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. 

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.

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.

Natalie Zmuda of AdAge wrote an article today about the big winners in retail over the last year. The grocery giant Kroger was ranked among them, thanks to gas discounts, free groceries earned through loyalty cards and 10% off all purchases made with tax rebate checks. Kroger also gives credit to their highly targeted and personalized direct marketing campaigns. From the source:

“We understand and appreciate that no two customers are alike,” said David Dillon, Kroger’s chairman-CEO. “Some may live in the same city, some in the same neighborhood and even on the same street, but we know that they don’t have the same shopping habits. This level of personalization is a direct link to our customers [that] no other U.S. grocery retailer can replicate.”

We love your approach Mr. Dillon. Why send canned beet coupons to an entire ZIP when you know that only 317 loyalty card members have bought them in the past month?