Online Marketing

Plenty of retailers have leveraged user-generated content (e.g., customer photos and videos) from contests and promotions in branded marketing campaigns before, but not quite like Sears just did. The company's Startup + Developer Challenge, held this past summer, was a "code-a-thon" designed to find the best and brightest minds in the tech community of Silicon Valley — and then use those minds to Sears' benefit.

Instagram, Facebook's insanely popular photo-sharing app, introduced video capability in June to compete with the rise of Vine's bite-sized videos. Within 24 hours, Instagram's 130 million users uploaded over 5 million videos.

Product listing ads (PLAs) are search ads that include concise product information such as product image, price and merchant name without relying solely on text ads to entice online shoppers. PLAs are proving that a picture is truly worth a thousand (key) words, as they're consistently driving increased clickthrough rates and conversions. Given that the holiday season is quickly approaching, it's now more important than ever for merchants to understand how to maximize PLAs. Here are some tips on how to most effectively use PLAs this holiday season.

In an effort to give you a sneak peek into the upcoming Retail Online Integration webinar, One Size Does NOT Fit All: Delivering Customized Shopping Experiences for Your Customers (you can register for free here!), I conducted an interview with Catherine Frye, marketing and customer services solutions manager, IBM Business Analytics. Frye will be co-presenting the webinar, and offered a few of her thoughts on the value of personalization in e-commerce. Here's a portion of that interview:

The Company Store hasn't sent many flash-sale emails. In fact, among the 133 emails captured by Who's Mailing What! this year, only one recent email used the flash-sale strategy. However, The Company Store clearly did its homework.

The holiday season is right around the corner, meaning most e-retailers are in the thick of finalizing promotional campaigns and optimizing websites in the hopes of increasing traffic and avoiding conversion roadblocks. However, before launching their email, social and traditional advertising campaigns, many online retailers would be well served to take the time to re-evaluate the overall digital experience they're delivering to visitors. 

As a 112-year-old brand steeped in a traditional brick-and-mortar history, Walgreens isn't what you would consider a digital pioneer. Yet the drug store chain has been forced to evolve its business to remain relevant for today's digital-savvy consumers. The transition has admittedly been a slow process, but it's taking shape. In a keynote presentation yesterday at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Chicago, Walgreens’ President and CEO Greg Wasson detailed how the company is embracing digital throughout its organization

Tuesday Morning Corp. has dropped the "e" from its commerce. The Dallas-based closeout retailer quietly shut down its online shopping site last month in order to better focus on business for its more than 800 physical stores. The company said the nature of its business, which involves a constantly rotating array of housewares, clothing luggage and more, is better suited for in-person shopping. While it seems like an unlikely move in an increasingly online-focused world, some industry experts say it may be for the best.

I had the opportunity to chat recently with Beth Guastella, the recently named president and chief operating officer of giggle, an omnichannel specialty retailer of upscale baby products and resources. In part one of this two-part blog post, we discuss what attracted Guastella to giggle; what specialty retail is; and how giggle’s catalog business works. 

It's likely you've used behavioral targeting to reach out to and convert shoppers on your website or through display ads. Now, however, with so much of your online marketing occurring on social media sites, wouldn't it also be valuable to reach consumers there with behavioral targeting? And what if you could actually improve your campaign effectiveness by retargeting those same people via social media?