Annie Selke Uses Offline Tactics to Drive Online Buyers
The high-end furnishings brand Annie Selke uses direct mail catalogs and flyers to tell the company’s story, before ultimately driving most shoppers online to complete their transactions, explains Cindy Marshall, chief marketing officer for the Massachusetts-based brand. It’s also working with 4Cite’s cart-abandonment program and the vendor’s other tools.
Logi Analytics Leverages Future Insights with Predictive Tool
With the understanding that applications are more valuable when they show future outcomes, as opposed to past results, the business intelligence firm Logi Analytics is launching a product today that will allow users to access and leverage future insights, enabled by machine learning, directly from their existing applications.
With Product Launches, Drift Moves Conversational Marketing Into Prime Time
By launching a Conversational Advertising product, Drift is looking to create a new category of online advertising—one that leads potential customers directly from digital ads to real conversations, without relying on the types of static landing pages and lead forms that tend to slow sales processes down.
How Brand Marketers Can Capture Consumer Attention on Mobile
With mobile ad spend set to surpass television for the first time this year, brand marketers are in a frenzy looking for smarter ways to generate the highest possible ROI from their investments. The problem, it seems, is that many brand marketers aren’t fully comfortable with mobile strategy.
As ‘Near Me’ Searches Spread on Mobile, Consumers Trade Loyalty for Convenience
Location marketing is changing the way people shop in the real world, potentially decreasing the role loyalty plays in purchasing decisions as consumers prioritize convenience. According to the results of a new study commissioned by the location marketing platform Uberall, 82% of shoppers have done a “near me” search on their smartphones.
TruRating, Verifone Deal Highlights Importance of Customer Feedback Data
In a move that highlights just how important customer feedback data has become to mid-size businesses, the global payments and commerce juggernaut Verifone recently announced that it’s partnering with TruRating, a comparatively small but influential customer insight company that specializes in point-of-sale customer feedback solutions.
As Brands Move Marketing In-House, Agencies Push Back
The number of big brands moving their marketing in-house is growing, but whether that decision actually leads to lower costs and faster turnaround times is still a hotly debated topic. Holly Robowski, associate director of paid media at Cardinal Marketing, offers a perspective contradicting the pro-in-house zeitgeist.
Uberall Partners With TripAdvisor for Multilocation Reputation Management
While it has become commonplace for hotels and restaurants to check their TripAdvisor ratings on a regular basis, the process breaks down as the size of the business grows, causing brands with hundreds of locations to struggle. The digital location marketing platform Uberall is trying to change that.
Happy Returns Expands Into College Market
Startup Happy Returns, based in Santa Monica and founded by alums from HauteLook and NordstromRack.com, offers a way for shoppers to return e-commerce purchases at real-world kiosks. Beginning this fall, Happy Returns will be setting up kiosks—which it calls “Return Bars”—at five campuses around the country to capitalize on the returns generated by back-to-college online shopping.
Indi Tackles Inauthenticity in Influencer Marketing Space
Consumers have grown weary of synchronized sponsored content flooding their Instagram feeds, and brands are being inundated by requests for freebies from self-proclaimed social media stars. That evolution in the influencer marketing space has created an opening that Indi CEO and founder Neel Grover believes his new platform can fill.
Report: 34% of Ad Impressions Placed on Low-Quality Sites
Reputable brands have pushed back hard against having their ads appear alongside content that goes against their values—for example, advertising running alongside articles or videos about how to complete the Tide PODS challenge—but Gartner L2’s research shows that the pushback hasn’t been effective enough, and the industry still has work to do.
With SimpleOrder Acquisition, Upserve Digs Into Back-House Operations
In a year that’s been marked by consolidation across the hyperlocal marketing space, Upserve’s recent acquisition of SimpleOrder should come as no surprise. It mirrors another hyperlocal acquisition announced just this week: full-suite marketing company Cheetah Digital’s purchase of loyalty specialist Stellar Loyalty.
LeSportsac Uses AI to Build Omni-Experiences for Shoppers
As digital marketing practices evolve in the retail space, LeSportsac has had to shake up its strategy to keep apace. Using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning, LeSportsac has been able to modernize its marketing programs and more effectively serve its customers.
5 Online-to-Offline Attribution Platforms for Local Marketers
Online-to-offline attribution isn’t a challenge without a solution. A number of vendors are serving the local market with platforms designed to help local marketers at big brands and multi-location retailers assign the correct value to each point of touch in their multi-touch campaigns. Here are five vendors to which retail brands can turn.