Social Media Marketing

Over 1,000 retailers are gathered in Boston this week to attend the eTail conference. Nicolas Franchet, who recently left eBay to become head of e-commerce on the global vertical marketing team at Facebook, gave a keynote address on Tuesday morning and took questions from the moderator, Bob Cell of MyBuys, and then from the audience. In the spirit of social networking, we've "retweeted" some attendees’ comments from the keynote session.

The New York Times recently ran an article detailing how F-commerce is doing. For anyone in need of a refresher, F-commerce was one of those ideas everyone was really excited about when it first popped up back in 2009, but it never really took off. Gap, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and ASOS all shuttered their Facebook boutiques shortly after launching them. (We did an informal reader survey on the topic back in February: the majority of the 100-plus responders had never heard of F-commerce.) The Times is now reporting that although larger brands have bombed, small businesses are benefitting.

It's safe to say that retailer Club Monaco was slow in getting into the social media space. Although the company had both a presence on Twitter and Facebook in 2010, it hadn't yet developed an actual social strategy. Posts on Facebook weren't in sync with its posts on Twitter to tell the brand's story. Last year, it aimed to change that, implementing a strategy to develop a global community of brand ambassadors on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. The goal: to skew a bit younger and encourage fans to not just engage with the brand, but also promote it to their friends.

Target is engaging Facebook to help determine how half of a $5 million back-to-school donation is allocated. The retailer plans to donate $5 million to schools as part of its “Give With Target” initiative this fall. The two-part giving campaign provides $2.5 million in grants to in-need schools, as well as up to $2.5 million in Target GiftCards to local schools through votes on Target’s Facebook page. The Give With Target campaign will include $25,000 grants to 100 in-need schools just in time for the start of the school year.

MyBuys and the e-tailing group announced results of a joint online survey of 1,000 consumers that examines the evolving relationship between consumers, retailers and social media. The survey found that consumers are more comfortable sharing data with retailers than they are with social networks, especially if it enhances the shopping experience. While many consumer advocates stress the need for tighter regulation in regard to consumer privacy and the use of consumer data, the majority of survey respondents (55 percent) said they're "mostly willing" to provide shopping preferences to trusted retailers in exchange for an enhanced shopping experience.

IBM’s fifth annual Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report has uncovered that 2012 may just be the year of mobile. Based on data from more than 500 U.S. retailers, the report found that online mobile sales increased 88.8 percent in the second quarter of 2012 compared with the same quarter in the prior year. IBM is forecasting that mobile sales will reach 20 percent of total online holiday sales this upcoming season, and that mobile traffic will close in on 25 percent. However, despite the growing trend in mobile shopping, social is lagging, according to IBM.

Mark Zuckerberg and his senior management team will spend two days at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas home office this week, meeting with executives of the world's largest retailer and discussing ways to "deepen" their relationship. The Facebook team will meet with Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke and his lieutenants on Friday, in the first such meeting between the two corporations’ senior management teams. Zuckerberg and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will then speak to hundreds of Wal-Mart employees on Saturday at the retailer's monthly meeting.

Empathica's Consumer Insights Panel surveyed more than 6,500 U.S. consumers and found that mobile and social customer experience strategies are becoming more important than ever for brands, with retail and restaurant consumers using these channels to make decisions — even while in-store.

Nearly one in five online shoppers claim that their recent purchase made after seeing the image on Pinterest was at Etsy.com, according to the latest study from the Bizrate Insights Image Sharing and Shopping Series. Branded stores and small boutiques came in a close second and third with 13 percent and 12 percent completing their purchases at the aforementioned, respectively. 

It seems retailers are having just as much trouble getting shoppers to spend money on their websites as they are in their stores. Total online sales for the second quarter were down more than 2 percent from last quarter, according to the latest Retail Online Index from IBM. The lackluster web numbers come on the heels of a disappointing retail sales report from the Commerce Department Monday, which showed a third straight month-over-month decline in sales.