نوشته ها در دسته بندی: بازاریابی ویروسی

Study a successful entrepreneur, and you’ll likely uncover resilience. Take Aaron Marino. Twenty years ago his first business, a fitness center, failed, leaving him with half a million dollars of debt. Fast-forward to 2024, and Marino is a YouTube celebrity and thriving serial entrepreneur, mainly with men’s grooming products.

He first appeared on the podcast in 2020. We recently caught up. I asked him about failure, success, helping others, and more.

The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us about yourself.

Aaron Marino: I’m an entrepreneur at my core. I started posting YouTube videos in 2008 about men’s styles, grooming, dating, and relationships. I called the channel Alpha M, and it took off. I wasn’t that great at it, but I kept doing it.

Over the years, it’s allowed me to start a few businesses and verticals. I have had 20 companies. Most didn’t work out, some worked out a little, and others have done reasonably well. A few years ago, I started a channel called Alpha Mpire, where I interview other entrepreneurs.

Failure was one of the best things for me. I had a fitness center. It was an epic failure. That was my dream from age 12 — to own a fitness center. I shut it down and had half a million dollars in debt. I then drove a beer cart at a country club just to put gas in my car. That was the scariest time of my life. I didn’t have a plan B. The failure forced me to try other things less scary. I was like, okay, what’s the worst thing that can happen? I’m driving a beer cart. I’m broke. I’m bankrupt, but I’m still alive.

Bandholz: How do you emotionally get through bankruptcy as an entrepreneur?

Marino: Stress and anxiety about money and inability to pay bills robbed me of joy like nothing else. I was making a hundred dollars every three weeks driving a beer cart. I was as broke as it got. My credit cards were all shut down. Declaring bankruptcy was a huge emotional relief. It was as if I got a new lease on life. I knew I would never make the same mistakes again. It shaped me in terms of how I think about money and debt. I became more responsible. I recovered and bought a $35,000 car within a year at 100% finance.

I believe there’s a time and a place for loans and debt. If you need it, you need it. A business has two ways to raise money: incur debt or sell equity. The choice depends on how much money and help you need.

Bandholz: You have several businesses now.

Marino: The largest is a men’s skincare company called Tiege Hanley. That was a partnership with two other guys. One of the founders put up $170,000. I generated marketing material through my YouTube channel. We had another founder who also brought equity and technical skills.

I started a hair product business called Pete & Pedro. I did that through white labeling. I started that whole business for $3,000. I went to a friend who was a stylist, and he told me to call people I knew, which began the process.

I started a sunglasses company called Enemy that’s no longer around. I funded it myself. I shut it down because the product was too expensive for what I was charging, leaving no margin for marketing.

I like putting up the money whenever possible. I don’t take substantial wild risks. I don’t need $100,000 to start a business. I can validate many of these businesses for much less.

Bandholz: Tell us about Alpha Mpire, the YouTube channel.

Marino: My original channel, Alpha M., focuses on men’s grooming. I launched it back in 2008. But I love talking about business. I started Alpha Mpire in 2021 to share my experiences and those of other entrepreneurs. I found a renewed passion. With this new channel, there were no expectations. I didn’t have to worry about sponsorships. I could talk about anything. It started to grow. It’s not the biggest channel — around 70,000 subscribers.

The internet has changed the game regarding entrepreneurship and business. It’s like taking a test with the book open. If you want to start a business, the information is out there. It’s never been more affordable.

Everybody has the same access and opportunities. Some people will take action. Most won’t. I tell new entrepreneurs to find somebody who’s done it before. Copy what they did, get their advice or somebody else’s, and then do it yourself. It’s not that hard. If I can do it, anybody can.

Bandholz: Where can people follow you?

Marino: Check out my mastermind community, TheWhiteLabelMpire.com, or my Alpha Mpire YouTube channel.

An “ideal customer profile” describes a company’s most valuable prospects, those who find a product or service seemingly perfect for their needs.

Ideal customer profiles help merchants:

• Select marketing channels,
• Create ad copy and design,
• Narrow outreach,
• Build email sequences,
• Produce how-to, problem-solving videos.

AI platforms have vast databases of businesses and their audiences, helpful for defining an ideal customer. I tested three platforms for this article.

Custom GPT: ICP Generator

“ICP – Ideal Customer Profile Generator,” a custom GPT (available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers), creates profiles based on a URL. I tested it on Smarty Marketing, the site I launched last year. The results were useful, although lacking specifics. My company’s ideal customers per the custom GPT are:

• In the growth phase: Companies aiming to expand their online presence, increase website traffic, and enhance brand visibility.

• Digital forward: Businesses that understand and value digital marketing’s impact on growth and are ready to invest in innovative SEO strategies.

• In competitive markets: Enterprises in industries where online competition is fierce, making them more likely to benefit from unique and effective SEO and link-building strategies.

• Content creators: Organizations that produce valuable content and can leverage infographic marketing and social media to engage and expand their audience.

• Seeking long-term results: Businesses focused on building lasting brand awareness and not just short-term gains, aligning with Smarty Marketing’s emphasis on long-term outcomes.

I could continue prompting the custom GPT for the best keywords in organic and paid search campaigns, the best social media platforms, helpful Facebook audience targeting, and so on.

Lemlist

Lemlist builds free ideal customer profiles based on a URL. The profiles are personas with names, demographic details, goals and objectives, and their potential outreach strategies. The reports are useful for ideas and brainstorming. The most helpful sections are:

• An ideal customer’s responsibilities and pain points,
• The ideal customer’s most effective marketing channels (“touchpoints”),
• Risks to ideal customers of not achieving goals.

Lemlist builds free ideal customer profiles based on a URL — with names, demographic details, goals and objectives, and potential outreach strategies. Click image to enlarge.

For example, Lemlist identified my company’s ideal customer as a marketing director (spot-on) with these pain points:

Struggling with understanding organic search strategies, underperforming marketing campaigns, and lack of unique digital content.

And the risks to my ideal customers of not solving problems are:

Continued decrease in online visibility, inability to compete with competitors’ online presence, loss of potential leads and sales.

M1-Project

M1-Project offers various AI-powered marketing tools, including generators for an ideal customer profile and a marketing strategy. Input your URL and M1-Project will:

• Create a product description,
• List the problems your products solve,
• Segment your target audience.

Edit the descriptions, problems, and segments to your business. Then choose your preferred segment, and the tool will create an ideal customer profile. The downloadable document costs $99 and includes the ideal customer’s:

• Position, income, and pain points,
• Tools or platforms (potential partners for your business),
• Publications,
• Channels frequented,
• Followed social media accounts.

Every week we publish a rundown of new products from companies offering services to ecommerce and omnichannel merchants. This installment includes updates on payment platforms, smart search, B2B commerce, resale programs, gated-offer tools, logistics, customer experience platforms, and generative AI tools.

Got an ecommerce product release? Email [email protected].

New Tools for Merchants: March 18

Amazon launches new generative AI-powered listing tool. In addition to using text or an image to generate product listings, sellers can now leverage existing listings by providing Amazon with a URL, which is automatically parsed by generative AI. This new capability is rolling out and will be available to U.S. sellers in the coming weeks.

“List Your Products” page on Amazon Seller Central.

eBay launches Preloved Partner program. eBay is launching a new pilot program late this month to highlight pre-owned fashion, which sellers can join by invitation only. eBay will display a “Preloved Partner” program badge next to qualified items. Eligible sellers must maintain certain performance metrics, including Top Rated Seller status, a minimum of 95% positive feedback, 30-day returns, and fewer than 1% “Not Received” items.

SAP announces composable payment solution. SAP’s new composable payment solution for retailers, Commerce Cloud, integrates with numerous third-party payment service providers, including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, and Airwallex. Commerce Cloud’s composable architecture allows retailers to pick payment partners tailored to their unique needs and markets. The new framework is extensible and headless, helping ensure the front- and back-ends are decoupled and operate independently.

Walmart Commerce Technologies releases AI-powered logistics platform. Walmart is making its AI-powered logistics platform — Route Optimization — available to businesses as a SaaS solution through Walmart Commerce Technologies. Route Optimization provides businesses of all sizes the use of AI-driven software to optimize driving routes, pack trailers efficiently, and minimize miles traveled. Walmart says companies using this technology avoided 94 million pounds of carbon dioxide by eliminating 30 million unnecessary miles and optimized routes to bypass 110,000 inefficient paths.

Walmart Commerce Technologies

SheerID and Payment Plugins partner on gated offer platform for WooCommerce merchants. SheerID, a provider of identity verification for commerce, has partnered with Payment Plugins, a developer for WooCommerce, to launch SheerID for WooCommerce. The new platform allows merchants to verify consumer eligibility for gated offers and discounts instantly. SheerID states the platform is a no-code, turnkey solution.

Rebuy introduces Smart Search for ecommerce. Rebuy, an ecommerce personalization platform for Shopify brands, has released Smart Search with the goal of increasing conversion rates and lowering cart abandonment rates through personalized experiences. Rebuy states that Smart Search can be set up and implemented in minutes. Additional enhancements will be released throughout the year, including collections merchandising and semantic search.

Fortis and WooCommerce partner on B2B payment integration. Fortis, a payment and commerce technology service provider, has partnered with WooCommerce. This collaboration aims to provide B2B payment functionality to the WooCommerce platform and Fortis’s expanding back-office ecosystem. Fortis will debut as a verified payments app in the WooCommerce Marketplace and the WordPress Plugins Marketplace.

Fortis

Verndale announces strategic partnership with BigCommerce. Verndale, an ecommerce agency, has partnered with BigCommerce to provide design, development, and optimization services to merchant sites. Verndale’s commerce practice serves mid-market and enterprise clients and works with content management systems, enterprise resource planning platforms, customer relationship management platforms, and product information management databases.

Brevo launches Commerce Suite for customer-data analysis. Brevo, a provider of customer-management applications, has launched Commerce Suite to provide merchants with a 360-degree view of customer data. Brevo says Commerce Suite enables merchants to analyze the full spectrum of their customers’ purchasing habits across all channels, allowing them to send more personalized recommendations. Per Brevo, merchants using Commerce Suite can improve the customer experience through multichannel communication adapted to each customer by email, SMS, chat, and social media — per Brevo.

ShopMy secures $18.5 million to help influencers earn more from promoting products. ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators, has raised $18.5 million in a round led by Inspired Capital. ShopMy’s platform equips creators with the tools to earn from their product recommendations, such as building digital storefronts, accessing a catalog of millions of products, making commissionable links, and chatting directly with companies. ShopMy will use the money to scale its network of 40,000 creators.​

Zendesk to acquire Ultimate for AI-powered CX automation. Zendesk, a customer service platform, has announced it will acquire Ultimate, a provider of help-desk automation, to deliver a customer-service AI offering. With the addition of Ultimate, Zendesk says it will offer AI agents enhanced intelligence for proactive problem-solving, complementing human expertise. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ultimate

Content marketing is foundational for many businesses, especially those seeking ongoing customer relationships.

Producing content, however, has changed since OpenAI released ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022. Generative AI has made creating content faster, easier, and relatively less expensive. But it has not necessarily made content better.

Here’s why.

ChatGPT 3.5 can create content faster, easier, and cheaper. Is it better?

Nothing New to Say

Circa 2024, generative AI does not produce new ideas or even develop its own conclusions. Rather, it regurgitates information that it has indexed.

Generative AI is excellent for some tasks. For example, gen-AI search results often answer a query on-site, which is handy for users but not website owners.

However, enter a generative AI prompt to produce content, and you can be certain it will not offer anything new. Instead, it will produce an article similar to everything else on the topic.

Careful prompting and editing help, but lack of originality is a fundamental problem with using generative AI for content marketing.

No Reason to Rank

In 2024, Google says it does not penalize websites for using AI-generated content.

Nonetheless, if the content your company publishes is the same as everything else online, Google and other search engines will have no real reason to rank yours.

Search engines want to rank content demonstrating expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Thus, just taking the output from a generative AI verbatim may not lead to content that deserves to rank.

Not Your Brand

A key element of successful content marketing is a consistent, distinct brand voice that resonates with the audience.

Men’s clothier Mr Porter is a good example. Its “The Journal” blog publishes original profiles and apparel suggestions with an opinionated, modern vibe. AI-generated content might miss these nuances, leading to content that feels generic or disconnected from the brand’s identity.

Put another way, AI might not capture your audience’s needs, preferences, and feedback as human-created content can.

If a company has built a reputation for being a bold, strong brand that supports environmental causes, a middling composition could change customers’ perceptions of the business.

Mr Porter’s “The Journal” publishes original, opinionated articles on men’s apparel, such as this profile of an NFL player.

Not Accurate

Large language models and other AI tools routinely produce inaccuracies.

For example, in August 2023, the Associated Press published an article titled “Chatbots sometimes make things up. Is AI’s hallucination problem fixable?”

“Spend enough time with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots, and it doesn’t take long for them to spout falsehoods,” wrote the AP’s Matt O’Brien.

“Described as hallucination, confabulation or just plain making things up, it’s now a problem for every business, organization and high school student trying to get a generative AI system to compose documents and get work done.”

The most egregious have come more recently from Google’s Gemini and Adobe’s Firefly.

In February 2024, Gemini made headlines when it all but refused to produce images of white people because it had been programmed with diversity in mind. This programming resulted in wildly inaccurate images, which led Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai to send an email on February 27, 2024, ridiculing Gemini for its obvious bias.

In March 2024, Adobe’s Firefly reportedly produced historical images favoring diversity over truth.

Content marketers need to be on the lookout for “hallucination” and bias.

Not Your Content

Copyright infringement is an emerging problem for AI-generated content in two ways.

First, there are now legal fights over whether OpenAI or Google has the right to train models using copyright-protected materials. The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is perhaps the leading example. Courts will resolve these copyright issues, but the outcome could impact the use of gen-AI for content production.

Second, AI content generators could be plagiarizing. Plagiarism detection software found that about 60% of the copy ChatGPT 3.5 produces is plagiarized, according to a February 2024 Axios report.

Content marketers should check any AI-written copy before using it.

Free resources from the design community can enhance an ecommerce site. Here is a list of new web tools and design elements from winter 2024. The tools include generative AI shortcuts, logo creation, mockup generators, coding, animations, background images and audio, domain names, free fonts, and more.

All of the tools are free or have free plans, though most also offer premium versions. The fonts are free for commercial projects. Before using a font, be sure to verify its terms.

Free Design Tools

ThinkBuddy AI is a native ChatGPT client for macOS. Use voice or screenshots to ask AI, execute commands with text selection, create and save custom prompts, customize shortcuts for quick use, and dictate with Whisper. Choose from the selection of AI models to customize your macOS AI experience.

ThinkBuddy AI

Gem Domains is a free search engine for expired domains. Enter keywords, organic search data, price range, and more. Use it to find the domain for your next project.

Logo Packer is a web app that generates logo variations. Instantly create the variations (black, white, and inverse color), export in multiple formats, and stay organized with structured folders.

Shotune is a screenshot mockup generator. With its library of device frames, Shotune supports a wide range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Generate backgrounds to complement your mockup. Easily add text, shapes, and overlays to create a unique and personalized look.

Shotune

Smudge.ai is a Chrome extension that provides online access to ChatGPT-powered shortcuts. Create and edit engaging content, or bridge language barriers with AI-powered translations.

Slogan Generator is a tool to generate one-sentence marketing summaries for your business. Enter your business description and audience, and generate 30 slogans for free. It’s a fun tool to help find the perfect hook.

Recraft is a generative AI design tool for creating and editing digital illustrations, vector art, icons, and three-dimensional graphics in a uniform brand style. Upload an image, and Recraft will replicate more in the same style.

Recraft

Codingoals is a platform to learn how to code JavaScript, React, and CSS through puzzles and challenges. Learn how to build a single-page application using JavaScript and understand the benefits of modern frameworks such as React or Angular.

Mix.audio is a multimodal AI music generator that creates and customizes quality background music. Use the wizard to generate royalty-free music by scanning your ideas through text, images, and even audio information.

Creatica is a web app that generates unique SVG and vector backgrounds. It offers a vast library of designs, from intricate geometric patterns to fluid gradients. Use the real-time preview to see how each customization impacts your design.

Creatica

BlitzBear is a web app for search engine optimization that cuts the manual work of improving your content. It combs through your articles and compares them against your competitors’ search engine result listings. It then serves your optimized pages after you preview and approve changes.

Audio Note AI is an app that turns thoughts into practical text. Speak your ideas, and let AI refine them into formats of your choice, such as journal entries, tweets, notes, lists, or LinkedIn posts.

Lottiebox is a Lottie animation library and set of animation tools to help users stand out from standard web experiences. Utilize pre-made, eye-catching animations for websites, presentations, newsletters, mobile apps, decks, email, and social media.

Data Dead Drop is a data storage bank that self-destroys content after access. Upload content and specify how long it should be kept. Share your link, or use it to download your file, which is automatically destroyed after being accessed a predefined period or number of times.

Data Dead Drop

Free Fonts

Leentank is a sans-serif display font in four styles. Rounded and geometric, Leentank is suitable for eye-catching displays and logos.

Leentank

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Kids Ballad is an all-cap handwritten font that’s friendly yet legible.

Kids Ballad

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Voye is a striking geometric sans-serif font for headlines, displays, and small paragraphs. Its simplicity conveys a modern elegance.

Voye

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Pingsan is a chunky, rounded display font with comfort and cheer. The feel-good characters lend a good vibe to any message or brand.

Pingsan

GWI is a U.K.-based research firm providing global audience data to merchants and agencies. According to GWI’s 2024 “Connecting the Dots” report, chat and messaging are the most favored apps among internet users, with 94.7% of those aged 16 to 64 stating (in January 2024) they’ve used at least one of these platforms in the last 30 days. Social networks are also widely utilized, with 94.3% of the same age group reporting usage in the past month.

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Nearly 61% of GWI’s survey respondents in the 16 to 64 age group stated that their primary reason for using the internet is “finding information,” making it the most prevalent rationale. “Staying connected with friends and family” is cited by 56.6% of respondents as their primary motivation.

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According to Similarweb, Google.com was the most visited website globally, with 81.1 billion visits in February 2024. YouTube.com and Facebook.com came in second and third with 30.6 billion and 15.3 billion respectively.

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Per the GWI report, Instagram is the most popular social media platform globally, chosen by 16.5% of internet users aged 16 to 64. This percentage is more than double the 7.4% who favored TikTok.

Businesses change website domains for many reasons — rebranding, acquisition, product changes, and more. While it is often necessary, a new domain reduces organic search traffic by upwards of 30% in my experience.

Similar to a new URL structure, domain changes require 301 redirects, which leak equity. I’ve seen rankings slip for months afterward. If the decline persists, a detailed audit could help.

Here are my go-to tools for domain-change audits.

Google Search Console

The first step is to keep the abandoned domain verified within Search Console to access historical ranking and click data.

Next, after verifying the ownership of your new domain, notify Google of the switch via Search Console’s “Change of Address” tool at Settings > Change of address.

Notify Google of the new domain via Search Console’s “Change of Address” tool. Click image to enlarge.

Search Console can identify which pages or folders lost the most traffic from the move. For this, open the Performance > Pages reports for the old and new domains (each in separate tabs). By default, both URL lists are sorted by the number of organic clicks, making it easy to compare the top-performing pages.

Don’t delay the research, as Search Console shows only 16 months of data. I typically access the report two, three, and four months afterward to monitor shifts.

It’s a good sign if no sections, categories, or URLs decline more than others — the move likely produced no structural problems.

If some areas slipped more than others, turn to the Wayback Machine.

Wayback Machine

Domain changes frequently include altering the site structure, especially with acquisitions or product differences. Wayback Machine helps identify which structural changes lowered traffic.

Having noted in Search Console the URLs with material drops, compare archived versions of those pages in Wayback Machine to the new ones, ensuring:

• The main navigation includes the URLs as prominently as the previous domain,
• The URLs are interlinked throughout the site — in related products, guides, sidebar widgets, footers, and so on.

Semrush

A loss in link equity from the old site to the new could account for the traffic decline. Semrush can help pinpoint the loss.

To start, run both domains through the tool’s primary analysis bar. Then proceed to Backlink Analytics > Indexed Pages and check the box “Broken links.” This report for both sites will list the pages that have broken backlinks and return 404 or 410 errors.

Semrush’s “Broken links” report lists the pages that return 404 or 410 errors. Click image to enlarge.

Screaming Frog

Domain changes often produce unexpected structural glitches. Hence it’s critical to run the new site through a web crawler such as Screaming Frog, JetOctopus, or similar.

Most crawlers allow limited access for free. Screaming Frog, for example, crawls 500 pages without charge. Beyond that, the paid version is $259 per year. It includes a crawl-compare feature, handy for contrasting crawls of the old site and the new.

When crawling a site, look for redirect chains. These trap external and internal link equity and extend the crawl time. Both may cause traffic declines.

Phillip Jackson launched Future Commerce in 2016. The company produces articles, newsletters, and podcasts focusing on coming trends and developments in business.

He believes commerce produces a gentler society, one that fosters culture and stability. Commerce is culture, he states.

He and I recently discussed his company’s mission, large versus small brands, the maturity of ecommerce, and more. The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Who are you?

Phillip Jackson: I am the co-founder and CEO of Future Commerce, a small, bootstrapped business researching and producing media for ecommerce businesses. We work with large and small brands. We’re trying to predict the future of commerce, which was technology for the last 15 or 20 years, but now that every business is technology-enabled, we have to think about the next phase. We have four podcasts: Future Commerce, Infinite Shelf, Step by Step, and Decoded.

Ten years ago, big brands said, “We need to be online,” and “What does direct-to-consumer look like for us?” Let’s say you’re dealing with Mondelez (the food and beverage holding company) or some other conglomerate where you have individual brands with their own innovations teams, futures teams, and P&Ls within the business. They’re all resourced differently, have separate budgets, and are not talking to each other.

Some brands will find a way to achieve breakout success on the sly. You have little scrum teams or individual operating teams that don’t ask for permission—they ask for forgiveness and demonstrate success somewhere within the business. Some of the best innovations occur when they bring in entrepreneurs who understand how to get stuff done. They’re not just about theory, sitting in boardrooms, and figuring out spreadsheets. They’re good at rolling their sleeves up and getting things done.

Bandholz: You talk about an idea that commerce is culture. Can you explain?

Jackson: We’ve been at it with Future Commerce for about eight years. Over the last three or four years, ecommerce has mostly been solved. You can talk about all the tips, tricks, and tactics, but generally, it’s just buying a new piece of software.

The early exciting internet promise based on technology is gone. What has become exciting is going back to the fine arts. When I talk to folks in corporate roles, such as the head of commerce for YouTube or the head of innovation for Visa, they yearn for something deeper. Commerce is a human truth, and independent cultures have all created and found each other through trade routes. The world came together through this necessity of having something others need. Commerce is not just a value exchange — it’s a cultural connection.

We’ve learned that live-streaming isn’t the future of commerce, yet every analyst said it would be because that was happening in Asia. Maybe commerce is more cultural. Every independent culture has its own way of expressing itself, and maybe commerce is one of those. We’ve pared it down to “commerce is culture.” It is who we are at our core. It’s what we value.

A French philosopher believed that commerce makes people more amenable. When you have things you love, prize, and value, you don’t want to lose them. People who have nice things become better actors in society. As a nation becomes richer and attains wealth, it’s less prone to social upheavals. Commerce has a gentle effect on society and gives us the capitalist economy today.

Eric Bandholz: Where can people support you?

Jackson: Visit FutureCommerce.com. Find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Since the 1930s, retailers have used the 4-5-4 fiscal calendar to streamline and improve forecasting. This somewhat peculiar planning method could help modern retailers and direct-to-consumer brands.

Ending the year on the same weekday simplifies comparisons across timeframes, aiding in strategic decision-making.

Here’s how.

4-5-4 Calendar

The 4-5-4 retail calendar is a scheduling framework that divides the year into months of four weeks, five weeks, and four weeks in a repeated pattern, ensuring each fiscal month starts and ends on the same weekday. This design aligns sales data across similar periods.

In the United States, the National Retail Federation maintains a 4-5-4 retail calendar for its members.

The NRF’s 4-5-4 retail calendar for 2024-to-2026 divides the year into consistent three-month quarters, wherein the months have four, five, and four weeks, respectively. Click image to enlarge.

4-5-4 Advantages

The 4-5-4 calendar structures the fiscal year into consistent, comparable periods.

The ability to compare date ranges — particularly weeks — facilitates smoother planning and estimates of consumer demand.

I spent nearly 10 years as the director of marketing and ecommerce for an omnichannel retailer. We depended on a 4-5-4 calendar so heavily that I was surprised recently when the respected owner of an ecommerce business told me he’d never heard of it.

Planning. For purchasing and marketing departments, the 4-5-4 calendar is a roadmap through retail’s inherent highs and lows.

The calendar recognizes the predictable swings in consumer shopping, optimizing, if you will, for those critical high-traffic windows, such as major holidays and seasonal shifts.

Imagine planning for the Christmas shopping season, which includes Black Friday. On the Gregorian calendar, Black Friday shifts between November 23 and 29, depending on the year.

This variability makes it challenging to accurately compare year-over-year sales for November because the number of post-Black Friday shopping days in that month can differ.

Enter the 4-5-4 calendar, which groups weeks into a consistent pattern, wherein each fiscal month starts and ends on the same day of the week every year. With this setup, Black Friday falls in the last week of November with exactly one shopping day afterward. In the Gregorian calendar, the number of shopping days after Black Friday varies from one to three.

With the 4-5-4 calendar, Black Friday occurs in the last week of November and is followed by exactly one shopping day that month, simplifying annual performance comparisons. Image: NRF.

This 4-5-4 consistency allows for direct, apples-to-apples comparisons of the critical holiday shopping period from one year to the next. Merchants can accurately measure the impact of Black Friday promotions and the subsequent shopping days until the end of November without the distortions caused by Thanksgiving Day’s floating date. Easter presents similar challenges.

Procurement and marketing teams can forecast demand, plan inventory, and set marketing strategies more precisely.

Analysis. Adopting the 4-5-4 calendar introduces a level of standardization that is helpful for the analytical rigor required in retailing and ecommerce.

This standardization simplifies conducting quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year analyses in most cases. However, there is a snag. Since a year is a bit longer than 52 weeks, the 4-5-4 calendar has a “leap year” where a 53rd week is added. Thus, the comparison fails every five or six years. Nonetheless, it’s far more standardized than the Gregorian alternative.

Bottom line, merchants can compare performance metrics such as sales, website traffic, and inventory turnover without the shifting number of shopping days.

4-5-4 Challenges

The 4-5-4 calendar presents challenges in training, technology, and financial responsibilities.

• Training and education. The 4-5-4 system requires training — explaining what it is, how it works, and how to use it. Accounting folks will likely pick it up quicker than marketers.

• Technological integration. Transitioning to a 4-5-4 fiscal calendar may require substantial adjustments to retail management software, analytics tools, and back-office systems — although the shift is an opportunity to audit current technologies.

• Financial responsibilities. A 4-5-4 methodology can affect obligations that align with the Gregorian calendar, such as tax reporting and compliance. Businesses must plan how their fiscal reporting will interface with tax and other requirements, possibly necessitating adjustments to accounting practices or additional reconciliation steps. Tax professionals experienced with non-standard fiscal periods can provide crucial insights.

Best Option?

Budgetary tools such as the 4-5-4 retail calendar have been around for years. If planning and comparisons pose no challenge for your business, focus elsewhere. Otherwise, switching the calendar might be just what you need.

Every week we publish a list of new products and services for ecommerce and omnichannel merchants. This installment includes updates on livestream commerce, cross-border transactions, logistics, omnichannel sales, customer experience platforms, fraud prevention, and email and SMS marketing.

Got an ecommerce product release? Email [email protected].

New Tools for Merchants: March 25

Checkout.com partners with Bolt to provide accelerated checkout. Bolt, a checkout technology company, and Checkout.com, a payment solutions provider, have announced a partnership. Through this collaboration, Bolt will become Checkout.com’s exclusive one-click checkout provider, and Checkout.com will become Bolt’s preferred payment partner. Bolt will integrate with Checkout.com to expand payment options for new and existing merchants. Checkout.com will leverage Bolt’s network of merchants and over 80 million shoppers.

Bolt

ParcelLab announces Order Tracking for Salesforce on AppExchange. ParcelLab, a post-purchase software provider, has launched Order Tracking for Salesforce Service Cloud on Salesforce AppExchange, an enterprise marketplace for partner apps and experts. Order Tracking for Salesforce provides customer service agents with a unified view of all relevant orders and return information, including product details, shipping status, communications, and the customer’s order history, to resolve delivery questions quickly.

Cirro Fulfillment integrates with Shopify. Cirro Fulfillment has integrated with Shopify. Shopify merchants can now connect their store data with Cirro Fulfillment for enhanced logistics management. Cirro Fulfillment has more than 4,000 clients using its fulfillment service in over 80 centers globally.

Merkle launches a global messaging solution. Merkle, a customer experience management platform, has launched Intelligent Messaging to create unified brand experiences by blending AI assistance and human interaction. With Intelligent Messaging, Merkle says it can create turnkey chat experiences across social and messaging platforms, delivering always-on conversational interactions throughout the customer journey.

Merkle

​​Cart.com launches Constellation AI for product merchandising and inventory management. Cart.com, a provider of unified commerce and logistics solutions for B2C and B2B companies, launched Constellation AI, a suite of features embedded across the company’s platform. According to Cart.com, Constellation AI leverages machine learning algorithms, predictive modeling, and generative AI to make selling and listing products more efficient. Features include new sales channel identification, product title and description generation, intelligent repricing, and AI-powered demand forecasting.

PriceSpider launches new commerce enablement capabilities. PriceSpider, a customer journey platform, has released tools to build omnichannel experiences. Auto-Create automates product feed maintenance and management. Enhanced data sharing provides brands using a dedicated warehouse with direct query capabilities, API connectivity, and native connectors. The Click to Retailer feature offers brands purchase paths created and enabled within minutes through self-service admin.

Commerce experience platform Nosto integrates with Klaviyo for personalized cross-channel shopping. Nosto, a commerce experience platform, has announced an integration with automated marketing provider Klaviyo, enabling retailers to build personalized shopping journeys. Brands can now import Klaviyo’s segments and email lists into Nosto and provide a personalized, on-site experience. Using Nosto’s segment details within Klaviyo, brands can create relevant email and SMS campaigns with personalized content based on shoppers’ behaviors and affinities, such as color and size preferences.

Nosto

AliExpress launches livestream shopping in the U.K. AliExpress, an Alibaba-owned retail marketplace, has launched a livestreaming ecommerce service in the U.K. through a partnership with Vogue Business. Shoppers can browse a platform where local models, actors, and TV personalities host livestream videos to sell products. Each creator will earn a commission on every sale made via their streams and could potentially develop their own fashion collections through a competition later in the year.

Digital agency Verndale acquires Yaksa to expand ecommerce services. Verndale, a Boston-based agency, has announced the acquisition of Yaksa, a commerce experience agency based in Montréal. This acquisition aims to enhance Verndale’s market presence, expand its service offerings, and deliver value to clients. Yaksa will continue to operate under its own brand for the short term. According to Verndale, the expanded company is now one of the largest independent digital experience agencies in the U.S. and Canada.

Cashfree Payments launches RiskShield to prevent payment fraud. Cashfree Payments, an India-based payments platform and API banking company, has launched RiskShield, a real-time management solution for payment gateways. RiskShield uses advanced AI and machine learning across a merchant network to identify fraudulent transaction patterns and empower merchants with controls to define specific rules for their businesses. According to Cashfree Payments, RiskShield mitigates fraud, minimizes litigation risks, and improves transaction experiences.
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Pandion secures $41.5 million for its residential parcel delivery network. Pandion, a residential delivery network for ecommerce parcels, launched by Amazon Air founder Scott Ruffin, has announced a $41.5 million Series B funding round led by Revolution Growth. Pandion states it will use the funding to accelerate the expansions of its network, including building new technology offerings, expanding its geographic reach, and increasing delivery speed for customers such as Saks Fifth Avenue.

Pandion