10 Awesome E-Commerce, Mobile, and Millennial Marketing Posts: E-commerce Link Digest

It’s been a great week here at Thinks Central, folks. Hope you’ve had an amazing week too. Why not take a minute and check out this list of 10 awesome e-commerce, mobile, and Millennial marketing posts? They’re a great way to finish out this past week and set yourself up for success in the days ahead. Enjoy:

1. Mobile Commerce Daily explains how mobile is transforming the grocery/CPG business. Hang with me for a second; I’ll come back to why this is a very big deal in just a moment or two.
2. Jalopnik points out that everyone was wrong, Millennials buy a ton of cars. It seems the real reason Millennials weren’t buying any cars for a while had more to do with money than any specific shift in buying behavior. Now that they’re getting their hands on a little more cash, they’re buying more cars than any market segment than Boomers. Given that Millennials outnumber every demographic except — and possibly including — Boomers, this is a really significant development. More on this in a moment, too.
3. Adding to the story, Quartz notes that in 7 of Africa’s leading economies one-third of mobile users pay with their phones, which leads us to…
4. Take those three prior articles, put them all together, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about when I highlight the big lie about mobile commerce everyone’s telling right now. We’re in the midst of a (silly, stupid) mobile commerce backlash, but with increasing use of mobile across all product categories, growth in Millennials’ — the original mobile generation — purchasing power, and the rise of mobile purchasing in loads of markets, that’s a really short-sighted attitude.

   To highlight exactly how short-sighted, note that in a recent interview with eMarketer, Deloitte & Touche US Telecom sector leader/vice-chairman Craig Wigginton said, “Twenty-four percent of the millennials check their smartphone immediately upon waking, and that was excluding the alarm feature. That jumps to 52% within 5 minutes of waking. Almost half of the millennials—45%—check it more than 200 times a day” and “Nearly half of the millennials—48%—indicate an interest in making payments. I think they are really going to be early adopters and help drive a lot more of the mobile payment penetration in the US.” So, um… yeah. Really short-sighted. We’re still in the early days of mobile e-commerce. Expect big things to come.

5. While we’re on the topic of mobile e-commerce, we recently took a look at what The Gap can teach us about mobile e-commerce. Good stuff.
6. eMarketer notes that mobile advertising is farther along than you think.
7. Sticking with mobile for another moment or two, Search Engine Land says Google’s mobile friendly update is not a disaster, but an opportunity. Absolutely. Good read overall.
8. Moving to e-commerce more generally, Luxury Daily asks, “should luxury brands stop avoiding e-commerce?” As you might imagine, the answer to this is an emphatic “Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.”
9. Marketing Charts has data showing that A/B testing is considered the most effective landing page optimization method. You should be sure to check out our past A/B testing coverage for more.
10. And, finally, Skift breaks down some key insights about how Disney built its Magic Band+ that Fast Company just reported on. Very cool info, and a great companion to this look at 4 keys to executing on digital. All in all, a terrific way to round-out this week’s list.

I hope you enjoyed these 10 awesome e-commerce, mobile, and Millennial marketing posts from the past week. Make sure to check out other entries from our E-commerce Link Digest series, including these
5-plus can’t miss mobile commerce and marketing posts from the past week, these 9 superb social and mobile e-commerce missives, these 6 quick e-commerce and digital marketing winners, as well as these “9 Amazing Millennial, Mobile and Digital Marketing Columns: the Top Posts from March” when you get a moment, too.

Do you want learn even more about how your customers’ changing behavior shapes e-commerce and marketing? Be sure an register to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it’s targeted specifically at hotel and resort marketers, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.

You can also check out these slides I had the pleasure of speaking to a great audience yesterday about how to lead digital transformation within large organizations (a topic we’ve been talking about a fair bit lately). Here are the slides for your reference:

And, finally, you might want to take a look at some of our past coverage of the e-commerce, mobile commerce, and digital marketing overall, including:

• 10 Key Posts about Millennials and Mobile: E-commerce Link Digest
• The Secrets Behind “It’s All E-commerce” for 2014
• The Zen of Digital Marketing Strategy
• 7 Steps to E-Commerce Heaven
• Today and Tomorrow: Mobile and The Changing Customer Journey
• Mobile Makes E-commerce Even More “Frictionless”
• Your 2014 Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions – Thinks Out Loud Episode 56