5 reflexes to adopt in digital marketing and e-commerce for 2022

5 reflexes to adopt in digital marketing and e-commerce for 2022

At the start of 2022, marketing and e-commerce teams must press the right buttons to boost company revenues. Five key actions are to be reinforced or prepared for this year by relying on technology. This concerns the fact of facilitating the payment of its customers in installments, the development of social commerce by relying directly on social platforms, the strengthening of the automation of internal marketing tasks, the continuation of the testing of alternatives to third-party cookies for advertising and exploring the possibilities of the metaverse, with video games and NFTs in mind. Playing the 'Buy now and pay later' card

In 2022, offering to split the payment of customers on the internet is on the rise. The trend is to set up the 'Buy Now Pay Later' on its e-commerce site to facilitate and boost its sales. Witness the Swedish fintech Klarna, created in 2005, which offers this type of service. It has seen its activity take off and is now valued at 45 billion dollars following its fundraising of 524 million euros in June 2021. "Clients are tired of revolving credits and need more transparency" underlines the CEO and founder of Klarna.

The domain whets the appetites of consumer credit providers, such as France's Younited Credit. This deferred payment method allows customers to pay for their purchases in installments, often on a weekly or monthly basis. The BNPL 'Buy Now Pay Later' thus offers them a certain guarantee since they will pay after receipt. It is also an encouragement to consume via credit without interest or with clearer fees.

Simple and instantaneous for the consumer, the BNPL is growing. Merchants are paid on order and the risk of non-payment is assumed by the Buy Now Pay Later service provider. Banks and fintechs offer this service to merchants via a subscription. With double-digit growth in 2020 and strong fundraising for the Fintech sector, the Buy Now Pay Later market is booming in some European countries and should logically increase in France.

Further develop social commerce


Selling from social networks is gaining in importance. The use of social networks to sell products directly is constantly growing. According to the research company Yougov, 1 out of 3 French people have already purchased a product via a social network. The trend is even higher among the youngest, 18-24 year olds, 38% of whom have consumed via this channel.

The social commerce or social shopping offered to brands by social networks – Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok – has a number of advantages and disadvantages. It is in China that social media is the most used as a sales channel, following the example of the use of platforms such as WeChat by Tencent.

These are commercial spaces that are easy to install but still limited in functionality. Targeting can be precise but it should be optimized by purchasing advertising messages. The audiences are very large but the competition is growing. Having said this, social commerce will increasingly assert itself as an essential tool for an omni-channel marketing strategy.

5 réflexes à adopter en marketing digital et en e-commerce pour 2022

Boost marketing automation to save time and money

With the acceleration of the digitalization of society and the massification of exchanges, automating customer knowledge is a key success factor. In their interactions with the general public as well as with their professional customers, the majority of companies have therefore equipped themselves with customer relationship management software (GRC or CRM).


Three out of four companies (78%) said they would use automation in 2021 according to a European study by Hubspot, a software publisher for marketing. Marketing is the sector of activity that has made the most use of automation according to this study. Marketers' priorities go to task management (58%), content automation (42%), and deploying chatbots (31%). Overall, marketing automation is a recurring task, and requires regular updating of tools to meet new challenges.

Note that in 2021, three out of four marketers (77%) observed more engagement from Internet users by e-mail than in the previous year. Fewer emails are sent each week by these marketers who now favor segmentation, personalization and automation. Emailing optimized by CRM software remains a safe bet for a customer loyalty strategy in 2022.

A year of experimentation before the end of cookies

The great transformation of Internet targeting methods will not take place this year. However, marketers must continue to prepare for 2023, when Google will eliminate the use of third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, which holds 65% of the global web browser market. Announced in August 2019, this measure was to apply in 2022.

A real upheaval for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem which was based on this data collection technology, the end of third-party cookies can be presented as an evolution towards a more protective web desired by the general public and required by recent regulations. . But the proposals to replace third-party cookies by Google and based on group systems or 'cohorts' of Internet users are not unanimous. Content publishers, agencies, advertisers and platforms are looking for alternatives to analyze audiences, track Internet users and target them with advertising.

Alternatives to third-party cookies are being developed, in particular with the use of alternative identifiers and the analysis of Internet user browsing for contextual and semantic targeting. We will also mention the 'Data Clean Room'. At the same time, first-party data is coming back to the fore, with each company having an interest in expanding its direct link with its customers. The year 2022 will be crucial for assembling a technological and business solution that meets the challenges of advertisers and media agencies.

Explore the promises of the Metaverse

Last point, when Mark Zuckerberg announced on October 28, 2021 that the Facebook group would now be called Meta, he also presented his vision for the future with the Metaverse. This digital, virtual and connected universe in which each user will be embodied by an avatar. A universe that resembles that of multiplayer video games on the Internet.

This does not represent anything technologically revolutionary, but it is an approach to the Internet of the future and the interactions between human beings that structures the initiatives of the sector. We note, for example, that in 2021, the Yves Rocher cosmetics group via its foundation is committed to replanting 100,000 trees in real life from plantations by players of virtual trees on the Minecraft video game. As for the sports equipment brand Nike, it is investing in the video game Roblox where it is creating Nikeland, announced in mid-November 2021. Nike fans connect there, create, share experiences and compete in competitions. Nike created this bespoke world against the backdrop of its global headquarters and inside the immersive 3D space of Roblox.

Visitors to Nikeland can use the accelerometers on their smartphones, smartwatches or health trackers to transfer their movements from real life to the online game. This is the case, for example, to perform movements in the game such as jumps or speed races. Of course, you can dress your avatar present in the 3D universe with clothes marketed by Nike. The virtual world of Nike in the Roblox game has been brought to life in the physical world in New York, the home of Nike's innovation, via augmented reality delivered by the Snapchat mobile app. Selling digital clothing in the metaverse The opposite way is to project a physical good into the digital universe. This is the case of Monnier Frères, an e-tailer selling luxury and designer accessories. The brand joined forces in October 2021 with the English company republiqe, itself founded in 2020, in order to create digital fashion items. The customer buys an outfit on the Monnier Frères website. He sends a photo showing it and the Monnier Frères teams take care of integrating the purchased outfit in the photo. The customer receives it and can expose himself on social networks. hope ".

From around ten billion dollars today, the consumer virtual reality market could grow considerably. The metaverse promises to be a new market place for commercial and human exchanges, but which is still to be built and brought to life. We just have to remember the bitter failure of 'Second Life', the financial speculation of investors and the complexity of the multiple technologies to be deployed on a large scale.

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