Issue #10
In this issue: Commerce Futures Gossip | Annoying at Scale (the Merchant issue) | MACH - Hedging won’t work | Analyst relations - Why do we care?
Welcome one and all - summer in Europe has raised its head above the parapet and the challenges of eCommerce, retail performance and poor SaaS sales seem to mean less when the sun is shining.
CF Gossip
We ran our conference “The Hundred” in May, and the audience of retailers completed a live poll revealing behaviours and sentiments about 2023. We love these… a statistical sample from high growth to very mature retailers across a number of sectors. The sentiments expressed are a really interesting gauge of how merchants are planning on investing and behaving for the rest of 2023:
We’re privileged to have a Commerce Futures merchant community who are happy to share truthfully with one another the challenges of running a business that’s primarily focused on digital transactions, and it is clear that the landscape is really changing.
Social is tougher, GA4 is empowering google again, which means they’ll likely turn down the throttle until it launches officially so they can claim gainz after the summer. Such is the way the Four Horsemen treat us all nowadays (god love Scott Galloway btw).
Annoying at Scale (Yes, Again)
The growth panel at our conference “The Hundred” gave a few really fascinating highlights across how digital is tackling growth in the current climate, and amongst the expertise in the room one comment has stuck in our collective memory. Jake Newbould from bedwear company “Piglet in Bed” talked about a metric for the “Cost of pissing people off”. In a conversation about txt messaging customers it made us all stop and think for a moment.
Couple this with new studies about the ceiling of email effectiveness, and the growing reputation of 6th sense / Demandbase for “Annoying at Scale” (and creating escalating media costs by coordinating campaigns to build competition) there is a need stop and think - merchants and tech firms alike - are we just being irritating?
We all wake up, pick up our phone and swipe about 50 emails away like annoying insects - then stop as the first “proper” email in our inbox appears. Last month we ran a CF Community session where two members talked about their customers wanting “MORE” emails - they’d have one each day if they could. Perhaps it’s the message and the trust that is lacking - I hope this email doesn’t get the swiping treatment 🙂.
MACH - Hedging won’t work in the end
The terminology knocking around the market for eCommerce (and of course wider technology) is constantly changing. We go from “what does that mean?” to “that’s meaningless” in just a few short weeks as terms such as “composable” are fought over, then discarded, then reclaimed in equal measure.
MACH has weight behind it of course. 86 members and counting. But there’s a niggle… or so it seems currently. To step forward and argue that MACH is not the same as “composable” (i.e. it’s more meaningful, better defined) will potentially alienate relationships many members have with the older “non-compliant” vendors.
This isn’t just an issue for SI’s who are MACH members, many SaaS MACH peeps are also friends with the older or non-compliant vendors. This means they’re conflicted - and aren’t comfortable publicly drawing a hard line between those two terms. I can see a time coming when MACH members need to be more public about their affiliation and contribution to the criteria of MACH - which may prove yet tricky for some.
Analyst relations - Why do we care?
OK. Maybe it’s just me, but I see this whole industry being just a teeny bit useless, and also a little rotten too. I’ve probably spoken to 160 enterprise C-Suite tech leaders in the last few months leading up to M2. Not a single reference to an analyst firm in their research for new vendors, and certainly no reluctance to experiment with suppliers who were so new that Forrester/Gartner would not be aware of them.
There is always a slow nod when I talk about the magic quadrant being like a party where some guests overstay their welcome. Goodness knows why Digital River was in the eCommerce Leaders section for so long (there… I said it). Many other examples too, if anyone fancies messaging me with examples I’ll feature them next month.
So, do we care any more? Does their business model mean they don’t really need us to?
Insult of the month:
99p - Another word for a flake