E-Commerce

Your Web site plays a crucial role in tying together all of your marketing channels. In fact, consumers cite company Web sites and third-party retail sites as being the most influential factor in seven out of 10 product categories as a source of further learning in their decision-making processes leading to purchase, according to a recent survey by DoubleClick. What are some ways you can leverage your Web site to increase conversions both online and off? Chris Shimojima, vice president of customer marketing at Sears Direct, shared some of his strategies on integrating the Web with your other channels in his session “Creating a Best-in-Class

Always ask to be added to your customers’ online address books to help ensure that your e-mail campaigns are delivered, note the authors of the white paper “Authentication, Accreditation tion — for Marketers!” Use registration pages on your Web site and in all e-mail communications to remind consumers to add your URL and e-mail address(es) to their address books. By being “white listed” in this way, you could realize several benefits: full image content and links will be rendered as you intend them to be; your e-mails will bypass personal adaptive filters; and you’re guaranteed placement in customers’ e-mail folders, according to the white

¥ 39.5 million U.S. households shopped online in 2004, up from 36 million in 2003. ¥ 70 percent of online consumers say they research their purchases on the Internet before making a purchase. ¥ 29 percent of North American households used broadband connections to link to the Internet in 2004, up from 19 percent in 2003. Source:”Forrester Research: The State of Consumer Technology Adoption,” released Aug. 2, 2005

Almost any question can be answered cheaply, quickly and finally by a test campaign. And that’s the way to answer them — not by arguments around a table. Go to the court of last resort — the buyers of your product. —Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising, 1923 Savvy catalogers have long used testing to improve their mail businesses. And as the Web matures, catalogers are bringing the same discipline to their online marketing efforts. This article offers 10 tips for running direct marketing tests in the online world. The first seven are common to online and offline. The last three are unique

Every business-to-business (B-to-B) merchant should take the time to optimize its homepage space to ensure its customers have a positive experience, said Amy Africa, president of Eight By Eight, a strategic consulting firm specializing in online and offline integration, in her session “The Best of the Best: B-to-B’s Top 25 Web Sites” at the Sixth Annual MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op and Interactive Marketing Conference held last month in White Plains, N.Y. Africa offered the following tips for b-to-b marketers interested in taking their Web entry pages from so-so to stellar: 1. The entry page should download as quickly as possible. “Make sure important stuff loads in

This holiday selling season you want your employees to convey to customers the excitement of your new product line. You’d love to see your staff pumped up and ready to handle the increased volume and sales, right? But how do you get them into that mental state in which they’ll happily go the extra mile to satisfy shoppers? Susan Drake, Michelle Gulman and Sara Roberts, authors of the new book “Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and WOW Your Customers” (Dearborn Publishers, $23, http://www.dearborntrade.com), note that to “create inspired and motivated employees who perform well and deliver on your

Search marketing is hot: Analysts predict the industry will reach almost $15 billion in marketing spend in 2005, up more than 30 percent compared to 2004. There are two primary flavors of search marketing: paid search, dominated by Google’s and Yahoo!’s pay-per-click networks; and natural search, also known as organic search, unpaid search, or search engine optimization. Since cost-per-click fees have risen during the last few quarters, marketers have increased their focus on natural search efforts. To help improve online sales, this article examines nine common misconceptions about natural search marketing and how you can avoid these pitfalls. It’s simply too complex. Some

Consumers lowered their ratings on retailers’ online shopping and browsing attributes, according to a new survey from Decision Direct Research. The Online Multichannel Survey of more than 50,000 consumers of 35 multichannel merchants found that retailers’ ratings decreased when compared to both last quarter and the same quarter last year. Consumers said the following attributes are important to them: e-mail order verification, ability to view an item online in a selected color and ability to zoom to enlarge product features. Yet, only 63 percent, 44 percent and 44 percent, respectively, gave “excellent” ratings to retailers on those attributes. Additionally, only 50 percent of respondents gave a

Online retail sales (excluding travel) rose 23.8 percent in 2004, to $89 billion. That represents 4.6 percent of total retail sales, according to The State of Retailing Online 8.0, an annual Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research. In all, 137 retailers were polled for the study. Here’s what else Forrester found: ¥ $109.6 billion, expected amount of online retail sales (excluding travel) in 2005. ¥ 28 percent, average operating margins of online retailers in 2004, up from 21 percent in 2003. ¥ 32 percent, average operating margins for catalog-based online retailers, up from 28 percent in 2003. Source: Shop.org and Forrester

Of 175 catalogers with e-mail programs, e-mail marketer Silverpop found that between March and May of this year, 75 percent offered e-mail signup directly on the homepage, while 3 percent used a pop-up at the homepage to collect e-mail addresses. Other data revealed by the study: * 75% offered an incentive to customers for providing their e-mail addresses * 45% of those catalogers offered sales and promotions as an incentive * 14% offered newsletters * 11% offered a catalog or other form of direct mail * 2% offered a prize For more information on Silverpop’s “2005 Retail E-mail Marketing Study,” visit http://www.silverpop.com/news/press/05_26_05.html.