eCommerce/eretail

SUMMARY: New companies face many challenges, not least of which is building the initial customer base. That goal is even more important for retailers with a specialty product that appeals to a specific target audience.

This week's case study examines a customized children's book publisher and how it used mobile app advertising to quadruple its email database while reaching its desired market segment with a continually optimized campaign. read the complete case study

SUMMARY: Mobile marketing is an exciting channel, and no part is currently more buzzworthy than mobile apps. Once you create the app, you will market it through outlets such as Apple’s App Store and the Android Market.

In this how-to article, you will find nine tactics provided by two experts in the field. The tactics cover a range of app store ranking topics: ranking factors for different platforms, using multiple traffic sources, and using organic users. They also answer why a worthwhile app is important, how app ratings improve app rankings, how app category choice can affect rankings, and more. read the complete article

SUMMARY: "US online retail sales will reach $229 billion in 2013." "The market will grow at a CAGR of 10% over the 5-year forecast period." view the complete research record

SUMMARY: The traditional marketing funnel is broken, says Joseph Jaffe, marketing consultant and author. Its emphasis on customer acquisition means marketers spend most of their time looking for new customers rather than nurturing the ones they already have.

Changing this marketing paradigm is the call-to-arms of Jaffe’s latest marketing book, “Flip the Funnel,” which officially launched with a keynote presentation at MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit in Miami last week. We sat down with him for an interview following his speech to learn more, and to outline five key strategies for changing your company’s marketing focus. read the complete interview

SUMMARY: This week we look back on one year of consumer-marketing newsletters to highlight three key trends from 2010 -- complete with 10 links to the year's best articles.

Take a look to find social marketing advice from Kodak, a Twitter contest that helped boost sales 150%, and a mobile-page test that cut bounces 22%. read the complete article

While this is just one consumer’s complaint, it’s something to think about. “Rob” recently was quoted in a Consumerist post about how Amazon ruined his wife’s surprise Christmas present by sending email recommendations relevant to the gift he purchased.

His wife saw a subject line referring to the surprise gift (a TomTom GPS) on the couple’s shared Google homepage enabled with an iGoogle email widget showing recent emails.

I suppose one could argue that it’s... read the complete blog post