Across brick and mortar and ecommerce, the customer experience landscape has changed dramatically—and permanently—during the pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, ecommerce channel advertising was attracting a lot of attention from advertisers—especially in verticals like consumer packaged goods (CPG)—as well as retailers, which hoped to add new higher-margin revenue streams to their businesses after seeing Amazon’s success in the area. Amazon had become the No. 3 digital ad seller in the US thanks primarily to placements on its ecommerce property, and companies including Walmart, Target, and eBay had been growing similar businesses.

Following a strong Q1 fueled by government stimulus, we have increased our forecast for US retail ecommerce sales in 2021. US ecommerce sales are expected to grow 17.9% this year (higher than the 13.7% predicted in January 2021) to reach $933.30 billion. That pushes ecommerce’s share of total US retail sales to 15.3%, up from 14.0% last year. Ecommerce is now on track to surpass 20% of total retail by 2024.

India cracks down on ecommerce giants: The country proposed regulations that would ban ecommerce sites from hosting flash sales or listing affiliated entities as sellers on their platforms, which could spell trouble for players like Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart.

In this Meet the Analyst Webinar, Jeremy Goldman, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, discussed how brand and retail marketers can navigate these trends, and win the hearts, minds, and wallets of today’s consumers.

eMarketer was pleased to moderate a Tech-Talk Webinar featuring Litmus' Cynthia Price, vice president of marketing, along with Epsilon’s Nicole Eaton, vice president, group accounts, and Proactiv’s Dave Sims, head of customer experience. They discussed tried and tested strategies for creating high-performing email onboarding programs.