eCommerce/eretail

SUMMARY: For certain products, consumers would rather use a search engine to learn more about them and then go to see the products in person. Local search is a way for e-retailers to bridge this gap.

Find out how a multichannel jeweler connected online searches to in-store sales with an integrated, localized search engine optimization program. Includes creative samples of alert emails and SMS messages that let searchers reserve products before coming in to look. read the complete case study

SUMMARY: A call center fielding calls from unhappy customers is akin to a bucketful of lemons – not the best scenario, but one that you can use to your advantage. Find out how a natural gas company mined a sample of their incoming calls to improve their marketing and customer satisfaction, and cut costs by the million. Includes tips to avoid customer confusion, wasted time and website malfunctions. 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: Only seven years ago, revenue at Zappos.com was a paltry $1.6 million. This year, the online shoe retailer will reach $800 million, and they expect to top $1 billion in 2008. Discover the secrets for such phenomenal growth in our interview with their CEO.

Includes answers to why:
-> They offer no-cost return shipping
-> They tested and stopped using discounts and ecoupons
-> They walked away from drop-shipping even though it produced 25% of their revenue read the complete interview

SUMMARY: Few strategies can pay off like the classics: doing research, segmenting your audience, and discovering why they like you. Once you know your customers' motivations, you can design more relevant marketing campaigns.

Read how the marketing team at an online community used customer research to identify key motivators for their customer segments. Then, they used that research to develop a campaign that's helping drive 200% more registrations every month. 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