Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

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

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.”

Dear Catalog CEOs: Six Catalog Trends

from Kevin Hilstrom minethedata.com

Hello there, my catalog friends!

These are interesting times, aren't they?

We are truly caught between two eras. The past 100 years were very good to catalog brands. And in five or ten years, there will be a road map for the catalog brand looking to enter the future.

Between the past and the future, that's where we are stuck. We're stuck in a period where, as one business leader recently told me, "nothing works".

We know that's not true. Plenty of things work. But nothing works at a scale necessary to cause optimism.

So let's discuss six important catalog trends that help the catalog brand bridge the past and the future.

Trend #1 = Micro-Targeting: This has been talked about for decades, but we're getting closer to seeing it happen. There simply isn't a need to send a 96 page catalog that has a lot of the merchandise you love to sell when there is this thing out there called the "internet" that also has a lot of the merchandise you love to sell. We're likely to see a 96 page catalog become three or four different 56 page catalogs, with the customer receiving just one of the 56 page offerings. People are using this strategy to generate 95% of the demand on about 60% of the pages --- mathematically, folks, it works! And instead of sending remails, you can send a different 56 page version to a customer a few weeks later. I cannot predict where micro-targeting is going to take us. I can predict that catalogs will get smaller and smaller and smaller, since the website is the store and we don't need to advertise everything anymore. E-mail will continue to progress down the micro-targeting path, with more an more versions that are sent on a triggered basis. Long-term, we'll see the slow death of the "campaign" ... sure, campaigns will be here twenty years from now, but we're headed down a path that cannot be reversed anymore.

Thegies: For the first time Merchants can digitally merchandise product offers and promotions to consumers by category and subcategory communities of interest when they work with the ShoppeSimple Loyalty and Customer Acquisition Tools.

Trend #2 = Filtering: We will see a dramatic change in how a catalog brand views customers. In many of my Multichannel Forensics projects, customers fall into four buckets.

1. Catalog shoppers who order via the telephone.
2. Catalog shoppers who order via the internet.
3. Online shoppers who order because of online marketing.
4. Brand buyers who like the merchandise.

It will take every ounce of energy possible to not mail catalogs to online shoppers and brand buyers. But this will be essential for the catalog brand to survive the transition that is coming/happening. Honestly, if I had to communicate one thing for a cataloger to do right now, it would be to start filtering, immediately. I've been able to generate a half-million to a million dollars of profit achieved for businesses between $30,000,000 and $100,000,000 in size just by doing a reasonable job of filtering. Quite honestly, filtering may be the difference between profit and loss for many catalogers. And psychologically, it isn't easy for a cataloger to transition the mindset from a customer buying because a catalog was sent to her and a customer buying because she loves the product. This transition has to happen, and filtering is a great place to start --- especially from a profit and loss standpoint.

Thegies: Imagine if you can take the above point from Kevin and deliver product messaging (whether it is new arrivals or promotional products) several times a day, 365 days a year without opt-out. At ShoppeSimple YOU Can!. Our client has seen substantial increases in site traffic, a 5X increase in conversion over email and an increase in Average Order Value. To estimate a mature TransactionalRSS (TRSS) program from ShoppeSimple an email program is estimated to be 10% of online revenue. A mature TRSS program is estimated to a 1/3 of email revenue. And if you take 25% of this number and only pay a Pay Per Transaction fee to get the sale, we haven’t had anyone say pass. Check out shoppesimple.com for more information.

Trend #3 = Dynamic Landing Pages: Folks are doing this as well (just hit refresh when you visit Amazon.com). Merchants will submit the items they want to feature, while the rules-based system that feeds e-mail campaigns to customers will fill in the holes with customer preferences. Catalogers will not pursue the algorithmic approaches of their online brethren, and that could be acceptable as long as there is a warm story being told to the customer. Again, this isn't a new idea, but it is one that catalogers will embrace, because catalogers will understand that the merchandising of landing pages is very similar to the merchandising of spreads. In fact, any online strategy that can be made to look, from a process standpoint like, old-time cataloging will be embraced by catalogers.

Thegies: Through the ShoppeSimple Loyalty and Customer Acquisition Tools we build dynamic landing pages for every TransactionalRSS Feed we publish.

Trend #4 = Co-Op Evolution: We're going to see between one and three companies emerge (could be existing catalog co-ops, could be online co-ops, could be the big data providers, could be one of the web analytics companies), companies that focus on evaluating real-time customer behavior. This is a very different strategy than what we see today. Today's catalog co-ops are very good at massaging past purchase history across brands. Tomorrow's co-op leaders will combine web analytics data with offline data and web surfing behavior. You won't pay $0.06 for one-time access to a name. Instead, you'll pay $0.03, and you'll get to pick the contact you wish to employ --- catalog, e-mail, personalized online landing page, etc., or you'll pay $0.15 to employ a multiple micro-channel campaign (catalog + e-mail + online display ads + search optimization + ads on social media platforms). Of course, catalogers will pay about anything for the multiple micro-channel campaign. This will be transformative, especially among catalog brands targeting lapsed buyers.

Trend #5 = Frenemies And Pods: As catalog productivity continues to decline (not yours, but industry-wide), you'll see new and unusual partnerships. Expect to see contact center and distribution center consolidation --- a company in one industry (automotive parts) and a company in another industry (gifts) will share contact center and distribution center resources, human resources, information technology departments, database marketing teams, circulation teams, all in an effort to conserve back-of-the-office expenses. Customer lists and resources will be freely shared across what I call "pods", a half-dozen or dozen frenemies who leverage what each other are good at. Catalogers already share all of their customer data with each other, and private equity firms already consolidate lists and back-of-the-office operations. It's only a matter of time before frenemies form pods.

Thegies: In ShoppeSimple Feeds there are opportunities for merchants to place your ads on the iGoogle/My Yahoo Home pages, on Facebook, Twitter and on Smartphones.

Trend #6 = Organizational Transformation: A generation of catalog marketers, age 50 - 65, are getting ready to retire. Quite simply, this generation will not be replaced by individuals who have the same passion for catalog marketing that the generation of catalogers raised in the 1970 - 1995 timeframe had. During the next ten years, we will see a considerable number of business failures, because a generation of individuals used to communicating with customers age 50+ will be replaced by a generation of leaders ready to market to customers in their 30s and 40s. The disconnect (strategies for young customers, marketed to older customers) will drive down productivity, and result in organizational transformation. Leading catalog companies will recognize this well ahead of time, and will cope by developing new brands that are targeted to a younger audience, led by a younger generation of leaders. Think of a business like, say, Cuddledown of Maine, building a new online brand for a younger demographic, training younger employees to manage this business, so that when a generation of leaders and customers move on to retirement there is an infrastructure ready to replace the core business.

Thegies: We ask our clients what is the strategic and tactical direction regarding Social Media and Mobile and it is surprising how few merchants can share the strategically vision in these areas. But today Shoppesimple can help you monetize both your Social Media and Mobile strategies. Simple checkout RSSCheck.com for answers and contact information. Email info@rsscheck.com

What’s in a Retail E-Mail?

To monetize your social media assets check out RSSCheck.com. Now use TransactionalRSS and ShoppeSimple.com to provide Loyalty and Customer Acquisition Tools.

emarketer.com

A look at best practices

With social media presence rapidly becoming a must for online retailers, Email Data Source and Goodmail Systems studied how often retailers were including social media marketing links in their e-mail campaigns.

Large majorities of the top 100 companies according to Internet Retailer had a profile on Facebook (79%), Twitter (69%) or both (59%). Formerly hyped technologies such as blogs and RSS feeds were much less popular among these online retail leaders—fewer than one in five used either.

But many of those that had a Facebook or Twitter account did not promote it. Just over one-half of social media participants included links in their e-mail campaigns. Further, less than 30% mentioned their Facebook and Twitter accounts on their company Website prominently.

Online retailers that linked to their social media pages in e-mail campaigns were somewhat more likely to also promote them on their Website. Still, the majority of the Internet Retailer top 100 sites (63%) did not link to a social media presence.

The e-retailers were more likely to include a less social but perhaps more practical feature in their e-mail campaigns: store locators. More than three-quarters of the Web retailers studied that had a physical presence included a locator tool in their marketing e-mails, up from 70% in 2008 and 60% in 2007.

Links to social networking sites may be rising quickly—appearing in 20% of marketing e-mails in July 2009, up from just 2% in February—but the majority of leading online retailers have yet to jump on the bandwagon.

Keep up on the latest digital trends. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription, today.

Check out today’s other article, “Internet Is Top Banking Method.”

The Internet Is Finally, Primarily A Content Platform

From siliconalleyinsider.com

It used to be the Web's only real killer app was communications -- email. But these days people use the Internet for content consumption more than anything else.

Users spend 88% more time consuming content on the Internet each month in 2009 (7 hours) than they did in 2003 (3 hours, 42 minutes), according to a study conducted by the Online Publishers Association's Internet Activity Index.

Whereas people used to spend 46% of their Internet time communicating in 2003, in 2009, that number is now down to 27%. As indicated in the chart above, content consumption is up to a 42% share from 34%

ShoppeSimple annoucing new enhancements to TransactionalRSS Feed Analytics Tools

What separates ShoppeSimple? Feeed Analytics. TransactionalRSS's platform enables a merchant to use tools that manage/grow the TRSS channel.

New ShoppeSimple Features

from RSCheck.com

What really separates ShoppeSimple TransactionalRSS (TRSS) from plain old RSS?  One of many compelling answers: Management and Analytics. ShoppeSimple’s SaaS-based TransactionalRSS platform is the only place to get a rich suite of tools that online marketers need to manage and grow the TRSS sales channel.

Case in point:  VP of User  Experience Jake Ingman just announced two new analytics features for the TransactionalRSS management side that should help our clients and peak the interest of many an online merchant:

1. The “Today” Row

This row on the analytics page provides up-to-the-second information about the pageviews, product click-throughs, and order conversions for the current day.

2. Campaign Tracking

ShoppeSimple stats now support Hub traffic source segmentation!  That means you can add a unique identifier to the end of your ShoppeSimple Hub URL, and it will be displayed separately in your detailed statistics report (and soon, in your summary table as well).  Some email campaign programs add variables to the end of your URLs automatically.  If you don’t use a program that adds these variables for you, you can add them manually.

For example, if you wanted to track visitors that came through your email campaign, you could modify your Hub URL like this:

Your generic hub link:

http://hub.shoppesimple.com/for/yourcompany/

Your email-specific hub link:

http://hub.shoppesimple.com/for/yourcompany/via/email/campaign/23/

This would tell the ShoppeSimple statistics program that those visitors came “via: email” and “campaign: 23″.  If you don’t have a campaign id, you can just use the /via variable.

There’s more, of course.  As usual, check out www.shoppesimple.com to see how it looks to the consumer; and have a look at www.shoppesimple.net to get a sneak preview of the next phase — a first of its kind opt-in prospecting portal for online merchants.

Let us know what you think — and if you want to learn more

For more information click on the Contact Us link at the top right of the home at RSSCheck.com

Jump starting your catalog sales with TransactionalRSS -- TRSS

Have you considered using TransactionalRSS (TRSS) starting the week before the drop of the latest catalog drop  through the first few weeks of the catalog mailing to announce your catalog is on the way. The TRSS feeds should focus on on key items from the catalog.  Announcing the catalog mailing and introduction of new collection or products items from the catalog will help jumpstart the book sales.  To learn more check out RSSCheck.com contact us at info@rsscheck.com

iDEAS to BUILD your brand in a continued downturn

Check out this video from http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24361.asp and then contact ShoppeSimple who can put your New Arrival and New Seasonal Offerings in front of your consumers every day 365 days.

Worried about being to promotional and as a result loosing contribution margin? Then ShoppeSimple can give you a cost affordable way to let your customers know about merchandise you want to show them.

Through ShoppeSimple's TransactionalRSS (TRSS) Content Management System (TCMS) you can now digital merchandise your product line to consumers who have requested to see you merchandise every day

To learn more check out RSSCheck.com and also ShoppeSimple.net for more information email info@RSSCheck.com or phone 612.349.2740

Take a peek at our new online customer acquisition portal at shoppesimple.net

From Federated Media

Boing Boing

Boing Boing attracts more than 5 million unique visitors to its site each month, and has over 600,000 RSS subscribers. This mirrors my experience of email to RSS. The power of TransactionalRSS or TRSS like RSS is not in the collection or growing a massive TRSS subscriber file but in its ability to provide a consumer with promotional or product offerings everyday or multiple product offerings every day 365 days a year.

This is a very different strategic approach then what you tend to do with email subscriber files. thegies