Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

October Update for ShoppeSimple

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Last month, we fired the starter’s pistol. This month, we’re in the race.

Here’s the gist: October gross sales were up 151% over September.

What’s happening? E-commerce sites using ShoppeSimple continue to see people choosing the ShoppeSimple portal and feeds to explore brands and categories for deals and exclusives.  When they click on ShoppeSimple for a brand they like, they bookmark the ShoppeSimple “See Deals Page”…or follow the brand on their personal homepages…or subscribe to the ShoppeSimple TransactionalRSS (TRSS) feeds — and then they come back and buy at higher conversion rates.

ShoppeSimple has been quiet for the past few weeks because a lot has been brewing behind the scenes. An experienced IT leader, John Hogie, has joined the team to lead and accelerate product development and bring out new features and opportunities. We’ve added a number of new e-commerce clients and new relationships.

And we’re continuing to add merchants and deals to ShoppeSimple.com, our first-of-its kind opt-in shopping portal that lets you explore and track hot deals and exclusive offers from great brands, where you want, when you want — privately and on your own time.

More to come…as always, contact info@rsscheck.com to learn more, and find out how your company can be a part of ShoppeSimple.

Add comment November 12, 2009

ShoppeSimple Converts 1 of 5 Visitors into Customers–20% New to File

What if you could add a feature to your website that would convert one of every five people who click on it into new customers?  What if it was free to implement, with only a transaction fee for what is actually sold? What if it was easy to use, and didn’t take up valuable IT resources, so that you could focus on Marketers and Merchants?

ShoppeSimple clients put our icon on their homepage and in their emails, with an offer to sign up for the latest deals or product exclusives.  We took a sample of ShoppeSimple clients and looked at who clicked on the icon and made a purchase.  We found that 15% to 25% of these buyers were new to file; the rest were customers who’d bought from them in the last 12 months — and chose to buy again.

We’re seeing that ShoppeSimple helps clients:

* Grow their site traffic.
* Increase order frequency.
* Increase average order value.

This is opt-in marketing that works. This is what we mean when we say that ShoppeSimple means ‘really simple sales.’

7 Ways to Integrate Social Conversation with TransactionalRSS Marketing

We are knee deep in the holiday season, so no need to remind everyone why TranactionalRSS (TRSS) is the coolest and sexiest channel in the ecommerce marketing toolkit:  Revenue.  TRSS drives revenue at the lowest cost.  Period.

And you just don’t get any sexier than that in business.

Socially connected subscribers from moms to business buyers to gadget freaks all are seeing TRSS promotions and daily reminder and alerts to prompt them toward social activities.    Certainly TransactionalRSS (TRSS) powers the social networks – it’s the biggest traffic driver.   But more importantly for retailers, integrating social and TRSS is a great idea, and a big opportunity.  Consider these ideas for your program.

1. Cross Promote by Adding Value.  Include a link to share with my network when soliciting product reviews or asking post purchase surveys.  Give customers lots of options for promoting your brand(s).
2. Turn Promotions into Conversations. The inbox clutter is overwhelming this time of year.  Zig while others zag by a TRSS Marketing Channel.
3. Match the content to the medium.  Email is great for lifecycle marketing, promotional broadcasts and content newsletters.  TRSS enables you to reach your consumers who have preselected to receive your offers, alerts and promotions multiple times a day, 365 days a week. As you know email just doesn't enable this type of connective consumer velocity like TRSS does. Facebook fan pages are great for surveys or building loyal fan bases.  Twitter may be great for customer service as well as broadcast.   Don’t just repost your blog everywhere – send content that is relevant to the channel so that you appeal to customers who consume information in different ways.
4. Make it easy to share.  Add “SWYN” or Share with Your Network links, but do so prominently and integrate them into the content.  SWYN links in the footer will not drive significant sharing, just like a buried Forward to a Friend link will get little use. Note that “Join us on Facebook” is different than “Share this product on Facebook.”  Do both where it builds real value and engagement.
5. Promote your own social community.   Invite conversation among Facebook fans (e.g.: What do you think of this new product line?), and use that content as well as product reviews as content in your email newsletters.  Let your customers’ voices do the selling for you.
6. Celebrate your listening skills.  If you are responding to customer and prospect input, be sure to communicate back your responses and any changes you are making.  This also makes for excellent TRSS content.
7. Participate. The key to social and TRSS marketing is authenticity.  Do more than listen, participate.

As with everything in email and social media, it’s all about the subscriber user experiences you create via your content/promotional strategy.  All the viral mechanics and technology in the world will not make your brand compelling or engaging.

Repurposed from shoporg.com

Are Social Media Users Just Technologically Advanced Coupon Clippers?

via Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim by Frank Reed on 11/9/09

Ok, let’s get everything out on the table before we really get going here. Social media helps brand build a following of people who believe in the brand. It creates little armies of brand zealots that do all the promotion for you on a grassroots level. It is the next level of the evolution of the online commerce experience because Internet users are so savvy that they will understand that to experience a brand is to live the brand is to make the Earth safe for the rest of us mere mortals! Oooops. Sorry. I got a little caught up in the hype of social media.

Now for the reality check? Social media users like deals. Sure they may ‘engage’ with a brand a little more but they are really just looking for a deal. A coupon. A discount. Not brand nirvana.

At least that’s what a study from Razorfish as reported by MediaPost is telling us.

Much has been made of the ability of social media to help brands connect with consumers in new and deeper ways — to establish a “dialogue” with users through various interactive tools that blend seamlessly into their online activities.

But a new study suggests the key to engagement on social properties comes down to old-fashioned direct marketing techniques like offering discounts and special promotions. “Based on our research, it’s not so much about some type of ’shared passion’ for a brand’s values. Largely, it’s about deals — pure and simple,” states the 2009 FEED report from Razorfish examining consumers’ digital habits and attitudes.

What the ……?! Are you trying to tell me that when I put my head down on my pillow at night I really am not smiling about how much Dell, Zappos and Rackspace care for me on a deeper than e-commerce level? You mean it’s because I am just using them for their discounts? I feel so cheap.

Makes sense though. Maybe we need to take a step back on this whole social media deal and understand what is really going on. Sure there are levels of engagement that could not be experienced by brands or their users until the Facebook’s and Twitter’s of the world came along. What we need to be careful of is forgetting that human behavior doesn’t just change on a dime. In fact, I would posit that this is going to be how the VAST majority of people embrace social media for the foreseeable future. Not because they want to engage with a brand but because they want the brand they like for less cash.

Some other quick findings included

Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, for example, 44% said access to exclusive deals is the main reason. And on Facebook and MySpace, 37% cited special deals as the main reason they have “friended” a brand. The report points to companies such as Starbucks, which has amassed nearly 5 million fans and soared to the top of Facebook brand pages by offering coupons for free pastries and ice cream.

Razorfish identified customer service as the other key driver of consumer interaction in social media, with 33% friending a brand on Facebook and MySpace for that purpose, and 24% on Twitter. Companies such as Comcast, Zappos and Virgin have all gotten high marks for using the latter as a customer relations management (CRM) tool.

Now, this is where you create the brand zealots. When you solve their problems using social media then you are on to something. To think, though, that social media is selling more product because of the buying experience is a bit much when you are talking about the masses.

So for all of you who are seething at my position that the ‘feel good’ side of branding with social media is over-hyped please make your case with your comments. Meanwhile I am off to Dunkin’ Donuts for a discounted dozen beauties followed up by a dollar off cup of something from somewhere.

Dear Catalog CEOs: Our Multichannel Mess

Kevin Hilstrom minethedata.com

Dear Catalog CEOs:

Want to have some fun? Go back to 2002, and read this roundtable interview with numerous catalog CEOs, facilitated by Catalog Age magazine.

Remember Catalog Age? A publication dedicated to catalog marketers? Well, they changed. The rebranded themselves at Multichannel Merchant, and when the world changed again, a portion of their empire evolved into The Big Fat Marketing Blog. What comes after that? But they did change with the times.

After reading the article from 2002, I don't find thinking that is significantly different than the thinking that pervades our industry in 2009. We grumble about postage. We say it is getting harder to prospect. We say that online marketers are raising the customer service expectation bar. We say that banner advertising doesn't work.

For many in the catalog industry, the phrase "multichannel" means nothing more than a bunch of channels and tactics that are there to support the continued production of catalogs.

Our industry invented the "matchback", a methodology that allows us to over-inflate catalog importance and deflate the credit we give to all other channels. At a time when all other marketers were increasing their investment in online marketing, we were allocating our investment back to the old stalwart, the catalog.

At a time when all other marketers were figuring out how to optimize landing pages, we were figuring out how to optimize printed pages.

At a time when all other marketers were using java script to dynamically generate online content based on consumer preferences, we were drinking java while dynamically figuring out how many pages had to be sent to cause an online order to happen.

At a time when all other marketers were optimizing their search marketing activities, we were searching for the best co-op to find names to send our marketing activities to.

At a time when all other marketers were learning all of the ways that customers integrated themselves with websites and social media, we integrated our websites with our retail and catalog channels, largely because our vendor partners encouraged us to do so.

We took the road less traveled by. And that has made all of the difference.

Last week, a person commenting on a blog suggested that I don't offer solutions, I just point out the obvious.

I feel like I've offered more solutions on this blog, for free, than any person in the catalog industry. Go back over the past 3-4 years and read the content, then compare it with the content from the vendors in the catalog industry. I'm trying to communicate how we can stay in business. It seems that unless the solution includes mailing a catalog, the industry doesn't perceive the solution as being viable.

Here is a laundry list of tactics, strategies, and potential solutions. Why not give a few of these a try?

1. Immediately test reduced frequency to best customers, and measure the incremental profit you achieve when reducing contact frequency.
2. Immediately test reduced pages per contact to all customers, and measure the incremental profit you achieve when reducing pages per contact.
3. Immediately calculate the "organic percentage", the percentage of demand that you will generate if you stop all catalog marketing. Calculate the profitability of your business sans catalog marketing.
4. Do not mail any catalogs next July. Instead, take your catalog investment, and allocate it across all online marketing channels. Carefully measure how customer behavior changes next July.
5. Execute mail and holdout tests in EVERY catalog, across EVERY customer segment. DO THIS NOW! Have your matchback vendor match online orders to the control group --- this quantifies how much damage your matchback vendor has done to your business by over-stating your catalog results. I cannot stress how important this is.
6. Set up a holdout group for at least six months, if not one year, and do not mail catalogs to this holdout group during this time. Within this audience, test halving your e-mail contact strategy, and test doubling your e-mail contact strategy.
7. Invest as much time on your online landing pages as you invest in catalog landing pages. Put your online landing pages up on the hallway walls of your office, just like you do with your catalog spreads, and measure the resultant profitability of every single action a customer can take on your landing pages.
8. In every meeting you have, you must spend equal time talking about catalogs and about your website. Yes, EQUAL TIME!
9. In every catalog marketing meeting you have, invite your online marketing experts in, and have them critique your catalog marketing activities. You've spent ten years having your catalog marketing experts integrate your website into your catalog business, now try doing the opposite, and see what happens.
10. Test your catalog creative, to find the style of creative that is most effective at driving customers online.
11. Test offering only best selling products in catalogs to prospects.
12. Test offering only new products in catalogs to existing customers.
13. Immediately change strategy and diversify your marketing activities if 50% or more of your online business is sourced from catalog marketing.
14. Use Multichannel Forensics to quantify if customers are likely to continue shifting online, or have finished their channel shift.
15. Optimize your catalog business for rural, 55+ year old customers who shop via the telephone.
16. Optimize your online business for EVERYBODY else.
17. Have your team create a marketing plan for a situation where you are not allowed to rent or exchange name and address without prior customer permission. More than anything else, this exercise will prepare you for the future.
18. Have your team create a marketing plan for a situation where every single catalog cost 50% more than it costs today. This exercise will prepare you for the future.
19. Develop a five year sales plan by advertising channel, if you don't already have one in place. It is irresponsible to not be prepared for the future.
20. Visit a non-competitive online e-commerce brand, and facilitate four days of knowledge exchange. On Day 1, the e-commerce brand tells you how they acquire customers. On Day 2, you explain to them how you acquire customers. On Day 3, the e-commerce brand tells you how they optimize online conversion. On Day 4, you tell them how you optimize offline conversion. Tell me you aren't going to learn something from this exercise.
21. Stop laying off your call center staff, and instead, unleash a fraction of these individuals in the social media ecosystem, sort of like how Zappos does.
22. Stop treating online customers from online advertising sources like catalog customers. Enjoy making additional profit after employing this strategy.
23. Spend more time optimizing fulfillment rates, return rates, and distribution center expenses than you spend managing social media.
24. Ask every one of your contact center and distribution center employees why they would shop from your catalog if they can find a similar product at the same price via an online brand that offers free shipping. Carefully record their responses. Change your strategy, based on their responses.
25. Spend more time with your search vendor than you spend with your co-op vendor.
26. Spend more time with your e-mail vendor than you spend with your co-op vendor.

I could go on and on, forever.

Maybe the economy will improve in 2010. Maybe customers will re-embrace catalog marketing. And maybe the old business model will thrive once again.

If those things don't happen, isn't it time to pull ourselves out of the multichannel view of the world that was so popular in 2002? If the multichannel view of the world yielded success, would so many companies be struggling, struggling long before the economy imploded or before postage increased?

As always, I am here to help you!

Thanks,
Kevin

Enlisting Insultants

excerpts fromThe  Breakthrough Company by Keith McFarland

It turns out that when a company botches strategy or misses out on the industries next big thing, the executive team probably fell victim to one of two common human afflictions -- at least that is what reseachers from MIT Sloan Business School believe. . The researchers call these two ubiquitous management traps "myopia" and "inertia".  Myopia or short-sightedness refers to the company's inability to see the forest from the tree. . Myopic executives tend to focus on fighting fires and tackling projects close to home, and foget to watch the tectonic changes reshaping the industry.

Simmilarly executives suffering from inertia fail to take advantage of new opportunties , choosing instead to stand pat in familiar markets, finding comfort in doing business the way they have always done so.

Why Company's need Insultants?

David Romer a University of California researcher studyestablished that NFL Coaches would actually win more games if they went for touchdowns and first downs instead of punting or attempting a field goal.  Bill belichick of the NE Patriots started winning Championships by applying Romers principles.

Breakthrough Companies not only are they open to people questioning  the fundamentals assumptions of the business, they encourage people to buck the system.

Another reason a Company needs Insultants is like animals people take safety in numbers (herding), The avoidance of being first or going it alone or being safe avoids the rebuke of your boss, Wall Street even if the Company's performance suffers. It is only after there is a success will the herd roll quickly behind the idea.  (sure sounds a lot like ShoppeSimple.com)

The Social Media Clutter Problem

Posted: 04 Nov 2009 06:38 AM PST Seekingalpha.com

There is an interesting dynamic that I wanted to highlight – the value of social media sites plateaus for individual users once the individual reaches a critical mass of content.

Have a lot of friends? Good luck trying to follow all of their twitter streams or their postings on Facebook. The overflow of content produced by the masses has diminishing marginal returns. The next tweet a friend makes will either be lost or push another tweet off of the first page of the queue. There is no way to consume all of the content presented to us, leaving the value of these services to plateau in their current form. Scouring the postings on Craigslist is a pain and so is trying to find a contact in LinkedIn whose name I can’t remember.

Consumer driven websites often need to rapidly scale their businesses to create network effects and grab market share. Getting big quickly was key for old-timers like eBay and Craigslist, and has been critical for new comers like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Network effects play an important role for all of these companies, as they scaled it became increasingly difficult for other players to challenge them.

While the amount of nodes (users) in the network gives the company the benefit of barriers, the amount of content that these users create can give the company the burden of clutter. Internet users are creating an astounding amount of content and for some of these Internet darlings this can create a big problem.

To be clear, this isn’t a knock on these services. They generally create a huge amount of value for an individual before they plateau. They do plateau, however, and that’s unfortunate.

This begs the question – what can these companies do to ensure that their services don’t plateau (or at least plateau less)? Ultimately it comes down to sorting data as granularly as possible (e.g., by person, by topic or by group).

Interestingly, ecommerce platforms do not appear as affected by the clutter issue as they can easily use directories and other sorting mechanisms to help users navigate the excessive amounts of data. Ecommerce sites can leverage the objective nature of the product characteristics or descriptions ot create these hierarchies. Social media sites, however, often have more difficulty structuring the data as categorizing user generated content is often based upon subjective characteristics.

So, what should these companies do to solve the clutter problem? For now, they’ll use sorting features to Band-Aid the problem. In the future, I suspect that more intelligent engines will help prioritize content in these streams for the users. The problem is growing and as always, I suspect hundreds of tech wiz-kids will emerge with new ways to solve the problem.

Dear Catalog CEOs: Demographics

Kevin Hilstrom Minethedata.com

Dear Catalog CEOs:

Unless you are Miles Kimball, there are significant demographic challenges awaiting the industry.

Most commerce happens among customers age 25 - 60. Clearly, customers older than 60 purchase lots of goodies, and the 24 and under crowd have a whole different set of purchase priorities.

But the big, meaty portion of the bell curve is between 25 and 60.

And with each passing year, we transition through a new portion of the bell curve.

A 60 year old customer with catalog preferences leaves the meaty portion of the curve, replaced by somebody who just turned twenty-five.

Think about the products you sell, and the channel you choose to sell those products in. Which customer, the customer who just turned 61, or the customer who just turned 25, is more likely to buy your merchandise?

Which customer, the customer who just turned 61, or the customer who just turned 25, is more likely to be appreciative of receiving a catalog in the mail?

And then we have additional inflection points.

• Age 50 - 60 = Orders via catalogs over the telephone.
• Age 40 - 50 = Orders via catalogs online.
• Age 25 - 40 = Orders online.

The problem here is that a customer doesn't move from the 25-40 online cohort to the 40-50 cohort that orders from catalogs via your website. The advertising habits do not change as the customer ages, meaning that the 40 year old won't become more likely to become a telephone shopper in ten years.

All of this means that the audience that is receptive to catalogs is shrinking, almost unnoticeably on an annual basis, shockingly fast when viewed over the course of a decade.

I have cause for concern when I hear statements like "80% of our e-commerce orders came from customers who received a catalog in the past month." This suggests that management has a disproportionate focus on catalog marketing.

Modern cataloging is a lot like managing a 401k account. You remember the days when a financial advisor would show up at work, and strongly recommend "diversification", right? You weren't supposed to invest all of your retirement money in just one fund. You were supposed to spread your money out across numerous funds, so that if one or two of your funds collapsed, you didn't lose everything.

The exact same logic holds in modern cataloging.

We must diversify. We must cultivate an e-commerce audience that is completely independent of our loyal catalog customer following. We simply have no choice.

I recommend a target of at least 50% or more of e-commerce demand that comes from non-catalog sources.

Let me say that again: At least 50% or more of your e-commerce demand should come from non-catalog sources, or your "portfolio", if you will, is not diversified enough, leaving your business model at serious risk.

I can hear the complaints already.

• "Online customers are price sensitive, I cannot give away the store with cheapest price and free shipping, or I'll go broke."
• "Paid Search customers have poor long-term value, they only care about finding the best deal today, they are loyal to Google, not to my business."
• "E-mail marketing is awful, I only get $0.07 per e-mail message, while I get $2.77 per catalog mailed."
• "Affiliate marketing stinks, why do I have to pay those folks a commission when the customer would have purchased anyway?"
• "Social Media is completely unproven. I don't have time to tweet about my order entry system task force meetings!"
• "Mobile marketing is a fad, nobody cares about an iPhone app when they can browse the entire assortment on my website on a 23" monitor via a broadband internet connection."
• "You don't understand my customer. My customers are unique, they love catalogs."
• "You don't understand my business model, we sell widgets/gifts/apparel/books/tools, and you cannot sell those things online without paper supporting them."
• "My daughter is 27, and she loves receiving Pottery Barn catalogs in the mail. So there. I think the younger generation just needs to be trained to love print."
• "Nobody wants to read things off of a computer screen, print is a far more effective vehicle for communicating a merchandising story."
• "Our matchback vendor tells us things are just fine."

You know what? Every one of those quotes could be accurate.

But looking at the financials of catalog brands all across our great country, it doesn't seem likely that every one of those comments will align in a way that is beneficial to catalog brands. Heck, a well respected industry expert recently told me via e-mail that 1/3 of catalog brands will not exist in their current form on January 1, 2011.

Yes, this is a person that you trust, folks, a person who does not boast, and does not write content online. This is an Executive who is in the trenches with us.

Given that information, it is time to diversify. It doesn't matter that the e-commerce side of the business is less profitable or less loyal or less fun or more fickle.

We simply have no choice. It is time to diversify. Now.

As always, I am here to help you through this transition. We will get through it!

Thanks,
Kevin

Some people are better than others

by Seth Godin

By 'better', of course I mean better customers, better prospects, better sneezers, better at spreading the word.

Here are two interesting lessons from the book industry:

1. Kindle readers buy two or three times as many books as book readers. Why? I don't think it's necessarily because using a Kindle leads someone to read more books. I think it's because the kind of person who buys a lot of books is the most likely person to pony up and buy a Kindle. I know that sounds obvious, but once you see it this way, you understand why book publishers should be killing themselves to appeal to this group. After all, the group voted with their dollars to show that they're better.
2. Walmart and other mass marketers are now offering top bestsellers for $9 or less each, about $5 less than their cost. Why? Why not offer toasters or socks as a loss leader to get people in the store? I think the answer is pretty clear: people who buy hardcover books buy other stuff too. A hardcover book is a luxury item, it's new and it's buzzable. This sort of person is exactly who you want in your store.

The challenge, then is to look for cues that people give you that they are better, and then cater to them. Every industry has people who are worth more, buzz more, care more and buy more than other people. Don't treat people the same, find the ones that matter more to you, and hug them.

Retailers Get Ready for Social Shopping Experience

EMarkerter.com

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Online shopping is more than just transactional

People have long shared product opinions with friends and family through word-of-mouth. Today, social media tools enable consumers to extend their connections and conduct commerce in powerful new ways.

As people spend more time on social networks, retailers feel pressure to be there as well. Twitter is a hotbed of experimentation for retailers that see it as a channel for customer service, promoting the deal of the day and more. Facebook and its third-party developers are creating e-commerce applications on the site. Meanwhile, retail Websites are bolstering their social commerce features.

“While user ratings and reviews are a mature form of social commerce with proven benefits, e-commerce on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, is in an early stage,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Social Commerce on Facebook, Twitter and Retail Sites.” “People are spending more time on social networks and are able to conduct more of their regular activities on these platforms. E-commerce on social networks has barely tapped that potential.”

But forward-thinking retailers want to bring their Web stores to the environments where their customers like to spend time. As a result, almost three-quarters of the merchants in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide have a presence on at least one of the major social networks or social shopping sites.

Social network users are a highly coveted group of consumers. Across all age brackets, they were more likely than average to make an online purchase, according to a May 2009 survey by Anderson Analytics.

What’s more, social network users are sharing recommendations with greater frequency than generally expected. A Q1 2009 Razorfish survey of social network users found that some 29% reported sharing their views online at least every few weeks, while 10% said they made such contributions at least every few days.

“Leading companies know they cannot afford to wait for customers to visit their sites,” added Mr. Grau. “They need to place their virtual storefronts where their customers congregate. This implies the nature of e-commerce is shifting from a transactional experience to a social one.”

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The full report, “Social Commerce on Facebook, Twitter and Retail Sites” also answers these key questions:

• What is the outlook for social commerce?
• How are marketers engaging customers on social media sites?
• What social shopping features are retailers adding to their sites?
• Which retailers are paving the way in social commerce?

Top ten holiday trends for 2009

Let ShoppeSimple help you add additional sales for this Holiday with our suite of Retention and Customer Acquisition tools. For more information check out ShoppeSimple.com and RSSCheck.com. Contact info@shoppesimple.com

From Shop.org

By Ellen Davis, VP and NRF spokesperson | Published: October 20, 2009

This entry was posted in Holiday, Research, Retail Trends, eCommerce

In a media and analyst briefing earlier today, BIGresearch’s Phil Rist and I shared ten insights of what to expect this holiday season based largely on findings from NRF’s first holiday survey. Listen in on the complete briefing, or view the top 10 below:

#1: Americans aren’t ready to declare an end to the recession. According to a survey by BIGresearch, Americans will not believe the recession is over until they see a reduction in unemployment. So, while an increase in stock market activity might be great news for high-end retailers, it’s not helping retailers who cater to Middle America. As Phil explained on the call, “The Wall Street traders are excited but the average American isn’t in the pit. They’ll be looking at the job market to see when they should feel better.”

#2: It’s all about the economy. We’re hearing a lot about people making changes to gifts (more practical gifts, joint gifts, or making gifts) as well as putting up last year’s decorations. The economy will also impact where people shop, with 70% planning to head to discounters and 11% planning to buy something from a thrift store or resale shop. (We added the “thrift” category this year and, personally, I’m shocked that one in ten people are going to purchased a used gift this year. Not for me, please!)

In another sign of the times…is it possible that people will use gift cards they’ve previously received to make holiday purchases? We’ll find out next month when we add “gift card” to our annual holiday payment method survey.

Side note: One of the best ways to hear from shoppers’ themselves about what they are planning this holiday season is to watch the three-minute video conducted by EXPO for NRF.

#3: Sales and promotions are king. With 2009 the holiday season of the bargain hunter, more than half of people say that sales or everyday low prices will be the deciding factor on where they buy. But with inventories at a minimum, it will be interesting to watch the push-and-pull between retailers and customers. Retailers, who have scaled back on inventory, are telling consumers to shop early while consumers, who are used to waiting until the last minute for good deals, might plan to hold out for better sales. We’re expecting retailers to market heavily on the front end to entice shoppers into the stores but we’ll need to wait and see when customers finally start to bite.

#4: Pay attention to payment methods. Our November survey digs deeper into payment methods, and we’ll be paying close attention to how an increase in credit card minimums and also an increase in interest rates may impact spending. This is an expenditure that Americans don’t like, many can’t accommodate, and most weren’t expecting. But this move is another reason why many may shy away from credit cards and could bode well for retailers who offer layaway.

#5: It’s the thought that counts. Hallmark and friends, take a deep breath: greeting card spending won’t experience as dramatic of a drop as many other categories. Americans say they’ll spend 2% less on greeting cards this year (compared with 17% less on friends and 15% less on co-workers, for example). Turns out people might be just sending a card instead of a gift. Better get those stamps ready…

#6: ‘Tis the season to eat. Candy and food spending is up about $10 per person and was the only category that rose in the entire survey. “People may be giving gifts of pie or cookies instead of buying them something, or they might invite others over to the house for a get-together,” said Phil Rist.

#7: Gift cards aren’t dead. When asking people what they wanted to receive this year, gift cards were the only category that saw an increase. (Check out a recent blog post on the findings and some examples of retailer gift cards.) While people may worry that gift cards are impersonal or are trying to find merchandise on sale, gift cards remain the most asked-for item. There could be a few reasons behind this: My cynical side says that people may want to use gift cards they receive for the holiday season on necessities like gas, food or laundry detergent. The optimist in me wonders if people salivate over the idea of receiving gift cards because they’ve been pulling back on spending all year and love the idea of going into a store to buy something for themselves.

In tandem with trend #6 (it really is the holiday season of food), Phil also suggested that many people might want to receive gift cards for restaurants to enjoy dinner out with their family during a year when many have been pulling back on that experience.

#8: When looking at store sales, consider the Internet. The web will influence one in three holiday purchases this year, and retailers are using the Internet not only as a sales channel but also as a marketing vehicle. Take a look at Shop.org’s eHoliday survey, which provides more insight on how people will shop online this holiday season as well as what online retailers are planning. (Hello, social media!)

#9: Don’t discount department stores. Department stores are doing something right among the 18-24 year-old age group: young adults are more likely to shop at department stores than anywhere else during the holiday season. These retailers, which include Macy’s, JCPenney and Kohl’s, are also doing a nice job with private label products, positioning themselves as discounters (at least on price) and creating an environment where young adults like to shop. That said, keep in mind that young adults are the most likely to wait until the last minute to shop, meaning a large portion of department store sales might come in very close to Christmas Day.

#10: Impulse spending? Fuhgettaboutit. The number of people who plan to make additional, non-gift purchases for themselves or their family declined this year, and those who will make additional purchases will also spend less on them. As Phil reasoned, “It’s not in the budget this year for people to treat themselves, and some may feel a little guilty doing that,” he said. “Instead, they’re taking their holiday budget and focusing on people on their list.”