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The future for online retail marketing is brighter and more challenging than ever. New paradigms like e-commerce 3.0 allow consumers to connect locally with other consumers and merchants. What can online retailers expect in the coming months and years as they plan to meet the challenges of new paradigms, new technologies, and the ever-changing online landscape?

Jeff Bezos, the innovative chief executive of Amazon.com has just created Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online service involving human workers, and he has also personally invested in a human-assisted search company called ChaCha. He describes this phenomenon as “artificial artificial intelligence.” It’s pretty complicated stuff. Computers still do some things very poorly. Even when they pool their memory and processors in powerful networks, they remain unevenly intelligent. Things that humans do with little conscious thought, such as recognizing patterns or meanings in images, language or concepts, only baffle machines. Pricegrabber.com, the comparison shopping site, uses Mechanical Turk to match images to the product pages. So look for artificial intelligence, with help from humans on the ever-changing online landscape.

10 Questions to Help You Increase Results From Your Internet, Catalog and All Other Marketing Channels:
1. What are the best practices in successful online/offline integration?
2. What are the most important business metrics, and how should you measure them?
3. How can you know where your sales are coming from in a multichannel environment?
4. What are the online merchandising innovations you should implement, and what should you measure?
5. How should your creative approach differ online and offline?
6. How can you control rising costs?
7. How can you maximize your online marketing dollars?
8. How can you mail less and still create more business from the Web?
9. How many co-op databases should you participate in, and how do they differ?
10. How should you differentiate your business from your competitors?

Multichannel Masters
How do you become a master at multichannel marketing? Here are the most important topics to focus on, and learn everything you want to know about making the most of all your marketing channels:
1. Business-To-Business. Design winning marketing strategies to generate revenue from current customers. Integrate your Web site and improve your customer experience. Implement multichannel measurement and metrics for increased sales and profits. Start proactive phone and e-mail customer contact. Create and cultivate a thriving B-to-B customer database.
2. Circulation Strategies. Activate strategic circulation planning. Plans are a must for success. Develop house files and merge and mailing strategies designed for a multichannel world. Create an annual mail plan that meets your financial goals. Correct database errors to fix declining response rates and increase performance. Acquire new customers by testing new media with your message and offers. Test new circulation techniques and strategies to increase your ROI and marketing insights.
3. Creative and Production. Does your brand have ba-ding? Design your Web site to make it sell harder. Write fabulous online and offline copy for your target audience. Maximize your photography budget and avoid the pitfalls present in the multichannel world. Investigate the ins-and-outs of saving money with co-mailing. Evaluate each test with a “this-worked-but-this-didn’t-work” evaluation meeting. Think about how to gain production cost efficiencies. It’s not as hard as it looks.
4. Management and Operations. How can you reduce your operating costs? Are there any sensible acquisitions available? Where can you find new marketing opportunities? Secure all your data.
5. Merchandising. Learn techniques for mixing the innovative with the hard numbers. Test some guerrilla merchandising techniques. Develop your own proprietary products for brand enhancement. Sharpen your product development and sourcing. Improve your inventory forecasting systems. Utilize square inch analysis techniques to calculate today and secure profits tomorrow.
6. Multichannel Marketing. Learn how to manage multiple channels to guarantee effective content management. Learn how to connect the customer experience (see how Amazon does it so effectively) to customer loyalty. Where is the most effective place to spend your next dollar in the multichannel marketplace? Focus on new customer acquisition. Investigate how branding can increase customer loyalty. Maximize your customers’ value through marketing, merchandising, operations and creative strategies. Start investigating where sophisticated marketers find profits. Fine-tune your growth strategies in multichannel marketing. Build a world-class customer and prospect database to maximize multichannel marketing.
7. Small and Start-Up Multichannel Merchants. The first task is setting the stage for multichannel success. You need to build a customer file. Next, you need to generate sales and profits through an integrated marketing plan (retail store, online store and mail order catalog). Then, test, measure and learn from your work. Follow up by identifying your growth strategy challenges (competition, physical resources, financial resources and human resources), and then figure out how to compete with the big boys.
8. Web and E-Mail Marketing. Identify the core concepts for building a powerful e-mail program. Do research on search marketing basics. Research what information is crucial to analyze. Next, shape up your database by slicing and dicing your list for improved relevance and profitable results. Measure your search conversions. Integrate your Web site and improve your customers’ experience. Make blogging and RSS pay off. Do some channel surfing and explore new possibilities. Focus on increasing your e-mail sales with data-driven relevance targeting. Develop your online merchandising to increase online sales. Make e-commerce a uniquely great experience for your customers. Investigate the latest tools for optimizing the online customer experience. Develop Web-specific photography to enhance sales and the customer experience. Make shopping comparison sites work for you. Learn how to conduct real-time testing online to improve conversion rates.

New Books to Give You a Competitive Edge:
Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity Into a Powerful Business Advantage by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn (Harvard Business School Press, $26.95). Using actual clients’ marketing campaigns as their storyboard, the authors show how to leverage brand and image across categories. The result — more juice from the orange. Creativity, by definition, questions what is. It starts from scratch by freshly defining the situation and framing new questions around it. Learn how to get out of your grove and into the groves of potential customers. Once you’re farming those new groves, you’ve employed creativity to business advantage.

On-The-Fly Guide: Balancing Work and Life by Bill Butterworth (Doubleday/Currency, $9.95). Butterworth’s book offers solutions for three types of workaholics: Hazies, Lazies and Crazies. Hazies think that their workaholism creates a better life for their families because it means more money. They forget that their presence is an essential part of that family life. Lazies lack the self-discipline to bring their life back into balance. They live each day with a litany of “You don’t know what it’s like to . . .” Crazies allow life to run them. They throw themselves into a task to the exclusion of everything else.

Ideas to Grow Your Business Profitably:
1. Improve your Web site format, design and copy.
2. Increase your e-mail response rates through effective creative design and featured offers.
3. Focus on generating more revenue from current customers.
4. Find out what information is important to measure, how to collect that data, and how to use it to boost sales.
5. Analyze your marketing tests. It is critical to properly attribute the source of orders so marketing programs can be evaluated and receive appropriate financial support.

Marshall Marcovitz is the founder and former CEO of the CHEF’S CATALOG, a leading Internet shopping site. Currently, he is a lecturer, a university professor and a marketing consultant. He may be contacted at mmmellow9@yahoo.com.