Retail Marketing - Shopping Center Marketing

Web campaigns are a great way to engage consumers, but brands should be wary of the pitfalls.

Consumers are using the web more than ever, so it is hardly surprising that brands are trying to tap in to the trend and engage in online dialogue. The interactive nature of the internet makes it easier to achieve brand engagement and offers wider benefits such as opportunities for data collection. Continue reading ‘Digital: Creating Conversation Online’

Glam Media, the top women’s online network, launched Glam Today, a topic-based daily email list for women. Each day focuses on a different vertical:

• Monday: “Great Style In No Time Flat,” a five-second style guide
• Tuesday: “Tips and Tricks for the Beauty Obsessed”
• Wednesday: “Because Food Should Always be Fabulous,” a roundup of modish recipes
• Thursday: “The Must-Know for Pop-Culture Gurus,” a gossip and trivia sheet
• Friday: “How Your Body Really Works,” a newsletter that debunks popular health myths Continue reading ‘‘Daily Candy’-Style Email Newsletters’

According to a Future Now client, images can lift conversion rates by 147% by showing products “in context.”

Yesterday we looked at examples of image zoom and alternate views, which can help customers experience the product better than one small view. A good photographer plus AJAX or Flash technology like Scene 7 or Magic Zoom can achieve this.

But online retailers can go a step further and use photos that show products in use, or “in context.” Continue reading ‘Can Product Images Improve Conversion?’

Maybe “luxury” and “MySpace” aren’t oxymorons after all. Cartier just launched an extensive global advertising campaign in eight languages on MySpace. True, the Cartier profile is a bit more sophisticated than most on the largest online repository of tacky wallpaper. And it also offers something for people who aren’t in the market for jewelry: free downloads of songs from international artists like Lou Reed and Marion Cotillard rather than a garage band on a special minisite. As Advertising Age points out in its article MySpace Signs Up Glam New Member Cartier, 40 percent of MySpace members are in other countries. The social networking site is a remarkably effective way to reach a global audience at a relatively low cost (especially now that the dollar is so weak). Continue reading ‘My Friend Cartier’

Private label retail growth drove need to unite multiple brands on a common e-commerce platform to support a multi-channel strategy

ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG), the premier provider of e-commerce software and platform neutral optimization services, today announced that Chico’s FAS, Inc. has successfully re-launched the Web storefronts for each of its retail brands as part of an aggressive multi-channel strategy powered by the full ATG Commerce Suite. Boasting a streamlined shopping experience with easy navigation through each brand’s extensive catalog of apparel and accessories, all three Chico’s Web sites (www.Chicos.com, www.Soma.com and www.WhiteHouseBlackMarket.com) make use of industry leading functionality allowing the merchandising team to deliver targeted promotions and recommendations to consumers. Continue reading ‘Chico’s FAS Launches New Web Stores’

What are the “unobtainables” that your brands or products are based on? I’ll pass on that one when it comes to traditional luxury and where Web 2.0 fits into marketing them because buying online, making messages too public and SNSing with just anybody about the $52,500 Louis Vuitton Patchwork bag seem to contradict the anti-massness of luxury.Instead, I’ll run with life-caches and life-streams as a luxury performance category.
- start with biographies of clients: income, status, life cycle, goals, social concerns Continue reading ‘Can A Luxury Brand Be Too Attainable?’

Online television show content is emerging as an increasingly effective way to reach new-vehicle buyers, 68 percent of which report going online to find information on TV shows, according to the JD Power and Associates 2008 Power Auto Online Media Study - Summer (via MarketingCharts).

Moreover, the reach of online television show content among new-vehicle buyers has increased 22 percent from 2007, the study finds.

The semi-annual study, in its third year, studies the internet usage and behavior of new-vehicle buyers and identifies websites that most effectively target desirable advertising audiences.

TV show content is among the top three types of online information consumed by new-vehicle buyers, along with travel-related information (including maps, driving directions and weather reports) and news (including finance and business-related content), J.D. Power found.

[Full Story at Marketing Vox]

It’s one of the largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, but Panasonic Corp. of North America still walks a fine line as an Internet retailer.

Having invested several years and millions of dollars in an e-commerce operation, Panasonic wants to maximize revenue by selling its base of more than 2,000 products direct to the public over the Internet. But the company also wants to avoid alienating its retailers, which include some of the biggest chains in the business.

To achieve both its goals, Panasonic, No. 160 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, is expanding a pilot program with Shopatron Inc., a third-party service that funnels orders from manufacturers’ web sites to retailers and dealers.

During the pilot, about 30% of web orders on Panasonic.com are going through Shopatron, but eventually that number could rise as high as 100%, says Panasonic vice president of e-business Jeremy Dalnes. “Once those types of orders are able to be processed by our retailers, we’ll open it up so that almost 100% of our orders to the public will be fulfilled by our retailers,” he says.

[Full Story at Internet Retailer]

We know about the MyStarbucksIdea website, which Starbucks positions as a catch-all blog, customer feedback site, and social networking website. The reality is that website is an unfocused slush pile for customer generated ideas.

But how many of us know about Starbucks V2V? It’s a full-fledged social networking site to promote volunteerism with customers and Starbucks partners (employees). It’s under the radar at this point — participation solely by invitation — and has only been mentioned officially by the company as an update entry on MyStarbucksIdea.

Think Meetup meets LinkedIn and there you have Starbucks V2V (Volunteer 2 Volunteer). You can post a cause, an event, or an activity and have others join you. Easy enough to understand and simple enough to make happen.

Starbucks V2V has real promise. It’s clearly community-focused with a drive to making positive contributions to small corners around the world. By having profile pages for participants, it feels much more personal than does the way-too-sterile MyStarbucksIdea website.

[Full Story at Brand Autopsy]

Have you been to SomethingStore? It’s an online shopping experience without all the, um, shopping. No browsing, no searching, no choosing sizes, styles, colors, features, brands. Just the amount. See, you go to SomethingStore and you can buy 1 Something for $10. Or 2 Somethings for $20. Or 3 Somethings for $30. You get the idea. What that Something is, well, you’ll find out when it hits your doorstep. (Shipping is free, incidentally.)

According to the Something Tracker (I think this is probably one of the coolest parts of the site), your Something could be a pocket watch, an hour glass, a soccer ball, binoculars, memory foam slippers, a ceramic teapot, an incense kit, a coral jewelry set, a karaoke microphone. The list goes on and on…well, to the last 100 items sold in the past 25 days. In case you’re curious, the site has sold (as of this blog post) 18,103 Somethings since it launched last fall. And the average rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. I guess when you don’t know what you’re getting your expectations tend to be on the lower side?

[Story Found at Mooney Thinks]