Archive

Archive for the ‘Ecommerce Eretail’ Category

Yahoo!’s Circulars: Too ‘Old’ to Work?

July 26th, 2008

There’s been lots of talk for some time about the convergence of online marketing with the print advertising world. Of course, as this blog has discussed in a past entry, there’s the virtual catalog with its ‘thumb-through-the-pages’ technology. And there’s been new ‘online magazines’ debuting in recent years.

Well, Yahoo! has announced a program designed to target online viewers with display ads that originate from the Web versions of retailers’ newspaper circulars. Now, on its face, this is not entirely new. Specifically, grocery chains, drug stores and other retailers have made their circulars available for printable download.

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Please, Join the Email Anti-Blast Revolution

July 22nd, 2008

DJ Waldow from Bronto Software recently posted an entry in his blog that made me nod my head and chuckle. He ranted a bit about the term “email blast” and called for the community to slash it from the current vernacular. Read more…

Birthday Emails — Not Just For Restaurants

July 18th, 2008

I’ve discovered that the customer loyalty strategy of sending out birthday emails is largely relegated to the restaurant biz. Read more…

Gas Prices Make Free Shipping by Eretailers Even Hotter

July 14th, 2008

I recently received an email from outdoors clothier Roots with a subject line that definitely caught my eye: “Free Economy Shipping This Memorial Weekend”.

The imperative word in that copy was “Economy.” With gas prices this summer seemingly ready to hamper consumer spirits, it reminded me that free-shipping promos will likely be hotter than ever. Read more…

Marketers Try ‘Talk TV’ Ads to Drive Traffic

July 12th, 2008

What I’ll call “Talk TV” seems to be an emerging and sensibly low-risk medium for major brands to drive Web traffic via sports entertainment on the good ol’ tube. Read more…

Nestle Plays Ball with Online Video Contest

July 5th, 2008

We just published a Case Study about how eBillme ran an online video contest with extraordinary results. They got millions of YouTube views and gobs of media attention. Read more…

Beware of Your Email’s ‘Bogus Bounces’

June 24th, 2008

While constantly doing a ton of detailed, cross-client deliverability research for his email services boutique, Internet-Tools.com, Mark David McCreary has come up with an alternative phrase for false-positives. He calls them “bogus bounces.”

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Three Reasons for E-catalogs

June 10th, 2008

E-catalogs that are navigated with a ‘virtual thumb’ in the turn-the-page sense have been a hot topic among marketers for quite some time. Do they produce sales? Are they worth the effort? What’s the point of an e-catalog when you have ecommerce?

I have searched high and low for a data-based, Sherpa-worthy Case Study on this very subject. The fact is, proving e-catalog activity creates sales with rock-solid data is difficult. Marketers who think they work only want to talk estimates or anecdotally. Read more…

Promoting Online Video Contests — What Works

May 20th, 2008

After writing a Special Report and a Case Study about online video contests, it’s time to draw a few conclusions about what promotional tactics successfully drive them. Read more…

Can Social Shopping Sites Improve SEO?

April 28th, 2008

The first time I’d ever heard about social shopping sites like StyleHive.com, ThisNext.com, and CribCandy.com was when working on a special report for MarketingSherpa.

A source mentioned these sites as an inexpensive way for B-to-C marketers to get their brand name out there as marketing budgets are slashed. It made me question whether these sites are successfully generating leads for marketers in tough times.

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