Editor's Note: Get Ready for 2012
I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to a busy and exciting 2012. After all, the past holiday season gave me (as well as plenty of you, I’m sure) a lot of confidence and reasons to be excited about the year ahead. Just look at this sampling of statistics from last year, which crossed my desk as I wrote this column:
- Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 26, consumers spent $35.3 billion online, according to market research firm comScore. This is 15 percent more than consumers spent online during the same time period in 2010.
- There were nine days in 2011 in which total online sales were more than $1 billion, according to comScore.
- Between Dec. 1 and Dec. 24, consumer retail spending rose 4.7 percent over the same time period in 2010, according to research from ShopperTrak.
- Seventy percent of all consumers shopped at brick-and-mortar stores between Dec. 20 and Dec. 26, according to The NPD Group.
- Transactions via mobile devices accounted for 11.3 percent of sales on the day after Christmas vs. 4.3 percent on that day in 2010.
Whew! Good news all around in both the online and offline retail worlds. With these kinds of statistics, retailers have a lot to be optimistic about. To give you a little help to ensure your 2012 is the best it can be, check out our cover story, where you’ll find our first-ever “How-to Guide to Being a Successful Cross-Channel Retailer.” We’ve assembled a top-notch group of cross-channel retail experts to offer you their best advice for the year ahead on everything from how to make the most of your free shipping program to email deliverability, and everything in between.
We’re also optimistic about having a great year here at Retail Online Integration as well. For starters, we have two new members to our editorial advisory board: Tony Ambroza, vice president of marketing at Carhartt, and Richard E. Last, a lecturer in digital retail at the University of North Texas, as well as being the chairman of the board of directors at Shop.org and founder of JCPenney.com. We’re excited to get their sage advice and perspectives this year.
We’re also looking forward to some great events in 2012, including a continuation of our popular Retailer Roundtable dinner events and the Retail Marketing Virtual Conference & Expo (mark your calendar, the virtual show is slated for April 19). Also, as you’ve probably noticed, we’ll have six issues this year as oppossed to last year’s 11. The bimonthly issues will be chock-full of the useful cross-channel retail infomation and advice you’ve come to expect from us at ROI.
Lastly, our IndustryEye department has undergone a bit of a makeover. We’ve changed the “Prospecting” section to the “Customer Acquisition/Customer Retention” section. Here we’ll be writing about the best and most innovative ways to acquire and retain customers in the cross-channel retail world. We hope this change aligns more closely with how you think about your business. As always, we’d love to hear from you as well. Please feel free to drop me a line with ideas, comments or questions any time at mcampanelli@napco.com.
