Category: Retail Marketing

Visit your favorite big box or grocery store online to find special offers available at your nearest stores and print coupons to use during your next visit. Simply type in your ZIP code and you have the same deals from the free-standing inserts (FSIs) found in your Sunday paper.

Now for the fun part: We’ve launched a turn-key solution for creating electronic FSIs that attract customers to local retail stores or to your site. We’re not talking about just uploading a PDF. We’re talking about creating elegant, interactive environments to advertise multiple products, complete with 360-degree product views and videos to highlight specific features. Customers can print coupons, save products to a wish list, and email themselves both to use later. We make it easy to update text and images, too. To learn more about the eFSI and to arrange a demo, email business@solutionset.com

Having a mobile strategy and presence does not need to be a difficult proposition. Sometimes the simplest tools can add big benefit. In a recent article on the website Mobile Marketer, Dan Butcher identifies the six trends affecting mobile marketing and commerce.

The trends are:

• increased Smartphone sales and usage
• dramatic increase in mobile Web usage
• mobile commerce adoption grows
• mobile search becomes essential
• multichannel marketing mix expands
• market fragmentation continue

To anyone who has an iPhone or other Smartphones, these trends seem obvious as we reflect on our own behavior and map them back to consumers at large. 

Mobile strategies are multifold and depend on your business, marketing, and revenue goals. But as marketers, we must understand the need to respond to these trends and to use the platform to meet our objectives. This will not always involve the development of a ground-breaking strategy or the launch of an iPhone app that is featured in the store, but can be as simple as enabling our current sites to be useful and readable in a Smartphone’s form factor.

Strategies will evolve as we understand user behavior and must take into account how, when, and where consumers interact with their devices. Much as TV marketing strategies are different from online/web/pc-based strategies, mobile device users have different goals and must be communicated in a unique way.

Apps are a key element of mobile marketing, but are still very nascent as marketers understand how to interact with consumers.  For now, utility is the name of the game. Top apps (as is true with websites) make it easier for consumers to do something, not just to be entertained. 

The lowest hanging fruit is to launch a mobile-enabled version of your site or elements of your site. With the proliferation of Smartphones, more consumers are using their mobile devices to visit websites for commerce and information. Thus, it should be an integral part of all marketing efforts to have a web presence which allows consumers to interact with the brand in a manner specific to the smaller real-estate available on the browser. 

A great example of this is the mobile version of the VW site. This site simplifies those tasks which a mobile user would be most interested in: reviewing car models, finding a dealer, and contacting road-side assistance. This is all designed for the form-factor of the phone and offers a very unique and valuable experience to the consumer, which is a different from the experience of going to the main VW website from a Smartphone.

The trends will only continue as the adoption of mobile is ramping faster than desktop internet did and will be bigger than we think. 

2009 Cyber Monday was a success (phew!). Sales were up 5% over last year, according to comScore’s data. Also, the sales matched the biggest online spending day ever (12/09/08).

Coremetrics data indicates that more people shopped, but average ticket price was lower (same thing we saw with Black Friday).

The top 5 most visited sites were:
Amazon.com
Walmart.com
Target.com
Bestbuy.com
JCPenney.com   

Read more details here and here.

Black Friday effect: Weekend sees rise in shoppers
More shoppers hit stores, but spend less each
Shoppers fill streets if not their bags
Shopping’s up, spending’s down

This is a sampling of headlines from reports on Black Friday consumer shopping activity (USA Today, NYT, WSJ and Washington Post). Just from the headlines, you get the idea. As anticipated, there were lots of people out shopping over the weekend - NRF estimates 195 million people shopped in stores or online during the four day weekend up from 172 million last year.

But, they were spending less than last year. Consumers spent an average of around $343 this year vs. $373 a year ago. Total spending was on par with last year at $41.2 billion.

What were they buying? Well at Walmart.com, one of the biggest sellers was the  Bissell Steam Mop Hard Floor Cleaner, indicating that this may well be the year of practical gifts. Consumer electronics, especially flat screen TVs, digital cameras, e-readers and game consoles were also big sellers.

If this news seems anti-climactic, take heart in the fact that the forecasting models predicted this behavior.  Expectations are set, and consumers are generally incredibly predictable. Short of money falling from the sky, we’re probably not going to have any surprises this holiday shopping season.

Makes one wonder if the notion of pent-up demand is a thing of the past, or if we’re going to see a post-holiday spending spree? President’s Day shopping forecasts anyone?   

JCPenney recently began testing POS mobile coupon redemption in the Houston metro area, claiming to be one of the first U.S. retailers to instate such a program. Accessible to consumers through the mobile coupon fulfillment service Cellfire, these coupons can be scanned directly from the phone screen at the register.

In an article published on mobilemarketer.com, Dave Owens, the development director for emerging digital media at JCPenney, talks about the company’s mobile initiatives. From the source:

“We recognize that this is where the customer is ultimately going, and we want to make sure we’re there and ready when the adoption curve ramps up. Mobile is a convenient way for consumers to shop JCPenney and redeem coupons and we want to support that need. The biggest thing is immediacy, because it puts the consumer in control. Its a competitive advantage to have a coupon right on her phone, which provides true immediacy and a discount offer she didn’t have to plan for.”

Comparative shopping. Coupon hunting. Customer service and product reviews. Location-based offers. As the real-time realities of a mobilized world settle in, this sort of instant gratification from retailers will become the norm. Read the full article here.

Some nuggets from a retail analyst appeared in an otherwise grim New York Times article covering back-to-school results. Retailers who are succeeding in this tough climate are doing so by coming up with innovative and fun promotions, like the Zumiez “5 for $85” deal. From the source:

John D. Morris, a retailing analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said more mall stores, like Gap and Aéropostale, offered buy-one-get-one-free sales. Others offered breaks on bundled merchandise, Mr. Morris said. He said that the teenage apparel chain Zumiez rolled out a “five for $85” promotion — three T-shirts and two pairs of jeans for $85.

“That deal started at $80 and it went to $85,” Mr. Morris said. “That tells you it worked. That tells you it is registering with the consumer.”

At Gymboree, customers could take 30 percent off whatever merchandise they managed to stuff into a Gymboree bag.

“The retailer is learning the native tongue of the new consumer,” Mr. Morris said. “It’s not only that you need to dangle value in the face of the consumer. It also tells you that the consumer is bored with the same old promotions. The smarter companies are going in and changing the marketing message.”

This made us think about the endless me-too promotions that are crossing our desk from direct marketers—Free Shipping! 20% Off! Buy One, Get One!—blah blah blah.

Direct marketers have a great ability to tailor their promotion to specific groups or even individuals. Far too few do anything with that power. So, since we are all going to be forced to promote this Holiday, why not use that promotion power to manage the customer life cycle?

How about getting some cross-category purchasing going by offering our apparel-only buyers, “Buy anything in our homewares section, and take 40% off first item”? How about offering our new customers a no-conditions $20 coupon for making their second purchase? How about acknowledging our best buyers and offering them concierge level treatment, lifetime unconditional returns and the like?  Wouldn’t we like to come out of this recession with more multiple buyers and fewer lost best customers? Since you’ll have to promote to stay aloft, try to do it creatively and strategically.

Last holiday season, we posted on the long-forgotten practice of allowing customers to pay for merchandise over time, taking it home when the last payment was made. For all of you born after 1985, this is called a “layaway” program.

Turns out it was successful for Kmart, and they’re planning on doing it again this year. Plus Sears is joining in. And, a new twist this year - last weekend, the retailers launched an online boutique called Christmas Lane at Kmart.com and Sears.com, so that shoppers can select items now and pay for them well before the holiday rolls around.

Because we obviously have a layaway fetish, you can be sure we’ll keep our readers updated on this retro-trend, which we think careful shoppers will take full advantage of this holiday season.

We attended a webinar today, with the scary (but motivating) title “Get Ready For Combat This Holiday Season - Winning The Battle For Market Share In A Ruthless Economy”. Sucharita Mulpuru, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research doled out some recommendations for getting your eCommerce act together for holiday ‘09.

These included:

Site Experience - Your site availability should be above 99% (during 2008 holiday season, the average hovered around 96%), key content should load in 3 seconds or less, language should be the language that the consumer uses (not internal widget-focused language, as good as that might make you feel), and “add to cart buttons” should be prominently displayed. In summary, your site should be available, fast and easily understood by the shopper. Sounds like a no-brainer, but how many times have you been flummoxed by looking for the “add to cart” button?

Shipping - We can’t really talk about online holiday shopping without talking about shipping, right? According the Ms. Mulpuru’s data, shipping is one of the biggest cues for consumers, highly correlated with conversion rate. And the prediction is: this year more than ever, since consumers are going to be extremely concerned about value. So get that shipping cost down, even if it means raising the cost of products to offset the cost of shipping. Further, expose the cost of shipping early and often in the shopper’s session. One of the biggest reasons for shopping cart abandonment is “surprises” at the end, like shipping costs.

Check-Out Experience - With shopping cart abandon rate 50% and higher, there’s lots of room for improvement. A good recommendation: test your check-out flow i.e. single screen check-out vs. multiple-screen. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you know we’re gigantic fans of “data not assumptions”, so get your test on while you still have time to optimize before the holidays.

While we’re all basking in the afterglow of the Memorial Day weekend, it may seem too early to get started on holiday site planning. But it is never too early to implement tests, check your basics, and make a plan for improving on them. Any one of the three things above could eat up most of your time between now and the start of the holiday shopping season in October.

A recent New York Times article about the decline in teen spending points out an undoubtedly larger problem for high-end retailers. From the source:

To maintain its prestigious image, Abercrombie has stood alone among mall retailers in not blaring its sales—a strategy that Wall Street analysts have blamed for its current decline. The company reported a 34 percent drop in sales for March at stores open at least a year, the worst performance of mall retailers that month…In the past, the chain has said it doesn’t want to tarnish its image with big discounts, but the risk is that consumers may retain the habit of thriftiness even after the recession ends.

This looks like a case of economic Darwinism—either evolve with your environment or become extinct. Other peddlers of prep fashion have been quicker to adapt:

Even the clearance items at Abercrombie do not exude the promotional fervor that can be found at American Eagle, which has a sign up front noting its shorts are under $25; or Aéropostale, where banners announce two-for-one bargains. Aéropostale also reported a sales increase last month, up 3 percent, a success that Mindy Meads, the company’s president, attributed to the right combination of product and value.

“We get the right looks,” she said. “At the same time, we’re very mom-friendly when it comes to the wallet.”

Retailers looking to grab those coveted teen dollars better rethink their approach. Teen jobs are vanishing. Allowances are undoubtedly shrinking. And thrift is officially chic.

During the holiday shopping season we posted about Kmart’s seemingly anachronistic layaway program. Really? Layaway? Would shoppers who have grown accustomed to instant gratification, take-it-home-today, pay-later style consumerism accept this quaint notion of paying for items BEFORE they take them home?

Well it turns out the program was a success. Kmart’s layaway program was a competitive tool, attracting shoppers from stores (like Walmart) who don’t offer layaway. And, Kmart was smart about encouraging layaway customers to make incremental purchases: when customers payed off their layaway contract, they received a coupon book with offers good during January and February 2009. These coupons resulted in upwards of $9 million in incremental revenue! That’s what we call maximizing revenue from your current customers without spending alot of money to do so.

Watch Mark Snyder, Kmart’s CMO, discuss the program in Ad Age’s 3 minute video.