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Stella & Dot wants to amplify its power of social selling.

On Jan. 3, the company announced changes to its existing representative base by allowing brand ambassadors to sell across its three direct sales offerings: beauty brand Ever, accessory line Keep Collective and its namesake fashion brand Stella & Dot. Prior to this change, Stella & Dots ambassadors signed up and sold for only one brand.

Our brands are separate from a consumer perspective, but our true reason for being as a company is to empower the modern woman with the ultimate side gig, so she can untether from [work] hours that just dont work for her, said Jessica Herrin, Stella & Dot CEO and founder.

To facilitate more cross-brand selling activity across its existing 30,000-plus ambassadors and lure new ones, Stella & Dot has developed a new social retail styling app called Mimi. Representatives can create and share curated pages of shoppable products in a mood board-like setting that promotes beauty, fashion and accessories equally. Then, ambassadors are able to share direct links of these pages to customers through social media, email and text for a frictionless click-to-buy shopping experience.

Its like Pinterest had a baby with Polyvore and Shopify, said Herrin. She said ambassadors boards could, for example, promote a custom skin-care routine or a total fashion and beauty look for an evening out.

Across its three brands, Stella & Dot ambassadors sign up for a $199 starter kit of products and materials and earn 20%-40% commission depending on quantity of sales and level of commitment. They are paid weekly and typically earn $100 to $1,000 a month or $1,200 to $200,900 annually, on average. To make itself more digitally savvy through Mimi and other tech tools, Stella & Dot spent more than $50 million over the course of the last year. The company declined to share annual revenue figures but said that it has paid out more than $500 million in commissions since its launch in 2004. Stella & Dot also recently aligned itself with Nordstrom in November to sell Stella & Dot and Keep Collective products in 26 brick-and-mortar retail locations and on Nordstrom.com.

Stella & Dots rejiggering comes at a time when social selling has consolidated across the market. In May, Natura & Co announced its plan to acquire Avon Products to leverage synergies across both companies. In the third-quarter results that followed, Avon Products saw mixed results from these shifts: Avon revenue decreased by 16% year over year and active representatives declined by 10%. But there were signs of hope. When compared to the second quarter, representatives increased by 1%.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Nik Modi said that improving Natura and Avon Products representative retentionwas the single most important thing they [needed] to do to stabilize the business.

Meanwhile, Coty terminated its partnership with Younique in August. In the companys third-quarter earnings call, Coty CEO Pierre Laubies said, Younique, like all multi-level marketing businesses, [went] through a phase of classic hype. Unfortunately, we are in the de-hype phase. Data from market research firm Euromonitor International further proves this point. Between 2018 and 2017, direct sales fell by 9% to $4.94 billion.

Enabling direct selling ease through technology is a key learning that all social selling companies have to reckon with as digital influencers and Instagram Shopping have become swaps for stores. While Herrin said customers have always been interested in all of Stella & Dots merchandise across category, the company previously did not make it easy.

By giving Stella & Dots brand ambassadors more tools to amplify their sales, like with Mimi, Herrin expects to double its existing monthly active representatives, or those that are receiving a paycheck from the company, from 10,000 to 20,000.

[Ambassadors] are the brand; its their authentic recommendations that drive conversion in their circles. By taking away the all complexities, we are thinking about whats in it for the customer, she said. A lot of women would like to build a large [social] following, but its the nano-influencer or everywoman that drives sales. Mimi is for women who dont have swipe-ups or have time to create their own content regularly, so we are empowering their recommendations and brand for them.

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Stella & Dot puts focus on ambassadors by merging its three brands - Glossy

PHOTO: Jared

Readers of our most popular digital marketing content cared about privacy, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and social media strategies in 2019. Put those popular articles together, and you've got digital marketers that want to utilize intelligent technology in hot marketing areas like social media but in a way that respects customer data privacy.

Without further ado, we present CMSWire's top 10 digital marketing articles:

Let's face it: Fully engaged customers spend more and stay around longer. Therefore customer marketing is going to play an increasingly important role in how B2B companies do business in the near future.

Marketers have had to contend with challenges stemming from SEO for greater than 20 years now. According to HubSpots State of Inbound 2018 report, 61% of marketers feel improving SEO and growing their organic presence is the top inbound marketing priority.

Marketing technology has evolved rapidly over the past decade, with one of the most exciting developments being the creation of publicly-available, cost-effective cognitive APIs by companies like Microsoft, IBM, Alphabet, Amazon and others.

Mary Meekers highly-anticipated Internet Trends report was released. Within it were some takeaways from marketers in the areas of mobile, omnichannel experiences, ecommerce, voice technologies, consumer product recommendations and others. Here is what you need to know.

It was April 2019 and the clock was ticking on the next major mandate for customer data privacy and protection, scheduled then to arrive in just a few months. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) officially goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, yet many businesses are still sleeping at the switch.

Jaws dropped when IBM announcedit was selling its commerce and marketing cloud business to investment firm Centerbridge Partners.

Some studies and digital marketing thought leaders are finding that social media is losing its mojo. To delve deeper into this issue we got in touch with a range of marketers to gauge their views on the health of social media marketing going into 2020.

More than 26,000 descended upon the Boston Exhibition and Convention Center in September for HubSpot's annual INBOUND conference. The annual conference has nearly doubled in growth since 2015. We were on hand to catch the latest news from the marketing automation and CRM company.

With the help of leading industry experts, we define what surprise and delight marketing is, what forms it can take and how this marketing tactic is being used in the field.

Whats the most valuable social media platform for many B2B marketers? Heres the answer that wont shock you: LinkedIn.

The rest is here:
The Top 10 Digital Marketing Articles of 2019 - CMSWire

With estimates predicting that influencer marketing spending might double in 2020en route to becoming a projected $15 billion market by 2022its a good bet that influencers will be moving further up the priority lists ofmany brand marketers.

Importantly, this growth will come from brands investing in influencer marketing for the first time, in addition to existing brands that have experienced strong returns and are expanding their investments accordingly.

Yet, despite the increased budgets and the rising number ofbrands looking to participate, influencer marketingis still sometimesdescribed as the Wild West. It certainly wasnt without its fair share of controversy in 2019, and the responsibility for professionalizingand standardizingpractices continues to be shared between the platforms, regulators and agencies.

With this in mind, here are my five predictions for 2020:

One natural evolution of influencer marketing has been the integration of paid media budgets to deliver targeted amplification of influencers posts. It delivers the media metrics that brands are used to seeing, and its an obvious goldmine for the platforms, who previously saw none of therevenue from the deals made between influencers andbrands.

Expect to see paid amplification made even easier and, as a result, it will become the norm on influencer campaigns, thanks to the key benefits it brings: increased levels of control for audience targeting; much needed reach and scale; and robust reporting and transparency that will be available around campaign delivery.

The influencer marketing industry has, for far too long, relied on social metrics like follower counts, likesand engagement rates as a benchmark of success. These vanity metrics are a proxy at best, and do not provide any real indication as to which talent is right for a brand, or if a collaboration was truly successful at delivering real business objectives.

Today, it is table stakes for marketers to require verifiable campaign metrics, including audience demographics, unique reach, actual impressions and video views delivered. In 2020,look for more brands and their partners to measure effectiveness via influencer campaign brand uplift studies, conversion and sales lift reportsand creative analysis in order to compare influencer work more directly alongside other parts of the marketing mix.

Most influencer marketing tends to fail when it comes to what messages arepublished. Often, brands are reluctant to hand over too much creative freedom to influencers, resulting in content that makes little sense for either the influencer or their audience. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a brand can relinquishall control to the influencer, who then produces something which may be a popular piece of content with their audience but doesnt actually deliver the appropriate messages and impact for the brand.

Balance is necessary, and brands are seeing exciting creative production capabilities coming from the influencer community,such asthe ability to localize a concept across the globe or tap into the mindset of a diverse range of communities and culturesall while staying on-brief.

When brands start their influencer campaigns with a solid brief, expect to see more suitably matchedbrands and influencers, more authentic and exciting work and more examples of influencer-produced creative that powers other marketing campaigns, from digital mediato print and OOH.

The notion that influencers are becoming increasingly meaningful channels for brands, combined with advances in data and measurement, will undoubtedly lead to longer-term collaborations between the most-effectively matched influencers and brands. And the outcome will be mutually beneficial.

For the brand, there are significant efficiency benefits to the relationship. In addition to the fact that the influencer is able to become a more authentic advocate with a much deeper relationship, it can drive real product and market insights, too.

For the influencer (the publisher), who needs to generate income, thebenefit lies in having both the financial security and opportunity to work continually on a brand collaboration that makes sense for them and for their audience.

Going one step further, you can expect to see more and more partnerships between influencers and brands working together to co-create products or even new brands.

With numerous reports of undisclosed brand collaborations, botaccounts,fraudulent audiences, manipulated results and the blurring of lines between organic and paid, its no surprise that a lack of transparency has been the major complaint about the influencer industry.

And while total eradication of these issues isnt a reality for 2020, the level of sophistication of the data, technology and education now available should enable a more informed and accountable process for influencer marketing. The issue of transparency will hopefully be banished to the fringes and will no longer be the central talking point in the majority of influencer marketing campaigns.

If these predictions become reality then, as a result, we can expect to see the influencer marketing industry taking some giant strides towards raising its professional standards, whichshould pave the way for even greater growth in 2021.

Link:
5 ways influencer marketing will evolve in 2020 - AdAge.com

The National Basketball Association continues to mourn the death of former commissioner David Stern, with league executives remembering him as a commanding and complicated leader who many regard as having been one of the greatest commissioners in sports.

Adam Silver, who succeeded Stern as NBA commissioner in 2014, called him a "mentor" and "friend." Stern, who died Sunday at the age of 77, three weeks after being hospitalized for a sudden brain hemorrhage, is survived by his wife, Dianne, and their sons, Andrew and Eric.

"Like every NBA legend," Silver said in a statement, "David had extraordinary talents, but with him it was always about the fundamentals preparation, attention to detail, and hard work. But over the course of 30 years as Commissioner, he ushered in the modern global NBA."

"He launched groundbreaking media and marketing partnerships, digital assets and social responsibility programs that have brought the game to billions of people around the world," Silver continued. "Because of David, the NBA is a truly global brand making him not only one of the greatest sports commissioners of all time but also one of the most influential business leaders of his generation."

San Antonio Spurs CEO R.C. Buford, the team's general manager during Stern's time as commissioner, remembered him as a man of "clear vision and purpose."

Buford and the Spurs certainly had their battles with the league office while Stern was in charge. It was Stern who hit the Spurs, which many consider the organization that popularized the "rest" trend in the NBA, with a $250,000 fine in 2012 for doing exactly that when the team played the Miami Heat in a primetime matchup. The Spurs rested star players Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Danny Green by sending them home, an action Stern called a "disservice to the league and our fans."

Despite any differences during Stern's reign, Buford joined in with other NBA executives around the league who remembered Stern as the person who changed the image and economics of the league.

"He built our game to a significant position, not only domestically but around the world. He had an impact on basketball across so many platforms," Buford said.

During his 30-year tenure, from 1984 to 2014, Stern took the NBA from a 23-team organization struggling to make a profit to a 30-team operation whose revenue increased by 30 times to a reported $5 billion. He helped boost its attraction by expanding its presence outside the United States through marketing and television broadcasts in more than 200 countries and regions in 49 languages.

He also presided over four NBA lockouts and led efforts to create two new leagues, the Women's National Basketball Association and the NBA Development League; implemented the first dress code and first anti-drug agreement in professional sports, and introduced salary caps and revenue sharing to the league.

Philadelphia 76ers CEO Scott O'Neil, who worked for Stern in the league office, said Stern read "stacks of newspaper articles" to study international affairs as he attempted to reach a bigger audience for the NBA.

"It wasn't sports," O'Neil told CNBC. "He wasn't reading about the Atlanta Hawks versus Milwaukee game. He was reading about life science, and politics, the emerging economy in Brazil and India, and the incredible market that Africa is today. He understood the geopolitical impact and influence that it would have on this game."

Neil Olshey, the Portland Trail Blazers president of basketball operations, said "for those of us fortunate enough to work in this league under David's leadership, he elevated the standard of excellence in all areas of basketball operations and required you to always be at your best."

Stern is described by some as a "shrewd businessman" and a commissioner who was a "commanding leader."

Golden State Warriors Chief Operating Officer Rick Welts called Stern the "single most important individual" in the history of the NBA.

Welts worked under Stern as the league's chief marketing officer and president of NBA Properties until 1999 before leaving the NBA to become president of Fox Sports Enterprises.

In a video statement provided by the Warriors, Welts called Stern a "mentor."

Said Welts: "I used to joke that my greatest success of my life was directly reporting to David Stern for 17 years and living to tell about it, because it was, some days, an amazing challenge.

"I had a complicated relationship with him, like everybody else," Welts continued, "but at the end of the day, he was a friend, he was a mentor, and his inspiration, creative genius, innovation, ingenuity are the things that really created the NBA that we know today."

Though Stern reported to the league's owners, he was also seen as a commissioner who had the players' best interests in mind when it came to growing league revenue.

After Stern's first year as NBA commissioner in 1984, players' salaries ranged from $60,000 to $2.5 million, and the league's salary cap was roughly $3.6 million. When he departed in 2014, the salary cap reached $58.6 million, while player salaries ranged from $490,180 to $30.4 million.

Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan, who was drafted by the Chicago Bulls the first year Stern became commissioner, told The Athletic that Stern created "opportunities" for players to grow their brands. Last year, the Jordan brand's parent company, Nike, announced the line reached its first-ever $1 billion quarter.

"His vision and leadership provided me with the global stage that allowed me to succeed," Jordan told the subscription-based sports media company. "David had a deep love for the game of basketball and demanded excellence from those around him and I admired him for that. I wouldn't be where I am without him."

In a text message to CNBC, Roger Montgomery of sports agency Elite Athlete Group added: "His legacy of turning the NBA and the game of basketball into what it is today has made it possible for me to be a part of the awesome opportunities I'm experiencing as an agent. Thank you, Mr. Stern."

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NBA executives mourn the loss of legendary commissioner David Stern a commanding and complex leader - CNBC

NEW YORK California attorney Michael Avenatti wants to portray Nike as a villain and himself a hero at his extortion trial later this month, the company said in a court filing made public Thursday.

The sportswear maker said in court papers that Avenatti's attorneys want five Nike sports marketing employees to testify at the Manhattan federal court trial that starts with jury selection Jan. 22.

The company asked U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe in papers dated Tuesday but filed publicly Thursday to deny Avenatti's request, saying the employees have no knowledge about the extortion and honest services fraud charges lodged against him. Gardephe directed Avenatti's lawyers to respond by Monday.

Avenatti has pleaded not guilty to the charges and said he is being prosecuted unfairly by a U.S. Justice Department beholden to a president he has criticized on social media and in numerous television appearances.

He also has pleaded not guilty to charges he cheated ex-client porn star Stormy Daniels of proceeds of a book deal at a trial scheduled to start in April in New York and to ripping off clients of millions of dollars at a trial set to begin in May in Los Angeles.

Email messages were left with Avenatti and his lawyer. An attempt to reach Avenatti's cellphone was unsuccessful.

Nike said Avenatti wants to "misdirect the jury" by getting Nike employees to testify about alleged misdeeds designed to influence young basketball players who might have a professional future.

"Mr. Avenatti would like to elicit the Nike Employees' testimony to try to establish that Nike engaged in criminal conduct, and that Nike hid this criminal conduct from the Government while claiming to be cooperating," Nike lawyers wrote.

"This narrative which paints Nike as the villain and Mr. Avenatti as the hero is false and illogical. It is false because Nike committed no crimes and fully cooperated," the lawyers said.

Prosecutors say Avenatti threatened to muddy Nike's name by publicizing allegations that the company was part of a scandal in college basketball in which shoe makers helped to fund payouts to basketball coaches and families to influence NBA-bound young athletes.

They allege that Avenatti tried to get Nike to pay him up to $25 million.

Nike said Avenatti wants to "drag the five" Nike employees across the country from the company's Beaverton, Oregon, headquarters to testify at his trial, including the executive vice president of Nike Global Sports Marketing and the global vice president of Sports Marketing & Basketball.

The company said that the employees to varying degrees have knowledge of Nike's sports marketing related to amateur basketball, but none of them "can offer testimony relevant to Mr. Avenatti's extortion and fraud scheme."

"They never spoke with Mr. Avenatti. They were not present for Mr. Avenatti's threats," the lawyers wrote.

Nike's lawyers said Avenatti's lawyers can elicit what they need from Nike attorneys who will testify at the trial.

They urged Avenatti's lawyers to seek "that limited testimony and not a fishing expedition into the minutiae of amateur basketball."

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Nike: Avenatti wants to make it a villain at extortion trial - Minneapolis Star Tribune