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Monetate, a provider of cloud-based technology for ecommerce marketers, today announced the release of a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting titled “Getting The Most From Your Replatforming Project.”

Through in-depth surveys and interviews with ecommerce and technology professionals, the Forrester report uncovers the best practices, common pitfalls, lessons learned and key recommendations during an ecommerce replatforming project.

“Nearly every ecommerce organization faces the replatforming issue,” said David Brussin, founder and CEO of Monetate. “This report’s findings reflect the questions we hear from our customers on a regular basis; ‘How do I run a smarter replatforming process, and how do I continue to optimize my online store throughout the project?’ We commissioned this report to help businesses mitigate the risks of replatforming, and to provide recommendations that ensure success.”

(click here to read the blog post: “6 Critical Steps to Take Before a Replatform”)

With 97% of ecommerce shoppers reporting that a website experience has impacted whether they purchased a product or service from a brand,¹ ecommerce IT and marketing professionals are challenged to create more personal, relevant online customer experiences. However, as the Forrester Consulting report reveals, there are certain common considerations that marketers should be aware of prior to committing to a replatform, including:

• Key performance indicators tend to dip post-launch. KPIs like conversion rates and average order values often dip following the launch of the new platform and take up to three months to return to pre-launch levels.
• The average delay for replatforming projects is 3.9 months. A four-month project delay amplifies risks associated with launching the new platform.
• Scope is a common victim of replatforming projects. In order to meet timelines and budget, 25% of organizations end up limiting the project’s scope, which can negatively impact the ROI.
• Multiple forms of testing are critical to success. Critical success factors marketers must make time to thoroughly test during a replatforming project include: the design of features, the layout of the site, and business user tools. Testing should be done before, during and after the replatform.

The Forrester report also offers seven Key Recommendations to help brands prepare for the challenges of a replatform. These insights include practical tips such as using the STEP (scenario-based technology evaluation) for vendor selection, as well as more bottom line-focused insights, like the importance of keeping the business vibrant and growing during the replatform.

“While replatforming is an inevitable reality for most ecommerce and multichannel businesses, it can be a daunting undertaking,” said Bob Myers, CEO of Sheplers. “This report really captures what those of us who’ve been through the replatforming process know; that to be successful, you must test throughout the entire process, set expectations of the C-level, and continue to innovate throughout the project.”

(Click here to see Bob Myers discuss how to Replicate the In-Store Customer Experience Online)

To read the research report in full, download “Getting The Most From Your Replatforming Project.“

¹ “Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Study,” Experience Group at Razorfish, http://feed.razorfish.com/feed09/read-this/

About Monetate

Monetate drives billions of dollars of revenue every year for some of the best-known brands in the world, including Best Buy, QVC, Urban Outfitters, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority, and PETCO. The company’s comprehensive product suite and conversion expertise enable marketers to deliver a more relevant customer experience with unprecedented agility.

Leading marketers rely on Monetate’s cloud-based browser technology to achieve a new level of speed and control, allowing them to run 16 times more optimization campaigns compared to industry averages. The Monetate Agility Suite includes advanced products for testing, merchandising, targeting, and cross-channel consistency, providing an opportunity to bypass IT restraints and react in real time to customer demands. Monetate also helps marketers implement best practices and drive online revenue through its expert strategic services and content publishing teams. For more information visit http://monetate.com/ or follow us on Twitter @Monetate.

Acronis, a leading provider of disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced that Gérard Darel, the leading French designer and global retailer of mid to high-end women’s ready-to-wear clothing and leather goods, has selected Acronis® vmProtect™ backup and disaster recovery software to ensure reduced recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) for the virtual infrastructure of its corporate headquarters, protecting more than 300 virtualized workstations and 100 virtualized servers.

Following a successful brand awareness campaign and the expansion of retail outlets all over the world, Gérard Darel’s IT department faced new challenges managing huge influxes of data. In particular, the company needed to better safeguard business continuity by ensuring the availability of critical data to employees and protecting data against natural disasters and human error. This involved guaranteeing the protection of its digital assets, located on more than 300 virtualized workstations and 100 virtualized servers throughout the company’s network.

Under the leadership of Samuel Chemouni, Technical Director at Gérard Darel, the organization has been relying on VMware virtualization technology for four years. While the cost and efficiency benefits of virtualization were clear to the company’s IT department, Chemouni realized that his backup and recovery provisions were inadequate to protect a virtualized infrastructure.

After vigorous testing of several products, Gérard Darel chose Acronis vmProtect as a comprehensive virtual backup and recovery solution. Chemouni explained: “During the testing of Acronis vmProtect, we found that the backup process only took a few clicks and was completed in less than 5 minutes. This was without any prior training of the team or any contact with Acronis for support. Compared to its competitors, Acronis vmProtect proved to be the easiest to use, the fastest for recovery and the most efficient solution.”

Acronis vmProtect is optimized to protect a VMware vSphere environment, including servers and workstations, without the need for in-depth IT training. It also backs up on a regular basis and quickly restores data and machines through imaging, replication and BMR capability.

“The software is intuitive and offers a full range of functionalities. It perfectly suits our needs and includes everything needed to launch a backup plan, providing IT managers with peace of mind,” concluded Chemouni. “Acronis vmProtect is the leading backup and recovery product of 2012. To date, no other solution on the market has proven to be as easy-to-use and efficient for the protection of our virtual machines.”

Laurent Dedenis, President, Worldwide Sales at Acronis commented, “We have customers all over the world who faced similar management challenges to those at Gérard Darel. vmProtect helps them to simplify their processes and accelerate their ability to keep critical data and systems available at any time.”

To learn more, watch the video here or read the case study here.

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of next generation data protection and disaster recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. With Acronis’ backup, disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users can better protect and maintain availability of critical servers and data to achieve recovery point (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) while reducing total cost of ownership. With over a decade of investment in research and development, Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis

Acronis^® and vmProtect™ are registered trademarks of Acronis International GmbH. in the United States and/or other countries.

Oovie, Australia’s largest network of DVD rental machines, increased year-over-year sales 30 percent by including email campaigns powered by global interactive marketing provider ExactTarget (NYSE:ET) in their marketing mix.

With a customer base of more than 600,000 and a rental volume totaling more than 5 million, the Sydney-based company also boosted repeat rentals more than 70 percent since launching its new integrated and automated email campaigns in November 2011.

“ExactTarget allows us to instantly start a conversation with our customers following their transaction,” said Karli Smith, Oovie’s marketing director. “With ExactTarget, we’re able to start a dialogue that before was really quite challenging. Now, it’s an entirely automated, process-driven solution that is delivering better results than ever before and creating a more engaging customer experience.”

Following a customer’s first transaction with the kiosk, Oovie immediately sends a welcome email, and segments all future ecommunication based on trends within each customer’s transactions. Using ExactTarget’s marketing automation capabilities and integration with Oovie’s data warehouse, the company also powers an automated remarketing campaign that uses past rental data to automatically create and send an ExactTarget-powered personalized email 60 days after a customer’s last rental return. Should the customer not reengage, ExactTarget automatically sends an email to the customer at 135 and 180 days, automatically featuring unique coupons. Oovie also empowers their audiences to share relevant content with friends through links to Facebook and Twitter in each email, said Smith.

“In today’s hyper-connected world, customers are interacting with brands around the clock and have high expectations for personalized interactions,” said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget’s chief marketing officer. “With ExactTarget’s data-driven marketing automation, Oovie is unlocking the power of transactional messaging and seamlessly blending it with marketing messages to drive repeat purchases and new levels of customer engagement.”

More than half of online Australian consumers who subscribe to brands’ email marketing have made a purchase after receiving an email marketing message, according to ExactTarget’s Digital Down Under research. The report is the latest in ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans & Followers research series that provides marketers exclusive insight into consumers’ online preferences and motivations for interacting with brands on email, Facebook and Twitter. To download the report, click here.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of email marketing and cross-channel interactive marketing software-as-a-service solutions that empower organizations of all sizes to communicate with their customers through email, mobile, social media and websites. ExactTarget’s powerful suite of integrated applications enable marketers to plan, automate, deliver and optimize data-driven interactive marketing and real-time communications to drive customer engagement, increase sales and improve return on marketing investment. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana with offices across North America and in Europe, South America and Australia, ExactTarget trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “ET.” For more information, visit www.ExactTarget.com.

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