Mack says getting internal resources and support to accelerate growth is critical, but that has to be done via calculated efforts that bring attention and respect to digital channels. In a presentation at eTail Canada this week, Mack outlined three ways to ensure that’s happening in your retail organization.

Dave Mack

1) Online leaders need to be driving value back into every area of the organization – unprompted!
Bring human resources into the conversation – help get their message in front of the best available talent through:
- Google keyword ranking to help extend reach and hit target demographic
- Geo-targeted reach for recruiting support in difficult geographic locations
- Best practice support for social marketing campaigns

He noted that the best learnings were home grown. When addressing marketing and getting more attention on digital channels, he realized areas where his team could add value such as traffic and merchandising. Over time, some real estate on the print flyer that he would have asked for and not gotten years ago was made available; “You can’t just ask for it you have to earn it,” he said.

2) Guarantee an ROI on the $$ the company re-directs to your online biz, if you can’t do that…reconsider
Mack quoted a famous business man who said, “What’s my return on investment in ecommerce? Are you Crazy? This is Colmubus in the New World. What was his ROI?” Mack said this might seem a logical way of arguing but that ultimately, you must prove ROI for your ecommerce operations.

3) Know the basic attribution case studies out there and use this data to help support your cross channel impact

For every $1 online, Mack guarantees $3.45 in store. “It’s a two way street,” he said. “You have to show value.”

From The Source: 3 Ways to get your Biz to Pay More Attention to Online is a post from: The eTail Blog

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1) Send a single, well-worded message

Mobile ads are small, which means that your words have to be few and to-the-point. The language should also communicate value to your customers so that they can answer the question “What’s in it for me?” According to some studies, words that rhyme or words that make a play on a cliche are most effective at grabbing a customer’s attention – just be careful not to make your language patronizing. Also, think beyond catchy slogans and offer an incentive for tapping on the ad.

2) Use images that captivate

A Nielsen media report found that people are 26 percent more likely to tap an ad that contains video. However, you don’t have to embed video to create images that attract attention. Use a light but vivid shade for the background of the ad. Avoid black and other dark colors so that your text pops against the background color. Also, when you add images, make the images simple and easy to see. Don’t require customers to pinch or expand so that they can navigate your ad.

3) Make shopping easy

Best Buy recently ran an ad campaign offering free Geek Squad data transfer with the purchase of a new laptop. Many retailers’ mobile ads direct customers back to the retailer’s mobile website or, even worse, to a website that is not mobile-optimized. The Best Buy mobile ad, on the other hand, not only directed customers back to Best Buy’s mobile site but also specifically routed them to a landing page to shop the company’s selection of premium laptops. By linking the ad directly to the shopping cart, Best Buy also gave itself an easy way to track ROI on its mobile advertising campaign.

Mobile Advertising: 3 Quick Tips on What Works, What Doesn’t is a post from: The eTail Blog

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Renowned doctors Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen have announced the launch of BeautySage.com, a beauty and health online store that comes to us from existing site, YouBeauty.com. YouBeauty.com launched about 10 months ago with the goal of helping women understand beauty and health together, from a scientific rather than a superficial perspective.

Now, with BeautySage.com, the 10 million women who have become fans of YouBeauty.com will be able to purchase products that align with that same philosophy. The site claims it will only sell beauty and wellness products that “truly work,” by putting every product through a rigorous analysis led by a team of experts like cosmetic chemist Ni’kita Wilson.

The reason we like it is it’s a pretty genius, well-thought out plan from start to finish. We presume this was in the cards all along and we congratulate Oz and company for thinking of it: Start a website that will be an authority on healthy beauty and wellness, then once the loyalty to the site’s content is apparent, give its readers a chance to buy the products that align with your philosophy. Pretty brilliant, we think.

BeautySage.com plans to engage a select amount of visitors as product testers who will be sent samples based on their beauty profiles, then tasked with evaluating those products and sharing their thoughts and reviews. Customers will also eventually have access to scientific quizzes from YouBeauty.com in order to determine the best products for their needs. In other words, customers will take a quiz, determine what’s right and wrong for them, and then learn why.

We’ve submitted our email address and are anxiously awaiting more information…

UPDATE: We received an email from BeautySage.com today apologizing for the confusion over the company’s offer of a “sample box” to customer’s signing up through the temporary landing page. Apparently, the offer was really for a coupon code via email after the company’s launch, which can be redeemed for a free sample box (a $10 value) with a first purchase of $30 or more. Already a gaff? Perhaps, but dealing with it promptly was definitely a plus!

New E-Retailer Series: BeautySage.com Launches from Dr. Oz is a post from: The eTail Blog

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“Google announces big change to how search results are delivered, says new search tool will think more like a human.”

I promptly turned to my right to ask our SEO expert George what it all means.

He responded with this article from Search Engine Land. My eyes almost immediately glazed over. “But it’s soooo lonnnng!” I bemoaned. (No offense Search Engine Land – good stuff, really!)

In a nutshell, this is what I can tell is going on. Google’s new “Knowledge Graph,” has been being murmured about for a few months and today the big news is that it’s been officially launched. The deal is that it will allow Google to move toward a new way of searching not for pages that match terms, but for concepts that the words describe, as Search Engine Land put it, and to help you get your search results faster. When you now search for a popular or well-known person, place or thing, you’ll get a box to the right of the results explaining more about your search term.

For instance, as this ABC News article explains, search for “Frank Lloyd Wright” today and the first link might be to Wikipedia. But now, to the right of that result you’ll see some of that Wikipedia or other sourced information right on the search page, including a short summary. You’ll also get related searches.The term graph is being used because it’s describing how Google is building relationships between people, places and things and reporting facts about these entities.

If you’re an SEO/SEM pro at a retail company and you really want to dig deeper into this new Google launch, by all means check out the Search Engine Land article, or this ABC News article.

I’m just curious to know what you all think about the announcement and how it will change your business…?

The ‘Knowledge Graph’ is Here is a post from: The eTail Blog

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James Connell, the brand’s ECommerce and Marketing VP, is working to ensure Roots is using methods like personalization and retargeting, and really personal customer service to keep Roots’ customers happy, no matter where they’re shopping the brand.

The eTail Blog: Based on what you might know about other global retail trends, what’s different about the Canadian online shopper?

James Connell

James Connell: It has been our experience that Canadians will consume more online content than our international audience, but will more likely go to a store to transact. The expectations that Canadians have for excellent customer service are also higher than our international audiences. Historically, because Canadians have had to shop on non-Canadian online retail sites to find the selection they are looking for, they have a high level of sophistication when it comes to the online shopping experience. They expect domestic retailers to meet or exceed those international standards.

eTail Blog: How important is it to the Canadian consumer to have an emotional connection with the brands they shop? If important, how are you working to make customers feel that connection?

James: I wouldn’t say it is more important to a Canadian or an international consumer to have a strong emotional connection to the brands they shop, but as a merchant it is a tremendous advantage to have that connection. At Roots, we have the privilege of being identifiably Canadian for almost 40 years, which brings along with it a sense of patriotic pride. But we also do our best to provide excellent products that are good value and provide an excellent customer experience while doing so. By serving our customers in all these methods with a strong emotional connection, we hope that consumers will be focused more on the product and its features than primarily the price of that product.

eTail Blog: On the same topic, how are you using personalized messaging at Roots to better build experiences with your customers?

James: We use personalized product recommendations on the highest ranked entry pages and a variety of other locations throughout the browse cycle on roots.com. Additionally, we leverage the same information into our email marketing programs so we are able to automatically trigger a variety of emails based on customer browse and purchase behavior. As we become more successful at these projects we’ve seen success extending these types of personalization efforts out to our retargeting programs.

eTail Blog: What kinds of interactive marketing are you implementing at Roots? Are you doing anything with banners, reward programs, sweepstakes and online chat with customer service representatives?

James: We’re executing all of the initiatives you’ve mentioned and then some. As a result of the success of our online initiatives, we now are migrating more and more of these programs into our store channels to address the needs of our customers across their behaviors online, in-store, on the phone and via smartphone.

eTail Blog: How are you working to make Roots an educational source as well as a retail outlet for your customers?

James: We are continually expanding our site content to include more information about our company, our products and our initiatives. This information is shared both internally as well as with our customers on our main site, our blogs and social media channels. A consumer, after spending an hour reviewing our videos on YouTube or our wall on Facebook, could have a very solid sense of what our company’s beliefs are, the products we sell and what Roots stands for. In each of those touch points there is messaging about the products featured and very often links to purchase those products online so a consumer could easily be a few clicks away from a purchase.

eTail Blog: How do you change the mentality within your organization to support your personalization goals?

James: Roots is very community focused so there was never a need to drastically shift how we approach our customers. That being said, internally in our ecommerce department it is hard to have a one-on-one connection with our customers because we never see them. As a result, we employ a variety of tactics to connect everyone on staff directly with our customers.

For example, every staff member on the roots.com team was responsible for contacting a list of customers to thank them for their business over the prior quarter and ask what we could do to provide better service in the year ahead. We also send out written notes to thank customers for their first purchase so we all get a little closer to the people who are behind the average KPI’s that we look at every day.

eTail Blog: What are your top 3 marketing priorities for 2012? How are you working to get those priorities implemented?

James: 1. We’re looking to take what we have learned from our digital marketing practices and use that information to market the same way to our in-store customers. We are integrating the data from the two programs to become more intelligent about how and when we communicate with all of our customers, whether they are online or in a store. We have started to align our POS systems and educate our staff members to execute this strategy in the near future.

2. We also see an enormous opportunity for revenue growth outside Canada, so we have taken the brand to new locations by participating in events like Aspen Fashion Week, where we had not been present in the past.

3. Lastly, we intend to extend our social media strategy to the local level and build communities around each individual store and get more involvement from local staff, which we feel will bring a level of service and connection that we could never provide at a global level.

Q&A: Roots Canada on the Employee-Customer Emotional Connection is a post from: The eTail Blog

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And that’s all, really.

If you’re looking for a post on new customer experience strategies or technology based innovation for retailers, you’ll get that soon enough. This is just plain fun. Enjoy the photos!

Driving toward the financial district

The adorable houses you see in Toronto

And another...

Toronto at night from the roof of the Thompson Toronto

And finally, the cutest dog...

...Ever!

That’s all for now – real posts to come!

We’re in Canada! is a post from: The eTail Blog

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Twice every year, the organizers of the eTail conference spend three to six months (continuously) conducting phone and email surveys with executive-level retailers from top industry brands.

The survey results show that many web merchants are in a mood to invest in more e-commerce systems and services. In 2012, 79.4% of merchants will increase their ecommerce technology spending. Among that group, 19.5% will spend at least 5% more, 53.3% between 5.1% and 15% more, 7.8% will increase spending from 15.1% to 20%, 5.3% from 20.1% to 25%, and 14.2% from 25.1% to 50%.

The survey includes responses from more than 100 retail chains, catalog companies, web-only merchants and consumer brand manufacturers. Based on our findings, retailers in 2012 will primarily focus on the following areas:

• Customer Experience Enhancements
• Optimizing The Fundamentals Of Their Online Business
• Branding
• Cross-Channel Optimization
• Monetizing Social Media/Social Shopping
• Social Engagement and CRM
• Mobile Shopping and Marketing
• Online Advertising Vehicles
• Best Practices For SEO/SEM and Email Marketing
• Web Personalization
• Online Video and Merchandising Strategies
• Content Management
• International Expansion

The full report includes charts and conclusions – download it here and check out the numbers.

See where your retail operation fits in and as always, give us some feedback about the findings.

Happy Friday!

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The Q1 spending marks the 10th consecutive quarter of positive year-on-year growth, and the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, comScore’s report claims. This translates to a 17 percent increase from the same quarter last year.

“The first quarter of this year was especially strong for retail ecommerce as we returned to year-over-year growth rates in the high teens, numbers we haven’t seen since 2007,” said Gian Fulgoni, Chairman, comScore. “While the economic recovery continues to be painfully slow, the channel shift to ecommerce appears to be accelerating. This presents opportunities but also challenges for brick-and-mortar retailers if they can’t hold onto their offline market share in the digital world. Ecommerce has reached critical mass in several product categories, and it will be important to monitor these sales trends by category in order to correctly gauge the impact ecommerce is having on overall retailer performance.”

ComScore’s press release pointed out other Q1 highlights such as:

- The top-performing online product categories were: digital content and subscriptions, computer software, consumer electronics, jewelry and watches and event tickets. Each category grew at least 17 percent vs. a year ago.
- 48.8 percent of ecommerce transactions included free shipping, the highest percentage for a quarter on record outside of the holiday season. Only Q4 2011 (51.8 percent) and Q4 2010 (49.3 percent) have been higher overall.
- 38 percent of tablet owners have made a purchase on their devices within the past month. Apparel was the most popular category for purchase among tablet shoppers.

Good news retailers, good news indeed!

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I’ll do my best to move on and forgive with a debriefing: Pinterest allows people to share who they are by sharing the things that they like via online pin boards, kind of like the olden-day cork boards. The site has become the third most popular social network, ranking behind only Facebook and Twitter – the THIRD. And it’s been around for like, a day. Ok, maybe more than that, but still – the third?!

My Pinterest Homepage

In many ways, you could say that exploring Pinterest is an exercise in virtual window-shopping. People create their own collages or browse through other people’s collections to acquire shopping ideas. Pinning an item creates a sense of ownership for the person who pins or re-pins it to a collage. “This Versace dress WILL be mine,” “I WILL inhabit this glorious tropical island,” “My makeup WILL look like this for that wedding I’m at next weekend.”

If all this sounds a bit girly, it’s no accident. Pinterest, by some accounts, is a woman’s game for now. At least that’s what several retail experts have said to me. Fact is, the site is growing exponentially every month, particularly among female users. Perhaps Pinterest will manage to convince the male demographic to start pinning their favorite movies, clothes, etc., but the strategy to target this behavior is still TBD.

The important factor to note about Pinterest is its potential for retail power. Retailers who maintain Pinterest pages may have a much better chance of getting their products in front of new customers as the site doesn’t require users to “like” a brand page or to sign up to follow a Twitter feed. Images from retailers can simply exist in a space where new customers can easily find it.

According to a PriceGrabber survey, 21 percent of respondents said that they have purchased items found on other people’s pinboards. Top retailers like Barneys New York and Aeropostale have “Pin It” buttons on their websites so that people can easily put images of products onto their pinboards.

We all know that people who post to social media are among a brand’s most outspoken promoters as they spend 20 percent more when they perceive that their favorite retailer provides good customer service through venues like Pinterest. These evangelists are also three times as likely to tell others about their positive brand experience. Simply stated, retailers who ignore Pinterest will miss out on a crucial marketing opportunity.

So what does the pinning trend say about social media in general? IMHO (that’s text speak for “in my honest opinion”), it shows the importance consumers place on having a personal, connected experience with the brands they support. Retailers work hard to convince buyers that their brand tells a customer’s personal story. Pinterest is the “small talk” hub of social media. Instead of sharing pithy status updates, family photos or other details, you simply talk to people about the things that you like. Pinterest delves into our need for that quintessential water cooler conversation. By creating a presence on Pinterest, retailers ensure that their products become part of the conversation.

Pinterest’s popularity also shows how visually-minded consumers have become and how they strive to recreate the tangible, tactile experience had when interacting, physically, with products. We have not yet reached an age where digital shopping completely replaces in-store shopping: touching a product is a lot different than seeing it, even if and when there are 14 different ways to view it, a video showcasing it, multiple zoom functions and more.

Retailers need to be cognizant of just how profound an effect it can have when consumers have not only your ecommerce site as a vehicle to interact with your products, but their own personal inspiration boards, where they can imagine themselves owning your products, touching them, wearing them – what have you – and bringing them into the story of their lives.

What do Sites like Pinterest Say about Where Social Media is Headed? is a post from: The eTail Blog

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Help Customers Tell their Story

Mr. Porter, a luxury retailer of men’s clothing and accessories, delivers a website that offers a stunning encounter with the brand. In addition to a scrolling screen of new products complete with celebrity endorsements, the site offers videos from top men’s designers, sections that give advice on what to wear when, and a section called “Style Help,” that connects customers with Mr. Porter’s iPhone app. The site taps into the experience that customers want from Mr. Porter’s: they want their fashion to make a novel and stylish statement.

Geolocation

Louis Vuitton and Burberry offer geolocation services on their websites that adjust the way customers see the site based on their particular location. For example, the website features either a day or night background according to the time of day at the customer’s locale.

Social shopping

Social is more than just posting buttons for Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest on your ecommerce site. Social is about creating a community of people who are interested in exploring the story of the brand. J Brand‘s website, for example, allows customers to post pictures of themselves wearing J Brand products through a program called “Share Your Style.” Customers can then shop from the looks posted by others on the site.

Video

Patrik Ervell‘s website displays a “Collections” tab that also features runway video of different products in the selected collection. As long as video has a strong and carefully thought-out art direction that fits the images of the brand, it will entice viewers and hopefully lure them deeper int your brand’s spell.

Virtual retail

Some brands deliver a shopping experience that literally looks like walking through a retail store. Marc Jacobs‘ homepage once featured an image of Marc Jacobs standing outside of a storefront. Customers were then taken to various departments within the store, shopping off of virtual racks and virtual tables of clothing. While the appearance of the website has since changed, other brands like Ermenegildo Zegna have adopted Jacobs’ idea and have built their own virtual stores.

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