Online Marketing

Social to Have Greater Influence on Holiday Purchases, Survey Finds
October 9, 2014

A survey released today by MarketLive, a commerce technology platform provider, identifies key buying trends for the upcoming holiday shopping season as well as tactics retailers can employ to better engage consumers during this busy season. Here are some of the key findings from the report, which surveyed a random sample of 1,000 U.S. consumers who had shopped online at least four times within the past year, own a smartphone, and typically spend $250 or more online annually:

Want Loyal Customers? Personalize Your Offers
August 27, 2014

Findings from a recent survey from Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud and Forrester Consulting confirmed what many retailers already knew or strongly suspected: the ability to deliver personalized customer experiences across all channels as well as contextual, unique offers is critical to driving repeat purchases and developing brand advocates. Whether they can execute on that mandate is a whole nother story.

Wal-Mart Will Buy Media for Suppliers as Digital Scope Grows
July 11, 2014

Now that digital and social media are reaching what Wal-Mart U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Quinn calls "critical mass," the retail giant is reshaping its marketing team and changing how it works with suppliers โ€” including buying media for them. Wal-Mart met recently with around 200 supplier marketing executives in part to discuss the Walmart Exchange, or WMX, which its executives bill as a digital targeting, buying and optimization platform that will bring everything from sales to social media data to bear on spending plans for Wal-Mart and its suppliers.

How New Top-Level Domains Will Impact Retail
April 30, 2014

Over the next few years, the internet will be facing its biggest makeover yet when branded and generic domain names like .nyc, .shop and .tiffany enter the existing field of top-level domains (TLDs) such as .com and .org. The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to introduce thousands of new TLDs to the web was intended to increase innovation on the internet. Brands and retailers, specifically, should see this as an incredible opportunity to better appeal to consumers in a way that allows them to creatively target customers based on geography and cultural context.