What is the greatest coffee secret at Starbucks you never knew? Simple answer: a cup of coffee from its Clover machine. I will get to the sales and marketing point of this blog post in a moment. But first let’s talk about a subject most of us love: coffee! If you've never had a "Clover," you're…
The United States Postal Service is changing the way it charges for boxes shipped via Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express and other parcel shipping services. Currently, the Postal Service applies a dimensional divisor (DIM) of 194 for boxes that exceed one cubic foot in volume, and only for zones five and above. Effective June 23,…
The trade war with China has been cited as a primary cause of much of the recent economic volatility, from the stock market dive last fall to fluctuations in oil prices. While it's clear that tariffs are creating some level of instability as companies and investors try to guess what will happen next, many retailers…
Retailers still have time to leverage learnings from holiday 2018 in order to make a positive impact on holiday 2019.
Have you read a column in the past week, month or year that's void of buzzwords? Probably not. In the age of 5,000-plus choices of what partners, technologies or agencies to choose from, I find it uncanny how the marketplace is fraught with complex ways to explain simple things. Blame it on analysts who define…
Email marketing is going on 20 years as a viable direct marketing channel. Although it has proved itself to be a recession-proof channel, how we do email hasn't changed dramatically over those 20 years. Change is coming, though. Are you ready to change with it? The consumer inbox still has limited interactivity and sporadic constraints…
As brands and retailers endeavor to unlock the mystery surrounding consumers’ shopping habits and behaviors, the question of product quality vs. price comes into sharper focus. According to recent research from technology company First Insight, consumers are increasingly choosing quality. In fact, 53 percent of consumers who responded to a First Insight survey said product quality was the…
There's lots of buzz surrounding digital-native brands and what's making them so disruptive and relevant today. While the definition of digital native is evolving, they are companies that launch as web-only retailers with the belief that superior technology can be a differentiator. They often engender loyalty by projecting authenticity and effectively leveraging social media. More…
Shopping preferences of men and women are diverging as each gender responds differently to disruptive technologies. This dynamic was highlighted in our new study, Mind the Gap: The Gender Effect on Shopping Habits and Technology Disruptors. In fact, according to the results, men are less likely to embrace disruptors like mobile shopping, Amazon.com, and discount…
This is an $18 trillion global spending story. Seventy percent to 80 percent of consumer purchasing is controlled by women. There's a reason why many retailers have shifted their language from share of wallet to share of purse, and why terms like clientele’ing are starting to replace terms like showrooming. Women are the gatekeepers to…
