Creative

Home goods online retailer Wayfair said it's raised $36.3 million in new equity funding to speed growth of its private sale site for the home, Joss & Main. Investors included Battery Ventures, Great Hill Partners, HarbourVest Partners and Spark Capital. A division of Boston-based Wayfair.com, Joss & Main is a membership-based website that offers inspirational decor at attainable prices via daily events, spotlight collections highlighting design trends and styles, and curated collections in collaboration with celebrities and notable influencers within the design community, the company said.

Whether consumers shop via websites, social media pages, mobile apps, brick-and-mortar stores, etc., it's important for retailers to understand their purchasing behavior. Adding to cart as opposed to abandoning the shopping cart is, of course, the ultimate goal. Here are three ways retailers can capture consumers' holiday purchases:

Walgreens announced the launch of Happy And Healthy, Your Guide To Living Well With Walgreens, a biannual magazine focusing on healthy living tips, relevant offers and Balance Rewards loyalty program promotions. The magazine will also showcase Walgreens’ private brands.  

PATIENT: "Doc, I'm discouraged. All I hear is that online is where the sales are and I gotta pour more money into my web channels. That means I need to cut back on my catalog program, probably big time. What should I do?"

Crafting queen Jo Pearson, creative expert for Michaels Stores, will hold court as one of three judges on TLC's new competition series, "Craft Wars." The show, hosted and executive produced by celebrity crafter Tori Spelling, premieres June 26. Pearson's 25-plus years of experience creating thousands of projects for North America's largest arts and crafts specialty retailer landed her the ultimate crafting gig. 

Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Wal-Mart have launched a new shopping experience that uses big trucks, free samples and QR codes to generate online sales of P&G products. 

What matters most to online shoppers? Hint: It has less to do with specific products and everything to do with communication, and that includes shipping and returns. You'll find key insights into what makes online shoppers click, consumers’ online shopping preferences, what shipping and post-purchase services enhance the customer experience most, and more with this fact-filled whitepaper. Check it out here!

Giving potential customers the information they actually want is one of the most effective ways to grab their attention in today's fragmented media landscape. With the right tools in place, once you have a visitor's interest, it becomes easier to guide individual website experiences, with conversion as the ultimate goal.

What you will learn:

- The importance of making a great first impression through relevant website content
- How PODS employed a relevancy strategy to double its percentage of business that is booked online
- How to use customer segmentation strategies to drive more relevant content
- How triggered marketing campaigns can help improve the online retail experience

Marketers have developed quite a bag of promotion and coupon tricks to get consumers to spend more at the checkout counter or when mailing in the order form. The good news for online retailers is that modern e-commerce software lets them easily adapt these proven promotional techniques to an online environment to lift average order sizes, revenues and profits.

You Will Learn About:

- Free Shipping
- Premiums
- Discounts
- Coupons
- and more!

Digital Content is everywhere - your website, blogs, social media outposts, and every mobile device imaginable. And with customers and prospects radically adjusting to this wealth of information, companies are investing in developing digital content like never before. Despite their efforts, however, these same companies often miss valuable opportunities because they lack a well-rounded content marketing strategy.

This new whitepaper from Bridgeline Digital identifies the top 10 steps to building a content marketing strategy that you can execute within your company in an effective and timely manner.

What you will learn:

- What is content marketing management
- Why you should treat content like a critical business asset
- How to understand the content needs of your audience
- Why maintaining an editorial calendar is so important
- Why you need to give your content a "voice"
- Why content management and web analytics tools can best help you deliver relevant content