Category: DIRECT RESPONSE

  • 5 Tips to Maximize Operational Efficiency for Your Online Store

    5 Tips to Maximize Operational Efficiency for Your Online Store

    As we approach year-end, many of you business owners are reflecting on the year to see what worked, what didn’t, and what can be optimized. This type of reflection is one of the best things you can do when gearing up for Q1 2022, because it’s coming up fast.

    This type of year-end review or audit should be done regularly to make sure your business is operating as smooth as possible and potential revenue is at its maximum. So, today we’re focusing on a five principles to maximize operational efficiency for your online store. These optimizations, in particular, are easy to implement–no long business processes–and can get you 3-5% increase in revenue overnight.

    1. Get an External Audit Done on Your Online Business

    One of the best things you can do to maximize operation efficiency is to get an audit done. It’s a simple task that doesn’t get performed often enough by most businesses but can definitely add a lot of value.

    The audit works best if you get someone that doesn’t know your business. So that could be a expert that you’ve never met or contacted before, or it could be someone you know and trust. As long as they aren’t familiar with your business, that’s never seen your funnel before, then the audit will come out with the best results.

    This auditor should test everything about your funnel. Have them go through your checkout process, shipping, and anything else. Ask them to tell you what they see, what works well, and what confuses (e.g., copy; checkout flow) them so you can fix things.

    These audits should be done at least once per year, so a year-end audit makes a lot of sense to be performed in December. But really audits should be done pretty often—at least as often as you update your funnel.

    DirectPayNet also performs audits, if you’re interested in us performing one for you. We’ve always gotten great reviews from our top clients who have asked us to perform audits on their sites, so please get in touch if you’re interested.

    2. Test Your Entire eCommerce Shipping Process to Maximize Efficiency

    Shipping is part of your audit, yes, but it should also be performed outside of that and much more often. Once per month, you should have the shipping process tested especially when you sell to particularly large regions or different countries. For example, shipping to the east coast is not the same as to the west in the USA. Both of those areas should be tested. Or if you ship internationally, test out each region at least.

    You need to test the entire process: from the moment the order is place to the moment the package arrives. What does the package look like on arrival? Is it damaged? Is there liquid on it? When the customer opens it, are they disappointed by the materials inside? Overwhelmed?

    Then, you need to try and refund the purchase and perform some customer service on the order. See how well it’s handled, how long the process is, and the end result. This is a good opportunity to get the customer’s perspective on your team members, which can help you understand retention rates. Doesn’t matter if it’s customer service on social media or your own app, these are metrics you want to know and improve.

    Getting supply chain and fulfillment right can greatly impact your ecommerce business and streamline deliveries while improving the customer experience. The number one outcome is a reduction in chargebacks. This past year has seen a lot of supply chain issues due to the pandemic, so it’s really important that you get your merchandising and inventory management system updated. Not only are you ensuring that your shipping and fulfillment partners are doing their job and getting your products out without damage, you’re also in tune with delivery time frames. When you can accurately inform customers about delivery dates, you’ll reduce chargebacks and refund requests.

    3. Know Who Your Best Traffic Source Is

    We don’t mean discover who they are, we mean get to know them better. You should already know who your best traffic source(s) are. Get in touch with them, have a call—a review. If your main sources are affiliates, get them on a face-to-face meeting where you review what you can for them that results with them promoting you more. What will it take? It’s not always more money. Sometimes it’s faster payouts or access to more creatives or special offers.

    Once you get the engine running on your top traffic source, you’ll have more money to test other traffic sources and maximize those revue streams.

    4. Check Your Reserves to Increase Operational Efficiency for Your Online Store

    If you have a merchant account or you process credit cards, you’re using a payment processor. That processor could be holding reserves that you (and they) forgot about. This is common especially for high-risk merchants, meaning merchants who work with supplements or in the adult space or dropshippers. A lot of the time, these processors are holding maybe 10% that you aren’t seeing back.

    Call up your processor and ask about the reserves. How much is being held? How often are they adding in? What’s the frequency of your payouts?

    It’s so common that reserves go unnoticed. Money goes in and never comes out simply because merchants and payment processors aren’t paying any attention to them. This is even more true when you have multiple accounts open for omnichannel sales. We get it: it can be tough to keep track of it all.

    If you’ve been consistent all year and things are going well with your processor, then it’s important to keep in constant communication with them. This is when it’s a good idea to call them up about the reserves. If your chargebacks are around 5%, then maybe you should hold off on that call (because this is the purpose of the reserve).

    Reserves might never go away for your merchant account, but you can try to cap them. Another good solution is to request payouts if they aren’t coming often (or at all).

    5.Add DCC to Your Checkout

    Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) is such a good way to maximize operational efficiency for your online store when selling internationally. DCC is perfect for digital goods, but also works when shipping out physical products if you have a physical store too (digital is just simpler because there’s no shipping to take care of).

    DCC is available with nearly every single payment processor. It doesn’t matter if you use 3rd-party processors like Stripe and PayPal or you have a merchant account of your own. Simply call them up and say, “I want DCC on my store” and they’ll turn it on for you.

    When you add this feature, it shows customers the price of your products in their local currency in real-time which improves overall customer satisfaction. So if you’re running a US-based retail store and someone visits it from London, they’ll see prices in pounds. It automates the currency displayed based on which region the customer is visiting from. It’s hugely beneficial when selling internationally to countries who use the same monetary symbol. For example, USD, CAD, and AUD all use $ but each has a different value. It leads to chargebacks so often when someone buys a product thinking it’s denoted in their currency when it isn’t. They see the charge on their card statement and dispute it because it’s more than expected.

    DCC will increase conversion rates considerably in your non-local markets. Best of all, it can be turned on in just a few hours and open up your store to a ton of new customers.

    With these simple tricks to your store operations and payment processing, you can maximize efficiency and boost profits in just a few days.

    These tips are meant to be fast solutions. They take just a few days—if that—to perform and you will be surprised at the results.

    DirectPayNet is here to help you through this entire process. We help our clients obtain the proper payment processing they need for their store, industry, and region. But we also help our clients get more money back from their processors and giving them as much free cash flow as possible.

    Contact us today to add 10% on your funnel with low-cost, fast tweaks we can help you make on your checkout and funnel.

  • Want 10x the Sales? Here’s How Global Affiliate Marketing Can Get You There.

    Want 10x the Sales? Here’s How Global Affiliate Marketing Can Get You There.

    This week, we took a seat with director of business development at Digistore24, Alex Gunoe, to see what information he can give us about scaling a business internationally using affiliate marketing. We’ve been talking a lot about successful affiliate marketing lately, especially with our incredible deep-dive into affiliate managers last week.

    For some background, Alex might be a little more relatable than you think. He got into this industry on his own personal business path. In short, he started out as the owner of a small gym and then worked his way into using direct response to promote and scale his own business, taking it from only in-person to e-commerce. Now, he works at Digistore24 and uses his personal experience gained from growing his business to a platform that can help any business owner reach the level of success he did.

    Understand the intentions of an affiliate in terms of sales.

    One of the biggest mistakes a lot of entrepreneurs think of when it comes down to an affiliate marketing strategy is thinking that an affiliate will only accept the highest EPC or PPC. On the surface, that does make a lot of sense. Why would anyone try to promote an item that gives them $4 earning per click when they could get $9?

    Fortunately, it doesn’t really work that way. Higher commission is great, but what matters more is how an offer (e.g., coupon, ebook, tutorial, webinar) converts. The less an affiliate manager has to do to keep an offer going, the more likely they’re going to leave it alone and turn their attention elsewhere because it’s effortless money in the bank. And an offer with high-quality content will make that happen.

    So for affiliate program beginners, don’t worry about pricing your EPC at the top to gain traction. Focus on making a reliable offer that will stand the test of time and building relationships with affiliates. And there are a lot of different types of affiliate sites out there specializing in different marketing channels with diverse commission rates. Digistore24 is a great one to check out, and you can also take a peek at Clickbank or Amazon Affiliates. Affiliate sales and referrals are driving businesses forward. It’s time you hop on that bandwagon.

    How does a global affiliate network get a vendor to the next level?

    For businesses like Digistore24, we were wondering if they and platforms like them prefer working with startups or tenured merchants—which was easier to bring into affiliate marketing.

    Up front, Alex’s response was enlightening. He told us that because the world of e-commerce is growing increasingly crowded, venders of any age or industry see the need to get into the eyes of different target audiences. Direct response and affiliate marketing are two of the best solutions to that concern.

    When starting with Digistore24, a client gets passed off to a growth manager who can help them gain the know-how for what it takes to create a killer offer and build the right connections. These are the two pillars for 10x sales and growth for any business model.

    Honesty is also a much better tactic when talking to affiliates. Not everyone needs to be on the marketplace, some businesses only really need the education-side of things and the right connections with people who can get them into new markets. The marketplace is full of competition, and if your best offer isn’t really one that will stay on top for the long-term, then it might not be worth it. Instead, clients that fall into this category can benefit from staying off the marketplace and putting their efforts into growth management.

    A personalized approach to business growth is the best approach.

    We asked Alex about how Digistore24 pairs clients with affiliates: does email marketing match with email, or do they try to create more of a blend with content marketing, bloggers, influencers, etc.? Instead of approaching it in this binary sense, his company goes about this in a much more personalized manner. And that makes sense since all businesses have diverse needs.

    For example, if a small business (or you) have a really amazing, aggressive email offer that is just incredible but it isn’t Facebook-compliant, they (or you) will be matched with email list owners. There’s no sense in creating a partnership between two people who can’t help each other.

    However, that isn’t the end of the journey. That’s how a business owner can continue scaling their business with their current marketing platform. But they should still be able to expand, and that’s where a global affiliate marketing program can take them. After getting email in order, the next step is to convert that offer into something that does work on social media and going from there.

    Keep in mind that it’s not so cut and dry. There are a lot of sacrifices and adjustments to make. Let’s say, for example, that you get introduced to someone who wants to take your daily sales volume from 50 to 300. That sounds great, but they ask for exclusivity. Are you willing to cut reposition your previous relationships to use this new one? In most cases, these are the actions you’ll have to take in order to reach that next level of growth you crave.

    Just because you build it, doesn’t mean customers will come.

    The same is true for affiliates. A lot of business owners think that because they put in the effort to create their business and set things up, they can simply enter the affiliate marketing space and suddenly get tons of new affiliates or new customers or new audiences or sales. That’s not how it works; you can’t drive traffic with no effort.

    Don’t do this. Instead, you 100% need to invest in a good affiliate manager. This person’s sole purpose is to build relationships, nurture them, and get your business up 10x. You have to be willing to invest in this person.

    A lot of small online businesses and startups claim they don’t have to resources to pay for an affiliate list manager. And that’s true a lot of the time, we aren’t knocking it. But there are ways around it. You can structure the role to be more commission-based, this way you only pay when they make you money. And good affiliate managers will want commission, anyway. They can make way more on affiliate commission than with a fixed salary.

    Prepare your offer for international markets verbally and culturally.

    International markets are a gold mine, especially with digital goods. Physical goods are still possible, and platforms like Digistore24 are well on their way to preparing you for physical fulfillment. But there’s a trick to entering. You need to make sure your offers translate well in whatever new market you choose verbally and culturally.

    Let’s start with the verbal part of your offer. And we can even make the scenario easier: an American offer being used in the UK. It’s the same language so it should be easy, right? No. British English is very different from American English. They way words are spelled, phrases used, humor, cultural relevance—it’s all different. You need to be aware of the language used and literally translate your offer to match the new market. When there are grammatical errors in an offer or advertisement, it removes the authenticity of your company. People will immediately feel like they’re being scammed, leave your store, and never come back.

    Second, you need to focus on culture. Offers need to be translated culturally, too. Some things simply won’t land, others might be offensive. Again, using an American offer in the UK. The new market isn’t going to care about FDA-approved supplements. They want to know if it has the CE mark. Be culturally aware of where you’re selling, otherwise you’re throwing away resources.

    One simple way to make sure your offers are up-to-par in Europe or wherever you’re selling, you can hire someone local to review it. The best solution is the really hire someone permanently in that market to help you go over your offers, but not every company has the resources for that. If that’s the case, you can use freelance platforms to find someone local and pay them a nominal fee to glance over your material. They’ll quickly be able to tell you about spelling errors, irrelevant content, and what resonates with them.

    Having a local bank account helps conversions.

    When you’re expanding internationally, you will see significantly higher conversions when you have a local bank account. That’s because the bank account will be accepting the local currency, no currency converting necessary. That international transaction is now a domestic transaction, and that will help you scale.

    In order to open one of these bank accounts you’ll need to incorporate which can be quite expensive. There are other ways to get a merchant account in another country without incorporating, and DirectPayNet can help you.

    We are a merchant services provider that will connect you with payment processors that allow you to process foreign currency as if its domestic, without any hits to your conversion rate.

    Affiliate marketing and digital goods are high-risk industries that require a specific type of merchant account: a high-risk merchant account. In order for your to expand 10x, you need to open this type of merchant account that will connect you with payment processors that allow you to process credit card, debit card, bank transfer, digital wallet, and even crypto payments with minimal risk.

    Contact DirectPayNet to get started and get the international success your business deserves.

    And don’t forget to check out Digistore24 to see how affiliate marketing works first-hand.

  • What Makes a Good Affiliate Marketing Manager + Women in Business

    What Makes a Good Affiliate Marketing Manager + Women in Business

    This past week, we sat down with Amber Spears and spoke with her about what makes a good affiliate manager, the difference between men and women in our industry, and predictions for the future. This will be a multi-part supplemental post of our podcast episode with her, so stay tuned for our future posts.

    Amber Spears currently co-owns the affiliate marketing agency, East 5th Avenue, that not only helps scale on the agency side but also provides training in all aspects of affiliate marketing.

    A Good Affiliate Program Manger – Is It Sales or Connection?

    Our first question with Amber was whether her agency takes in teams that are already established so she can take them to the next level, or if she takes in folks starting from scratch to be a good affiliate manager. And her answer might surprise you.

    Many Affiliate Managers Don’t Have Good Sales Training

    Initially, Amber would take in existing teams and upload their performance. She still does this, actually. But more importantly, what she learned by starting out this way is that most affiliate managers don’t have good sales training. They are very good with people (creating partnerships with new affiliates; a people-person), but they aren’t good at selling. Having strong communication skills is important, but if conversion rates aren’t rising then it might not be your online marketing strategy that’s the problem.

    This type of affiliate sales knowledge is important because a good affiliate manager needs to know about KPIs, quotas, high-level negotiating techniques, and prospecting.

    With this type of existing team, it’s easy to make introductions to them for people who will become affiliates of theirs. But an introduction doesn’t mean sales—or maximized sales. In the end, the bottom line is what matters most. If an affiliate account manager isn’t impacting the bottom line positively, then they aren’t good at their job.

    Self-Promotion Is Not Sales

    What she’s found after doing this for so many years is that many desirable affiliate managers are really good at self-promotion, and that’s what makes them desirable. But it doesn’t make them good at their job. The same can be said about any industry, like copywriting, designing, developing—you name it.

    A good question to ask yourself when hiring an affiliate manager like this is, “what is an appropriate amount of money to pay someone that’s well-known but doesn’t get good results?” Because in the end, you’re paying for clout, not knowledge or skill.

    Solution: Train or Fire

    There are two solutions to solve this problem: training your existing manager in sales or replacing them with someone who knows sales from the start.

    Training takes time and effort, but you also need to account for that person’s willingness to be trained. A lot of the time, ego gets in the way of growth. Training can help both of you: the affiliate manager will be better at their job and you will see more profit. But this method isn’t always possible, whether it’s because they’re unwilling to learn or you’re unwilling to train.

    Replacing your existing manager with someone who may not be as well-known is a great solution, even if it’s a bit troublesome in the beginning. You can hire someone that’s more affordable. They may not know the ins-and-outs of affiliate management, but they do know sales. And here, there are two ways to hire someone new: find someone with a real-world, positive sales background that has years of experience, or find someone who tests well and fits the job description.

    Testing here refers to Kolbe scores. Amber and her team have administered over 100 different Kolbe tests of the top performing and lowest performing affiliate managers. From that, they came up with a clear indicator of what type of person will thrive in this position. Either a person that actively performs well or has the aptitude to do so.

    Going back to the first option (training), there’s another inherent issue that repetitively comes up. When you send your affiliate manager to events and meetings without a holistic understanding of how the e-commerce business works, they’re more eager and willing to jump ship. For example, if they’re making $70k while generating a $5 million sale, they don’t understand the difference in those numbers. A lot of success for a sale comes from the offer and its performance, not the pitch.

    We’re not saying you should go out and fire your affiliate program management marketing team, replacing them with someone in sales. We’re bringing to light some of the things you should keep an eye out for so you can either find someone who will better fit the position or train yours to perform better. Both are viable solutions, but dependent on the retailer business and the individuals involved.

    Connections Are Important, Deals Are Better

    During our sit-down with Amber, she spoke a bit about a new and ongoing project of hers: Traffic Tribe.

    Removing the Fluff

    Many businesses, business owners, and workers in the industry (and every industry) panicked last year when COVID started shutting things down worldwide. Birthed from this, Amber started Traffic Tribe. It’s a bimonthly call that created a community of folks in affiliate marketing and direct response digital marketing.

    There was a realization that they could maintain business, stay profitable, and eliminate the panic by taking our high-ticket stuff, bringing it down to a price that businesses can afford, and create a community from it with support and knowledge coming from every member.

    The first step was removing the fluff. Whenever you go to a meeting or a convention, you spend a lot of time making connections with affiliate partners. But what you really want to do is make a deal. With Traffic Tribe, she created a platform—a virtual convention—that removed the fluff of schmoozing and went straight into deal-making.

    Good Relationships That Don’t Make Money Are Bad Relationships

    And that’s what an affiliate marketing manager’s job is: to make deals and bring in the cash. If your business has great relationships that don’t convert, then your affiliate marketing program manager isn’t doing their job well. This position is designed to drive the business forward, and that’s done through making deals and making money.

    Speaking of relationships, they also ensure affiliate network managers have a good relationship with themselves. This position can often lead to loneliness and isolation, so they have mind training exercises to make sure each member is mentally and emotionally prepared to drive business forward. Otherwise, this role is very lonely and taxing and will lead to failure eventually. Training for affiliate managers on these calls also involves improving the pitch, negotiating, and asking for traffic. It’s a community to lean on and learn from.

    Women in Direct Response and Affiliate Marketing

    From one woman business owner to another, Amber and I also touched on what that means for the industry and what we can learn to improve the statistics here.

    Creating Community Among Women

    As we spoke about affiliate manager and sales, it also came up that men run the show in this industry. Women are notoriously worse at asking for business out of being too shy, second-guessing, and worrying about the other end. But—maybe more importantly—women are terrible at sharing business with other women.

    What men in the affiliate marketing industry do is share business, swap it back and forth, and make it more of a hang-out. They strengthen their relationships with one another by doing this. Instead, women stay isolated. There needs to be community for women in the industry like this and the only way that’s going to happen is if we create that community ourselves.

    Leverage Relationships

    Another thing women can do to be more prominent in the industry that also acts as a sign of changes is leveraging relationships with men in various affiliate marketing channels. Men don’t ruminate on whether they’ve sent too many texts, if the recipient read the email, or if they did well on a call. They simply move on and continue until the connection is made and they can leverage it. That’s what women can do for themselves in the industry.

    Leave the stigmas behind—why is she so aggressive, etc.—and start being confident in your role. When you’re confident in your position, you can share your business with fellow women and men, and work to scale your business without making it personal.

    Scaling Your Affiliate Marketing Business Requires a Merchant Account That Can Handle Your Volume

    Stay tuned for our second part of this interview where we go over industry changes and future outlooks.

    For affiliate managers to do their job well, your business needs a payment processor and acquiring bank that forgoes the flat-rate fees and gives you customized processing designed for high-risk, high-ticket business. Performance marketing campaigns, content marketing (social media, bloggers, referrals, etc.), and SEO (search engine optimization) all lead prospects to your online business’ landing page where you need them to sign up and start spending.

    DirectPayNet is the merchant services provider to give you this power in payments, so you can scale your business.

  • FAQ: Why You Have So Many International Declined Transactions

    FAQ: Why You Have So Many International Declined Transactions

    A common question we get from (understandably frustrated) sellers in Canada and Australia involves declined transactions. “My approval ratio is high, so why do I get so many declined transactions when selling to Americans?”

    Do you have this issue, too? There’s no doubt about the frustration and rage you might be feeling when customers get all the way through to the last stage of checkout only to be declined. Here’s why this might happen and what you can do about it.

    Why International Customer Transactions Are Being Declined

    Here’s the scenario we’re considering: you have a business outside the states (could be as close as Canada or as far as Australia) with steady local sales. You have small-ticket items, sell all white-hat products, and have a decent approval rating above 70%. Yet even though you open your store for sales to Americans, those transactions are repeatedly denied. Why? There are two main reasons.

    Cardholder Has No Funds

    Though we can likely rule this out if transactions are denied regularly, it’s still worth mentioning. Your customers could simply have insufficient funds in their bank account or have reached their credit limit. There’s no fix for this on your end, though you could contact the customer and entice them to come back with they do finally have the funds available.

    Generally, one of the first steps a customer goes through during the checkout process is either logging in or entering their personal information. When they submit their email address, you can use it to reach out. Knowing this, take the time to contact your customer and let them know you appreciate their interest and hope they come back to your store. Offering a small discount could sweeten the deal a little bit, too.

    Another valid point isn’t the amount of funds or credit a cardholder has, but if they are attempting to use an expired card. As you might expect, the customer should be prompted to get a new card and use another credit card number for the time being.

    Customer’s Bank Says “No”

    If you have a cross-border merchant account and US banks don’t like it. A cross-border account is what it’s called when you have a processor outside the country a customer wants to purchase from. For example, you have a Canadian payment processor and you’re charging American USD. Banks don’t like this.

    Foreign banks don’t speak to local payment processors too kindly. Many times, the card issuing bank will simply deny the transaction outright. This is especially true when using Dynamic Currency Conversion on your gateway, because it’s the bank/customer that has to pay the exchange. For the highest rate of success, something like a US merchant account or multi-currency merchant account is needed.

    Solutions for Upending Cross-Border Transaction Card Declines

    Above are the two main reasons why an international customer transaction could be declined. The first reason has no real solution; the fault remains at the hands of the customer. But for the second reason, there are a few options for moving forward.

    Check Decline Messages

    When a transaction is denied, your payment gateway will store a message or decline code about the decline. What you should do is log into your gateway and check these decline messages/codes.

    If the code relates to a technical issue, then your next step is clear: contact the processor or gateway provider to resolve it. Upon resolution, you should see fewer international declines.

    These codes will also refer to non-technical issues, which you should research further. If it’s something out of your control, then the next step for the safety of your business is to either disallow those foreign transactions or open a merchant account in the US.

    You can also check these codes to see if the type of payment is the problem. Maybe your processor doesn’t like bank transfers or debit transactions. If this is the defined reason, then limit the gateway to only allow certain transaction types.

    Determine Approval Ratio per Traffic Source

    In the scenario we’re using, the approval ratio is decent: around 70% or so. Look at the approval ratio for your other traffic sources and make a comparison. If approval is 72% for US-based transactions but your Canadian approval is 87%, then you need to investigate the discrepancy. Bringing that approval ratio up could lead to less declines at the online payment gateway.

    However, if the ratios are within just a couple percentage points of each other, then this shouldn’t be the source of why you have so many declined international online transactions. Just like with the gateway messages from the previous solution, you can limit gateway transactions. While this won’t help you with sales to interested foreign customers, it will at least limit the declines your account is receiving.

    Minimize the Amount of Debit You Accept

    Debit cards have a different risk profile than credit cards, even though the card type is the same (Visa, American Express, MasterCard, Discover). US banks and debit card issuers don’t want their account holders using debit cards to make foreign transactions due to the risk associated. Because debit cards pull actual funds directly from an account, there’s a higher risk of fraud. And the potential repercussions of that are much more serious than when using a credit card. Authentication, address verification (AVS), and security codes (CVV) help limit fraudulent activity. And card information like accurate billing addresses, correct expiration dates, and other card details help verify the identity of a cardholder.

    Even so, because of the risk, US financial institutions will more often than not exclaim a resounding “no” to allowing foreign purchases.

    Lower-ticket items could be the culprit. We know it isn’t black-hat products in this scenario (though that does come with a high amount of risk, too). When you sell products at a low price point, customers will default to using debit. The dent to their funds is minimal, so they don’t need the monthly payment solution offered by credit cards.

    Raising the price of your product in the US could help you minimize use of debit and lower your gateway’s international declines. You need to be smart about this because customers won’t be happy if they view your store one day and suddenly see $100 premium or exorbitant fees at checkout. Gradually, though, you can raise the prices for customers viewing your store from the States.

    You can also set your gateway to operate with specific types of transactions and payment methods like only credit cards, debit cards, ACH, or bank transfers. And it’s entirely possible—and recommended—to have multiple merchant accounts and use multiple payment processors. If your customers want to use debit, then forcing them to change their preference won’t work in your favor. You’ll need a processor that’s friendly to US banks if monthly sales volume supports it.

    Open a US Merchant Account

    If the issue is US banks not working well with foreign credit card payment processing companies, then don’t use a foreign processor. Open a US merchant account to manage US-based transactions appropriately and without issue. Obtaining the account is an endeavor in-and-of itself, but it’s well worth the effort if there’s value in reaching these American customers.

    If that’s not a road you’re willing to go down, then payment aggregators like Stripe or 2checkout are also viable solutions for accepting foreign transactions. You’ll have to set this up so you’re not using the aggregator for all your transactions, so be aware. But opening an account with one is fast and easy and should be no trouble for white-hat products, small-ticket items, and small transaction amounts.

    Open a US Merchant Account and Stop International Transaction Declines Dead in Their Tracks

    DirectPayNet is an industry-leading merchant service provider when it comes to high-risk industries. Even if you don’t operate a high-risk business, our team of highly experienced representatives will help you set up a merchant account that allows you to reach customers from all over the world while helping to limit chargebacks and declines. If there’s potential for a steady stream of income and you can’t quite automate it, we have the solutions for you.

    Contact us today and eliminate international declines for good.

  • Why Consumer Data is Valuable to Both Businesses and Consumers

    Why Consumer Data is Valuable to Both Businesses and Consumers

    Data has become synonymous with breaches of privacy in recent years. The fear consumers have of their personal data being shared, used, and sold across the world is unappealing. It doesn’t help that so many big tech, and big data, companies like Microsoft and Amazon have exposed customer information in one way or another.

    Consumer data doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being sold or shared. Not every service provider does this. In fact, most businesses store user data internally to benefit both their brand and their customers. Today, we’re going to go over ways data can benefit both consumers and businesses without risking privacy or selling that data. And as a business, you can use this information to better position your privacy policy and terms of use to help consumers understand what their data is used for.

    Defining What the Value of Consumer Data Is

    Data comes in a wide variety of formats, holding information both unique to each consumer and broad.

    Marketing data, also known as marketing research or consumer insight, is any kind of information/data collection from current customers or potential customers. It can be as simple as how many visitors came to your website this month or as complex as a customer’s lifetime value (LTV). Marketing data comes from a number of sources, including surveys, social media monitoring, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools.

    The most important aspect of marketing data is that it can predict future outcomes. What you want to do with this data is up to you. You could use it to understand your existing customers better or find potential customers based on their demographics or interests. You could even use it to predict trends and anticipate what will happen in the future for your industry.

    Customer data can also help you improve your marketing strategy. If you know where your target audience lives, for example, you may want to tailor your message to appeal to them. You could also use profiling data to create more personalized offers and convert more visitors into customers.

    Why Consumers Are Concerned About Their Data

    Consumers are concerned about their data, and for a simple reason: they don’t understand what it is being used for. The value of data comes from its potential to help solve other problems. But consumers’ understanding of data’s value does not match up with its actual value, because the problems it could be used for are too complicated to easily explain.

    The result is that there are lots of ways to use data that don’t produce much value for consumers, but the consumers don’t know which uses produce value and which do not. They can’t tell which uses are important to know about, so they have to learn about everything.

    The solution is to have companies be more transparent in how they use data, so that consumers can better assess how much it is worth to them for companies to use their data in different ways.

    How You Can Obtain Consumer Data without Privacy Backlash

    Data doesn’t need to leave your business or even your CRM, depending on what type of data it is. If the biggest concern for consumers is having their valuable data sold or not knowing what it’s used for in a digestible sense, then that’s what businesses need to clarify.

    Build Personalized Customer Experiences

    Consumers want it both ways: customized services yet little data sharing. If they understand that you’re using their data to better the experience, then they might be more willing to share it. But that’s too generic of a phrase. “Building a personalized experience” or something like it is blasted over every website on cookie agreement popups. No one knows what that means.

    The solution is to clarify it. What does building a personalized experience for your brand mean? How can you notify customers in a clear, concise way? Here’s an example: say you run a CBD shop. When someone visits that shop, you can notify them that “hey, we want to build a custom experience for you but we need you to share some information with us to do so. You’ll share general location data (not specific addresses or streets), age, gender, product browsing history specific to our site only. With this, we can suggest products we know you’ll love.” Something like this that tells the customer they’re data isn’t so personal that they need a restraining order to feel safe.

    Personalized experiences are even more possible once a customer makes an account with you. You can track their browsing and purchase history as well as request feedback to not only improve their experience but improve your product as well.

    It’s all about the customer. Make them feel safe and they’ll hand over more data than they knew existed.

    Improve Products and Services

    Data is the new oil. Everyone is rushing to get as much of it as possible because they know that whoever has it will be able to make better decisions and beat the competition.

    Data is information that you can’t make better decisions without. And this isn’t just about large companies; all businesses, even small ones, need data to make better decisions and improve their products.

    The sources of data are everywhere: from apps on our phones to sensor-enabled devices in our homes and offices, from social media interactions to sales records, from online search results to GPS tracking. The key is figuring out how to collect that data and turn it into useful information that can guide better business decisions.

    Insightful decision making requires a combination of two things: data and analysis. Data by itself doesn’t do anything for a business. It’s just a collection of facts and figures—raw material for analysis. Analysis by itself doesn’t mean anything either; it’s simply a way of looking at things in a different way or putting two unrelated pieces of information together in a new way.

    But when you put the two together, you get something magical: insights that lead directly to business growth. By collecting the right data, you can offer more targeted products to your actual consumer base and improve the services you already offer. It’s no longer a game of hit-or-miss, it’s collection and analysis.

    Understand Consumer Behavior

    In the early 2000s, online retailers were looking for better ways to predict what books or DVDs or computers their customers would buy. They had a lot of data about what people had bought. But it wasn’t clear how to use that data to figure out what people would buy next.

    Some researchers decided to try a different approach. Instead of trying to infer which purchases a person might make in the future, they looked at how often a person browsed without buying anything. This was less precise than knowing what they had actually purchased, but it worked better. And it had an unexpected bonus: if you combine browsing and buying patterns with information from similar consumers, you can identify new segments of consumers who have similar tastes but different buying habits from your existing customers.

    The point is that sometimes you may have data that you don’t know what to do with or how to read. Try looking at it from a different point of view and you’ll gain invaluable insight into the habits of your customers.

    Share Data with Customers

    The more data businesses share with customers, the more value customers create for themselves. Businesses then have an incentive to share more of that value with customers in the form of lower prices, better products, or more personalized services.

    The latter is particularly important. If customers can create new value by at least viewing a business’ data, then businesses will want to make their data as accessible as possible to customers.

    The long-term trend is headed toward businesses using more open business models. We see this in the rise in popularity of transparency reports. But if data is locked up inside a company, customers don’t benefit from it and there’s less connection between customer and brand.

    New privacy laws and regulatory movements, like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and GDPR, aim to keep individual consumers safe by protecting consumers’ personal information and enforcing data privacy. We’ve heard a lot of groans from businesses, especially tech companies, about this. But general data protection regulation is a good thing for both your business and your customers. If your goal was never to sell that data, then this is your opportunity to use these privacy regulations to your advantage and build a rapport with your users. With proper data management, you’ll see your business flourish.

    Are You Gaining Valuable Consumer Data from Your Shopping Cart?

    Data is the fuel that allows businesses to reach people in new, more meaningful ways. It benefits both consumers and brands, though consumers need more incentive to share it. And that incentive comes from privacy assurance alongside personalized experiences.

    But that means nothing if you aren’t obtaining data from your shopping cart.

    DirectPayNet will set you up with a shopping cart and payment gateway so you can better analyze the data flowing through your site at (and just before) checkout. This data is invaluable to the growth of your business. Contact us today to get set up.