Companies spend a huge amount of time and money on customer acquisition.
And why shouldn’t they? After all, growing a business significantly is usually best accomplished by growing the number of people who pay for its products and services.
How is retail being changed by digital?
What better way to find out than by looking at six icons of retail, three from the US (Macy’s, Walmart, Walgreens) and three from the UK (John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, and Boots).
Here are their digital transformation journeys, as they fight to compete with online and agile competitors.
You may all be thinking about going on your hollibobs, but there’s never a dull week in digital.
This week’s news is a rattlebag of Facebook updates, ecommerce buyouts, ad spend revelations, and….cats.
In 2012, Jerry Storch, then the CEO of Toys R Us, told attendees at the Shop.org conference that stores will never die thanks to omni-channel retail.
Since that time, many traditional retailers have invested heavily in omni-channel initiatives that seem wise, at least on the surface.
But are retailers’ omni-channel hopes really delusions?
Many retailers resort to sales and discounts to boost sales.
However, smarter retailers have demonstrated there’s more to it than that.
Earlier this month, Google announced that it was giving mobile users the ability to order food directly from its search results, signaling the possibility that the next phase of search’s evolution will be transactionalization.
As I wrote at the time, “it’s not hard to imagine Google applying transactional functionality to other types of search,” and product search seemed like one of the most obvious search categories ripe for transactional features.
Valentine’s Day is on Saturday but most retailers have been gearing up to it for several weeks.
I received my first Valentine’s promotional email on January 19, close to a month before the day itself.
Black Friday has come and gone, leaving my inbox full to the brim with tempting offers and discounts.
Thanksgiving sales have been big business in the US for many years but they’re now starting to catch on among UK retailers as well.
One of the biggest barriers for customers about to use a checkout is forcing them to register their details first.
Presenting them with page after page of forms in which they need to fill out the most unnecessary of personal details is a quick way to send your customers to the exit, leaving many abandoned baskets and lowering your conversion.
Earlier today I looked at 30 UK retailers and which ones force their customers to register, now it’s time to turn our attention to the USA.
Email is a versatile marketing channel. For example, it can be used to deliver a content strategy, to maintain customer relationships, or to promote new products.
However over at Macy’s, email is really only used for one thing – offering discounts and money off.
In fact I’ve noticed that for the past few months the only marketing messages I’ve received from Macy’s are those that promote a seasonal sale or special offer.
Email is a very effective sales tool, with respondents in Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Census stating that it delivers the best ROI of any digital marketing channel.
Discounts or offers are a common tactic and can drive high volumes of sales, however Macy’s approach is overkill.
I have to go back three weeks to 25 August to find a subject line that didn’t mention some kind of sale or discount, but since then I’ve received 12 other sales emails.
Over the past few weeks online retailers have begun unveiling tools aimed at inspiring shoppers as they search for Christmas gift ideas.
I’m unconvinced as to whether these features have any impact on sales as they often appear a bit gimmicky, but judging by their popularity among retailers they presumably achieve some kind of ROI.
I’ve already reviewed Argos’ rather quirky Gift Finder which offers a unique browsing experience at the expense of usability, so in the interest of fairness thought it would be interesting to take a look at how other brands are catering to Christmas shoppers.
Here’s what I came up with…
Jeans are apparently the most difficult item of clothing to buy online, according to a new consumer survey.
Almost a third of shoppers (29.5%) identified jeans as the trickiest product to buy, followed by shoes/footwear with 18.2%.
There were also a number of bizarre responses to the open-ended question, including Appalachian dance outfits and Elizabethan ruff, however it’s safe to assume that the customer experience of buying jeans is a more pressing concern for most online fashion retailers.