Online Marketing

Amazon.com is cautiously dipping into its trove of customer data, trying not to betray consumer trust as it develops a digital advertising business that's on track to sell nearly $1 billion worth of ads this year. The data the retail giant collects on its 237 million active customer accounts puts Google to shame. Amazon doesn't just know what folks have searched for, it knows what they bought. Using that data has turned Amazon into one of the web's ad juggernauts, the seventh-largest seller of digital ads worldwide, according to eMarketer.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2014 economic forecast yesterday, projecting retail industry sales (which exclude automobiles, gas stations and restaurants) will increase 4.1 percent, up from the preliminary 3.7 percent growth seen in 2013. NRF also announced it expects online sales in 2014 to grow between 9 percent and 12 percent. "Measured improvements in economic growth combined with positive expectations for continued consumer spending will put the retail industry in a relatively good place in 2014," said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.

Attention to attribution is skyrocketing because in many companies reporting has been set up so that every channel claims 100 percent of the final sale, even when their efforts were only partially responsible. This "double counting" of converted traffic has led to inflated marketing channel reports and, more importantly, has companies overpaying for sales and leads.

Plenty of retailers have leveraged user-generated content (e.g., customer photos and videos) from contests and promotions in branded marketing campaigns before, but not quite like Sears just did. The company's Startup + Developer Challenge, held this past summer, was a "code-a-thon" designed to find the best and brightest minds in the tech community of Silicon Valley — and then use those minds to Sears' benefit.

Instagram, Facebook's insanely popular photo-sharing app, introduced video capability in June to compete with the rise of Vine's bite-sized videos. Within 24 hours, Instagram's 130 million users uploaded over 5 million videos.

Product listing ads (PLAs) are search ads that include concise product information such as product image, price and merchant name without relying solely on text ads to entice online shoppers. PLAs are proving that a picture is truly worth a thousand (key) words, as they're consistently driving increased clickthrough rates and conversions. Given that the holiday season is quickly approaching, it's now more important than ever for merchants to understand how to maximize PLAs. Here are some tips on how to most effectively use PLAs this holiday season.

In an effort to give you a sneak peek into the upcoming Retail Online Integration webinar, One Size Does NOT Fit All: Delivering Customized Shopping Experiences for Your Customers (you can register for free here!), I conducted an interview with Catherine Frye, marketing and customer services solutions manager, IBM Business Analytics. Frye will be co-presenting the webinar, and offered a few of her thoughts on the value of personalization in e-commerce. Here's a portion of that interview:

The Company Store hasn't sent many flash-sale emails. In fact, among the 133 emails captured by Who's Mailing What! this year, only one recent email used the flash-sale strategy. However, The Company Store clearly did its homework.

The holiday season is right around the corner, meaning most e-retailers are in the thick of finalizing promotional campaigns and optimizing websites in the hopes of increasing traffic and avoiding conversion roadblocks. However, before launching their email, social and traditional advertising campaigns, many online retailers would be well served to take the time to re-evaluate the overall digital experience they're delivering to visitors. 

As a 112-year-old brand steeped in a traditional brick-and-mortar history, Walgreens isn't what you would consider a digital pioneer. Yet the drug store chain has been forced to evolve its business to remain relevant for today's digital-savvy consumers. The transition has admittedly been a slow process, but it's taking shape. In a keynote presentation yesterday at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Chicago, Walgreens’ President and CEO Greg Wasson detailed how the company is embracing digital throughout its organization