is, namely, do different, and do it large.

Innovation in Digital Marketing and Ecommerce

When it comes to innovation in Digital Marketing and Ecommerce for your business, think of how Uber can enhance your delivery timelines with same-day deliveries; think of how mobile adoption and shopping has scaled so quickly, and build entirely for a mobile-first attitude in everything you and your team does; for multi-channel retailers, think of beacon technology and how that can improve an in-store experience (think for an instance of you walking into an apparel retailer, you get a push notification from the brand’s app asking what you are looking for, you respond by voice and say “jeans”, and through a wayfinding system you are shown exactly where the pair of jeans and colour you are looking for is located, you try them on in the fitting room, and pay right then and there on your app); think too of reserved parking for online pickups in store; what about only accepting payments through a mobile wallet?