What a Cataloger Learned at IRCE
There was an energy — not to mention growing audience — to the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) last week that reflected the fast pace of change in the industry. The hot topics for catalogers included the following:
Video is a really hot way to sell products. Video of a product can increase sales of that product significantly, especially if the product's benefits or features can be shown better in a video than a photograph.
Through its acquisition of Brown Printing Co., Quad/Graphics now owns Nellymoser, a company that specializes in activating brands through mobile. Mobile-activated print is the use of visible or invisible activation points (e.g., QR codes, digital watermarks, image recognition, augmented reality) to make the printed page interactive. The technology enables consumers to engage with your brand straight off the page with their smartphones or tablets.
Treepodia offers an automated video production platform combined with video hosting and streaming. The benefits of video content are that video search engine optimization is light years more effective than traditional SEO. A digital video sitemap (DVS) guarantees that many of your product pages will appear at the top of Google and Bing results. Each product page with video gains higher rankings.
Furthermore, video has a positive effect on conversion rates. Video showcases your products more effectively, appeals to shoppers’ emotions, makes your site look more professional and increases engagement. Conversion rates increase by up to 85 percent for products shown in a video.
Direct marketers are still struggling to make display ads respond profitably. Retargeting display ads to recent website abandons is an acknowledged profitable strategy. However, many digital ad companies are leaving that business to Google or Fetchback. Why? Because while the programs are profitable, they're limited by the number of website or shopping cart abandons, so the revenue potential is small. The Holy Grail for display ads is to find a way to make acquisition of new customers profitable. Short of that, vendors can cookie catalogers’ buyer and mail files to send display ads to established customer and prospecting bases.
