Editor’s Note: Retail Online Integration Magazine

No, you're not seeing things. Before I get started with this month's Editor's Note, let me point out the obvious: As you can see from our new logo on the cover, All About ROI is now Retail Online Integration.

Why the change? Because while All About ROI was a great, catchy title, we wanted to make it clear to our readers — new and old — that our focus is, and always has been, on cross-channel retailers and how they (or you) integrate online and traditional retail strategies. Despite the name change, our goal stays the same: to provide you with the best possible information about the integration of retail and online tactics through case studies, cover story profiles, features, columns and more.

Now, on to the rest of the Editor's Note.

A Busy June
Not sure about the rest of you, but the last few months have been pretty darn busy for the Retail Online Integration team. Conferences and trade shows were the order of the day. It started with the DMA's Retail Marketing Conference (RMC) in Orlando in late May, continued on to the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago in early June, TWTRCON and Digital Marketing Days in New York a week later, and ended with ROI's very own Retail Marketing Virtual Conference & Expo on June 24. Whew! My feet and fingers are tired just writing this.

While these weeks have been busy, they crystallized for me the fact that we're on to something: Cross-channel retailers — whether they're originally from the catalog space, online space or traditional brick-and-mortar retail space– — are focusing more and more on integrating sales channels, including transactional websites, retail stores, catalogs, email, mobile and social media.

At the RMC, Margaret Moraskie, senior vice president of marketing at Boston Proper, discussed how her company inspires its customers with multichannel messaging. When you have a great product, she said, "put it on your catalog's front cover, on your homepage, in your emails, and on your landing and category pages. ... Consistent messaging spoken with conviction really drives sales."

At IRCE, Imran Jooma, president of e-commerce for Sears Holdings, discussed his brand's mobile commerce strategy and how the channel enables it to connect with customers on a variety of levels. "Mobile is the epicenter of social media and multichannel," he said. "It bridges the gap between the online and offline spaces."

Other retail integration trends were on display at IRCE as well. The integration of retail and social networking as a commerce platform — also known as F-Commerce, or Facebook Commerce — was a big one. Attendees learned how greeting card retailer Hallmark recently started selling merchandise directly on Facebook. Vendors offering applications to add e-commerce capabilities to Facebook — such as Payvment — were on display as well.

Multichannel marketing was also discussed during a session at ROI's RMV. In "The Bucket List: Strategies For Marketing to Your Multichannel Cus-tomers," Kevin Hillstrom (featured in this month's Shop Talk department on pg. 9), president of multichannel marketing consultancy MineThatData, said audiences are dispersing into a plethora of micro-channels, requiring marketers to approach customer strategy in new and interesting ways.

The Virtual Conference & Expo is on demand until Sept. 28.

Enjoy!